Right as Baxter and Kay are ready to leave, Kay turns to us all and says, “I heard a story from Lola over at the bank. She said she heard that in some other country some couple was put in jail for defying the government and to punish them the officials put their baby in the next cell. They had to listen to their baby cry, listen to it starve to death.”
There is a silence as we all absorb that. Then Baxter breathes out, “Kay, now there’s no need to be repeating stories like that.” And I’m thinking, I know why she’s doing this, she can’t stand us talking nice, she has to make every conversation a little mean or else it’s scary to her.
Kay looks so hard and she says, “Sometimes I think we’re just animals, and then I can understand something like that. Like a baby fox. A baby fox might lose its mother and cry and cry till it dies. That’s the way it goes. But then I think, damn, that was a baby, crying and just wanting milk. Then I can’t stand to hear things like that.”
Baxter looks up at her. “Kay, I can’t either.”
“Think of that baby, crying and crying.”
“Come on, Amber,” I whisper. “Let’s go inside.”
As I’m making my move to get away, Kay says, “Put in your two weeks notice at the store. Or cut back your hours. You could do both jobs.” I shrug, but she stays after me. “Frank will understand. Just tell him soon so he has time to find someone else.” She pauses for a breath and says, in a softer voice, “A well-being check, my ass. But it’s a nice idea, isn’t it? Well-being check. We could all use one of those.”
The map shows the route clear enough, I guess. La Junta. Walsenburg. Monte Vista. Durango. From flat land to mountain, over the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan ranges.
I trace the route with my finger and tell myself that it can’t be that hard, that I can do it. But it does look hard, and I can’t. It’s far and complicated and my car would probably break down, plus how am I supposed to get there with a baby that needs something every thirty minutes?
Missing someone hurts more that I thought. If only she’d call and say one damn real thing, that would be enough. Silence is so hard. I think maybe it’s the meanest thing on earth.
I don’t know how to love her less.
Maybe I will eventually wear out.
And I’m figuring something else out, too, which is that if you can’t get what you want, you end up doing something else, just to get some relief. Just to keep from going crazy. Because when you’re sad enough, you look for ways to fill you up. Which is why, maybe, I finally got around to calling the community college in Lamar and asking for application materials. “Financial aid materials too,” I threw in at the last minute. The lady at the other end of the phone was busy and tired, so I didn’t bother her with my story, which I realize is not special anyway, except that it’s my life.
I called social services too, and they can’t fit me in for a few weeks, but at that time, the lady promises, they can see about which services are applicable to my situation. If I’m going to legally adopt this baby, she said, I’d need to get my sister’s permission and the father’s too. I said, “What if there’s no father?” And she said, “There’s a father.” I said, “Nope, there’s no father.” She sighed and said, “Come on in and we’ll get it figured out.” She sounded like she was tired of dealing with girls who did dumb things.
I sit with the map in front of me, staring at the impossible. Amber is right next to it, on her back, and I tell her, “It’s ‘cause of you I can’t go.” But I know that’s not true. I wouldn’t go anyway. It’s me that’s the problem. So I play patty-cake and itsy bitsy spider, because that’s easier than thinking about directions my life won’t go.
Ed Mongers is a slow talker, and when his sentences do make it out they’re all in circles and stops and starts, with long pauses, and then a bunch of words all packed together. It takes him a good twenty minutes to explain that he has honey bees, and that bees like alfalfa, and that he’d sure love to swap us some honey in exchange for letting him keep his bees out here.
We’re standing in the driveway and his eyes keep flicking from Amber to me to the house to the alfalfa field. Amber’s nestled in my arm, and she opens and closes her mouth, like she’s tasting air. She’s got that white curdy stuff on her tongue, and I think it’s cute, how she sticks out her tongue and then closes her mouth to think about that air for a while, and then does it all over again.
Ed has sand-colored curly hair that’s graying near his temples, and small round glasses, and it looks like maybe he hasn’t shaved in four or five days because he’s got whiskers that are just at that length where they go from being bristle-hard to soft. I guess he’s in his forties, but it’s hard to tell, and there’s no doubt that he’s good looking. But he also looks worried, and he keeps scratching the blond-brown whiskers on his face, or touching his glasses. He says, “They’re Italian bees, which is a friendly kind. Flowers bloom in waves. Alfalfa will bloom in late July. The first wave comes in June, but the earliest batch of honey goes to the bees. The spring honey flow is no good, anyway, since it’s mostly from leafy spurge and tastes too strong. Italian bees are not aggressive.”
“Oh, okay. They don’t bite? Because I’ve got a baby here and all.”
“Sting,” he says. “And I see that, that you have a baby, and I am surprised, because I see you at the store, and no, bees don’t like to sting, and they won’t unless they feel threatened. But we all lash out, don’t we, if we feel threatened? And you were never pregnant.”
I blink at him. “Oh, right. This is my sister’s baby. I’m raising her, though. I’m adopting her.”
“Oh.” He draws it out, like a long breath, and nods. Then he looks at me closer. “I didn’t know that. I’m out of the loop. You shouldn’t give a baby honey. Not till they’re one. I read that in my beekeeping magazine. But after that, it’s a natural sweetener. It’s very healthy. Why? Perhaps I shouldn’t ask that. I mean, but taking someone else’s baby—”
After a second I say, “Oh. My sister, Tess, didn’t want it. She was going to get an abortion. I told her I’d raise it. We thought it was a boy. But it wasn’t. This is Amber. She’s almost three weeks, now.”
“She looks like she’s floating in space.”
“I know! That’s what I was just thinking, I really was. And like she’s tasting air.”
“Yes, that’s right. That’s what it looks like.”
We both stare at her for a minute, and then I say, “Where do the bees live? In those white boxes?”
“Hive bodies, they’re called. Bees are the most amazing creatures, really. I think it’s amazing that you would take your sister’s baby.”
“Oh. Well, thanks.”
“That’s a whole different way of operating in this world. A lot of people, they don’t want to take the hard way. I wish the world was different. I wish people wouldn’t use plastic bags, or so many chemicals. Because, did you know that plastic bags never disintegrate? Never, ever? And those chemicals, they don’t go away. Of course they don’t. Did we really think they would? But those are all hard things. And I understand. Because the world is difficult enough, sometimes, and it’s too hard to be worrying about every single thing. So we look for easy, convenient ways. Myself included. I mean, don’t think I think I’m so great. But that’s why I moved out here. To get away and think about how to live life. To try to be of consequence, but I couldn’t do that in the mainstream. Anyway, I don’t think you took the easy way. Really? You live out here? And you work at the store? And you’re raising your sister’s baby?”
This guy is crazy; I never had to listen so hard in all my life to figure out what a person’s saying. When I’m sure he’s done talking, I nod a bunch of times, like I’m agreeing with everything he said, and I add, “Um, okay. You can keep the bees out here. I think that would be nice.”
“Libby, I need to repeat something to you. That’s a fine thing that you’re doing.”
“Thank you.” I say it in a normal voice, but the tru
th is that it seems so kind, him saying this, that tears float into my eyes.
“I think it would be nice for my bees to live out here.”
“Well, it’s really okay with me if they don’t bite.”
“Sting.”
“Sting. But I guess it’s not really up to me. This is Baxter’s land. My mom’s his ranch hand.”
“Oh, yes. I know. I already asked Baxter and he said I could, but I wanted to ask you too. Because I’d like to put them pretty close to the road here, so I can get to them okay. I have to check up on them. Make sure they’re healthy, don’t have mites, and watch for when they swarm.”
“Whatever. Okay.”
“Thank you, Libby.”
“No problem, Ed.”
He smiles. “I’m glad you know my name. I wasn’t sure you did.”
“Well, I’ve seen you at the store. I like the drawing on your honey jars.”
“I did that myself.”
“It’s real nice. I like to draw too.”
“Art is what gets us beyond what is real. It makes reality more real. It also shortens the distance we gotta travel to see how connected we are. That’s what art should do. I’m just now teaching myself photography. Set up a dark room in my bathroom and everything. Listen, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Where’d your sister go?”
“My sister?”
“Yeah. Where’d she go?”
“Durango.”
“She drove up?”
“She caught a ride.”
“Brave, just going like that. Or not brave. Depending. She just went up, got a job?”
“Yeah, waitressing and cleaning in a hotel.”
“Nice dog you got here.” Ringo’s bouncing her head against Ed’s palm, wanting more attention. Ed made the mistake of petting her first thing and now Ringo won’t leave him alone. That’s what I like about this dog: She makes it clear she wants some love.
“I like it here,” he says. “I don’t even lock my doors at night.”
“Me either. In fact, we don’t even have a lock.” As I’m saying this I’m realizing that maybe I shouldn’t, but Ed’s just nodding.
He says, “You probably know Baxter pretty well, huh?”
I shrug. “I guess. I’ve been living here my whole life.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t have to answer.”
“Okay.”
“Is he expecting a group of ilegales? Illegals?”
I look at him, surprised. He catches my eye and is telling me, I think, to go ahead and talk, so I do. “Yeah. But look, he pays them good. He takes care of them, unlike some people around here. Because I know that some people, they don’t. But not Baxter, really. The workers send money home to Mexico and I don’t see anything wrong with—”
“Oh don’t worry. I’m not going to—”
“Everyone hires Mexicans here—”
“I know, I know. Believe me, I know. I help them out some. Don’t worry. If the coyote is charging them too much—well, I just make sure they don’t get taken advantage of. Last coyote I was dealing with was charging his pollos—”
“His what?”
“That’s what they call the immigrants. Pollos. Chickens. And the coyote transports them. Not a very comforting image, is it? Ha! Anyway, he was charging his pollos three bucks for a pack of ramen noodles.”
“Oh.”
“Three bucks! How can a human being do that?”
“Ed? Are you involved with this stuff?”
“Oh, Libby, there’s a whole network out there.” He lifts his hands and waves his fingers at the air, like he’s pointing to invisible things that I should see, and then he gets wide-eyed and smiles at me. “It’s exciting. It’s sort of like the underground railroad. People helping, not for money, just because it’s right.”
“And you’re part of that? You’re a coyote?”
He bobs his head around like, Yep, yep, but then he says, “Not a coyote, exactly. I’m just a person who helps. And I’m waiting for this group of guys to come in. Actually, there are several groups coming in. And I’m worried they’re out there somewhere—” He waves his hand to the west and shrugs. “They never got picked up. Wondered if Baxter knew anything. But I don’t know him well enough to ask. I don’t know you, either.”
“I don’t think Baxter knows anything. He just hires them when they get here. I don’t know anything either. I don’t.”
Ed pushes his glasses up his nose and then rubs his jaw. “Well, I can trust you. And thank you. If it’s okay, I’ll bring my bees out sometime next week.”
“All right.”
“One more thing, just so you know. Sometimes a person can hollow out the middle of semiful of alfalfa and put ilegales there. Or there’s a false floor. They make a lot more money than hauling hay.” His voice is softer now, and he’s looking at me in a serious way. “There are other ways, too. I don’t know how this group is coming. I’m just worried about these people—I think that maybe they need some help. I wish I knew. But what I really wish I knew was how to get out there,” he says, sweeping his hand across pale pastureland and far-distant mountains, “and here,” he says, touching his chest, “how to get the heart and the world to see the other.” And then he looks at me and says, “That’s part of understanding this life, isn’t it, and,” and he looks at Amber, “aren’t you excited to see her do that?” Then he says, “I assume what I told you was in confidence.” Then he says, “Yes, my bees sure will like it out here. I’m going to go now, but I’ll see you again soon.”
As I watch him wave and walk over to his orange VW bus, I lean down to whisper to Amber. “What do you think about Ed Mongers and his Italian bees?”
She flails her arms and looks up at me with hazy, blank eyes and then opens her mouth to taste air. Life, she seems to be saying, tastes pretty darn interesting.
Shawny used to tell me that we were made from the same patch of sky.
I knew what she meant. Because the difference between a friend and a real friend is that you and the real friend come from the same territory, or the same place deep inside you, and that means you see the world in the same kind of way. You know each other even before you do.
How Shawny was at eleven, which is when she moved here—that’s how I remember her. Feathered blond hair, freckled face, riding her bike over to my house. She got off her beat-up bike, looked right at me with these steady blue eyes, wiped the back of her hand across her nose, and said, “My mom and dad and me just moved here and you’re my only neighbor. My name is Shawny. If you come over to my house, there’s a ditch bank where you can dig out holes and make caves. We can find treasures from that old dump to put inside the caves, to fill them up.” She shrugged. “It’s pretty fun.”
Then she looked around the place, sizing it up. She got me on her bike seat then, and she stood up and pedaled us all the way to her place. I think she wanted me to see it because she knew that neither of us would have to be embarrassed—we were both poor and she was an expert at avoiding her dad like I was at avoiding Kay. Having someone like that—someone you don’t need to hide things from—already makes you a different and higher class of friend.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and at seventeen Miguel Mendoza moved to town and Shawny got pregnant. In between, we’d had ups and downs and periods where we’d loved each other so fiercely we had to see each other every day and other times when we let go of each other a little. Always, though, we kept ourselves open to each other.
I don’t think there’s all that many people who come from the same patch of sky. It’s rare bumping into one; and it’s Ed that’s making me think about the word friend, and how you get there, and whether it’s worth it, and how it might hurt, and how it felt to have someone like Shawny in the world, the two of us with our hearts all tangled up, doing something simple like making caves in the earth, like hollowing out the e
arth, and filling them with treasures.
SIX
Watching Arlene is like watching a fish die. In those final moments, after it’s done flopping and fighting, it rests, waiting for the end, still and alert, but knowing what’s coming. And every once in awhile, it flops its tail, one last surge of hope, and then it gives up again, and that’s how Arlene is, making a small attempt and then sinking down and letting go.
I’m bagging while she cashiers and, surprisingly, she even has a line of three people, who have all taken to talking about the weather and wishing for cooler days and some rain.
Arlene’s made up today, wearing black jeans, a western shirt, and she’s curled her bangs under. She’s hoping, I think, for some man to come in and buy groceries and notice her—just notice her as he leaves. And it makes me sad that every time a man comes through she tries to hold his gaze—like this older fellow who must be an out-of-towner because I don’t recognize him and because he’s buying worms, which means he’s fishing at the dam. It makes me sad that this guy doesn’t even look up. Just signs his credit card receipt and leaves.
“Well, anyway,” she says when he’s gone, “thank god Frank put air conditioning in here. Bank said one hundred.”
“Wish my car had air. Baxter and Kay might put in a swamp cooler at the house, though.”
“Saw Derek last night.” She says it casually as she rings up Mrs. Sterling, who’s dirt poor and counting coins in her hand and who probably wishes someone would notice her, too.
“Yeah?”
“With Shelley Patrick. At the movies.”
“Oh.” And then, “Really?” and then, “He called me to go the movies. I couldn’t, though. Nobody to watch Amber. Although I could have taken her. But I was afraid she’d squawk the whole time. He and Shelley are just good friends. I’m glad he still went.”
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