Gardens in the Dunes

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  Hattie noticed the child’s fixed attention out the train window—entirely normal for a child on a train ride. But as they ate dinner, Hattie was surprised to notice Indigo’s gaze out the window had only intensified.

  “Indigo, what is it that you see out there?” she finally asked. Indigo glanced at Edward, then looked at Hattie and shook her head. In all the excitement and noise of the journey, the child withdrew into herself, just as Hattie feared she might, though Indigo’s appetite did not seem to be affected; she ate the roast beef and vegetables on her plate, and when more food was served, it disappeared from the plate in no time. Edward, who complained of a headache from working on correspondence all afternoon, felt restored by the excellent dinner.

  As the waiter served their slices of apple pie, they felt the train slow and the conductor called out, “Barstow,” a stop for water and coal. For the first time in hours, Indigo turned away from the train window and repeated the name of the stop. Indigo asked the name of the next stop, and Hattie looked to Edward, who reached into his bag and brought out a leather-bound traveler’s atlas that he took on all his expeditions. When he found the page, Edward kindly spread open the atlas on the table in front of Indigo and adjusted the lamp wick so there was enough light.

  “See,” he said, pointing with his forefinger. “Here is the Barstow stop we’ve just departed, and over here, quite a distance really, is our next stop: Needles.” Indigo’s heart was pounding as she repeated the word that meant sharp-pointed objects, a good name, all right, for that town, she thought. Indigo was careful not to betray her excitement; she turned back to the window but over and over she repeated “Needles” to herself in rhythm with the train.

  She had prepared as best she could for her escape by taking extra slices of roast beef off her plate to wrap in the napkin with the slices of bread. When no one was looking she maneuvered the bundle under her skirt and into her panties next to her belly. Grandma Fleet said always take food along.

  After dinner Edward insisted he felt up to another letter or two and proceeded to refill his fountain pen. Indigo remained pressed to the window. Hattie brought out the garden books with the lovely tinted illustrations, but Indigo shook her head without even glancing at the books.

  “You must be exhausted,” Hattie said. “I’ll go see if the trainman made up the berths.”

  When Hattie gave her the nightgown, Indigo waited until she turned, then slipped it over her head without removing her clothes. She smelled the roast beef against her skin and wondered if Hattie would notice when she came to tuck her into bed. Now came the wait; she knew she must stay awake so she could creep out of the sleeping compartment at the first sensation the train was slowing for a stop. To keep herself awake, Indigo whispered a message to Sister Salt, the same message she sent to Linnaeus: “I love you so much and I miss you too. I send all my love with these words. I’m on my way. I’ll see you soon. I am always your sister Indigo.” She repeated the words softly until they were a little song that she sang a bit louder each time until Hattie looked in from the parlor car to ask if everything was all right. Indigo pretended she was asleep and did not answer.

  After Edward and Hattie got into their berths, Indigo waited until they both were breathing slowly and deeply, then she slipped out of her berth and crept to the door to the parlor compartment. The door opened silently but the latch closed with a loud click. Indigo froze and held her breath, but heard no one stir in the berths. Indigo took her seat in the dark parlor car and watched the stars; no matter how fast the train moved and the earth moved, the stars remained unhurried on their slow journey.

  Indigo was asleep when the train jerked and then jerked again and shuddered as the locomotive began to brake for the stop in Needles. Indigo quickly opened the compartment door, looked both ways for the conductor, then stepped out. She made her way to the end of the car to the exit door between the train cars, where the rush of wind smelling of coal smoke and the grind of steel wheels against steel rails engulfed her. She hid behind the luggage rack of valises and trunks to wait.

  Her heart was pounding and she felt as if she might wet her pants, but the urge to urinate passed as the train slowed. In the distance she heard a voice call “Needles”; each call became louder as the conductor approached. Indigo closed her eyes and concentrated on the sand lizards she’d watched, then she flattened herself on the floor behind the luggage just as the conductor entered the car. He called out “Needles” loudly as the train jerked and creaked to a halt. Indigo’s heart sank further with each bump and brake’s squeal—the stops at San Bernardino and Barstow had been far less noisy and bumpy. She knew Hattie and Edward could not possibly sleep through all the racket.

  She scrambled out of her hiding place to reach the outer door and the steps to jump from the train as it came to a stop. Just then she heard Hattie call out her name, and the sound of the compartment door, then footsteps behind her. Sweat ran down her chest and back; she had to get out now! Suddenly the conductor stood in front of her; behind her Hattie called her name. Indigo did not turn; she stood facing the exit door until she felt Hattie’s hand gently slip over her hand.

  Clackety-clack! Clackety-clack! You left home, now you’ll never get back. Clackety-clack! Never get back, never get back, get back, get back, the rails sang; even when Indigo put her fingers in her ears she heard the song. She cried until the tears made a wet spot on the pillow. Hattie sat on the edge of her berth and patted Indigo’s back.

  Indigo sobbed with disappointment in herself; Grandma Fleet would have been so disappointed too, because she always managed to escape the first time she tried. Now that she missed her chance at Needles, the train was speeding her farther and farther away from Mama and Sister Salt. Hattie was a nice person, and her husband was OK; Hattie meant well, but she did not understand.

  Indigo cried herself to sleep and dreamed she was back at the old gardens. Linnaeus was up in the top branches of a tree helping Grandma Fleet pick apricots. The apricot seedlings had grown greatly in the dream and their branches were heavy with fat orange apricots. Sister Salt and Mama sat in the shade and split open the apricots for drying in the sun. She stayed with them in the dream for a long time because she felt their love for her so strongly. When she awoke, she could still feel their love, powerful as ever, and she was confident she would return to them before long.

  Hattie could not get back to sleep. She was thinking about the child. The superintendent at the Indian school knew so little about her. When they returned from abroad, Hattie planned to make a thorough investigation of Indigo’s background. Edward was agreeable; he was actually quite interested himself in rare or extinct Indian cultures. Edward thought it was a coincidence the child tried to get off the train in Needles, but Hattie had seen the expression in Indigo’s eyes, and she knew Needles was Indigo’s destination.

  The next morning Indigo slept past ten o’clock; she was reluctant to get dressed. When she finally raised her arms so Hattie could slip off the nightgown, Hattie saw the reason: Indigo had not undressed the night before. Indigo looked at Hattie, then reached down the front of her skirt and pulled out the stained napkin with the slices of roast beef.

  “What’s this? Rations for your journey?” Hattie said softly. “Indigo, dear, you’d be all alone.”

  “No!” Indigo cried as big tears ran down her face. Hattie felt her throat constrict.

  “You must be terribly homesick, Indigo. I’m so sorry for you.” She reached out to hug Indigo but the child stiffened and turned away angrily.

  “Mama and Sister Salt are waiting for me!” Indigo cried. She did not speak for the rest of the day, and sat listlessly on her berth and refused to eat. She felt better when she thought about the Messiah and the dancers. Hadn’t their Paiute friend told them that part of the year the Messiah traveled far to the east to find cooler weather? At that moment Indigo felt reassured; although she missed her opportunity to get off the train in Needles, still there was a chance the Messiah and the others
were farther to the east anyway.

  “Edward,” Hattie said as she returned from looking in on the sleeping child, “did the superintendent at the Indian school mention anything about the child having a sister or mother?” Edward removed his reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers and shook his head wearily. He had difficulty getting to sleep the night before, then after the child’s near escape, he lay wide awake until dawn.

  “Indian school employees are not particularly knowledgeable about their students,” he explained.

  “Poor child! She must have known she was near her home and she—”

  “She nearly got herself lost or killed jumping from the train!” Edward interjected. He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief, then opened the window wider for fresh air.

  “Are you feeling ill?”

  Edward smiled and shook his head. “Too much reading and writing in a jolting coach for an old man. Shall we play a game of gin rummy?” Edward refolded the pages of a letter and put away the letter and the legal-size documents bound in blue manila. Hattie glanced at the papers as he closed up the leather portfolio.

  “Has something come up?”

  “There’s not a thing to worry about,” Edward said as he brought out the deck of cards.

  “The Pará expedition?”

  Edward nodded.

  “Wasn’t all that settled at the time?”

  Edward removed the jokers and shuffled the deck.

  “Shall I keep score?”

  “Yes, if you will. Here’s the pencil.”

  Edward continued to reshuffle the cards.

  The insurance underwriters had indemnified all the investors. Nonetheless a lawsuit had been filed. His attorney even called it a frivolous lawsuit. Edward smiled reassuringly and passed Hattie the deck of cards.

  There was a two-hour stop in Albuquerque for a crew change, and Hattie managed to persuade Indigo to accompany them for a stroll in downtown Albuquerque.

  “The fresh air will do wonders for us,” Hattie said as she brushed Indigo’s hair and fastened it with little silver barrettes.

  “These used to be mine when I was a girl. Mother made me wear them whenever I rode my horse so my hair didn’t tangle.”

  “A horse?” Indigo knew of men who had horses, but a little girl?

  “Yes, I know, my mother was just as shocked. She begged my father not to allow me to ride. But I had so much fun.” Indigo put on the kidskin slippers and Hattie arranged Indigo’s new straw hat with the ribbons down her back.

  Beyond the depot platform Indigo was surprised to see five or six Indian women in the shade of the overhang from the depot roof, with their blankets spread open to display little black-and-white pottery and small willow baskets, not nearly so fine as Grandma Fleet’s baskets. Other train passengers were examining the pottery and baskets as they walked past. Indigo stared at the women’s faces and at their woven black dresses with red wool sashes, and the black-and-white pottery they made, and thought they must be related to the Hopi people. Hattie noticed Indigo’s interest in the women and thought perhaps the child might be comforted to greet people of her own kind. But when Hattie asked Indigo if she wanted to go over to speak to the Indian women, Indigo shook her head and walked faster to hurry past the Indian women, who were busy with sales to the train passengers.

  Indigo was relieved to see that none of the Indian women had noticed her, dressed as she was like a white girl. What did Hattie think? Those women were strangers from tribes Indigo knew nothing about; what was she supposed to say to the Indian women? They would see the clothes and hat she wore and they would laugh and say, “What kind of Indian are you?”

  They ate lunch in the dining room of Albuquerque’s only hotel, where the white people noticed Indigo and stared at her and Hattie and Edward as they walked through the hotel lobby to return to the train. Indigo smiled to herself; in Needles no Indians were allowed in the café or the hotel lobby. Edward found a two-week-old New York newspaper for sale in the smoke shop of the hotel, and Hattie bought a tin box of taffy.

  Back on the train, Edward read the newspaper while Hattie and Indigo opened the candy, only to discover the taffy had hardened like bits of rock. Indigo was not discouraged; she showed Hattie how she and Sister Salt ate the hard dried dates, softening them first in their mouths for a long time; she did the same with the hard taffy.

  “If Sister Salt is your big sister,” Hattie said, “do you have other sisters and brothers?”

  “I don’t know,” Indigo said as she rolled the piece of taffy with her tongue. “Mama might have a new baby by now.”

  “Indigo,” Hattie began in a soft voice, “I want to talk to you about your mother. The records at the school say you were orphaned.”

  She was no orphan, Indigo assured Hattie confidently. She knew where her mother was, and her sister too. Her mother had escaped with the Messiah and his family and the other dancers into the mountains.

  “The Messiah? Who is the Messiah, Indigo?”

  Indigo looked into Hattie’s blue eyes to see if she was serious, or just teasing.

  “You don’t know who the Messiah is?”

  Hattie shook her head.

  “Sure you do. It’s Jesus Christ.”

  “Yes, but the Jesus I know lived very long ago, far across the ocean.”

  Hattie hesitated before she said Jesus died in Jerusalem. Indigo shook her head; many were fooled by what happened. The Paiute woman told them after the soldiers tried to kill Jesus, he left that place and returned here to his home up in the mountains. He lives there with his family, but sometimes the Messiah takes his family great distances to visit other believers.

  Hattie seemed at a loss for words, so Indigo explained: “When the people dance night after night, the Messiah and his family come down to join the people.”

  The child’s vivid imagination lifted Hattie’s spirits. She had begun to feel unsettled, though she could not locate the source of her disquiet. Hattie put the lid on the candy tin and opened one of the garden books she had brought along to amuse herself and the child on the long train ride. She looked forward to the new book about sunflowers the bookseller in Los Angeles sent her just before their departure. She brought an old archaeological guide to the stone shrines of the British Isles because the book contained Celtic legends Hattie thought Indigo might enjoy.

  Hattie agreed to accompany Edward abroad only because the travel would be very educational for Indigo; she felt responsible to see the child continued to learn reading and writing while in her care. Indigo was absorbed by the gardening book and studied each illustration for a long time before she turned the page. She asked Hattie the English names of the flowers and seemed especially fascinated with the gladiolus, which reproduced itself with clusters of cormlets.

  Edward folded the newspaper as Hattie joined him at the little table.

  “Anything interesting in the Albuquerque newspaper?”

  “Oh, nothing too interesting, really. Your neighbor from Oyster Bay, Mr. Roosevelt, has been mentioned as a possible running mate for McKinley this time around.”

  “That’s interesting. I expected Mr. Roosevelt to settle for nothing short of the presidential nomination.” Hattie thought McKinley the worst of the greedy politicians. Edward smiled. She sounded like her father, Edward teased, “Don’t forget: the budgets for acquisitions and independent contractors at the Smithsonian and for the Bureau of Plant Industry were quite generous under the McKinley administration.”

  Hattie laughed. “So I sound like my father, do I?”

  Just then the tray of tea and pastries arrived, and Hattie’s expression became serious.

  “Indigo says she has a mother and an older sister,” Hattie began. “As soon as we return, I want to look into this.”

  But Edward was doubtful. The government required that strict records of the Indians be kept; Indian mothers did not easily part from their children. Hattie glanced over at Indigo, who had started through the boo
k of gardens a second time. The boarding school was run like prison; it was no place for a child as bright as Indigo. Hattie drew herself up straight in the seat. They didn’t care the child was lost—they called off the search after only a day!

  “Nothing government employees do surprises me,” Edward said. “Remember, I’ve worked with them in the field. The Indian Bureau employees are some of the worst.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The train stopped in Kansas City to change crews, which was enough time for a stroll through the downtown, though the humidity and heat were considerable. While Edward was at the telegraph office, Hattie and Indigo visited the soda fountain next door. Indigo loved the vanilla ice cream but the fizzing bubbles of the soda went up her nose and brought tears to her eyes. They saw a disabled automobile blocking traffic; the freight wagons and buggies jammed the downtown streets.

  Indigo had not seen a Negro woman before, only Negro soldiers. She tugged at Hattie’s sleeve and pointed at a tall, majestic dark-skinned woman who passed them in a lovely dress of pale yellow cotton trimmed in green satin ribbon; she wore a wonderful yellow felt hat with a single green feather and amazing button-up shoes of pale yellow leather with pearl buttons. As they walked through downtown Kansas City, Indigo saw a number of dark women dressed in satins and silks of the brightest prints and colors. On the streets crowded with people in clothing as ordinary as the dust, the Negro women were as lovely as hollyhock flowers in all their colors. Indigo decided they were more beautiful than white women in their pale colors of gray and beige.

  Back on the train just after dark, Hattie pointed out the window to the great Mississippi River, as they crossed over it; but all Indigo saw was an ominous, surging darkness that went on and on like no river she ever saw. Night was the most difficult time; she missed Mama and Sister, and the thought of Linnaeus, alone in the distance and the darkness, made her cry. Her body was so tired of the motion of the train; her back and knees hurt from all the sitting. She lost count of the days they’d been gone. What if Hattie was not able to persuade the school authorities to let her go live with Sister Salt? What if Hattie gave up and left her at the school? The school authorities never intended to let her go home. Tears filled her eyes when she thought of Sister Salt, dragged away with the others considered too old and unruly for school. Yet she could not think of Sister without remembering her fierce will and her quick wits. Sister Salt would escape the first week. Indigo was so proud of her sister that her spirits lifted and she drifted off to sleep, recalling the fun she had with Linnaeus in the red garden with the pomegranate trees.