He knocked politely but the figure in the red shawl was nowhere to be seen. He became concerned about the lateness and the departure of the steamer, so he knocked a bit harder. The corrugated steel sides of the stall shook. Suddenly a huge blue face appeared in the window and Edward could not help but jump back. The old woman’s long tangled hair and her ample chest and arms all had been painted a bright blue that emphasized the woman’s Maya features: sharp high cheekbones and aquiline nose. Her glittering black eyes fastened on his, and he felt beads of sweat form above his lip and across his forehead. He pointed at the meteor irons on the ground by her feet.
“How much for these?”
The woman stared at him until he had to look away. He saw the black skin of her legs and realized the woman was African as well as Maya.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Go away, I’m closed.” The tone of contempt in her voice astonished Edward.
“I’ll buy all the meteor irons you have,” he said as he reached into his specimen satchel for his purse. She leaned her blue face and breasts closer; he felt the heat of her breath and instantly a terrible dread swept over him as if he was in imminent danger.
“Go away! You cannot buy them but you will pay!”
Had she misunderstood him? He held out a handful of silver coins to show her he wanted to buy the irons. She hissed out the words again—go away! The sweat on his forehead felt cold and the hairs on his neck stood up. He got a sudden impression the blue-face woman knew him and she had hated him for a long time.
How silly, he thought later when he was safely in his cabin. He was pleased with the handsome melon specimen and the photographs; the visit to the Tampico market had been a success. He put the unpleasant incident with the Maya Negress out of his thoughts; there would be other opportunities to acquire meteor irons. The encounter only whetted his appetite.
At high tide the steamer departed, but they were under way only a few hours when the wind began to increase and the ship’s barometer began to fall. The whitecaps began to slap the sides of the ship and the captain attempted to outrun the storm by heading due north. The ship rolled and plunged as she circled, waiting for the storm to move. In more than thirty years on the Caribbean, the captain had not seen as many storms as there were this season, and all of the winds followed the same path out of the Bay of Campeche.
The wind howled and drove the rain relentlessly against the ship; on the third day the storm gave no sign of abating, and the sailors began to recount old stories about hurricanes that raged for weeks. Edward remained calm. A few years before, he had weathered a far worse storm on the return trip from the Pará expedition.
That time a sudden storm sprung up off the coast of Venezuela; he was convalescing from his injury, immobilized in his cabin alone. Wind-driven waves nearly swamped the ship; the terrified sailors cast overboard much of the ship’s cargo to buy the wind’s mercy, and all but two crates of the rare orchid specimens were lost.
The sailors believed the storm was the work of the Black Indian of Tampico, who kept two sets of altar saints, one for the day, one for the night. The ship’s barometer fell so far that they thought it was broken. Who or what had angered the Black Indian? Edward listened to the men and wondered if she was the same woman who refused to sell him the meteorites. They said she was a daughter of the African spirits and the Maya spirits as well. The sailors heard spirits in the high-pitched whine of the wind.
The Black Indian and her black dogs combed the beaches after big storms to collect the gold and other valuables from shipwrecks. Edward listened to the sailors’ comments with amusement. The seamen worked themselves into self-righteous anger: What fool had angered the Black Indian, prompting her to burn black dog hair and rum in a white bowl to call up the winds? No solution but to throw gold coins and valuables overboard. That’s what she wanted; gold floated to the shore for her.
Later, when they were alone, Edward asked the ship’s captain where in Tampico this Black Indian might be found. The captain had already finished the first bottle of wine and opened another. Her ugly mug was unmistakable—painted bright blue. Edward felt a chill run down his neck. He said nothing about his encounter with her lest they accuse him of bringing down the storm. He excused himself and returned to his cabin. To think that he had inhaled her hot breath reeking of rum!
The rain and wind were relentless, never increasing but never decreasing in velocity; like the other tropical storms this season, it seemed to stall in Campeche Bay. The vessel was in a protected anchorage but they were unable to move. The first mate poured holy water as the ship’s captain threw handfuls of gold beads overboard; for good measure, the sailors dumped two palletloads of bananas. The wind seemed to slacken somewhat.
Edward took no chances this time; he kept his trunks and chests full of specimens safely locked in his cabin. The relentless howling of the wind brought on a deafness in his right ear, an affliction Edward first suffered in childhood after swimming in the ocean with his father.
The next morning the sky was blue and the ocean calm as if there had never been a storm. Edward took the opportunity to collect specimens of kelp and seaweeds churned up by the storm before the steamship got under way. As he filled the bottles with salt water and strands of seaweed, he felt a bit more confident the expedition was not entirely wasted; he could not afford to return empty-handed.
Perhaps it was the strain of this worry that triggered the headache that descended on him as he hefted a bucket of kelp and ocean water onto the deck. With the sudden sharp pain over his left eye came a blinding streak of light. He was scarcely able to stopper and label the collection jars before he began to perspire and feel nauseous from the pain over his eye. The headache lasted for two days. The ship’s captain sent the steward to administer belladonna, and at one point, the pain was so excruciating Edward begged the steward to put him out of his misery with an overdose. Now as he described the incident to Hattie, he laughed, but Hattie noted the hesitation in his voice. In the fury of the headache he became so disoriented, he believed he was back on the Pará River.
♦ ♦ ♦
“I could smell the burning foliage. I could even feel the broken bone fragments in my leg.” Edward took a sip of wine and settled back in his chair across from Hattie.
“At one point, I even imagined my father was in my cabin, smoking a big cigar and laughing at me!”
Hattie smiled. She enjoyed Edward’s animated mood. She put a light shawl over her shoulders and they strolled the west terrace arm in arm without speaking. The scent of citrus blossoms suffused the night air and overpowered even the white climbing roses and the lilies. No need to plant scented gardens here, though after a time, one became accustomed to the orange and lemon blossoms. She wanted to plant a garden of scents to contrast the heavy sweetness: wild sage, coriander, basil, rosemary, scented geraniums, and catmint for a start. She saw so many possibilities for the gardens despite the neglect they’d suffered.
Edward’s father planted the first citrus groves in Riverside County before the railroad line was completed. But he wasn’t a citrus farmer; he called himself a botanist, though he lacked formal training. Edward’s father seemed not to care that the family fortune, in decline since statehood and further drained by his obsessive gambling, might easily be renewed with the sale of the sweet oranges by the railroad boxcar to the northeast. Edward’s father did not want the bother such business enterprise entailed—orange crates, train schedules, purchase orders bored him.
Instead his father spent all day in the orange groves or in the greenhouses, where he showed Edward the results of his citrus grafts—lemons, grapefruits, and tangerines all grew on the same tree. Every Thursday afternoon found his father at his desk for hours, valise packed and the coachman waiting while he calculated and recalculated his lucky numbers before he left for a weekend of gambling in Long Beach. Edward understood he must never ask to accompany his father.
As a boy, Edward shared his father’s enthusiasm for citru
s trees; the workshop of the orangery, with its odors of paraffin, sulfur, and damp earth, had been Edward’s childhood haunt. The dwarf tangerine trees along the back wall of the red garden were grafts Edward made when he was twelve. Back then, if his mother and sister were in New York, he did not feel as lonely in the greenhouse, surrounded by his mother’s orchids.
Edward was seven when she pronounced him old enough to stay with his father. She began her annual summer visit to Long Island with Susan in tow; they took the train the day after Easter because she could not tolerate the dry heat of Riverside in the summer.
For the first few years, Edward dreaded the approach of Ash Wednesday; on Easter Sunday he woke in tears because in a matter of hours his mother and sister would be gone until October. But gradually he learned to overcome the sadness by following his father to the greenhouse or orange groves. His father tolerated him as long as he did not speak unless spoken to. His father’s trips to Long Beach or Pasadena occasionally lasted for weeks, and when his father returned, he brought new suitcases full of soiled clothes newly purchased. No one ever spoke about his father’s absences, not even after he died during a two-week stint in Pasadena.
A cool wind stirred off the desert, and Hattie pressed herself closer to Edward’s side and rested her head lightly against his shoulder. A moment later Edward felt suddenly weary and they went indoors. He was asleep before Hattie came to bed, but after midnight he woke from a dream with a start and sat up in the bed.
In the dream he had been in a narrow bottom bunk in the crew’s quarters of a ship. Ocean waves had crushed the sides of the ship and salt water was exploding in all around him. The specimens! He must make sure they were safe. He left Hattie sleeping soundly, to check on the new collections.
One of the containers of seawater had leaked out between Los Angeles and Riverside, and he was concerned about damage to the rare algae. The first thing in the morning, he would send to Los Angeles for fresh seawater. He had not unpacked the dried plant specimens; now he worried they might have been wet by the leaking container of seawater. He dried the sponges before he packed them; if moisture reached them they would rot. He prepared the drying cabinet and took the precaution of opening the specimen envelopes and placed each sponge on top of its envelope for closer inspection. Jacksonville, Lake Okeechobee, St. Johns River, Titusville, Indian River, St. Lucie, Pine Key, Cedar Key, Key West, Cape Florida, Nassau, the Dry Tortugas. He examined each envelope of dried plant material to be certain there was no dampness. Although the hurricane season’s early arrival cut short the expedition, he felt confident he had collected an adequate sampling. The Smithsonian Institution and the Bureau of Plant Industry were organizing a joint installation at the World Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans the following year. The focus of the exhibit was to be the commerce, industry, and natural history of the Gulf and the Caribbean Sea, with special attention to the commercial and other sponges, the ornamental corals, and the larger species of mollusks and crustaceans fit for human consumption.
Once he was satisfied the specimens were safe, he opened the trunk with his field notebooks and maps marked to pinpoint the locations of each of the specimens collected. After the hurricane season passed, a work party, using his notes and maps, would retrace his steps to collect the large quantities of specimens needed for the displays at the Centennial Exposition. Mr. Talbot showed him the plans. Congress had appropriated $75,000 for elaborate preparations: special curators would bathe the corals and sponges in solutions to preserve and enhance their colors; saltwater display tanks costing hundreds were already being assembled.
The night after his arrival, Hattie woke and saw that Edward was not in bed. Concerned for his health, she went to find him. She noticed light from the third floor study. She did not mean to watch him, but he was so absorbed, she paused in the doorway. What was he doing so intently? He had a wool camp blanket across his lap with the edge of the blanket between the fingers of both hands, examining the blanket inch by inch. Now and then he seemed to find something and pull it free from the wool; then he reached over to a jar on the desk.
She did not disturb him but waited until the next morning to see what he put in the jar. She found delicate grass seed in the shapes of long arrows and others in the shapes of stars. Edward saw her examine the jar.
“Oh those. I wasn’t able to finish my collection of grasses but I found some specimens on the blanket.”
Something about Edward with his notebooks and specimens in jars awoke Hattie’s longing for her books and notes, still packed in the trunks. Despite its rejection by the thesis committee, Hattie still hoped to complete the manuscript. While she was packing for California, one of her notebooks fell open to a page that outlined the teachings of Valentinus, with 365 heavens and 365 different choirs of angels; suddenly she realized how much she missed her work with the old Gnostic texts, so full of exuberant imagination.
The doctor blamed her father’s “wild progressivism,” as Mother called it, for Hattie’s sensitive nervous system. The doctor’s orders stipulated that she rest, relax, and avoid intellectual exertion, particularly the overstimulation caused by the reading and writing for her thesis. Her mother blamed the furor over the thesis for another incident so shocking they did not speak about it.
Her father was so proud of Hattie that he accepted any responsibility he might have even for her illness; knowledge did not come without its price. Mr. Abbott planted a white oak tree in the front yard the day Hattie was born. As an ardent student of John Stuart Mill, he believed it was his paternal duty to give Hattie the fullest education possible; so he taught her himself. She was exceptional, he told her, and urged her to look beyond the narrow interests of current feminists—prohibition of alcohol and the vote for women—and look to the greater philosophical questions about free will and God. At Vassar she found the other Catholic women timid or dull, but she disdained the suffragists as well. Hattie preferred her cubicle in the library and the books to the ballroom; she completed her degree with honors in three years.
The peculiarity of Hattie’s education separated her entirely from other young women her age. Because Mr. Abbott was a freethinker, Hattie’s mother had been adamant about the Saturday afternoon catechism classes at the convent, which were Hattie’s only opportunities to socialize with young women her own age. Even after Hattie completed her First Communion and confirmation, her mother continued to send Hattie for religious instruction, in part because Hattie asked to go. Five or six other girls attended the classes, which would have been deadly boring but for old Sister Conrad, who was too deaf to hear them whispering and too eccentric to follow the catechism book.
For years, Sister Conrad had instructed the daughters of prominent families in the creed of the church. The first part of Sister Conrad’s classes were too boring to remember; first they stood and prayed in Latin to prove they’d memorized the words, then the old nun talked about goodness and sainthood and heaven. But before long Sister Conrad would drift off the shining virtues to the serious topics, which reddened her big Irish face. Hattie was twelve years old the first time Sister Conrad talked about the devil and the fires in hell, and she was spellbound by the old nun’s stories.
Sister Conrad looked each one of them in the eyes as she told stories about the selfish, lying little girls whose behavior was so wicked it caught the attention of the devil himself. Inflamed by their sins, the devil came and hid in their bedrooms—in the closet or under the bed—where he waited to ambush the bad girls. If the sinful girl did not die immediately of fright, then the devil flung her high in the air and let her crash to the floor, where she broke her bones. When Hattie told the devil stories to her father, he appeared concerned and asked if she wanted to stop catechism classes. She quickly said no because she enjoyed her time with girls her own age to gossip and giggle over boys.
Hattie trusted the loving, forgiving God her father described—the God who brought only good to his children and no harm. No devil cou
ld harm Hattie—she was confident God loved her too much to allow evil to touch her, and she was curious about the hidden dangers of the world polite people seldom discussed. Her mother’s friends whispered about young women who were “ruined,” but aware Hattie was nearby, they never disclosed the lurid details.
Sister Conrad dropped hints and made innuendos about “bad girls,” who must confess sins of the flesh if they lingered in their warm baths too long. Hattie had no idea what the nun was talking about until she asked the other girls and they told her. Shocked but not surprised, Hattie went home and straight to the library for the set of medical reference books. The chapters on reproduction and childbirth, complete with diagrams and color plates, left Hattie a bit queasy; but she felt sick after her mother described her loss of blood and hours of suffering to bring Hattie into the world! Poor dear! She wasn’t able to have more children.
From time to time a Jesuit priest came to lecture them on church history. He was a pale, heavy man who did not look at them but at the wall at the back of the room. Even when a girl raised her hand with a question, the priest stared at a point above her head. The other girls became restless and bored whenever the priest lectured about the dangers of the loss of their immortal souls, but Hattie secretly was thrilled at the drama of the old struggle between God and the devil played out in endless new situations.
The priest began his instruction on the early history of the church with the third day after Christ’s crucifixion. Naturally, Jesus’ followers were grief-stricken and confused—Hattie felt tears in her eyes as the priest related the event: Mary Magdalene was the first to see the risen Jesus, but Peter refused to believe her. Why would Jesus appear first to a woman like Mary Magdalene? Hattie felt indignant at the injustice; she raised her hand and the Jesuit nodded at her. The other disciples did not like Mary Magdalene, Hattie said; they were jealous of her because of Jesus’ regard for her. Boldly Hattie went on: perhaps the reason Jesus appeared to her first was to teach the other disciples a lesson in humility. The Jesuit remained expressionless. A divine mystery, he said; only God knew the answers.
Gardens in the Dunes Page 11
