Isabel's Daughter

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  “That they’re all wacko.” I got up and pulled the dirty sheet off the couch.

  She laughed. “What else?” She edged the coffeepot under the faucet, filled it, and set it on the stove.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Every one of them outfits has got themselves a little old piece of God and they act like they got the whole thing. In the meanwhile, the real God’s going about taking care of business, and not paying a bit of attention to what everybody’s saying.”

  “So then, what difference does it make what you believe?”

  She smiled. “That’s your answer, same as your question.”

  If I was expecting any special treatment because I had got my first period, I found out different right after breakfast. I finished washing the dishes and I went and curled up on the couch with my knees tucked up to my chest to relieve the strange ache in my low abdomen.

  When Cassie turned around and saw me, she said, “Don’t get too comfy. We got work to do.”

  I shifted uncomfortably, the wad of material that she’d given me feeling like a saddle inside my underpants. “I don’t feel good.”

  “You probably got cramps.”

  She put water on to boil, pulled a blue tin off the shelf, and scooped some stuff out of it into a mug. After she poured the boiling water in and let it steep for a few minutes, she added some honey and a squeeze of lemon, gave it a quick stir, and handed the cup to me.

  When I brought the cup to my mouth, a pungent smell hit me. I looked at her suspiciously.

  “What’s in this stuff?”

  “It tastes a lot better than it smells. Go on, try it. If you don’t like it, don’t drink it.”

  I held my breath and sipped cautiously. At first it was really sour, but the honey smoothed that right out, and it went down pretty easy. There was a surprising fresh aftertaste with just the tiniest tang of salt.

  “Not bad,” I said.

  “It’s better if you don’t hold your breath,” Cassie said.

  I drank some more without holding my breath. I sloshed it around in my mouth. She was right, but I didn’t have to tell her everything.

  “So what do you call this stuff?”

  “Women’s tea.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “All kinds of things good for women.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’ll show you sometime,” she said. “When you’re ready.”

  “If I’m ready to have my period, I’m ready to know what’s in some silly tea.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Any fool can have a period, Avery. You didn’t have a thing to do with it. It takes some time to become a woman.”

  “How old do I have to be?”

  “It’s not how old you are, it’s what you understand.”

  I felt the top of my head getting warm. “Oh, bullshit.”

  “Nope, there’s not a bit of that in it,” she said.

  Fifteen minutes later I was out back, turning over compost with a pitchfork, watering it, then turning it again, while Cassie pulled weeds and picked off grasshoppers that were stiff and sluggish from the cold night. Whatever was in her women’s tea had made me feel pretty good in short order.

  When we were walking between the rows, picking the plump, red shouldered tomatoes and swollen green and yellow peppers, she looked over at me.

  “Avery, you and me need to have a little talk.”

  “What about?”

  “Some folks call it the birds and bees.” She plucked a yellowed leaf off a bean plant and studied it. “I call it sex.”

  “I already know about that,” I said quickly.

  “If you thought blood coming from your womb meant cancer, you got some more to learn. I think we’ll pick some of these green tomatoes and put them up. That way if we get an early frost…” She handed me her basket and said, “Put these on the portal and bring me an empty basket. Then you can start watering.”

  I picked up the old galvanized watering can and put it under the rusty fifty-five-gallon drum.

  “Your cycle’s based on the twenty-eight-day cycle, just like the moon. When you bleed, it means you’re not pregnant. Which is what I want to talk to you about. Now that you’re having these ‘periods,’ it means you can get pregnant—”

  “Not without a guy.”

  She sighed and pushed the shirtsleeves up higher on her bony arms. “I see you already know this part.”

  “Yeah. So you don’t have to worry. There’s no guys hanging around me and there never will be.” I pulled the cork stopper out of the drum and water began to gurgle out rhythmically, hitting the bottom of the watering can with a metallic thunk. It smelled flat and stale, but Cassie always said the plants didn’t care.

  “Now why would you say a thing like that?”

  “Because I don’t like them. And even if I did, they wouldn’t notice me. Not that way. I’m too weird looking.”

  “You’re not weird looking at all, chil—Avery. You’re a pretty little thing.”

  “Don’t you think I see how everyone looks at me?”

  She sighed again, deeper this time. “I know you’re probably not going to believe anything I say about this, but things will change. I guaran-dang-tee you they will. Lots of times when we’re young, we only see what’s on the outside of somebody. And the folks that look best to us look pretty much like ourselves—”

  “Grownups look at me that way, too. Not just kids.”

  “Not all grownups. You get older, you’re gonna meet some boys that think you’re pretty nice. And that’s where you need to be careful.”

  I folded my arms and glared at her. “Why don’t you just say, ‘don’t have sex’?”

  “For one thing, you wouldn’t listen to me. For two, I done it myself, so I know how it happens. Look to your water.”

  I stuffed the cork back in the hole and picked up the overflowing can.

  “It’s a force, Avery. It’s a force so powerful—well, it’s what creates life. It’s not to be sneezed at.”

  I poured some water in the shallow trench running next to the row of tomato plants, my arms shaking from the strain of holding still, pouring slow, and trying to imagine Cassie having sex. “So what’s the point?”

  “The point is to be careful. Think about what you’re doing. And no matter what or why, take precautions. You’re a smart girl, and if you work hard, you can do all kind of things. But it ain’t gonna be easy if you get pregnant.”

  “Cassie, I’m not going to get pregnant.”

  “Well, then, we’ll consider it settled.”

  She put two more green tomatoes in the full basket and shuffled off toward the house.

  seven

  By September I knew I was staying. We never really talked about it; it just felt okay. The only thing we disagreed on was my attendance at school. I was adamant about not going. She was equally determined that I would.

  She sat down on the couch next to me. “You got to learn things I can’t teach you, child. Sorry. Avery.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like how to live in the white world.”

  “No, I don’t.” I hated the way my voice sounded—all whiny like a little kid. “I’m staying here with you. I’ll be a medicine woman like you.”

  “No, Avery. You got your own way to go.”

  “You said I could stay here with you.”

  “You can, for now. But you won’t be stayin’ long.”

  The hair at the base of my neck began to rise. “You mean they’re going to come take me back?” I tried to see her face in the shadows.

  “No, it ain’t that. You’re just bound to go tryin’ to find your momma.”

  I looked at her sharply. I’d never said a word to her about that.

  “If I go to school, they’re going to want to know where I came from,” I said.

  “Don’t you s’pose I been thinking on that very thing? I got a plan, Avery. I’ll take you to the school. I’ll say you’re the child of my cousin
who died. I’ll say I’m taking care of you now. You got no records because your momma was home schooling you.” She looked pleased with herself.

  “That’s not going to work. Delbert knows I’m not your cousin’s kid.”

  “Delbert keeps his own counsel, like most Navajos. He’s not going to go talking about you to anyone.”

  “What about that Harlan guy?”

  At that she laughed, loud and long. “Harlan don’t care, Avery. Long as you don’t get between him and his lunch. And he’s such a horse’s patoot, nobody pays him half a mind anyways. Most people around here are busy just trying to make a living. Once you’re in school, nobody’ll waste a minute wonderin’ where you came from.”

  The uniform of the day at Florales County High School was stiff, dark new jeans, cuffs rolled up about three inches. The girls who had boobs wore sweaters or nice blouses if they could afford them. The rest of us wore whatever was on sale at Nina’s Bargain Fashions. Guys weren’t supposed to wear T-shirts with anything written on them like club names or beer labels, but a lot of Florales County was so poor, teachers were just happy if everyone had a shirt to wear, and as long as you didn’t have things like FBI, which everyone knew meant Fucking Big Indian, on your back, you could pretty much get by.

  One thing I knew for sure, it didn’t matter what I wore, I’d never be like any of these kids. First, they all thought Cassie was a witch, so that meant I was the witch girl. Second, I was smarter than them. No bragging; it was just a fact. I never raised my hand in class, but the teachers called on me anyway, because they knew I’d have the answer. Or at least I’d be one of two or three who’d done the homework.

  And then of course, there was my eyes.

  I walked by myself, sat alone, ate lunch on a far corner of the ball field. I looked straight ahead, ignored the giggles, concentrated on the fact that I could now kill a chicken by wringing its neck quickly so there was no pain. That even though I was small, I was stronger than most of those fat Indians, quicker than the lazy Mexicans, smarter than the stupid Anglos. Eventually they’d forget about me; I’d become invisible.

  For the first few weeks it worked okay.

  The last Friday in September was one of those high desert autumn days when the air was so clear it made your head buzz, and the leaves of the giant cottonwood tree in front of the school burned like a gold fire.

  There was a football game that night against Rio Arriba that everyone was all high about. Why, I don’t know. There can’t be any dumber sport in the world than a bunch of guys banging heads and chasing each other up and down that pitiful grass field after a little brown pellet.

  I shouldered my backpack, pushed open the heavy door, and stepped outside. The buses were gone, but I didn’t mind. I preferred walking back to Cassie’s by myself in the crisp fall afternoon.

  A shout of laughter drew my eyes out to the street. Two pickup trucks sat at the curb side by side, and a bunch of guys gathered in a loose knot in front of them. A couple of them still had their football uniforms on from the “spirit rally.” Even the name of it was silly. It just meant everybody working themselves into a frenzy so they could kick Rio Arriba’s butt tonight.

  The circle of guys grew and shrunk and moved, like the amoebas we saw under the microscope in biology class, and with roughly the same IQ. Then one of them spun away, and I saw what was in the center.

  His name was Jimmie John, and he was a Navajo. He was actually older than me, but he was in my class because he was what they politely called “slow.” He stood there, looking goofy in his too small, faded green T-shirt. A roll of soft flesh draped over the waistband of his baggy jeans. Around him, the hard-muscle macho boys in their tight pants grinned like monkeys. He looked from one to the other, like he couldn’t figure out their game.

  The pretty girls sat on the low stone wall that ran across the front of the school yard, comparing fingernail polish, too cool to notice what was going on. I pushed past them and started across the street, happy to be ignored.

  And then I heard Jimmie John say, “I need my book back.”

  “You have to say please.” Kevin Gonzales, the handsomest, stupidest football player in school, held the book just out of reach.

  “Please.”

  Kevin passed the book to Toby Jones. “Didn’t hear ya.”

  “I said please.”

  “Please what? I forgot what you want.”

  “Please my book.” Jimmie gave him a gap-toothed smile that would have broken my heart, if I had one. But I didn’t, so I kept walking, but slower now.

  “Please my book.” Toby mimicked him and tossed the book to Josh Rainey.

  “Give me,” said Jimmie. His smile was fading, and I was trying not to watch.

  “Please my book give me?” Josh shook his head. “Boy, you got to learn English if you’re goin’ to get anywhere in this world. ’Sides, you don’t need this book. You can’t read.” He tossed it back to Kevin.

  “Please give me my book.”

  I stopped in the middle of the street, shaking my head against memories that elbowed their way in front of me. Memories of my books hidden, my papers flushed down the toilet. Boyd Stiles and his buddies holding the flashlight just out of my reach. Anger flooded my stomach, overflowed into my chest, somehow familiar and comforting.

  I wheeled around.

  “Give him the goddamn book, you assholes!”

  The entire group turned to stare in surprise, and for a few seconds, it was quiet. Then the morons fell out laughing.

  “I said, give him the book.” I was walking back now, wishing I wasn’t, feeling really stupid. What was I planning to do? Martial arts?

  Kevin wasn’t laughing then. “Hey, Witch Girl, suck my dick.”

  I stopped about two feet from him.

  “I hope it’s bigger than your brain.”

  This brought on a whole new uproar. His face turned scarlet. “Fucking bitch.” He took a step toward me, but somebody grabbed his arm.

  “Forget it, man.” It was Will Cameron. The one they called Cam. “She’s not worth the trouble.” The voice was good-natured, reasonable. “Save it for Rio Arriba.”

  Kevin hesitated. It was obviously straining his brain to decide if what he wanted to do to me would be worth the shit he’d get into. Finally his shoulders relaxed. He shook off Cam’s hand and threw the book at my feet. “You give it to him. Witch Bitch.”

  He turned and strutted off to where the girls were sitting, and the others followed him, making stupid little kissing noises as they passed me. Except Cam. He didn’t even look at me.

  I picked up the book and handed it to Jimmie John, who followed me across the street. I couldn’t feel my legs under me. When my chest started to ache, I realized I was holding my breath, and I let it out all at once.

  “They won’t bother us no more.” Jimmie said cheerfully. His voice had the odd, flat intonation I always associated with Navajos speaking English. I nodded and kept walking; to my dismay, he fell into step beside me. “Want a Coca-Cola?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  “I would buy you one.”

  “I have to go home,” I said.

  “You’re my friend now.”

  I turned abruptly. “No, I’m not.”

  “Well, I’m your friend.” He lumbered in silence for a few minutes, occasionally pushing the thatch of black hair off his forehead. When we passed Begay’s, he peeled off like a fighter plane from formation and disappeared inside.

  About a half mile outside of town, I heard this commotion like a herd of cattle stampeding behind me. I looked back, half expecting to see Kevin Gonzales and his buddies coming to beat the crap out of me. Instead, there was Jimmie John, running as fast as he could—which wasn’t very fast. When he got closer, I saw that he had two Cokes in his hand. Open. They were about half empty, and he had Coke all over his arms and on his T-shirt.

  Panting hard, he held one out to me. I took the warm, sticky bottle, and he grinned.

  “You
sure walk fast,” he said.

  When I got back to the house, Cassie was sitting at the table peeling a small apple. I poured the warm Coke down the drain and sat down across from her, watching the spiraling apple peel grow while I told her about Jimmie John.

  When I finished she just shook her head. “Truth is medicine for ignorance. But there’s no cure for stupidity.” She sliced the apples in half and rubbed a cut lemon on them.

  “And now this Indian kid thinks I’m his buddy.”

  Cassie sliced the apples in half and rubbed a cut lemon on them. “It’s good to have people like Jimmie around.”

  “Why?” I sat back in the chair.

  She scuffed over to the stove, turned on the heat under the skillet, and dipped two spoons of sugar out of a mason jar. “Keeps you from feelin’ too sorry for yourself.”

  She dumped the fruit in and stirred gently with a bent wooden spoon, and the heavenly smell of caramelized apple began to fill the room. After a bit she scooped the apples into two dishes and we sat at the table in the long afternoon sun, eating our snack. When we were finished, she pushed her chair back and went over to the door. She lifted something off a hook in the wall and brought it back to the table, holding it out to me. It was a leather cord. When she slipped it over my head, I saw the small, rough oval of blue stone, veined with a goldish green.

  “What’s that?”

  “Turquoise. To protect you,” she said. Then she closed her eyes.

  “In this stone, before my eyes,

  Bless and make its power rise.

  She who wears it, safe is she.

  This I ask, so may it be.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “It’s turquoise.” Like she thought I didn’t hear her the first time. “A circle stands for all creation, child. A circle within a circle like this…” she fingered the stone, “makes it double powerful.”