The Sheep Walker's Daughter

by Sydney Avey

  “Take pictures of Stanford.”

  “And the Golden Gate Bridge and the Pacific Ocean.”

  “Take pictures of California girls.” They poked each other. “And of your boyfriends, and we’ll tell you if we approve.”

  As Alaya walked me out to the car, she said, “Are you going to tell her about me?”

  I don’t know. Did Alaya make the right decisions? I can’t say. I do know that I will make different decisions. I am mulling that over on a Monday morning, walking past the plaza on my way to Esteve’s office, when a disheveled young man runs smack into me, catching my shoulder with his. The impact spins me around and knocks me off the short curb, into the cobbled street. Trying to stay upright, my foot lands close to an open drain and when I finally lose my balance and go down, my ankle gives way and jams my foot down into the abyss. It feels like a demon from deep under the earth has clamped its teeth on my foot, keeping me tethered while I try to pull away. And that was probably a mistake. I hear something snap and feel an intense burning sting in my ankle. The young man stoops over me, to comfort me I think, but no. He pulls my purse from underneath me, where I have fallen on it, and takes off running! It all happens so fast that people walking by see only a girl laying in the street. If anyone notices the purse snatcher, they don’t react. A businessman stoops down to see if I’m okay. I’m not. Black spots float in front of my eyes, and the world goes dark.

  When I come to a few seconds later, I’m still sprawled in the street and I can’t get up. I try to float my thoughts above the pain. Someone says, “She’s in shock.”

  The next time I wake up, I am in a hospital, in a surgical recovery unit, with a cast on my leg that runs clear to my hip.

  I’m so drugged, I think pleasantly about the items in my purse that I will never see again—my passport, my identification, my travelers checks, my favorite lipstick. Then I think about what I didn’t have in my purse—my manuscript, my address book, my engagement ring from Peter. As groggy as I am, I am having my first moment of clarity since I left California. I actually let Peter give me an engagement ring before I left for Spain knowing that I wasn’t sure this was what I wanted. Before meeting my mother for lunch, I took the ring off my finger and put it in my coin purse. I told myself it was because I wasn’t ready to tell anyone yet. I guess it makes sense. He is graduating this year and I’m twenty-five years old. Most of my girlfriends are already married, which is why I spend so much time with the undergraduates I teach.

  I’m going to have a lot of time to think about this. Gibert has been by to see me. I’ve sustained the unlucky kind of break in my ankle that will keep me in some kind of a cast for months.

  A hospital volunteer arrives with a vase of flowers. They are from Peter. Phone calls have been made and the word is getting out. The card on the flowers informs me in the flowing script of a florist’s pen that Peter is flying to Spain this weekend to see “his girl.” Gibert stops by my room once again. This time he has a telegram.

  What can we do to get you home?

  Mother.

  I’m calculating how fast and how far away I might be able to get on crutches when the nurse brings me drugs that make me pass out and sleep for eighteen hours.

  14 — Dolores, Smoke

  H Dolores I

  14

  Smoke

  V alerie is in the hospital in Spain. A Señor Borrell called to tell me she’s been the victim of a mugger, a thug who stole her purse and broke her ankle in the process. She won’t be coming home anytime soon, Borrell told me, but she’s doing well under the care of a doctor who happens to be his son. And Señor Borrell happens to be the owner of the publishing house that is publishing her book. Is that what they call a thesis these days? This is confusing, but I know better than to try to sort out Valerie’s affairs. I’ll tackle the part I can do something about.

  I make phone calls to see what I can do from here to help Valerie re-establish her identity. The most I can manage is to assemble a package of forms and phone numbers that will help her get new papers.

  The next thing I know, Peter is at my door. He has been stopping by regularly. At first, I thought of him as if he were a neighbor’s puppy who hangs around, waiting to be liked. But he’s grown on me. His family is from Ohio, he tells me. He’s trying to decide whether to give a career in baseball a whirl or begin law school. I ask him if his folks have an opinion on that, and he rolls his eyes. He asks me what I think. I surprise myself by telling him law school will always be there, but the time he can play baseball will probably be short.

  We talk about a player’s life—starting in the minors, traveling, hoping the seasons of living on nothing will pay off. I entertain his fantasy from the point of view of one who gave up her own.

  Today he’s come to tell me he is going to fly to Spain to make sure Valerie is okay. I ask him if she wants him to do that. Doesn’t matter, he says, he’s going. He doesn’t like the idea of her being laid up and alone. Something about the solicitous tone in Señor Borrell’s voice when he called told me that Valerie is receiving plenty of attention. Hopefully this young man is not going to get his heart broken.

  I put Peter out of my mind. I have my own heart to think about. Four months have flown by since my weekend in Bakersfield. Of course, I confronted Iban about the twin sister I didn’t know I had. I still don’t think I got the straight story, but it seems that, yes, I was born a twin, but that my sister didn’t live much past a year. Of everything he told me, he seemed most uncomfortable with that little detail. It does explain the two urns that wait in the columbarium. Perhaps Leora planned to unite her little family in death. Who would know where my sister’s ashes are?

  I did wrestle my twin sister’s name out of the old man—Alaya. It means joyful. The joyful one died and the sorrowful one—me—lived.

  Since I’ve been back from Bakersfield, I’ve been immersed in creating collages. Roger and I still see each other, but not as much as before. I tramp around on the trails off Skyline Road and practice using my camera. Roger helped me turn the closet in my sitting room into a darkroom. Since it’s right next to the bathroom, he was able to pipe water into the closet for the chemical baths I use to develop my photos. He figured out how to ventilate the room without bringing in light so I don’t pass out; it’s such a small space. My house is becoming as much a collage as the creations I produce.

  In my darkroom, I enlarge the photos I take of oak, olive, fig, and pepper trees. I cut them into pieces and arrange them into portraits, along with pieces I cut from the small collection of Leora’s photos. In one piece, Leora emerges from the spine of an oak tree, her many-eyed expressions among the leaves, some clinging to branches, others piled at the roots of the tree. In another piece, I’ve broken down her glamorous friends and pieced them back together with fig-leaf shoulders and pepper-tree hair. They look like stylish wood sprites or a coven of playful friends. I experiment with the exposure to get sharply focused branches or sepia-toned leaves. It is tedious, exhilarating work that totally absorbs me.

  The more I work with the pieces of Leora’s life, pulling things apart and piecing them back together, the more I see her layers of contradiction. She was at once an observer of life who drew people in and an inscrutable keeper of secrets, other people’s as well as her own. That’s why she was valued as a court reporter.

  She didn’t take all those secrets to the grave though. Digging through her Vuitton steamer trunk one afternoon, I unearthed a trove of stories she wrote. They must have been based on some of the more notorious cases she recorded.

  Back in my studio, I use a razor blade to cut and lift typed phrases from the yellowed paper and add them to my collages.

  In Leora’s writing, I see her humor, moral implacability, professional grit, and feminine wile. It provides another layer in the archeology of my creation. Along with the quotes from her stories, I pull apart her jewelry and add the pieces to my collages—an enamel cat face among the eyes in the oak tree, feathers fr
om a brooch on the tree sprites, fiery opals around the witch women.

  Weirdly beautiful.” Laura sits cross-legged on the floor in my studio leafing through my growing portfolio. She is getting quite proficient on my piano, so much so that I paid to have it tuned. She keeps after me about the Wednesday bridge club.

  “Dee, there’s a reason I want you to do this. Marianne Watson plays with us.”

  “Who is that?” I’m not really listening. I’m sitting on the floor, fingering through a box of old earrings, sorting out the ones I want to keep for their stones.

  “Don’t you read the Town Crier?”

  “Sometimes. What is she, a columnist?

  “She owns the Main Street Art Co-op.”

  “Oh.” I’m still not getting it.

  Laura scoots over closer to me. “Dee, you need to show your art. You need to start getting your collages out there for people to see.”

  There is more to Laura than I realized.

  15 — Dolores, Mirrors

  H Dolores I

  15

  Mirrors

  Once again, Father Mike and I sit in his office after vespers. I try to attend either the quiet early Friday evening service or the Sunday worship every week. With everything else in my life so unsettled, Jesus’words Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest are salve.

  “You are coming up on an anniversary. It’s been just about a year since your mother passed away. How are you feeling?”

  “My life has changed a lot.”

  “Yes, it has—new work, new people in your life—a lot of change.” Father Mike leans back in his chair. The chair squeaks and groans. He clasps his hands behind his head in a gesture I know well. He’s about to challenge me. “What hasn’t changed?”

  I roll my eyes to heaven and set my chin on my folded hands. Silence enters the room from a high window in the rectory and sits down in a corner. The wall clock beats with a somnolent rhythm. Frogs and crickets are tuning up for the evening symphony outside.

  When I open my mouth to speak, words tumble over my tongue like creek water washing the silt off rocks. “I still feel like there is a missing piece. It’s like I’m hanging out here by myself, like I’ve been left. It’s not just that Henry and my mother are gone. I feel a deep sadness that a father and a sister I never knew are gone too. Valerie is gone. Maybe she’ll decide to stay in Spain. Maybe she’ll return to Stanford and become a professor. Maybe she’ll marry Peter and there will be grandchildren, but I don’t see that happening. How did I end up with no family?”

  “You have an uncle.”

  Warm liquid spills into my eyes. “Going to see Uncle Iban was like seeing a light coming from underneath a closed door. It’s like a light in a closet that gets left on and you think maybe there is something there, but when you look, there is nothing.”

  I open my purse and pull out a tissue to catch the overflow of disappointment I have dammed up inside me.

  “Dee, what did your uncle tell you about your twin sister?”

  We’ve talked about this before. “He just said we lost her after our first birthday.”

  “That sounds like a man choosing his words very carefully. Did you ask any questions?”

  “No. I was just so mad at my mother for keeping all this from me and for letting me believe my father had abandoned us.”

  “You know, you found a whole community of people there who knew about you. Is that maybe a family of sorts?”

  “I thought about that. I wanted to feel a connection to them, but I didn’t.”

  “Connections need to be nurtured. Keep that door open.” Then he leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk between us. “How are things going with Roger?”

  “Oh, well, that’s a light that’s gone out too. I mean, we are very good friends. We spend a fair amount of time together, but the romance kind of dried up after we got back from Bakersfield. I think it didn’t go quite the way he hoped it would.”

  “Because?”

  “Okay, because I pushed him away. I’ve been alone for so long. Even when Henry was alive, we lived apart most of our lives because of the Army. I don’t think I really know how to be close to someone.”

  “Because of the Army?”

  “You don’t quit, do you, Father.” The direction of this conversation is very uncomfortable. “Okay, the truth is, I followed Leora from city to city when I was growing up, and then I married a man who expected me to follow him from Army post to Army post. I said no.”

  “In that way you were like Leora.”

  “What?”

  “Well, Leora told your father she wouldn’t follow him.”

  “And I repeated that pattern in my marriage. I see what you’re getting at. I don’t like it, but I see it.”

  “Often the people we are most angry with are mirrors of our own souls.”

  Father Mike lifts himself out of his chair and reaches for his Bible and his appointment book. I stand up and follow behind as he turns out the lights and locks the doors. He puts a companionable arm across my shoulder as he walks me to my car.

  “You know, Dee, if you don’t want to be alone, you may have to open a door and turn on a light.”

  16 — Dolores, Fire

  H Dolores I

  16

  Fire

  I drive through the hills on my way home. The sun is setting earlier these days and change is in the air. A season is passing. Something is coming and something is going. How much say do I have in what gets left behind and what takes its place?

  In my collages, each step in the process alters the character of the piece. Cut too much away and context has no power to help define the theme. Allow too much in and …

  I turn the car into the lane. Flashing red lights shoot like sparklers in the night sky. The air is thick and glowing above the rotating lights. In the dim light, shadowy figures appear to stand in the middle of the street. Those are people and that is my house they are standing in front of!

  This can’t be happening. It’s as if someone has turned on the lights in my head one sense at a time. The acrid odor of smoke fills my nostrils. The old wood house is erupting like a fall bonfire. Whistles and cracks of flames deafen me. I throw the car into park in the middle of the street and jump out, not bothering to cut the ignition. I stand in the street with my neighbors, completely stunned.

  My pepper tree looks like the burning corpse of a woman with her hair on fire. The back part of my house is black and chewed, its bony skeleton exposed. The front of my house chokes in the smoke, trying to live but losing the battle. A few firemen shoot water into the savage blaze from the ground, while others stand on the rooftops of my neighbors’ homes, watering down everything in the path of the fire. A fireman appears in front of me.

  “Is this your house?”

  “Yes, this is my home.”

  “Your neighbors said you live here alone.”

  “Yes, is that important?”

  “No one was in the house, then?”

  “No, no one. Just everything I own in the world, but no people.”

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry to tell you this, but the house is a total loss. At this point we are working to save your neighbors’ houses.”

  I am glued to the spot. I have no feeling in my body anywhere. Conversation around me blends into the crackle and pop of the flames that have spent most of their rage. The fire seems content to burn my house peacefully to embers now.

  “How did this happen?” I run through the possibilities in my mind. Did I leave something burning on the stove? Was there something flammable in my art supplies? Was there a gas leak and an explosion? Was someone burning leaves that caught a breeze and set fire to my roof?

  “We haven’t determined a cause. There will be an investigation, but there are two likely scenarios. Bad wiring—these houses were built in the twenties with substandard wiring. And arson.”

  “You think someone set fire to my house deliberately?”

>   “Ma’am, I did not say that. We do know that an arsonist has been at work in the hills this past summer. Usually it’s a kid, and it usually stops when school starts again, but we’ll investigate. We’ll find the cause.”

  I start to shiver. Laura comes up behind me with a sweater she pulled from my car when she turned the engine off. She wraps it around my shoulders and brushes my hair off my face.

  “Dee, I’m so sorry.” We both burst into tears.

  My other neighbors are busy keeping their children at bay or hosing down their fences and rooftops. My house is gone now. It looks like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, a solitary hat sitting among steaming remains. The thing that has remained amazingly intact is the piano, probably the one item I cared least about.

  My practical mind tries to minimize the psychological damage. Clothes? I can buy more. Furniture? I didn’t have much, nothing I cared about. I’ll miss the davenport. My collages! My collection of what Leora treasured—this loss punches me in the stomach. As if she can see this blow, Laura pulls me away from the commotion.

  “Dee!” Laura puts both her hands on my shoulders and forces me to look at her. My eyes are burning with smoke and tears. “Dee, listen to me. Your neighbors tried to save your house but it went up so quickly. While the others were scrambling for hoses, before the fire department got here, I ran into your studio and pulled out as much as I could. Your collages, your camera, and a few small boxes of stuff you had in your studio are safe at my house. But then there was an explosion.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that Laura! You risked your life going into a burning house!”

  But her words are like a life ring tossed in a black sea, a speck of brightness. The last word she said finally makes an impact: Explosion. My darkroom. Could the chemicals in my darkroom have caused the fire? If I caused this fire out of ignorance, then I deserve to lose my home. Stupid! How could I be so careless and stupid? Laura has the clairvoyance of a medium and the compassion of a saint. I’m sure I did not utter this thought out loud, but her next words are, “No one deserves to have this happen, Dee, least of all you. This is just the most awful thing. It could happen to any one of us. I am so sorry it happened to you.”