Banana Rose

  “Blue, please. I’m nervous enough. I haven’t seen her in more than a year.” I sat down.

  Blue stopped putting cans of dog food away. She blinked her eyes several times and then came and sat down beside me on the couch. “Oh, I get it. Your mother. Well, what’s she like?”

  My mother’s plane was two hours late. There had been a thunderstorm in Chicago, and they’d had to circle a long time before they could land. “Nell”—my mother began weeping in my arms—“I thought the plane would crash and I’d never see you again!”

  I smiled weakly. “Of course you would.” I patted her back and then took a bag she was carrying. “What’s this?”

  “Oh, I brought some things for you. A kosher chicken, Barton’s truffles, Ebinger’s cookies, dill pickles, stuffed cabbage, a challah Grandma made. Some things from the freezer. You’ll see.” Talking about what she brought pleased her. She looked around the Albuquerque airport. “My, this is”—she dug around for the right word—“primitive.”

  I smiled. “Well, it’s not Kennedy.”

  After we got the rest of her bags off the carousel, we walked out to the parking lot. She squinted, not used to such bright sun. She took hold of my arm and looked out at the Sandias. “My,” she said, “that looks like Israel, in the Negev desert.” She grew quiet.

  We stopped for a bite to eat in Santa Fe and continued on through Española and Velarde and then entered the gorge. “My,” she said. “My.” She said that word over and over. New Mexico was a strange place to her. Sage, chamisa, dirt roads, treeless hills, and such open space. She was out of her element. She had no words for what she saw.

  “Those houses”—she pointed to an adobe—“they’re made of dirt. And that”—she pointed to the Rio Grande—“it’s not that big. I thought it would be like the Hudson River. And look at that.” There was a white cross leaning off a steep cliff. She bent her head near the windshield to see it better.

  We stopped for peaches at the Russian woman’s stand in Rincoñada. She touched the red chile ristras hanging above her head and insisted on paying for the peaches. “My,” she said when we were back in the car and she bit into one. “They’re so juicy and ripe.” I realized I’d almost never seen her outside of Brooklyn.

  “My, everything’s so big,” she said, swiveling her head around.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I love all the space.”

  “Well, we have the ocean back east,” she said defensively. “There’s Coney Island, Jones Beach.” Now she was on a roll. “We have some things. There’s the subways, the Daily News, the synagogue, your father and mother, your grandmother and sister. Nell, why don’t you consider coming home?”

  Just then, we completed the horseshoe turn below Taos, and Taos Mountain became visible. The plain swept out from it, revealing the distant gorge that looked like a crack in the earth.

  “Look,” I said, and nodded my head out at the scenery.

  She caught her breath. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Now we drove straight north, Taos Mountain in front of us. That friend, that majestic teacher, that god, I thought. It could even shut my mother up.

  But not for long. “Nell, I hope the hotel is clean and has air conditioning. I need a good hard bed.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom. It will be perfect. Besides, it’s seven thousand feet up. The nights are cool. And there’s no humidity.”

  “No humidity?” That amazed her.

  We pulled into the Kachina. After we got her room key, I told her, “I’ll pick you up in an hour. I have some errands to run. We’re going to the house. Gauguin’s making dinner.”

  I bent to kiss her good-bye and she grabbed me. “Oh, Nell, I’m so happy to see you.”

  “Sure—me too, Mom.” I peeled her arms from around me.

  I ran to the post office to pick up our mail and stopped in at Dori’s for a cookie.

  “Hey!” Neon called from a back table.

  “I can’t stay long. My mother’s here.” I sat down at the edge of my chair. I wore white shorts and a red cotton top. My mother said you can never have too much summer white.

  “Oh, so that’s it.” Neon took a sip of tea. “You seemed nervous, the same way you were with Rita. Both my parents have high blood pressure so they can’t come to such a high altitude.” Neon shined a big toothy grin. “I’d like to meet her.”

  “Not today,” I said, looking at Neon’s beaded moccasins and the leather pouch dangling from his belt. “I have to go.”

  My mother had changed into white polyester pants and a hot pink blouse. “How do I look?” She turned around so I could see her from all angles. She wore gold earrings and three gold dangle bracelets. People said we looked alike. I couldn’t see it. She had short, very curly black hair with a few streaks of gray and black eyes with blue eye shadow smeared on her eyelids. She was shorter than me, and stouter. When she was fifteen she weighed 160 pounds, and though she lost all that a long time ago, she couldn’t forget it.

  “You look fine,” I said.

  “Not pretty?” she asked.

  “Yes, pretty.” I held the door open for her. My whole childhood I had had to assure her of her beauty. My father thought she was gorgeous.

  We pulled up to our house in Talpa. I could see she was stunned, but she said instead, “My, it’s so simple.”

  I looked at it. “I guess so.”

  Gauguin came out to greet us. He was almost dressed up in new jeans and a red Guatemalan shirt.

  He took my mother off guard when he hugged her after I introduced them and called her by her first name. “Welcome, Edith,” he said. All my friends back home called her Mrs. Schwartz.

  We walked into the house. “I didn’t know that people lived like this anymore,” she said, looking around at the wood stove and bucket of water. “My,” she said, “it’s primitive.”

  We sat down to eat. “Nell, don’t forget to put the food I brought in the refrigerator,” she said. “The meat is defrosting.”

  I got up and put the food away and then sat back down on the bench.

  Gauguin had set the table with fresh daisies and our best plates from the flea market in Santa Fe. He held out his arms. “Let’s hold hands,” he said.

  My mother reluctantly took his hand and then reached for mine across the table. We closed our eyes. She closed her eyes, too. There was silence except for the incessant buzz of a fly on our ceiling and the sound of a chain saw in the distance.

  “Thank you,” Gauguin said. “Thanks for bringing Edith here.”

  I squeezed my mother’s hand gently, then we let go and opened our eyes.

  Gauguin had made vegetarian enchiladas with blue corn tortillas. He took my mother’s plate and served her some. I tossed the salad.

  She was very quiet and then blurted out, “Just who were we thanking?”

  “When?” I lifted the lettuce onto her plate.

  “When we held hands.”

  “Oh,” Gauguin stepped in. “I guess the earth and heavens. Maybe me airline you flew on.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom. It wasn’t Jesus.”

  She picked at her food. I thought the enchiladas were delicious and told Gauguin. My mother agreed, though I knew she didn’t like them. She’d never eaten Mexican food before.

  Gauguin told my mother about his father’s architecture business and how he used to visit his grandmother in Iowa every summer.

  “Only in the summers?” my mother asked.

  “Yes, but we talked on the phone every week in the winter.” I knew this was a lie. He’d never even spoken to his mother the whole time I lived with him.

  “And did you go to church?” she asked.

  “Certainly,” he said. This, too, wasn’t true and it was the wrong thing to say.

  “Catholic?” she asked.

  “No, Protestant,” he said.

  “My, hmm.” She grew quiet. “How nice.”

  “We have ice cream for dessert,” I chimed in before my mother began talki
ng about the shame of Christians for not speaking out against anti-Semitism. My mother loved ice cream. “What flavor did you get?” I asked Gauguin.

  “Cherry vanilla,” he said proudly.

  Even I grimaced at that. “No coffee or chocolate?”

  My mother said she was on a diet anyway and then asked where the bathroom was.

  “It’s out back,” I said. “Come, I’ll show you.”

  “Out back?” Her mouth fell open.

  “Mom, I told you months ago that we had an outhouse,” I said.

  “Yes, but I thought you were just kidding or you said it to aggravate me.” She was flabbergasted.

  We walked outside. “Nell, I just can’t.”

  “Oh, come on, Mom. What else are you going to do?”

  “I’ll hold it in,” she said.

  We got to the outhouse door and I opened it.

  “Oh, my god! I can’t. The smell!” she shrieked.

  “Hold your nose and go in,” I demanded in a no-nonsense voice. Here we go again, I thought. Now my mother is my little sister, too.

  She held her nose with one hand and struggled to pull down her girdle with the other. I didn’t want to watch. I shut the door and told her I’d stand guard outside.

  “Nell, I can’t see,” she called through the door in a weak voice. I opened it a crack to let in the dim evening light. “Oh, Nell,” she whined.

  She sounded so helpless, I weakened. “Mom, do you want me to drive you back to town to go to the bathroom?”

  “Please, Nell, my pants are half up and half down. Help me.”

  I opened the door. Blue’s goats bleated up the hill.

  “What’s that?” She was startled, but still she did not take her fingers off her nose, so everything she said sounded nasal.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing. Step out so you can take your fingers off your nose and pull up your pants.”

  “Nell, I can’t. Someone will see me.” She stood with the flesh of her hips and stomach—the belly I came out of—hanging over the elastic of the girdle. The polyester white of her pants seemed to glow in the dark. She was wearing white patent leather shoes.

  “No one will see. There’s no one around.” Of course, just then we heard a pickup fly by on the road in front of our house. Then I had another suggestion. “Hold your breath, and then pull up your pants with both hands.” I looked in at my mother. She looked so pitiable. “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Pull up my pants for me. Please,” she begged in a nasal voice.

  I reached in and jerked them up over her hips. She stepped out of the outhouse.

  “Okay, let me run in and get the car keys, and I’ll drive you to the hotel.”

  I ran into the house. “Where’s your mother.”’ Gauguin sounded alarmed.

  “Don’t worry. She didn’t fall in. We’re going back to the hotel to the bathroom. Forget making coffee,” I called as I ran out the door.

  My mother was already in the car. I started it up.

  “Please, tell Gauguin for me, ‘Thank you for dinner,’ ” she said meekly.

  “Oh, sure. No problem.” I took it easy on the dirt roads. I didn’t want to shake her up anymore.

  We parked in front of the Kachina. She reached out her arm and put her hand on mine.

  “Nell, come in with me.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I sat on the bed and read a copy of New Mexico magazine I found on the nightstand while my mother was in the bathroom. The toilet flushed and she emerged.

  “Nell, let’s call Daddy. It’s not too late in Brooklyn. They’d love to talk with you.”

  She dialed the number.

  “Irving? Hello, Irving, it’s me. Yes. She looks beautiful. Tell me. What? Your voice doesn’t sound good. What’s wrong?”

  My father was telling her something. My mother uttered, “No, no” and “My god” every few moments. Then she hung up.

  I was sitting on the bed. It had a big flowered black-and-white cover. “Hey, wait. I thought I was going to talk. What happened?”

  “Nell,” she said, her hand still on the phone. “I have to go home as soon as possible.”

  I sat up. “Is it Grandma?” Tears sprang to my eyes.

  “No.” She waved her hand. “It’s Rita, again.” And then she told me what happened.

  Rita had been playing music so loud in the afternoon that the neighbors called the police. When there was a knock on the apartment door, Rita, who had been taking a bath, answered it naked. There was no one else home and the policeman had to scream to be heard over the record player. A small group gathered in the hall and it never dawned on Rita to put her clothes on. Lugging two bags of groceries, my grandmother had reached the top of the stairs and almost had a heart attack when she saw Rita with the police.

  “I’m so worried. I don’t know what she’ll do next!” My mother had her hand to her mouth.

  “Oh, Mom, come on. That’s Rita. You’ve come to visit me. Stay. They can all take care of themselves.”

  “No, I have to go.” My mother’s eyes were faraway. I’d been through this before. There was no changing her mind. She had to save my sister. “I’ll leave early tomorrow morning. You’ll drive me to Albuquerque?

  “Sure.” I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. Just what I wanted to do—drive six hours round-trip the same route I’d done today.

  “I’ve seen enough of this area already. I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said.

  I rallied for a moment. “But, Mom, you’ve never been out west before—”

  “Never mind. I have to go home.”

  I nodded slowly. She would never meet Blue or Happiness or Neon or eat at the House of Taos or visit Red Willow or see my paintings.

  15

  SOMETIME IN LATE NOVEMBER, Anna and I had lunch together. She wore a gray crewneck with a white T-shirt underneath. I could see the white sticking out around the collar of the sweater. Anna’s clothes always looked like Anna. They were simple, long and baggy, always gray, brown, or black. She wore a braided leather band around her left wrist and was the only person I knew who didn’t have pierced ears.

  “Anna? Do you think I’m pretty?” I asked. She looked up from her sandwich. She was surprised.

  “Doesn’t Gauguin tell you?”

  “What does he have to do with it? I want to know if you think I am.” We were at Steven’s Kitchen, and the lunch crowd had emptied out. I took a swig of my water.

  “Nell, what do you want to know that for?”

  “I guess I never know what you think of me. I figure you like me, but I like to hear it,” I answered.

  “You mean, am I attracted to you? Yeah, you’re attractive, but you’re straight, which means I’m out. I just don’t think about it much. We’re friends.” She took another bite of her sandwich.

  “How come I never hear about anyone you go out with?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Because I never go out.”

  “Why not? Aren’t there lesbians around? Aren’t you attracted to anyone?”

  “Nell, I like being alone. I haven’t made love with anyone in a year and a half. It just happens when it’s right. I can be patient,” Anna said.

  “You’re too passive.” I frowned.

  “We’re just different. I hardly saw any folks when I was growing up. I’m used to being alone.”

  “Are you still planning to go home for Christmas?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why, if it’s so lonely there?”

  “Well, I miss my ma.” She hesitated. “Nell?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m thinking of moving back there.”

  I stopped my grilled cheese sandwich midway to my mouth. “What!”

  “I said I’m thinking of moving home.” She said it tentatively, but I felt certainty underneath. “I’m broke. I’m sick of my novel. It doesn’t feel right. I miss the cornfields, how they’re plowed in March, dark and wet. The smell of manure. I don’t
know. I love Taos, but it’s not my home. Nebraska’s my home, and I want to see if I can be there again.”

  “Are you forgetting the slaughterhouses and that there are no lesbians?” I was incredulous.

  “Well, not in Elgin, but I know there are some in Omaha and Lincoln. I thought I might move to Lincoln. There’s a university there.” She was almost finished with her club sandwich. An old fly that should have died at the end of the summer walked across my bread. I waved it off.

  “How serious are you? When did you get this idea?”

  “It’s been cooking slow in me, and yesterday I found out there are no more extensions on unemployment,” Anna said, and pushed some hair out of her eye.

  “When will you go?” I listened carefully now.

  “I thought I’d go for Christmas and stay.” She looked straight at me.

  “But we’ve only been friends such a short time.” I looked down at my hands.

  “We’ll always be friends.” She reached out and touched my wrist. “And, yes, I think you’re pretty. I love your dark eyes and your curly hair.” One thing about Anna, she always came around. I smiled, and there was a moment of silence. I couldn’t imagine Taos without her. Already I felt a rising sense of dread at the thought of her leaving.

  The waitress brought over the bill, and Anna grabbed it. “I’ll treat you.” She paid at the cash register. Then she held the swinging door open for me in a gallant gesture and bowed from the waist.

  “Ma-dame,” she said, smiling.

  We walked down Bent Street and looked at the Christmas decorations. Already there were the traditional farolitos lined up along the adobe rooftops. It was such a simple decoration—a brown bag with sand in the bottom to hold a lit candle that reflected golden through the paper—and one that I loved. We smelled cedar smoke and piñon coming from chimneys.

  “You’re going to leave all this?” I asked Anna, gesturing widely. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Yes,” she nodded.

  When I went home, Gauguin was playing the accordion in the back room. He had found the accordion at a garage sale the week before and figured out how to play a few simple songs on it. He liked trying out different instruments.

  “Nell, is that you?” he called out.