Gardens in the Dunes (33 page)

The morning of the ball, the Scottish gardener surprised Susan with two hundred pots of white tulips and white freesias carefully prepared by weeks in the cold room of the greenhouse. The pots of tulips and freesias lined the walks and balustrades of the blue garden and the adjoining terraces. The gardener worked similar wonders in the cold room with the rare blue primulas, which did not leave the greenhouse for transplanting until the late afternoon of the ball.

The blue garden was a lovely sight indeed the night of the ball, despite the dry hot weather. The pots of blue hydrangeas did not leave the glass house until the afternoon of the ball, and the workers were instructed to bury them pot and all in the ground between the powder blue verbena and the sapphire blue lobelia. Along the edge of the walk, a scattering of white mignonettes were transplanted for their night fragrance. Big pots of white and blue wisteria carefully pruned into dwarf trees and forced to bloom for the ball were arranged to create shimmering draperies of the pendulous blossoms. Weeks before, the Scottish gardener had instructed the workers to allow the white rambling roses to overgrow the stone gateways.

Tiny silver lights strung in the shrubs and trees flickered on just as the sun set. On tables draped in white damask, silver platters with real boars' heads, nose to nose, formed centerpieces. Guests began to arrive as the full moon rose over the bay. Even the dry summer provided a lovely clear evening, and the drought only deepened the blue of the sky after sunset. A hush fell over the guests as the pianist began to play the
Moonlight
Sonata and Susan slowly descended the pale limestone steps. The full moon gave off a lovely silver blue glow, which was all that Susan could ask for her dramatic entrance in a white satin Renaissance-style ball gown, trimmed in sapphire blue, which was transformed by the moonlight from mere white to shimmering moonlight blue.

While Edward and Hattie and the Abbotts assisted Susan and Colin receiving the guests on the main terrace, Indigo watched the people from a distance, from the far end of the rectangular pool, where a big silver carp basked motionless at the bottom. She brought crackers and bits of bread from a table of food on the terrace to toss to the carp. The guests began to stroll along the pool's edge to ooooh and ahhh over the fragrant white Victoria lilies big as dinner plates and highlighted by blue lilies of all hues. Indigo was careful to keep herself behind the shrubs and tall flowers where the white women could not see her to call out her name and touch her before
she could escape. She was happy alone with the flowers. She loved to inhale the fragrance of the white mignonettes, then hurry down the steps to sniff the gardenias so the scents lightly mixed with each other.

The sound of the voices grew louder, and with her eyes closed and nose pressed into a big white gardenia blossom that appeared blue in the moonlight, Indigo imagined the loud buzz was bees, not human beings. More guests dressed in their Renaissance costumes with ruffled collars and feathered hats came to admire the fragrance of the giant white water lilies. Indigo began to notice then a strange effect of the moonlight: the faces and hands of white people appeared blue, while the skin of her hands appeared almost black.

Hattie, who became concerned when no one had seen the child, found Indigo sitting on a marble bench in the gardenia bower of the blue garden. The child was so serious; what was she thinking? Hattie was relieved their departure day was within a week; when the trip to Europe was behind them, Hattie intended to find the girl's family. She joined her on the bench.

“Did you have something to eat?”

Indigo nodded. She had positioned herself so a branch with a gardenia blossom hung just a few inches away from her head.

“How's the finger?”

Indigo extended it to her and Hattie checked the bruising and swelling, which seemed to be receding. She looked at the child's face and detected fatigue from so much excitement over the parrot. Edward agreed with Mrs. Abbott it was inconsiderate of Susan to present the child with a live parrot without first discussing the matter with them. But Hattie felt the parrot was important to the child's well-being, and the brass travel cage was quite handsome and compact.

“We'll look at the blue garden together and then we'll go home,” Hattie said. In the full moon's light the arching bowers of white bougainvillea and white wisteria appeared a luminous silver, and Indigo was reminded of the Messiah and his family and all the dancers in their white blankets all shimmering in the light reflected off the snow.

That night Indigo dreamed she and Sister Salt were running naked in the high dunes; a cool damp wind that smelled of rain swept in low-hanging blue-violet clouds of fog and rain mist. Below them on the sandy floodplain were the Messiah and the dancers, wrapped in sky blue shawls delicate as rain mist, and then the mist swirled around them and they all disappeared.

When Indigo woke the next morning after the ball, the light from the
window was dim, and she heard clicks against the window glass and a faint drumming sound overhead. It was raining! She went outside barefooted, delighted at the sensation of the wet lawn between her toes. She could hear the excited cries of the parrot as she neared the aviaries. By the time she reached the parrot's cage the wet cloth of her dress and petticoat were clinging to her body. The parrot was excitedly flapping his wings while dancing up and down the length of his perch with his head turned to the sky, beak wide open to catch the raindrops.

♦   ♦   ♦

The Masque of the Blue Garden was the most successful yet, and the bishop himself offered a mass of thanksgiving in Susan and Colin's private chapel the following Sunday to give thanks to God and to Susan and the other aid society women for the princely sum, which exceeded last year's amount considerably.

Only five days after the ball, they boarded the steamship
Pavonia
for Bristol. The weather was overcast with light rain and the sea was choppy as they steamed out of New York Harbor. Indigo pulled the edge of her coat around the parrot cage as the breeze swept up from the last edge of land disappearing behind them. She watched the dark blue water gracefully encircle the ship; the white mouths of the waves smiled at her. “Don't be afraid, we won't hurt you,” they seemed to say. Now she really was far from home. It was too late to jump from the ship. She was crossing the same ocean that the Messiah crossed long ago on his way to Jerusalem. After they tried to kill him, he returned over the dark moving water; Indigo had seen him herself that night as he blessed all the dancers. She took heart because the Messiah and his followers visited the east and returned; she would too.

S
ISTER
S
ALT
dreamed Indigo was in a beautiful place full of big shady trees and water and green grass. It was such a lovely dream she didn't cry for her sister when she awoke. She told Maytha and Vedna, two Chemehuevi girls who shared the bunks next to hers.

“Sounds like she died and went to heaven,” Vedna said. “No such place exists here.” Their faces were nearly identical but Maytha wore braids while Vedna twisted her hair into a knot at the back of her neck. Maytha frowned at Vedna and shook her head to silence her, but Sister Salt didn't care what she said. Indigo was smiling and singing in the dream, so Sister Salt knew she was all right. Maytha and Vedna were Chemehuevis so they didn't have much in common with the other girls, who complained about their strange ways and odd sense of humor. Vedna said that the Sand Lizard people were even more strange than the Chemehuevis, so maybe that's why they were friends. The Cocopa, Yuma, and Mojave girls were not unfriendly but they stayed to themselves, and so did the Apache girls.

Vedna claimed she and Maytha only teased her to cheer her because they loved her. That was their private joke, and it was the signal for the teasing to begin.

“Strange way to show your love,” Sister Salt replied, and that set them off. Still laughing, Maytha exclaimed, “We Chemehuevis are strange—it's a relief to know Sand Lizard people are stranger still!” Of course only they and their dear friends, like Sister Salt, were permitted to tease them or make jokes about the Chemehuevi people; the twins were proud and ready to punch any stranger who dared insult their tribe.

Sister Salt laughed. Stories about the peculiar behavior of the Sand Lizard people were known all along the river. In battle, as soon as the Sand Lizards started to win and get the best of their enemies, they'd stop fighting and go home instead of taking prisoners. No wonder the Sand Lizard
people were almost gone. Two Sand Lizards on surveillance duty were eavesdropping on enemies when one of the Sand Lizards rustled the leaves of the tree he was hiding in, and the enemies looked up. Desperately, the Sand Lizard imitated the woodpecker's squawk again and again until an Apache threw a rock and knocked him out of the tree. His companion, hidden on the ground, started laughing, and the Apaches got him and killed him, but his companion who imitated the woodpecker got away. Here the Chemehuevi twins laughed out loud, and Sister Salt joined them—these were everyone's favorite Sand Lizard stories. Sister Salt teased them back; she asked where were all the stories about the Sand Lizards' wild sexual practices?

Sand Lizard mothers gave birth to Sand Lizard babies no matter which man they lay with; the Sand Lizard mother's body changed everything to Sand Lizard inside her. Little Sand Lizards had different markings, and some were lighter or darker, but they were all Sand Lizards. Sex with strangers was valued for alliances and friendships that might be made. In Needles the people were too kind to mention Sister Salt's lighter hair and skin to Grandma Fleet or Mama; but down here at Parker, on the Colorado River reservation, Sister Salt found the others looked at her differently. Maytha and Vedna said long time ago some of the other tribes used to smother their half-breed babies because they were afraid of them. This was during the time the white armies came and robbed the people of their fall harvests to starve them, the people killed the half-breed babies. Chemehuevis never did that, the twins assured her. See! Chemehuevis were different too, like the Sand Lizards!

Sister Salt was laughing when suddenly her eyes filled with tears. Yes, her Sand Lizard people were strange, and she felt strange and lost without Mama and Indigo.

For a long time after she and Indigo were parted, Sister Salt dwelled in the numb half world only a step outside the everyday world. She did not remember taking the step outside, only finding herself there after that terrible day she watched the train move away, slowly at first, then faster, until off in the distance it appeared to be the size of a snake, and then it was gone. Her body went numb; her hands and feet felt strange and distant from her; she opened her mouth to yell “Indigo!” but gasped instead. She could not get her breath and sank to the ground, and cried into the hot hard-packed dirt. Though no one could see, a part of herself was torn loose, and the bleeding filled her chest and stomach with a strange weight, so
that for days Sister Salt lay motionless on her bunk and managed to swallow only water and a little corn meal soup Maytha and Vedna brought her. All the other girls avoided her; the Mojaves whispered she was suffering from ghost sickness, and the school staff feared typhoid, though she had no fever. The twins brought her the fresh datura root she requested, and she rubbed it against her cheeks and forehead to ask its help.

After the numbness in her body subsided, Sister Salt began to ask about Mama whenever she met Paiute or Mojave people who might know the whereabouts of the people arrested at Needles last winter. Yes, they'd heard about that, but no one seemed to know where the arrested people were taken—maybe to Fort Yuma or even Fort Huachuca. She missed Indigo so much, especially in the night, when she dreamed Indigo was lying beside her talking to her, only to awaken alone in the sweltering dormitory. She cried until her tears dried up and the other girls warned she'd go blind.