The Star Garden

  Then I got right down to my sore spot, and pressed it. If I were a man, I might just leave. Strange what a man can do that a woman would break apart doing. Maybe there’s more to being a woman—other lives were intertwined with mine like the bougainvillea that had long ago become part of Albert and Savannah’s front porch. I was caught between Rudolfo and the railroad, with a load of dynamite just moved in, as near to flat-out broke as I’ve ever been, lonesome for a man I barely knew, and responsible for too many people to just run away. Unless I packed the lot of them along, too.

  There weren’t any Apaches or Comanches left in the Chiricahuas. It’s winter. There’d be water past El Paso. I had no reason to move to Texas other than that my pa had wanted to go there. I knew nothing about the place, didn’t even remember it, except for Chess’s ranch, that’s probably overgrown with mesquite and cedar. We could head to Austin and pick up Chess’s old place, buy it back from his daughter, who’s a widow now and not running anything on it but some chickens. Or I’ll sell out and take up life in town. Raise chickens and sell some eggs, myself. Then again, I wasn’t ready to ride a rocking chair the rest of my days. Right now, though, I could leave this ranch with nothing to show for the life I’d led but some footprints that will blow away when that sand thaws. I was too young to just sit and wait to die.

  I turned Hatch to the south and stopped on the ridge again. Above the house, smoke curled in earnest from three stovepipes. A rooster crowed, almost in time with the windmill’s creaking. West of the main yard, below the black, leafless branches of the jacaranda tree, the graves of people I’ve loved lay under a haze of frost. My dead babies, two husbands, an assortment of cavalrymen including my brother, and my crosscut nephew, Willie. Smoke raised a line from the stovepipe, straight up over the house to where it met some kind of breeze and there it spread in a fan. From the very first timber Jimmy Reed cut, that place had belonged to me. These double adobe walls were sturdy and solid, and bound to be pleasant in the summer, but though I’ve lived here near three months, the place didn’t feel like my home.

  I put Hatch in the barn. Chess was tinkering with something and set it down to pull the saddle blanket down. We walked toward the house. I asked him, “Was it hard to leave your place and come here? Did you just reckon this was your new home?”

  He stopped in his tracks, his head nodding with a rhythm he can’t control. He said, “What’re you driving at?”

  “I’m feeling like pushing on. Maybe head back to Texas, where my pa always wanted us to live. Reckon we never gave that a chance, just up and left because Albert and I were only young’uns and didn’t know what to do with ourselves but run back.”

  After a few steps, he said, “Always thought our boy Charlie had more sense than to do what he done.”

  “What man’s got sense when he loves a woman? Or woman, either.”

  “We’ll see how it fares, soon as the old boy finds out. So you reckon not to stand up to Maldonado again, that it’s better to up stakes? Let him win it all?”

  I took a few more steps, slowing to keep pace with him. “Suppose I don’t want to fight this battle.”

  “Reckon not.”

  “Maybe you’d like to go home.” I stopped. “Chess?”

  He turned. “You asked me to stay the day we laid Jack in the ground. It ain’t about the roof and windows.”

  I’d have hugged him, except he’d have ducked away. I said, “Maybe Rudolfo will be all right. Maybe he’ll even be happy. Nothing like a grandchild to melt a heart.”

  “ ‘Til they grow up and go off Romeo-ing with some Juliet.”

  “I should never have let the boys read Shakespeare. Wonder which one of us is the Capulets? I could swear.”

  “Well, go ahead. You don’t get profane often enough, Sarah Elliot. It’d do you better than leaving. And what about that Hanna fella? Don’t you owe him no fare-thee-well?”

  “He isn’t Jack.”

  “Naw. But you ain’t the kind to fiddle with a person. You got grandchildren, too. Look at that houseful. So, no sense turn-tailing. I reckon old Charlie’da got the notion some otherwise. I’m hungry. Let’s quit jawing and start eating.”

  We stepped through the door into warm air perfumed with cooking. I’ve stuck on this land through fire and flood, gale winds and Apache raids, and though Rudolfo’s hand in the building of the house itself still rankled me, I wouldn’t be chased off this land. Especially not by my own fears.

  December 28, 1906

  Long before dawn I went out to get eggs, and when I got back to the kitchen, I found Blessing sitting in the chair that Granny usually occupies when there is a good fire going. The child was shivering, but she said nothing when I came in, so I gave her a minute to open up while I set down my egg basket and put up my hat and coat. When I turned around, she had gotten out of the chair and had a chunk of firewood in her arms. “Aunt Sarah?” she said. “Ain’t I big enough to make this stove up for you?”

  “Well, I swan, you are at that. But before you put in that old log, you’d better add some kindling.” I bent and poked in the depths of the stove with an iron, moving banked embers to the front while she picked up some twigs. “There, lay it on top of the coals. Don’t get too close. It’ll scorch you.”

  She poked a few slips of split shaves and twigs in while I pushed over the coals. Blessing said, “Poppy says we have to go home, but I like it here. There’s a mommy and a daddy here. He says we’re too much trouble for you. I could help you light the stove ever’ morning. You might need that. I’m real helperful.”

  I tried not to grin. It hadn’t been long since she’d hated my very breath. I sat in the chair and held out my arms to the girl. She climbed in my lap and laid her head against my shoulder. I said, “You aren’t ever going to get over missing your mama. I know it.”

  “Miss Cousin Rachel is mean. And she’s not my mother.”

  “Rachel is trying her best. She’s new at being a nursemaid and maybe you have to give her a chance.”

  Blessing straightened. “Nursemaid? Poppy says she’s the giver-nest. She givers us castor oil, and givers lectures, and scolds Story about scratching his behind in Sunday School, telling him he mighta caught worms and that if he don’t tuck in his shirttail for the fifteenth time today, she’s gonna sew lace doilies on it so all the boys can see. I don’t see what’s wrong with scratching what itches in Sunday School. It ain’t his fault.”

  “Isn’t. You say ‘isn’t his fault.”

  “Well, at school some girls say ‘ain’t’ all the time. I heard Granny saying ‘ain’t’ and Grampa Chess says it.” She sighed and moved her legs around, holding her stocking feet toward the stove. “Why don’t you come to our house and be our giver-nest? You tell better stories, and you don’t scold so much. I wish I was your little girl, now that Mommy’s gone to heaven in Chicago.”

  “I wish you were my little girl, too,” I said. For the blink of an eye, my tiny Suzanne was in my lap, prattling away in baby talk over a string of wooden beads. Suzanne died of scarlet fever even before Jack was killed. Blessing’s mother died of cancer and left this child sitting here in my lap on this bitter cold December morning. I kissed the part in Blessing’s hair and the past vanished. As Blessing rhythmically waved her left foot toward the stove I rocked the chair for a while, without either of us saying another word.

  December 29, 1906

  The year is drawing to a close and I for one am glad to see this one put in the barn. It has been one of the toughest years I’ve faced, with famine, flood, and fire. Reckon the only thing missing was pestilence, but then I thought, I have Rudolfo Maldonado, so we’ve endured plagues enough. Harland and his little ones left this morning, as he had to get back to his practice, and they had to return to school shortly.

  Elsa, April, and I have washed clothes all morning and hung them outside to dry. Every few minutes we take a look at some gathering clouds, but still no sign of rain. They also helped me put on some bread to rise and three of the lo
aves have cinnamon and raisins rolled into them. What a fine treat we’ll have this evening. Keeping the table full for this big family has been near as hard as riding a roundup for a week.

  About noon, April went out to check the clothes on the line and hollered, “Sprinkling!” so Elsa and I ran to help pull them all in, dried or not. We got shirts and pants and drawers laid around the book room, and lit a fire in the stove in there, then we worked up some lines in the kitchen and every bedroom, too. Patricia and Lorelei thought that was great fun and ran, whooping, beneath the hanging clothes, surprising each other and dashing through the house.

  Once we got this little army fed and put down for naps, the rain started up with more purpose. All we females settled in the kitchen for some tea and cookies, and to watch that bread rise. April put her feet up on a second chair and pulled off her shoes, rubbing her swollen ankles. Granny snoozed in a rocking chair. The calico cat rose and arched his back with a flick of his tail and hopped from Granny’s lap to April’s.

  “Elsa,” I said, “you have to sit and rest with us now. You’ve been working all morning.”

  She looked from April to me. “We’re all working,” she said.

  April laughed. She said, “Mama doesn’t want anybody to best her, is all. Get down, cat. Why don’t you name that old thing, Mother? Hand me another of those cookies. We’ll get them cleaned up before the boys get in here.”

  “I’ll save mine for Carlito,” Elsa whispered.

  “No you won’t!” April crowed. “If you don’t eat it, I will. With this baby, I’m so hungry all the time! Besides, there’s not enough for all of ‘em and Charlie gets all the food he wants. Come on. Hand it over.” She laughed, but she meant business.

  I watched Elsa’s face closely. She frowned. Then she sat up straight and pushed out that strong chin, and put half that cookie in her mouth at once. I laughed and said, “Now you girls, do I have to give you a talking-to or will you behave?”

  April and Elsa laughed, too. Elsa greedily chomped on the rest of the cookie while April said, “Mama, are there any left in the crock? Just crumbs? I’ll take them. I’ll make some more. Elsa, we’d better be good now. Mama’s talking-tos can pin your ears back for a week.”

  “No more’n you deserve, young lady,” I said.

  She giggled. “You haven’t called me that in a while.”

  Elsa said, “We can make more cookies. Granny said she likes them, too. Come here, gatito.” She held her hand down toward the cat with a tiny piece of cookie on one finger. She’d made a friend, I could see, and the calico curled up on her lap, then, to stay. “Charlie and I want to start our family soon.”

  “Well, I’m not sorry about that,” I said. “I think grandchildren are the best part of being a mother. Twice the fun and half the worry.”

  Elsa peered under lowered lids from me to April. “How, how do you know if … ? How can you tell if … if there is a baby? Can you tell before it comes?”

  “Well,” April began, “I always get a brown spot on my left hand, right here, and my ankles puff up. Then I have a sour stomach nearly every day for a month. That’s a sure sign.”

  Elsa studied both her hands. “It could be a spot there. My stomach, sometimes.”

  “I never got spots,” I said. “Backaches, that’s what I had.”

  Elsa rubbed her back. “It hurts a little,” she said. “Does it hurt a great deal, when the baby comes?”

  I tried not to glance at April, but the two of us locked eyes almost like clockwork. “Well,” I said, “it’s different for everyone. It’s hard. But it doesn’t last forever. If you can think about the work you’re doing and just go to doing it, it gets done quicker.”

  “Oh. Like laundry. I hate laundry,” Elsa said. Then the three of us laughed enough to wake Granny. Elsa sputtered, trying to regain her composure. “They made me do so much laundry at the convent I thought I would perish from my cracked and tortured hands.”

  April got up and went stocking footed to the pantry shelf, returning with a can. “Here,” she said, “rub your hands with teat salve. Mama doesn’t keep a milk cow but this is good for plenty of skin ailments.”

  We passed that can of salve around, along with more cups of tea, and then put that bread in the oven to bake for supper. Elsa rose from closing the oven door and kissed my cheek, hugging me warmly.

  December 31, 1906

  The bustle in this house has not slowed one bit, what with April’s brood of three. Her boy Vallary is a pistol, and he, Ezra, and Zachary are wilder together than my two ever thought about being. Spurred on by the number of new faces, Savannah and Albert’s children from youngest to oldest have all but moved in here and shirked their chores, having to be gotten home by Mary Pearl or their brother Clover, regularly. Little wonder that by the end of the year of nineteen and aught six, my patience with the number of people in the house was wearing thinner than the gravy made from my last ration of flour, and when April announced she and Morris were taking their family home, I was not truly unhappy to see them go. She begged me to go along. I was sorely ready for some peace and quiet, but I needed feed and supplies more than I needed quiet, so I will be accompanying them to town.

  Gilbert will be riding along, too, for he wants to see his girl again. I have asked him when I can meet her, as I’m not looking forward to yet another surprise wedding, but he only says soon, and then goes to talking about the cows we’ve got swelling with calves or the size of the moon, or some other thing. Gilbert is pulling at that spare mule that belongs to Wells Fargo, and the thing is giving him quite a time. Finally, we put him and the ornery critter up front ahead of the rest, and he moves along just fine as you please. Must be used to being the lead, and I know some animals never can do aught but what they learned the first time. Mary Pearl is also coming to town, intent on seeing Aubrey and the house he proposes to buy for a home. She’s more than lonesome lately, and put out by Elsa’s conversation, which has pretty much been about Charlie since she got here.

  Charlie and Elsa are staying put at the ranch, along with Chess and Granny, and I reckon the two young people will be glad for at least some measure of quiet privacy, the both of them having camped amongst the bunch in the book room and parlor floors, at far ends from each other for a week now. Granny mostly sleeps around the clock, and Chess stays busy, so things should be all right for the new married pair. After plenty of talking last night, we made them promise they will not pay a call on Rudolfo until I get home with Gilbert, so the bunch of us can go together for strength.

  Last night we came to an arrangement where Elsa and Charlie can use the plaza and one of the other rooms for their own kitchen and then take Charlie’s old bedroom and the book room for a small apartment. While I’m gone, Charlie is going to move all my books to the parlor and fix them up some quarters. I figure soon enough they’ll be getting their own house, but we’ll wait until the big confrontatión with Elsa’s papa to see how far away it may need to be. I looked toward him as we drove away, but his eyes were only on her. Charlie Horse, his papa called him when he was first born. The boy was skinning his knees one minute, shaving his face and married the next.

  April’s house was just as lovely as ever, and thankfully, she is not suffering as much with the baby coming now. We settled right in as if the party had only changed locations.

  Two days after we got to town, both April’s girls, Patricia and Lorelei, woke in the night with fever. Patricia held her neck and said her tongue hurt. I rocked her and held her, while April tried her best to comfort Lorelei. The little one cried weakly, and when the sun was up, Morris went to fetch a doctor.

  Influenza has stricken the babies. Patricia barely eats, and Lorelei eats but vomits. By the next day, Morris was down in bed, too, and the third day, Val-lary came downstairs with sore ears and throat, and now Gilbert is coughing and crouping. It seems we wait each day to see who will come down next. April, Mary Pearl, and I are tending everyone, with the help of April’s maid Lizzie. Toward
afternoon all the sick ones seemed to be sleeping at last, and so I made April lie down, too. I was planning to get to town and buy a few things but I was met at the front of the house by two men in long black coats looking like they were a matched pair of undertakers. They nailed a big sign to the door that said it all in one word: QUARANTINED. The house is locked up like a prison with us inside for no less than four weeks.

  I told them I had a ranch to run, chickens to feed, old folks to care for. But one doctor said that if I left, I’d take the influenza to the old folks and they’d likely die. No matter that I still felt well, he said, it had been microscopically determined that people could carry the sickness and spread it like dysentery or trail fever. Someone could bring us things from any store we wished, as long as we waited until the baskets were delivered and the messenger left before opening the door. I can’t say why this all made me feel somewhat ashamed, but it did, as if we’d done something criminal or vulgar, and were being shut off from the rest of town like we were unclean.

  Fortunately, we are allowed to send letters, and so Mary Pearl has kept up letters with Aubrey and with her folks back home. Then, one day as she was sitting at April’s desk and busily writing, she asked me to keep a secret, and she told me she wrote away to the college for artists in Illinois at a place called Wheaton. I didn’t like keeping secrets from her folks, but she said she was convinced that if the teachers will let her into that school, she’ll tell her mama and papa, and things would be all right, and if they didn’t, she’d take it as a sign she should stay home and marry and keep house, forgetting her other dreams. Mary Pearl insisted if her mama knew she was applying to the school, she’d be here in an hour with more speeches about betrothal and all.