“And perfectly spelled,” Lorelei said, elbowing her sister.
Rose spoke back, but her quiet voice could barely manage to criticize. “At least I’ve set my plans.”
Lorelei played with her hair, flipping it just under her ear. She explained to me, “Back at school, I hadn’t settled on a major yet. Too many things interested me, so I was taking all the required courses first.”
Rose snickered. “She studied the senior boys.”
Lorelei laughed aloud, covered her mouth, and then blushed. “Only the clever ones. Or the dashing ones,” she said. She hung her hands over her feet and sat so that their shadow covered her work shoes.
Later I told them about the history studies I, too, had abandoned. That once I had planned to go on expedition to Egypt, to help decipher the hieroglyphs, to aid in recording the excavation of tomb chambers buried in the sands.
“Ah, King Tut,” Rose said.
At last, a conversation about another part of the world, off this farm. The discovery of King Tut-ankh-amen’s tomb in 1922 had awakened much of the general population to the wonders of ancient Egypt, but I doubted that its reach had extended to many others in the onion fields. “And so many other tombs, so many other kings and princesses, as well,” I said. “I was particularly interested in studying the pharaoh who ruled before King Tut, named Akh-en-aten.”
They looked as if they wanted me to continue.
“Historians think he had a misshapen head and hips because portraits reveal this about him. And he believed in only one god, Aten, and he built a great holy city, Horizon-of-the-Aten, in his honor.”
Rose looked at her hands, then she turned and asked me, “Do you miss it?”
I hadn’t expected such a direct question. “Yes,” I answered her. Then I hugged my knees to my chest. “But in many ways, just listening to the radio news is a study in history. Especially now.”
Rose looked out over the open fields. “I miss all the lively conversations, the sharing of ideas. A classroom of students may read the same piece of poetry or the same passage in a novel, and each person will interpret it differently.”
I turned to face her. “It’s the same,” I said. “Exactly the same way with history, too.”
“Is it?”
“Think about it,” I told her. “Even the facts of history are tainted by personal views. Depending on beliefs, every side in every conflict has been seen as both right and wrong.”
Rose answered softly, “Of course.”
Then it dawned on me. These girls would understand differences in views better than most. After all, they had been moved and confined by a country at war with the country of their ancestors. They were living among people who assumed our white brains superior to theirs. The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the hardships of the war in the Pacific had come as a shock to those Americans who thought Japan incapable of executing anything intelligent or difficult. Yet Rose and Lorelei were as American as I was. What internal struggles must torment them?
“In years to come, all of this present history may be viewed differently,” I said.
“Just as books and poems are continually being reread and reevaluated,” said Rose.
“Literature has had a profound effect on history.”
“For example, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
“Exactly.”
Later we walked about the farm, visited the pond, and tossed sticks for Franklin to lazily retrieve. I invited them to come over again, and when I explained I had a truck available to me, one with plentiful gasoline, their faces lit up like tinfoil left out in the sun.
“We could look for butterflies in the thickets,” said Lorelei.
“Or on the open prairie,” added Rose.
I could hardly wait. “Come again and we’ll go driving.”
That night, I found myself moving without effort. I remembered running on younger legs, the wind whipping between campus buildings, and the feel of new book pages beneath my fingers. I remembered the classroom discussions that had taken my thoughts down new paths, records played on the radio, and whispered thoughts only girlfriends have the courage to share.
As I was cooking dinner, Ray came up behind me. He looked over my shoulder at the tuna fish casserole I was stirring up in a bowl. Something surely did seem to please him, and I thought it was the food. “Does it look good?” I asked him.
“Sure enough,” he said. “But that’s not why I’m standing here. I wanted to listen better.”
I stopped stirring. Then he told me, “You were singing to yourself.”
Eight
Ray and I began to attend church every Sunday. Despite a few sets of questioning eyes, I didn’t object because it was my only chance to escape the farm, and I enjoyed the peaceful messages of Reverend Case’s sermons. And, too, I enjoyed seeking out Martha and trying to piece together an early picture of life on the land where now I lived.
“Ray tore down the old shack,” I told her on a Sunday in early October.
“Oh, dear,” she said with a smile. “Hank would have done the same, I’m afraid. But you ought to be able to find the dugout.”
I almost choked on my coffee. “They started with a dugout?”
Martha nodded. “It’s along the creekbed just south of the bridge, but you shouldn’t try to find it on your own.”
“A dugout?” I still couldn’t believe my luck. “How long did they live in it?”
“At least the first few years.” Martha looked concerned. “You won’t go down there by yourself, will you?”
I squeezed her arm. “Don’t worry, and thank you.”
“Promise me you won’t go down there on your own.”
But how could I wait? I planned to find it the next day, but before I had time to go outside, Lorelei and Rose showed up again on my doorstep. With almost all the onions and beans harvested out of Singleton soil, they had some break time, and they wanted to spend it with me.
They asked to travel south, so we slid in together on the truck seat and headed through La Junta in the direction of Trinidad. Along the way, we searched streambeds, patches of brush, and open sage prairie. Whenever we saw wildflowers that might attract butterflies, we pulled over. In one meadow, we’d searched for only a few minutes before the girls spotted a swallowtail among the thistle flowers. The black and yellow butterfly opened and closed its wings and turned about in the sunlight as if showing off for us. Rose said it was definitely swallowtail, probably a Western Tiger Swallowtail, but she wouldn’t be certain of its exact identity until she researched it later in one of their books. As Rose moved in closer, Lorelei held back and outlined a sketch in the notebook, shading the wing patterns with colored pencils.
I studied them at work, and I studied the swallowtail. On the butterfly’s hind wings, I saw two large circles of red and blue. “The large spots on the wings are quite beautiful, aren’t they?” I said.
“False eyes,” Lorelei said as she worked on her drawing.
At last, the swallowtail fled. I noticed that it didn’t flutter away; instead, with just one flap, it caught a current of air and soared.
Rose brushed off her hands. “The false eyes confuse the butterfly’s enemies.”
Lorelei had to explain, “They scare birds and lizards away. Those large spots appear like eyes of a much larger animal.”
“So predators think the butterfly must be something else.”
Lorelei added, “It’s a protection for the butterfly, evolved over time.”
“Many moths have them, too,” said Rose.
I had learned something new, something I’d never noticed before—false eyes on butterflies. But more importantly, I had uncovered the pattern of the sisters’ speech. Perhaps they weren’t aware of it themselves, that they finished thoughts and sentences for each other. Layer upon layer, they added on to each other’s phrases until a more complete picture emerged, one more vivid than if it had come from a single voice.
“Amazing,” I told them.
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sp; We stopped at a service station outside La Junta, where I treated us to bottles of Dad’s root beer out of the drink machine. We leaned up against the side of the truck and sipped while we talked.
Rose flipped through the butterfly notebook that Lorelei usually took in her charge. “Since we’ve been in Colorado, we’ve seen over twenty new varieties,” Rose said. She stopped turning pages. “Now what’s this?” she asked Lorelei.
I glanced over. In the midst of all the butterfly sketches was a full-page drawing of an American soldier complete with uniform and butch haircut.
“Give it to me,” Lorelei yelped as she reached for the notebook.
Rose jerked it away. “This was supposed to be for our records.”
Lorelei covered her mouth and giggled. Then she looped a strand of hair around her finger. “I couldn’t help myself. He was so handsome.”
Rose looked defeated. “Now our book is ruined.”
“No, it’s not. Here, let me have it.” She grabbed the book away from Rose, ripped out the paper drawing of the soldier, folded it, and stuffed it into her pocket. “You’re no fun. Rules, rules, rules. Always Rose has to follow the rules.”
“Things need to stay in their right places.”
“Oh, yes,” Lorelei said, nodding exaggeratedly. “Like we need to stay in the camp.”
The camp. It was the first time either one of them had mentioned their confinement. I studied the bubbles in my root beer bottle and listened.
Rose shot back, “I never said that.”
“But you go along all too well.”
They stared at each other, then turned away. Obviously, this was a subject they hadn’t meant to discuss, at least not in front of me. I watched the road and saw a cottontail scurry across it. I looked away until the moment had passed, and soon Rose and Lorelei were talking about men and swigging down their drinks again.
We traveled farther south. Along the Purgatoire River, we found tiny Silvery Blues, Painted Ladies, and Viceroys—orange and black butterflies I had always thought were Monarchs. We watched the Viceroys gather along the riverbank. Hundreds of them came together and overlapped their wings into one wave of color, a bright scarf flowing in the breeze.
“That’s called mud puddling,” pointed out Lorelei.
“They gather together to drink the shallow water out of the soil, water rich in mineral salts,” added Rose.
After a few moments of silence, Lorelei turned to me. “How much farther to New Mexico?”
“The border is only a short drive away. Why do you ask?”
She shrugged. “We’ve never seen that state.”
I checked my watch. “Maybe next time we can get an earlier start.”
When I slid back in behind the steering wheel, I caught Rose studying my belt.
“What?” I asked her.
She shook her head and looked out through the windshield. Then, apparently changing her mind, she turned back to me and asked, “Are you expecting?”
My keys fell to the floorboard.
I couldn’t believe it. I was unable to speak, unable to answer her question. Already it was noticeable, and so soon. I had seen a doctor for verification back in Denver but hadn’t suffered one morning of sickness, hadn’t felt weak or faint, and hadn’t even realized my abdomen was growing. Checking off the time, I realized it had been over three months, that certainly it made sense I should now be showing. As I searched the floorboard for the keys, I felt the powerlessness once again rush in and consume me. I remembered the first day I had allowed myself to acknowledge the possibility, and by then I was over a month late. It was too unbelievable that I couldn’t control the processes transpiring inside the confines of my own flesh, so unbelievable that I had ignored the clear signs. Although I had feared the truth, I told no one for another two weeks in hopes that it was just some cruel trick of nature. But after weeks of walking around with a bomb buried inside me, I finally went to Abby, and she went to Father.
Abby had meant me no harm. She had assumed that Father, as the head of our family, needed to know, that he would come up with a sensible plan. Father didn’t speak to me for two more weeks; he wouldn’t even meet my eyes. Then he summoned Abby and Bea over to the house, where he ushered the three of us into his study. He sat us down and announced that he had been in touch with his old friend Reverend Case, and that I would marry a bean farmer out on the plains. I remembered sitting there in his cool leather chair and staring at the perfect part in his hair. It was so straight. Had he sectioned it off with an ice pick?
Bea had begun to cry.
“Oh, Father, please,” Abby was saying. “There must be other options.”
Bea spoke up between sobs. “She could go to a home for unwed mothers, then give up the baby for adoption.”
Abby said, “I knew a girl who went away to visit a maiden aunt for about six months. That was the story. We could say the same—”
“No,” Father interrupted her. He stared at me through the spotless lenses of his glasses. “We must all bear the consequences of our actions.”
“This is too big,” Abby said in a whisper. “This is too big a consequence.”
As Abby and Bea continued to plead for me, Father took off his already immaculate eyeglasses and scrubbed the lenses again until every imaginary speck and smudge had vanished. If I had done something we could hide, if no one could have ever found out, I might have been forgiven. For us, family dignity was one of our chief concerns. But this thing—I couldn’t even say the word—the P word. It made my transgression so bountifully obvious.
Father placed both hands flat on the desk and began to rise, signaling that our discussion had ended. “My decision is made. The arrangements are all in order.” Before he put his glasses back on, for just a second, I thought I glimpsed just a touch of something not totally clear, a fine mist coating his eyes. But he said, “Livvy, you leave on the train next week.”
Near the gas pedal, I finally found the keys. I looked up at Rose and Lorelei and almost laughed. Only two nights before, Ray had asked me, “Don’t you need to see a doctor?” I had thought he was referring to an accident I’d recently had. While working in the garden, I had cut my foot on an old piece of glass hidden in the dirt. Now it occurred to me—his true concern was the reason I had come here in the first place.
Of course, others would assume this a happy event. I said to Rose and Lorelei, “Yes, I am expecting.” Then I managed a smile.
Lorelei squealed and clasped her hands together. “Do you have any clothes?” she asked.
Perhaps I wasn’t yet listening to her. She meant maternity clothes, of course. “No, no, I don’t.”
Rose sat up straight in the seat and smiled. “We can sew. We have our own Singer. Back in California, that was our family business—tailoring. Our father made the finest suits in all of Los Angeles, often for moviemakers. What could we make for you?”
“It isn’t necessary,” I said, but soon realized that it was necessary, for them. In this way, they could return the favor of my driving. “I’ll take that back. I would like a dress for church. In Wilson, a minister preaches on Sundays. A man I most admire.”
“What are your favorite colors?”
I didn’t care, but I remembered the false eyes. “Blue and red, like the eyes of the swallowtail.”
Lorelei asked, “Are you hoping for a boy or girl?”
Again I was momentarily unable to answer, for it was another question I had never considered. “I suppose the Singleton family would prefer a boy.”
“But what about you? Would you prefer a daughter or son?” asked Lorelei.
I remembered a young man I’d known at the university, a quiet, soft-spoken, serious student who had always dressed as if he were going to church. He’d avoided the draft all through college, then, at his father’s urging, had joined the Marines upon graduation and became a Corps pilot. He was shot down and killed during his first combat mission in the Battle for the Eastern Solomons, never once having t
he chance to teach blind children, as had been his ambition.
“If I were able to choose, I’d take a daughter.” I met Rose’s eyes. “At least girls don’t get drafted, don’t get pressured to go off and fight in wars.”
“Do you ever wonder,” began Rose slowly, “why there must be so much war?”
What a question it was, and one I’d often asked my professors. “All the time I wonder. Throughout all of my history studies, I was constantly amazed and distraught by the near constancy of it, all across time.”
Lorelei chewed a nail. “Do you think that human beings are naturally warlike?”
I shook my head. “I can’t believe that. I can’t let myself believe that.”
“I don’t believe it, either,” said Rose. “Most of us would find some other way to settle our disputes.”
I agreed. “Most of us are naturally peaceful.”
“It’s only when the wrong leaders come into power that the peace disintegrates,” Lorelei concluded.
“If only the leaders of all countries could be women,” I said, and we laughed together at the notion, the impossible nature of it.
Then we were silent, each of us lost in our own gnawing thoughts.
Rose put a hand on my arm. “It must be a difficult time to be carrying a baby.”
I hadn’t thought of it until then. This baby would most likely be born while this deadly war, the worst and most brutal in history, still raged. And Rose’s sympathy for me in the face of what was happening to her, in the face of her lost home, lost education, and imprisonment, touched me profoundly. I swallowed back tears. “I’m sure it’ll end up okay.”
“Yes,” said Rose. “We must all believe that, mustn’t we?”
Lorelei studied me over the next few moments of silence. Her eyes saw more than I thought I was showing. “Is Ray Singleton your husband?”
I realized then, that in all the time I’d spent with them, I’d never introduced Ray or even mentioned him in our conversations.
“Yes,” I answered. And legally, he was.
The Magic of Ordinary Days Page 7
