Gardens in the Dunes (11 page)

The older girls had learned to be good Christians from the time they first arrived at boarding school. They thought they knew more than she did, but Indigo knew all about the three gods, Father, Son, and Ghost. She knew English words because Grandma Fleet and Mama knew them. The older girls hated her because she already knew English words and she had never been to school. They pulled her hair and pinched her when she recited all the English words she remembered from Needles: Jesus Christ, Mother of God, Father God, Holy Ghost, hallelujah, savior, sinners, sins,
crucify, whore, damned to hell, bastard, bitch, fuck. Indigo enjoyed the shock on their faces as she cursed them with English words the teachers never used. The others ran to tell the dormitory matron. The fat matron dragged her to the laundry room with the others trailing along to watch. Indigo did not cry as she was pulled along; she spoke English to the matron, who looked Indian but behaved like a white woman.

“Hey, lady! What's the trouble? I'm talking English—see. God damn! Jesus Christ! Son of a bitch!” The matron was a big Pomo Indian, who gripped Indigo's arm even tighter. At the laundry sink they struggled, and one of the older girls had to help hold her while the matron shoved the bar of brown soap into her mouth. Indigo broke loose from them and spat soap in the matron's eyes. Even with soap in her eyes the matron would not loosen her grip on Indigo. One of the janitors, hearing the commotion in the laundry room, had appeared then; he was one of those mission Indians, and like the matron, he spoke only English. He picked up Indigo by both shoulders and carried her to the mop closet and shut her inside.

She didn't mind the darkness of the closet; darkness was safety. She had to keep spitting to get the soap taste out of her mouth. Light peeked in around the edges of the door, and gradually her eyes adjusted, just as they had when she and Sister Salt traveled at night. The damp mops smelled of mildew and the disinfectant used to clean the bed after a sick student died.

In the months Indigo was at the Sherman Institute, she had watched three girls from Alaska stop eating, lie listlessly in their beds, then die, coughing blood. The others said the California air was too hot and too dry for their Alaskan lungs, accustomed to cool, moist air.

Indigo was locked in the mop closet all night. She relieved herself in a scrub bucket; she did not mind the odor of furniture polish and arranged a pile of dust cloths into a bed. That night in the closet she dreamed about the three dead Alaskan girls; they were happy, laughing together at the edge of the ocean, with great tall spruce trees all around. The ocean mist and the fog swirled around the girls' feet as they ran and chased one another on the beach. The girls did not speak to her, but she knew what their message was: she had to get away or she would die as they had.

The first time the fat dormitory matron turned her back, Indigo took off, running at full speed. She ran past the big boys' dormitory, past the steamy soap and starch smell of the school laundry, past the dairy barn's warm cow smells. She headed for the row of palm trees that marked the
eastern boundary of the boarding school property. She did not look back. She stopped by the palm trees to catch her breath; she leaned against the tree and felt the odd curled bark against her back. She could hear voices in the distance.

She crouched low as she moved away from the tree; she glanced once over her shoulder, and seeing no one, she took off running, just as she had the morning she and Sister Salt escaped the soldiers and Indian police who pursued the Messiah's dancers at Needles. Sand Lizard people were not afraid of capture because they were so quick. Grandma Fleet taught the girls to wait and watch for the right moment to run.

Indigo heard the sound of horses' hooves and the rattle of a wagon in the distance; that would be the superintendent with the big boys to track her down. She removed the school shoes so she could run faster; the shoes rubbed sores on her toes and left the soles of her feet too soft. The ground burned her feet, but she found, if she ran quickly, she barely felt the heat. The skin on the soles of her feet would callus in no time. Once before, right after she first arrived, she ran away, but made the mistake of heading directly into the desert, where they easily tracked her and caught her within a few hours. This time she headed for the orange groves down the dusty road from the school. The orange trees would hide her better than the low desert brush.

The ground was cooler in the orchard, and the air perfumed by the orange blossoms; under the canopy of blossoming trees, there was the low steady hum of bees. Here she stopped to rest and to listen for her pursuers, but the only sound was the bees, a soothing sound that reminded her of the bees that hovered at the spring above the old gardens. When Indigo was little, Grandma Fleet used to tease that the bees sang a lullaby for Indigo's nap so she must not disappoint them. The sound usually made her feel sleepy, but not when she was on the run. She did feel a bit tired, so she sat with her back against the tree trunk and closed her eyes. Wherever they were, Sister Salt and Mama must have thought about her at that moment because suddenly she was thinking about them too. She felt their concern for her and their love; tears filled her eyes. Grandma Fleet still loved them and prayed for them from Cliff Town, where the dead went to stay.

The bees' hum, the perfume of the orange blossoms, and the dampness under the trees made the air heavy; Indigo felt drowsy as she sat there. She checked the position of the sun in the sky; it was still early enough that the superintendent and the big boys were probably still driving up and down
the dusty farm roads, between the lemon and orange groves, searching for her. The old buggy creaked and rattled so loud she could hear it a mile away, with the jingle of the harnesses and the clip-clop of the horses. She was safe there and would wait for darkness. She smiled because Sister Salt and Mama would be proud of her.

The sound of the buggy and the loud voices of the big boys and the superintendent woke her. There were so many—half the summer staff at the school must be searching for her. She took off running again, deeper and deeper into the rows of orange trees; now and then she caught sight of a grove of tall trees, much taller than the orchard trees, up ahead. She was thirsty, and tall trees meant water nearby.

She left the cover of the orchard and bolted across open ground and a road to reach the tall trees. She stopped and listened. Nearby, the buggy horses moved at a walk while the big boys trotted alongside, talking and laughing as they searched the orchards, row by row. She ran with all her might, all her being. She ran to escape them all—the white teachers with the sour faces, the dormitory matrons with their cruel smiles and quick pinches; she ran from the other children too, because they teased her and pulled her hair. They wanted to make her cry because she was from the Sand Lizard people with their odd ways—they preferred cliffs and sand dunes far from the river, far away from churches and schools.

Get away, get away; the words sang inside her head. She ran until her lungs and legs were burning and the sweat ran into her eyes so she caught only glimpses of the grove of tall trees up ahead. She felt the ground change under her feet. Smooth dirt, a road, then suddenly she stumbled and fell hard; the breath was knocked out of her, but she wasn't on dirt anymore. The surface was absolutely hard and flat, scorching hot; she jumped up breathlessly and she saw the white stone tile that tripped her was part of a walkway into the grove of tall trees. She could hear the wagon and the voices of the searchers. The stone tiles were not quite as hot as the ground. She ran down the stone path until she reached the bushes that enclosed the grove of tall trees. If they were so smart, let them try to find her tracks on the stone walk. She glanced over her shoulder and saw no one; then with both arms in front of her face she dove under the thick green bushes the way Grandma Fleet taught her and Sister.

She lay motionless until she caught her breath. The cool damp of the rotting leaves smelled so good. The palms of her hands and her knees were stinging from skin scraped away by her fall; the damp earth soothed the pain. Her face felt much cooler pressed against the ground. She closed her
eyes. Suddenly the sounds of the horses' hooves and the rattle of the buggy were right there on the road across from the bushes. She held her breath and watched; through the leaves she saw the superintendent's angry face as he scolded his posse of Indian boys.

“She can't have got very far,” he told them, but the older boys leaned against the buggy or squatted on the ground while they caught their breath. They were tired; they gave up. The superintendent motioned furiously for them to get in the buggy, then took one last look at the lilac bushes as he took the reins in both hands; it seemed as if he was looking straight at her, right into her eyes, but he saw nothing. Then they were gone and silence returned.

Indigo dreamed about the old gardens. Grandma Fleet and she were making little windbreaks for the bean seedlings from dry twigs. Somehow Grandma Fleet made crackling sounds with the twigs, sounds that seemed so odd Indigo had to ask Grandma what she was doing. Her own voice woke her. Only the crickets were awake; desert singers like them knew the night was made for music and love, but the heat of the day was for sleep. Under the bushes it was dark, but beyond she could see outlines emerge from the predawn light that kept shifting—from dark gray, then dark blue, then violet that lifted to lavender that faded to a rosy gray streaked with pale yellow. Faster, faster, faster, the gray sky vanished, and now the eastern horizon was a blaze of red-yellow. Somewhere Sister Salt and Mama looked up at the same sky. She was not so far away from home: some of the same birds lived here—little speckled cactus wrens were calling one another around the lilac bushes, and though she could not see him, a desert curved beak greeted the dawn with trills of praise.

She was thirsty. Grandma Fleet taught them to smell water, to catch the scent of dampness early in the morning before the heat of the day scattered it. She tried to see beyond the bushes, but the foliage was too thick. Her knees and hands were sore as she crawled, head down, pushing aside the twigs and leaves. She saw the trimmed lawn just ahead of her just as she heard a woman's voice call a name over and over. Suddenly a little bearded man no taller than a turkey stood in front of her; he seemed surprised to see her too. He crouched down so he could look her in the eyes. He wore red leather around his little neck. His eyes were golden brown and calm. Timidly he extended his tiny hand toward her face. Just then the woman's voice rang out: “I see you! You little monkey! Come! Come! Linnaeus! Here, sweetie! Come!” As the woman knelt to reach under the lilacs to pick up the monkey, she gave a little shout of surprise when she saw Indigo.

“Oh!” she said as if she had been struck. Their eyes met. She held the monkey close to her.

“Linnaeus,” the woman said, “who is this?”

♦   ♦   ♦

Hattie did not try to coax or drag the child out of the bushes; instead she smiled and nodded as if she was accustomed to visitors in the lilacs. Edward had alerted her to the runaways from the Indian school a few miles down the road. No danger. No cause for concern. Only the first-time students tried to run away; after the first year they were not so wild, he said, and she laughed gaily and replied, “Thank goodness we haven't got a penitentiary next door!”

At first she could not determine if this was a boy or a girl, though Edward said the boys were shorn of their long hair; this child's hair seemed long, though it was too tangled with weeds to be certain. Poor little Indian.

She did not want to frighten the child any more than she had already. She carried the monkey to his cage in the old orchid house, damaged some years ago by an earthquake, then abandoned to a white wisteria. Over the years, the wisteria followed the contours of the glass panels of the vaulted roof, snaking along tiny ledges formed by the leaded glass. Long cascades of pendulous white blossoms caught the bright morning light through the glass; the white blossoms gave off a luminous glow as if they were little lanterns. The monkey did not want to go into the cage and clung to her tightly; she tickled him gently and played with him until he loosened his grip, then quickly set him down inside the cage on his bench. She hurried to the house to decide what to do about the Indian child.

The cook was in the laundry helping the new maid iron the linens, but she did not disturb them. Edward's household staff was accustomed to the needs of a bachelor who spent more than ten months of the year away on expeditions. Hattie was in no hurry to make changes; she wanted the cook and maids to feel comfortable with her.

She opened the cupboards and drawers in the pantry in search of something special to lure the child from under the lilac bushes. A peach? Some bread with strawberry jam? Edward said the Indian students were quick to learn civilized ways. In the summer, when he was not away on an expedition, Edward hired two or three Indian boys to help with the weeding and mowing.

She carried the bread and jam and a cup of water on a tray and left them at the edge of the lawn next to the lilac bushes. She wanted the child to see she meant no harm, so she proceeded to measure the grassy arcade created
by the lilacs. She had big plans for this area. While she paced off the length of the lawn, she kept watch from the corner of her eye for any sign of the child. She wondered what the school fed the Indian children. Did they feed the children the tribal foods they were accustomed to?

She paced off the width of the grassy area and noted the measurements on one of the note cards she carried in her pocket, a habit left over from her days of scholarly research into early church history. Of course, to Edward, the garden
was
a research laboratory, though she felt he appreciated its beauty. During his mother's last illness the orchid house and gardens were neglected, but the acres of lemon and orange trees were tended by Edward to occupy himself. He did not talk about those difficult years, so Hattie did not press him, but she saw evidence of some sort of breakdown in the neglect of the orchid house.