by Ruth Wariner
Mom stopped cleaning the beans for a moment, sat back in her chair, and rested her thick brown hair against its back. She always cut her hair herself, and always just above her shoulders, in short, feathered layers. She smiled as a faint whiff of fresh cow’s milk drifted through the kitchen window. It mingled with the scent of the green alfalfa fields outside and the cheese curds we kept in a pan on the stove. Except for when it rained, when all we smelled was wet dirt from the adobe bricks and stucco that made up our small, five-room house, the kitchen always smelled like the little mice that scampered along the walls, the cows in the fields outside, and the Mexican sagebrush on the nearby mountains.
“You know, Ruthie, your dad was the most humble man I’d ever met. He always practiced what he preached, and he never turned away anyone when they came to him for help.” Mom thought for a moment. “When he asked me to marry him, it was the happiest day of my life. We were sittin’ alone in a car at night. He kissed me and it felt right. Even though he was twenty-five years older than me and already had four wives, I knew I was makin’ the right choice. I had never wanted to marry any other man till then.”
Mom swept the last pile of pintos toward her with swollen, stubby fingers; she chewed her nails down to the quick, her cuticles red and raw. “Your dad and I hadn’t been married for very long when it was my turn to have him spend the night. You know, I only got to see him once a week, and then only if I was lucky. With five wives, his mission trips, and his work, there just wasn’t time. Anyway, when it was my turn to have him over, all we had to eat were pinto beans. So I put some water in a pot and then I filled it all the way up to the top with beans. To the top. I didn’t know that beans swell up!” She paused and laughed at the memory. “The beans started boilin’ and swellin’ up and overflowin’ out of the pot. I had to pour half of them into other pots. By the time I was done, we had three full pots of beans, and I had to throw half of them out because they soured before we could eat ’em!” She laughed again and flashed her hazel eyes at me, which dazzled with speckles of green when she was happy and turned the color of mud when she wasn’t. “Bein’ a housewife was all new to me. ’Cause nobody ever taught me how, Ruthie. That’s why it’s important that you start learnin’ now.”
Mom pulled herself out of her chair to pour herself a glass of water from the pitcher on the counter. I couldn’t imagine a time when she didn’t know how to cook. I couldn’t imagine a time when she didn’t have kids. “But, Mom, if Grandpa gave my dad permission to court you, why aren’t he and Grandma still a part of our church?”
“Well, Sis, everything changed after your dad died.” Mom took in a deep breath and shook her head. “It was just such a mess. After your dad died, so many people turned their backs on him and left the church. Grandpa and Grandma lost faith and so did Aunt Carolyn and Aunt Judy. They all sold their property in LeBaron, moved to the States, and didn’t come back.”
“Is that when we went to live in San Diego?”
“That’s right. I took you and Audrey and Matt and Luke to go live with Grandma and Grandpa for a while. But I knew I wanted to come back to LeBaron. This is where you kids belong.”
I focused on my little pile of beans, continuing to separate them from the dirt and rocks that were in the bag. I didn’t remember living with Grandma and Grandpa, but there was a part of me that wished we were still there. I knew we were doing the right thing living God’s purpose in the colony, but I envied my cousins in California. They lived in nice houses with bathrooms and they always had new clothes and toys. Sometimes I’d lie awake at night thinking about what it would be like if Mom had never married my stepfather and had never brought us back to LeBaron.
Mom met Lane when I was three and she became his second wife a few months later. My grandparents and aunts were invited to the wedding, but they didn’t believe in polygamy anymore so they didn’t go.
Mom said Lane was handsome. He had sandy-blond hair, olive skin, and light blue eyes. He wore his hair slicked back behind his ears with long, perfectly trimmed sideburns. He had been an apostle in my dad’s church, which is what my mom said she loved most about him. The people of the colony called him Brother Lane.
After they married, Mom moved us onto Lane’s eleven-acre farm. Our little house had two bedrooms and one unfinished bathroom that Lane was always promising he’d fix. Until he did, we used a wooden outhouse in the backyard. Lane’s first wife lived in another adobe house a quarter of a mile from ours, at the opposite edge of the farm. Mom’s house was separated from her sister wife’s by a barbed-wire fence, several acres of alfalfa, and a small peach orchard. We didn’t have electricity—we were too far out of town, and power hadn’t yet reached that far into the countryside—but Lane said it was coming.
Lane was the only father figure I’d ever known, but I never liked him. Whenever he was at church or with other churchgoers, he was happy and friendly, always offering to help them fix their cars or their broken appliances. But when he was at home, he was always cross, threatening to spank me if I cried for Mom’s attention. Mom never spanked or hit us, and Lane’s temper scared me.
Two years after Mom and Lane were married, she gave birth to my brother Aaron, who I adored instantly. Having a baby around was like having a new pet. Right after Mom came home from the hospital, she told me I could be her little helper, and I was thrilled. Matt and Luke went to the Mexican public school across the highway from LeBaron, leaving me at home on the farm with Audrey, Mom, and baby Aaron. Even though she was the oldest, Audrey didn’t go to school. Mom said Audrey was too much for the teachers to handle. I hated being stuck at home with my sister, but I loved helping Mom take care of my baby brother.
Her beans all clean, Mom stood up and scooped my little pile of pintos into her pot. She knelt down underneath the wood-framed window and filled the pot with water from a spigot that sprouted right out of the cement floor. Mom put the pot on the propane stove and lit the burner with a match. The stovetop hissed and the air smelled like sulfur. Mom stirred the beans a couple of times, then went to go check on Audrey, telling me to watch to make sure the pot didn’t boil over.
I sat in the kitchen thinking about how different my life would be if my dad hadn’t died. If he were still alive, Mom would be happy and would stop worrying all the time about how much it cost to feed all of us and how Audrey seemed so troubled. If my dad hadn’t died, maybe my grandparents would still live in the colony with us. I just couldn’t understand why my dad had been killed. I knew my uncle Ervil had him shot. Everyone in the colony knew that. Ervil and his followers sent lots of letters to our church elders threatening to kill more people and bomb the town. Mom said that Uncle Ervil was wanted by the FBI and that they had people looking all over Mexico and the United States for him. Each time we got a new threat, Mom would tell us to keep the doors locked. “And if I’m not home and you hear gunshots and explosions,” she always said, “take your baby brother and run to the peach trees, cover him, and lie down in the dirt so no one can see you.” Uncle Ervil was like a ghost haunting us. Knowing that he and his followers were still out there terrified me. Would Ervil come back for me? And what would happen if he murdered my mom the way he had murdered my dad?
2
One constant in my family’s life was traveling. We had to go back and forth from Mexico to the United States every month to collect food stamps, Medicaid, and cash assistance. Mom would bring us along with her on rickety, old Mexican buses while Lane stayed and worked on the farm. Mom was a US citizen, after all, and in the eyes of the government, she was a single parent. Because Mom was Lane’s second wife, their marriage wasn’t recognized outside the colony. Lane had a friend who let Mom use his address in El Paso to qualify for welfare.
Everyone in the colony was always saying how Lane had a strong work ethic. He spent every day milking cows, planting and baling hay, fixing tractors, trucks, and other equipment—all of which broke down regularly. But in spite of all his hard work, he never made enough money to
provide for his eleven kids and stepchildren. So Mom said we had to help out by going to El Paso every month. Although Firstborners, as members of our church were called, believed firmly that the modern-day Babylon to the north would soon crumble under the weight of its people’s wickedness, Lane said it was just fine to take advantage of Babylon’s beneficence.
Lots of women like my mom—the American wives of polygamists raising their kids in Mexico—would travel north and collect government assistance checks. Many of the men in our colony did construction work in border states such as California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, which provided plenty of addresses for the women to use when it came time to pick up welfare checks, and lots of places to stay too. Mom said that we had to learn to live modestly; that we might be poor, but we were rich in spirit. Being faithful sometimes meant doing without. And we were doing the Lord’s work, so why shouldn’t US taxpayers fund our efforts? Which is how we found ourselves waiting for a bus back to LeBaron from Juárez on a cold, rainy morning in late December.
We huddled together for warmth in front of the Juárez bus station. Above us, a huge Mexican flag flapped furiously in the wind. Juárez was a border town of cars with broken mufflers and loud horns coming from every direction, men on rusty bicycles dodging potholes as the rain poured down, and dilapidated, old trucks that expelled smoke so thick they turned the sky from indigo to black.
Skinny Mexican children, their parents nowhere in sight, huddled on street corners in muddy and torn shoes, each waiting for the chance to sell treats and knickknacks to passersby. They peddled Chiclets, candy, brightly colored ceramic piggy banks, cookie jars, and more. Black-haired boys shoved each other aside for the chance to converge on cars that lined up outside the bus station. They held their hands out to us as we walked by. The chaos frightened me, but Mom seemed completely at ease, numb to it all. She fished a coin purse from her tattered, navy-blue bag and pressed a few coins into the hand of a child selling banderas, coconut candies that looked like miniature Mexican flags. We would have preferred gum, but Mom always said no, reminding us of all the times she’d had to cut it out of our hair. Plus, Audrey would put enormous wads of gum in her mouth and swallow them whole.
Inside the station, chaos reigned. A Spanish announcement barked at us from a speaker in one corner, and a radio blared from another. In her left arm, Mom held nine-month-old Aaron and a large, black garbage bag full of Christmas presents she’d bought for us at garage sales and in thrift shops. Her right hand kept a tight grip on Audrey. My sister’s skin was a fair as mine, but she had Mom’s brown hair cut into a square bob.
Mom said she had never seen a child like Audrey before. One day Audrey would do something harmless, like grabbing my pigtail, but the next she’d yank on it so hard my neck would jerk to one side and I’d fall to the ground. All at once she’d bite my shoulders and pinch my forearms for no reason. But other times she kept to herself and sat quietly on a chair or the living-room couch rocking forward and backward for hours, staring straight ahead off into the distance. Behind Audrey, my brother Matt, a rambunctious eight-year-old with strawberry-blond hair parted down the middle, dragged our one hard-shelled suitcase across the muddy floor. Luke and I carried our clothes in plastic bags. Even at seven, Luke looked like my father, with a strong, square jaw, perfectly straight teeth, and a wide smile. Mom said Luke was developmentally delayed, but unlike Audrey, he was quiet and predictable, full of smiles and softness.
Families with cinnamon-colored skin gave us quizzical looks as we shuffled by, especially the mothers, who tittered to each other in Spanish, their thick, black hair pulled tightly into ponytails. I couldn’t help but stare right back, at their bright red lipstick, thick, black eyeliner, stockings, and high heels, and at the men in white straw cowboy hats, their silver belt buckles cinching tight jeans that always led down to fancy boots.
“Hang on tight, Sis,” Mom said as I gripped the waistband of her polyester pants. She looked down and smiled, her glasses inched down her nose so far she had to crinkle it to keep them from falling off altogether. “I see an open seat where we can all sit down.” She led us to a nondescript bank of green plastic chairs. “You kids stay put,” she commanded, and handed Aaron off to Matt. “I’ve got to call Maudy’s store before we leave.”
Maudy’s was LeBaron’s general store. Maudy sold snack foods, paletas, and soft drinks out of a room built off the front of her house. Maudy’s also served as the post office in a town where none of the homes had addresses, and it housed the only public telephone in a town with almost no private ones. You could call Maudy’s from anywhere and leave a message for anyone in town. I listened as Mom called and left the same message she had the day before: to tell Lane that the six of us needed a ride home from the bus stop in LeBaron.
“Cero-uno-uno-cinco-dos-seis-tres-seis.… Sí, por favor. Gracias,” Mom said in her thick American accent as she winked and smiled at us. Mom never learned to speak Spanish well. I sometimes thought she was only pretending that she didn’t speak Spanish so that she wouldn’t have to talk to Alejandra, Lane’s first wife, who was Mexican and barely spoke English.
Mom left her a message and rushed back to tell us that we needed to head outside to get in line for the bus. Mom had been running from the moment we’d arrived in El Paso, the five of us kids struggling to keep us as she collected our food stamps and waited in long lines at the bank to cash the government-assistance checks. But as soon as we stepped out into the wet December weather, Mom stopped us, transfixed by a refrigerator-size cardboard box on the sidewalk, open at both ends. What does she need that box for? I wondered.
“Is someone sleeping inside there?” Mom called out to no one in particular. She stopped and squinted through her glasses to get a better look. She let go of Audrey’s hand and tiptoed closer to the open flaps. Sure enough, there was a boy inside. He looked about ten years old—barefoot, no coat, no blankets, no pillow, nothing.
We must have woken him. He bolted out from the box’s other end. His T-shirt looked three sizes too small and was full of holes, and the cold had turned his lips dark purple. In Spanish, Mom asked the boy his name. He just stared at her motionless with fear, the way an animal might, the way Audrey sometimes did.
Matt took off his jean jacket and asked Mom if he could give it to the boy.
“Are you sure you want to give your jacket away?” Mom asked. “It’s the only one you have, and you might get cold on the bus.”
Matt nodded and Mom said okay. My brother walked up to the boy and wrapped it around his shoulders. The boy slipped his arms inside the sleeves and zipped it up quickly. I was impressed by Matt’s generosity, even as I said a silent prayer of thanks that my coat was too small for the boy. Mom unzipped our suitcase, pulled out one of my brother’s sweaters and a pair of socks. “Here, give these to him too.” Matt did as he was told. The boy gave the barest hint of a smile and then crawled back into the box. Matt shrugged his shoulders in his wool sweater, shivered, and stuffed his hands in his jean pockets.
We got on the bus, and Mom handed Audrey a tattered deck of red cards. Card shuffling was one of my sister’s favorite pastimes, and one of the few things that Mom could depend on to keep her from pulling at the threads in her clothes. I took off my coat so I could use it as a pillow and thought about the refrigerator-box boy and the children begging and selling candies on the streets of Juárez.
I was jealous of my cousins in the States. They used to live in Mexico too, but after my dad died, Mom’s sisters moved to California, not too far from where my grandparents lived. When her Microbus was working, Mom would take us to visit my grandparents at Christmas. Then we’d drive a couple of hours south to where my aunts lived to celebrate the New Year with all of my cousins. Mom’s sisters were like her best friends when they were together. My cousins lived in warm homes that were already completely constructed; they had electricity, soft carpets, warm water that came right out of the faucet, washing machines, telephones, televisions, and th
ey even had video games that we took turns playing on their TV. Whenever we left my cousins’ house and went back to LeBaron, I’d feel embarrassed about how we lived. Our little house didn’t have electricity or even a bathroom that worked, let alone a television with video games. I was so sad that this year we wouldn’t be spending Christmas with my grandparents, aunts, and cousins. Mom’s Microbus was broken again and she said there was no way for us to get to California. But leaving Juárez, I realized things could be much, much worse. I could be living in a box, wearing torn-up shoes, and selling candy to strangers. I felt sorry for the Mexican children of Juárez, and for a while I forgot I was poor.
3
The bus drove through miles of mesquite, cacti, and tumbleweeds, and eventually the Sierra Madres came into view. We called them the Blue Mountains because of the way they looked in the afternoon sunlight. Along the road, I saw rain-soaked farms and cattle ranches ringed with barbed wire; one- or two-room adobe buildings that served as homes; small adobe restaurants; and adobe garages for mechanics. But my favorite view from the bus was of the little adobe structures that looked like tall doghouses but had faded statues of the Virgin Mary or Christ on the cross tacked to their roofs. Candles burned on small wooden tables inside the entryways. Mom explained that they were shrines where Catholics went to pray for safe travels during road trips. I was so used to sharing our small, five-room house with my mom and my four siblings that I liked to imagine playing house in one of those warm, cozy little shrines.
As the dark day turned to an even darker evening, the bus came to a stop in the middle of Casas Grandes. Thirty-five miles north of LeBaron, Casas was the closest town to the colony, home to grocery stores, the hospital I’d been born in, as well as our favorite tortillería. There, we often found ourselves in long lines as we waited for a dozen hot corn tortillas wrapped in newspaper-thin packages. Back home in LeBaron, Mom would smother the tortillas in homemade butter and roll them up into little butter burritos. There was nothing better.
