Let the Wild Grasses Grow

by Kase Johnstun

  After we had been in school for three periods and three of Ernie’s nod offs, a knock came on the schoolhouse door. Without waiting for my teacher to walk to the back of the room, my mom flung herself into the classroom.

  “Mija, let’s go,” she said. “Let’s go now.”

  I didn’t even think to grab anything. My mom’s face said, “Venga, ahora,” so I ran toward her.

  “It’s John, mama, isn’t it,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

  “Si, Della, si,” she said. “Don’t be so goddamned smart in life. It will only bring you trouble. The world doesn’t like smart girls or smart women.”

  “Della,” Ernie began.

  “Callete, Ernie, callete,” my mom shut him up.

  My dad sat in the front seat of the truck. My mom hated the truck.

  “It has death on it from Larry,” she’d always say.

  “He didn’t die here, Benita,” my father would say.

  “Yeah, it has death thoughts on it, and that’s worse. Those are contagious,” she would answer.

  I jumped into the truck, the four of us squeezing onto the bench seat in front. My father pulled me over to him and squeezed me with a hug.

  “Della, we have to go the Garcia’s. Something has happened,” he said.

  “It is John? Is John okay?” I yelled.

  “Don’t be so selfish, mija,” my mother said in my ear. “John is okay.”

  To me, if John was okay, I was okay. But I would find out within minutes that they lied to me. John was not okay. Nobody was okay.

  We pulled slowly up to their house. There were no lights on, and Father Ronald’s car sat in the driveway, an old, old Ford that one of the parishioners had gifted him years ago so that he could give communion to the elderly and check on the sick people way out on the plains and near the mines.

  “Stay here, Della,” my mom said. “Let us go in first.”

  “No,” I said. “No, I’m going in. What happened?”

  “Goddamnit, stay here, Della, and shut your mouth,” she said.

  My dad placed his hand on my knee to anchor me into the seat, and they both got out of the car at the same time, leaving me and Ernie there to wonder what in the hell was going on and why in the hell they brought us if we were going to sit there in the car.

  They walked through the front door, and a minute or so later, John and Manuel walked out instead of my parents. Through the window, I watched my mom wrap her arms around Maria and Paulo, Paulo snug against Maria’s body and both of them within my mom’s tiny grasp.

  Ernie got out of the car and met Manuel halfway with his palms raised in the air, silently asking him, “What happened?” Manuel told him something, and then his knees buckled a bit, and my older brother caught him in his arms and held him up.

  I sat melted in the seat, just like my father left me, and watched John walk with his head down toward me. When he reached the door, I opened it for him, and he climbed in. He threw his body up onto the woven bench seat like he were a sack of beans being tossed into a bed of a truck, a lump of something inanimate.

  He raised his dry eyes up to me. But when they met mine, tears flew from them. He had been holding them in. I could tell.

  I saw the same look I saw in Larry’s face when I brought him food and booze. He had lost everything he loved. I quickly scanned the windows, hoping to see Señora and Señor Chavez in the living room of their tiny home, but I only saw my father standing and talking to Father Ronald. John’s parents were gone.

  John leaned into me. His body had given way. We had never been so close before. Our bodies had never touched like that. The rush of young love had been replaced by a need to console him. I was the only one he wanted to see that day, the only one he wanted to cry to.

  I hugged him into me.

  I looked up, with John’s head on my shoulder and his face covered in my fallen, black hair. I expected to see my mother rush out of the house with a cleaver to separate the two of us. I did see her. She did not hold a cleaver in her hand. Instead, she raised her hand in the air to me and nodded. John lay in my arms for another five minutes before he spoke. When he did, his words were slurred like a borracho, and the only ones I could make out were, “Muerto.”

  A knock on the driver’s side door woke us to the rest of the world. Ernie opened it up and said, “Bring John back inside.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  John

  1933

  “I DON’T THINK YOU SHOULD TAKE THEM WITH YOU,” FATHER Ronald said. “I’ve met Señor Cordova, Flora’s father, and he said that he was on his way to pick them up, and I think it’s best if they are here, at the house, when he arrives. I do think it’s best. He’s a strict, stern man.”

  “I don’t give a shit what you think, forgive me, Father, but I don’t. I’m taking these children to our home until their abuelo gets here. They won’t need to go to school. They can stay at our home during the day, but I am not leaving them here another godforsaken night, Father,” Señora Chavez said. She raised her little finger in Father Ronald’s face, and he nodded.

  “Francisco, take them all out to the truck and throw them all in the back, except Maria and Paulo. They can squeeze between us in the front. Della, John, Ernie, Manuel, get going. Della, help John get some stuff. Ernie, help Manuel. I will gather Maria and the nino’s things.”

  That night, Della laid out sheets on the floor of the Chavez’ living room. Ernie and me and Manuel and Paulo lay together and fell asleep in the light of the moon and stars. Maria and Della slept in the bedroom. I missed my mother and father so much that I wanted to cry out, but I didn’t want to wake the house. But there, in their home, I felt loved too, and if I couldn’t be home, I wanted to be there, only a sliver of a wall away from Della. There was no way Señor Chavez would let us sleep next to each other, but we were close enough, and in a moment when my parents didn’t cover my mind, I smiled and fell asleep.

  The next day everyone stayed home from school. Maria and Señora Chavez took turns comforting Paulo who, at seven years old, cried out for our mom and dad to come back. He still didn’t believe it. He asked us to go pick them up off the road.

  Maria helped cook. She had already slid into our mother’s role. She did not cry anymore. She only walked around and fed people and did the sign of the cross and pointed up to Jesus and said, “Jesus, pray for us.”

  Manuel and Ernie went to the barn and drank beers that they weren’t supposed to have, and Della and I walked through the corn stalks together.

  “It’s all going to shit, you know?” she said.

  “What is?” I asked.

  “The goddamned crops and dirt. It’s all dying and drying up,” she said.

  “That’s what the teacher said,” I said.

  “Well, I’m not the teacher, John, but I’m the one who sees it every damned day. The soil is dying.”

  “Do you still want to leave?” I asked her.

  “Of course, John, of course. Don’t be dumb. Why would I want to stay?” she said.

  “Family? Me?” I asked. I felt brave to ask. It felt brave to tell her that I loved her in this way.

  “You’re leaving, John,” she said. “Father Ronald said your abuelo was going to take you to Nevada. That’s not close, John.”

  “When he gets here, I want to ask him if we can just stay,” I said. “Maybe he will see that we are alright with your family, and we can just stay.”

  The night before when I lay on the ground, I imagined it. Manuel and me could sign up to work in the mines like my father did. We could bring home money, and we could stay in our home.

  “I don’t think he’s going to say yes, John. You’re naive,” Della said. She said it with kindness though and dropped her hand into mine and slid her fingers between mine too.

  She turned to kiss me. I could feel it. Her body swung around slowly, and she leaned in with her eyes closed. When her lips got so close to mine, a large piece of corn hit her on the head.

  “Ut, ut, ut
, no!” Señor Chavez yelled from the edge of the corn. Then he disappeared into his work. They had sympathy for us, but they were still watching me and Della. “No babies!” Her father yelled. We were thirteen years old. I really had no idea why he thought about babies, but he still frightened me enough to back away and smile.

  Walking with Della out in their corn, I somehow believed the universe and Chavez’ love for us would convince my grandfather to let us stay there with them. I made the sign of the cross over and over again until my eyes got tired—and I prayed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Della

  1933

  THERE WAS SOMETHING ABOUT THAT QUIET KID WHO SLEPT IN the living room that kept me up that night after we had gotten caught, again, in the corn trying to kiss. I think if I would have just been a little quicker, we could have gotten away with it, but he had to start talking about asking his grandfather if he and his brothers and Maria could stay.

  I thought this was dumb. First, I don’t think my mom would have let them stay even if John was able to convince his grandfather. She was kind, but her kindness had its limits. She knew she could keep us all there for a few days, but I could not see my mom agreeing to having all of them live with us.

  “We’re not the goddamned grandparents,” I imagined her saying. “Family is family is pinche family.” Her cursing of the idea already had become real in my mind.

  But deep down, I wished they could stay. I wished their grandfather would never come. Who knew, maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe my mom wouldn’t have anything to say about it at all, and we would have to keep them because there was no way she would let them be taken to a home ran by all of the honkies in town. She’d rather die than have that happen.

  “What would they eat, porridge? Corn bread? Ew. That stuff is so dry it makes the milk in my tetas dry up just thinking about it,” she’d say. I imagined her telling Father Ronald that since John’s grandfather never showed up, the only option was for the children to stay with them and for, “the church to kick in to show that it really is a house of God. Nothing extra, I’m an honest woman, but the church could show some mercy.”

  For a moment, I thought about us spending the next five or six years together before I left for a university. At that point, I think I would probably have fallen out of love with him—I imagined—and would be ready to move on, but those five years would be wonderful. No one, except for my father, liked to listen to me talk as much as John did, and I liked it when he listened.

  I lay there for a little while longer. The snores from the boys rattled together against the thin wall and beneath the door and into our room. I thought about the chance that maybe his grandfather would never come, and when I finally fell asleep after lingering in that in-between place where dreams and reality merge together, I believed it had already happened.

  Chapter Sixteen

  John

  1933

  HEADLIGHTS STOPPED ON THE DIRT ROAD IN FRONT THE HOUSE. They were square and lit up the front window of the Chavez home. The bright light screamed in where there were no curtains, and soft light made the curtained windows glow. The light seemed so foreign, like aliens themselves had come for our frijoles.

  Paulo was asleep beside me, but Manuel and Ernie and I shot up and looked out the window together. The three of us huddled together in the kitchen, somehow knowing that life was going to change, and not for the better.

  “Mama, Papa,” Ernie yelled out. Before he finished screaming, Señor and Señora Chavez had already come out of their bedroom, the pistol hanging from around Señora Chavez’ waist, clinging to a belt that encircled her cotton nightgown. She was ready to shoot anyone in her path. She placed her hand on the butt of the pistol and pulled us behind her.

  From the car, a body emerged and stood in the headlights. The man raised his hands in the air to show that he wasn’t there to rob them, not of their food or clothes or valuables, that is.

  He obviously saw all of our silhouettes standing in the windows watching him because he yelled out, “I am Mr. Cordova. I’m here for my grandchildren.” He didn’t say Señor Cordova. He didn’t say mi nietos. He said “Mr.” and “grandchildren,” and it felt really weird to me.

  He walked toward the front door with his hands falling down toward his hips, walked up the front steps, and then through the front door without the slightest hint of knocking, treating the Chavez home like it were his own.

  He was light skinned and had a top hat balanced on his head and a cane in his hand like the rich men who owned the mining company. The cold night sucked the warm air out of the house and into the darkness behind him.

  He stood for a moment and looked directly at all the children and then found Paulo asleep on the floor in the living room. He was never too far from the rest of us. We thought that if we let him out of our sight, somehow a car would find him and fling him into the desert too.

  “Let’s go,” the man said. “Which ones of you are my grandchildren?”

  Señor Chavez stepped forward toward him and stuck out his hand.

  “Buenas noches, Señor Cordova, would you like to talk over some coffee?”

  The tall man just shook his head, not even extending his hand to Señor Chavez.

  “We don’t have time. I have business on Thursday in Reno that I cannot miss. Children, whichever ones are mine, get your stuff to the car and let’s go,” Señor Cordova said.

  “Well, that’s some rude-ass shit,” Della said under her breath. Maria came from the edge of the bedroom and merged next to her.

  “At least have some coffee and stay for a moment.”

  “I will not stay in a home with a child who has no respect like this young lady,” Señor Cordova said. He pointed at Della and shook his head. “Uneducated ranchers and miners. This is why we left here twenty years ago.”

  “She is really smart, the smartest girl I know,” I said to my grandfather, frustrated at the way he looked at Della.

  He was not a stranger in the real sense of the word. He was my mother’s father. But he was a stranger to us.

  He walked up to me, asked me my name, and when I told him, he backhanded me.

  “You will learn quickly to not talk back to me, Johnny,” he said. My parents never called me Johnny. He did it to make me feel little.

  Señor Chavez shook his head. He closed his eyes and dropped his head. I expected Señora Chavez to do something, but she didn’t. With her gun on her hip, she just shook her head, gathered us all up, gave us hug, and whispered in our ears, “You’re always welcome back here.”

  I looked at her, begging her with my eyes to stop him, but she only said, “He is family. There is nothing we can do, John. I am so sorry.”

  And that was it.

  A howl of a lone coyote cut between the rumble of the engine and Paulo’s budding cries in Manuel’s arms after he picked him up off the soft makeshift bed we had made for him out my parents’ clothing that smelled like them.

  “Move, or I’ll move you with this,” my grandfather said. He waved his cane in the air.

  I looked back at Della. I wanted to stay with her. At that moment, it wasn’t because I loved her like my dad loved my mom, but because she was safe. She was not Reno. She had become my home.

  She ran to me, quickly, and hugged me, kissing me on the cheek.

  That’s when I felt the first swift swat of my grandfather’s cane against my back. He stood in the doorway, his eyes squeezed at the bridge of his nose. His brows followed them to form a deep ‘V’ in the center of his forehead, and his nostrils flared above a very thin, black, and manicured mustache that ran above his top lip.

  He raised his cane in the air.

  “Get in the car,” he said. “Now.”

  He did not yell. He only raised his deep voice.

  The four of us stood still. It was less an act of defiance and more a state of paralyzation.

  Paulo broke the silence again with a howl into the fleshy nook of his older brother’s shoulder.

&n
bsp; The man’s cane swung down fast toward the littlest of us all, the tiny boy who had just lost his mom and dad and who couldn’t understand why they weren’t coming home.

  Manuel swung his left side toward the falling cane to shield Paulo from its blow, but the loud thwack of the wood against bone did not hit him. The cane landed square against Maria’s dark, dark forearm. She had jumped in front of us to take the blow just like Mr. Chavez had done to protect Della, and the cane broke the skin and bone of her thin but strong forearm on its way toward Paulo’s body.

  She fell to the ground, holding her bloodied arm and holding back tears. She would not let him see her cry, even if her wrist fell limp at the point of impact.

  “Out. Now,” my grandfather said.

  He placed his top hat back on his head and then he growled a little when we didn’t immediately move. Within a second, he snatched little Paulo and carried him off into the night. We had no choice but to follow him.

  “Adios,” the Chavezes said together behind us. And I swear I heard Della cry.

  TWO DAYS EARLIER, I HAD gathered things. Somewhere inside me, even so young, I knew we couldn’t stay home. Someone would come to take us from the house we grew up in; the place where we ran around my mother, fighting and slapping and pinching each other; the place where my father would eventually catch us and pull us over his knee and spank us for bumping my mom and spilling hot corn and bean soup all over her bare skin. Someone would take us away, eventually.

  I dug through my mom and dad’s closet. Before they died, we had no business in there.

  “You have this whole house and all of the countryside to play in. There’s no need for you to be in our closet,” my father would say when one of us would hide there during hide and go seek or one of us would just get nosey and start snooping through their things on a long, hot summer day when the lazy, wandering scorpions and snakes owned the desert landscape, hiding in my father’s chile plants and sunbathing on the front step of the house. “This closet is mine and your mother’s.”