A Rainbow in Paradise (15 page)

"And gathering wood and going for water.
There's a small stream on the far side of that hill." With a wry
grin, he added, "My grandmother didn't believe in wasting available
labor. She usually kept me pretty busy."

"But you loved her for it," Eden answered.
"Your admiration is obvious whenever you speak of her."

"She was my whole family," he said simply.
"She was everything to me." He stopped the truck in the dooryard
and together they waited to be acknowledged.

Eden breathed deeply, trying to calm the
fluttering of her stomach. Everything she had heard about Logan's
grandmother made her sound like an imposing woman indeed, and one
not likely to welcome the presence of a
belagaana
,
especially a woman brought here by her treasured and very Dineh
grandson. She was still steeling herself to the idea of the coming
meeting when a tiny, rounded woman, her long hair white with age
and wrapped in a bun, came to the trailer’s front door and motioned
them forward.

Eden looked to Logan, who smiled and squeezed
her hand in reassurance, and then she opened the door of the
pickup, curiosity almost overcoming her fear.

* * * * *

I should have known it would be like this.
I did know it. I just felt I had to come here, anyway.
Logan
sat on the rugs that covered the floor of his grandmother's hogan,
listening as the old woman kept up a steady stream of Navajo, all
of it filled with condemnation for Eden's people and, both directly
and by implication, for Eden herself.

"Why did you bring her here?" the old woman
was saying now. "You know better than to bring a
belagaana
here. Don't you remember what happened to your father when he took
up with a
belagaana
woman? How can you even think of
bringing such a woman to my home after what that one did to you?"
Ella Begay Redhorse, known in an earlier time as Left-Handed Woman,
barely stopped to catch her breath as she unleashed an invective of
angry, pain-filled words, all of them tying Eden to "that one" who
had been his mother.

Logan looked warily at Eden, wondering how
much she was aware of. Though the words were foreign to her, it
would have been difficult to mistake his grandmother's tone and the
disgusted, sidelong glances she kept turning to the lovely woman he
had brought here, largely against her will.

Just as Logan had predicted, his grandmother
had heard earlier that day of Logan's arrival on the reservation
with a woman at his side. The man from whom he and Eden had
purchased their lunch had spoken with a friend who was on his way
to the feed store in Chinle, who had happened to mention it to one
of the clerks there, and thus the story had been passed from one
person to another until a neighbor had stopped by the Redhorse
hogan to bring a letter from the general store and, after reading
and translating the letter for the old woman, had mentioned in
passing the news about Logan and the woman. She had prepared extra
beans and fry bread, and had added a dish of fresh green beans and
yellow squash, fried up in a little bacon fat, in case her grandson
found his way home that day. Apparently, that was not all she had
prepared.

“I did not take the trouble to raise you in
the Dineh way just to have you give yourself up to the
belagaana
," she went on, apparently not the least concerned
whether Eden understood her or not. "You have been taught to be one
of us, one of the People. I can't imagine why you would choose to
behave so foolishly.”

"
'Ama-sani
," Logan addressed her in
Navajo, determined to try to calm the old woman, or at least to
postpone her angry tirade until Eden would not have to be subjected
to it. "This woman is a friend of my friend. I have brought her
here to learn something of how our people live."

"You have brought her here to laugh at us,"
his grandmother answered, firmly setting her jaw, her look and her
tone slicing at Eden even while she offered more food with her
hands. "You may not see her laughing, but she will return to her
friends among the Surface-of-the-Earth People laughing behind her
hand at the things she has seen here today, and at the foolish man
who brought her to see it. She will go away from Dinehtah with
nothing but harsh words for a simple, lovesick fool and a weak old
woman."

"It is not like that, grandmother," Logan
answered, still speaking in his native tongue—the only tongue the
old woman allowed herself to hear. "I am not lovesick for this
woman."
At least, I hope I'm not.

"Bah!" His grandmother interrupted with scorn
in her voice. "You cannot tell me this lie. I have eyes, haven't I?
They may be dim, but they see the look of the lovesick young. What
about your obligations to your people, you foolish young one? Do
you not remember that you are born of the Dineh, and that it is
among your own people that you will find your companion?"

"I remember, Grandmother," Logan answered,
casting Eden a look of abject apology. "I have not forgotten all
you taught me."

"I should hope you have not," his grandmother
answered. Without excusing herself, she stood and left them,
clearing away their plates though neither Logan nor Eden had
finished eating.

"Ask if I can help with cleanup," Eden
whispered softly. Logan could tell from her expression that she was
working hard to be both brave and civil, despite the ordeal his
grandmother was putting them through.

"I don't believe that would be wise," he
whispered in answer. "I think we'd better go."

Eden nodded—Logan thought she looked
enormously relieved—and he rose and went to where his grandmother
worked beside a small wood-burning stove, touching her shoulder in
a gesture of affection. "I thank you for preparing our food,
Grandmother," he said. "And I am glad you are looking well."

"Go," Ella Redhorse answered, barely meeting
his eyes. "Take your
belagaana
woman home so she can start
her laughing."

"I will visit you again soon," Logan said,
trying to hide his feelings. He couldn't help feeling bemused by
his grandmother's vision of how Eden must see them all. It
certainly didn't square with the Eden he was coming to know.
Clearly his grandmother's view of the
belagaana
had colored
her relationships with any and all of them, not allowing her to see
individuals for who they were.

But I can't condemn her too harshly
,
he thought guiltily.
I was like that, too, until I met
Chris.
As he thought about it now, he was surprised how much
his views had changed in the days since he had come to know Chris
McAllister. Chris had helped him to learn to trust the
belagaana
, at least some of the time, and it was Chris's
mother, Kate McAllister, then later the pretty red-haired
veterinarian who had now become Chris's wife, who had taught him
that some
belagaana
women could be trusted as well.

With a silent thanks to his friend, he said
good-bye to his grandmother and took Eden's arm, preparing to lead
her away, but Eden was not quite ready to leave. "Goodbye, Mrs.
Redhorse," she said with a slight bow of her head and a studied,
finishing-school politeness. "Thank you for a lovely dinner."

"Tell that silly creature I will not let her
speak to me," Ella Redhorse answered in her native tongue, casting
Eden a look so foul that Logan knew she couldn't possibly miss its
intention.

"She says you're welcome," Logan said to
Eden.

Eden flashed her eyes in a look that left no
doubt as to just how much she believed that, and Logan had to fight
the urge to smile. He was also fighting the impulse to tell his
grandmother just how ill-mannered she was being. Only the assurance
that she would blame his comments on Eden's influence kept him from
speaking.

Eden, too, kept her peace. Logan had started
the pickup and was turning it onto the rutted trail when Eden
leaned toward him with a look of patient amusement. "You're
frowning again," she observed, gently touching the furrowed space
between his eyebrows.

It may have been the simple release from the
tension he felt, but Logan smiled. Then he laughed aloud, barely
able to contain his relief and delight. "You are a good person,
Eden Grant. It's not everyone who can bear my grandmother's scorn
with such patience."

"I didn't want to be patient," Eden answered
honestly, looking back over her shoulder to assure herself the
Redhorse hogan was no longer in sight. "But I know she is just
trying to protect someone she loves very much. That's a motive I
can understand, Logan. She doesn't want to see you hurt."

Her eyes shone with a depth of understanding
and suddenly, Logan felt a need to come clean. "You know she didn't
say 'you're welcome' there at the end," he confided.

Eden answered wryly, "I gathered that. She
didn't have a good word to say about me from the time we arrived.
In fact, I had the feeling she'd been rehearsing all day."

"I suspect you're right."

"She's wrong about one thing, though," Eden
continued. "I won't be laughing behind my hand at you when I go
back among my friends this evening."

"
What
?" Logan's mouth dropped open. He
swerved off the rutted trail, then brought the truck to a stop and
set the brake. "How did you know that?" he demanded. "I thought you
didn't speak Navajo."

Eden seemed nonplused. "Oh, I don't," she
answered airily. "I doubt I ever could. Aside from
yah-ta-hey
and a few native place names, I don't have a word
of Navajo, and it’s way too difficult to learn. Sorry."

"Then how—?"

"It wasn't difficult to catch her drift,
Logan. If looks could kill, I'd be nothing more than a
chindi
by now." Logan couldn't help noticing that she had
used the Navajo word for "ghost."

"But that isn't the same as—"

"Maybe not," Eden answered, anticipating the
question even before he had finished it. “But when she put her hand
over her mouth and started miming the way a scornful woman
sometimes laughs at others, I understood her well enough, Navajo or
no Navajo."

"I see," Logan said. He could remember that
his grandmother had indeed mimed that action, so the answer made
some sense, but he also remembered the way Eden had spoken to the
rattlesnake just a few hours before. He wondered if she "just knew"
Ella Redhorse the same way she had "just known" the snake was
female, and of peaceful intention. The bitter thought crossed his
mind that his grandmother might not be as easily charmed as a
rattlesnake.

"It's been a long day," he said, confused
more by his thoughts than by anything that had happened. "Come on.
Let's get you home."

Chapter Eight

"I'll be right back with
them extra tiles, ma'am."

"Okay, thanks." Eden held the door while the
man from the tile store pulled his work kit through.

It was Thursday morning and he had already
come once this week, but until today he hadn't carried what he
needed to measure the broken tiles she had asked him to replace.
Now that he finally had the correct measurements, he said he felt
certain his store had those tiles in stock, but he was going to
have to go pick up more of them before he could do the job.

Eden sighed as she watched him go. This was
just another in a long series of frustrations. She'd spent three
busy days on the house since she'd last seen or heard from Logan.
After that last horrid scene with his grandmother, she sometimes
wondered if she'd ever hear from him again, yet it certainly didn't
fit the description of the Logan Redhorse she thought she knew for
him to simply abandon her—no visit, no phone call, nothing. So
she'd waited and hoped for his call, throwing all her energies into
the house.

She'd finished the two smaller bedrooms on
Tuesday. On Wednesday the plumber had come to do repairs in the
hall bath and on the leaky faucets on the back porch. Eden had
spent much of the day in the front yard, and now had that space in
pretty good shape. This morning she had painted the hall bathroom.
This afternoon, while the tile man worked, she intended to do a
thorough cleaning of the kitchen, getting ready to paint tomorrow.
That would leave her with just the master bedroom and bath and some
basic cleanup in the backyard. She guessed that by Wednesday next
week, Thursday at the latest, she'd be out of excuses for hanging
around Rainbow Rock.

"If you're going to see me again, Logan
Redhorse, you'd better hurry," she whispered into the quiet of her
kitchen.

Just then, the front doorbell rang. Eden
checked her watch: thirty-six minutes since the tile guy had left.
That should be just about long enough for him to pick up the
missing tiles and get back
, she calculated. She was more than a
little surprised when she opened the door to find Logan waiting
there.

"Hi," she said, wishing she could think of
something clever.

"Hi," he said. "Busy?"

"Well, yeah. The guy from the tile store is
due back any second, and I've been working in the kitchen—"

"You look great." His face held that admiring
expression she'd seen a few times; it almost took her breath
away.

She gulped. "Thanks."

"I was hoping maybe you could get away. There
are some people I'd like you to meet."

Eden immediately reached to smooth her hair.
"I'm not in any shape to meet people—"

"Horsefeathers. Like I said, you look
great."

"But really, I—"

"And the tile guy is here now, so you don't
need to wait for him. Come on, Eden. Come with me."

He was right. Eden saw the truck from the
tile store pull up behind Logan's and the man get out, walking
toward her. She opened her mouth to protest, but couldn't think of
any reason why she shouldn't go with Logan. She'd just been
commenting to herself on the shortness of the time they had left
together, just warning him—however distantly—that if he wanted to
see her before she'd left, he'd better hurry it up.
Well, he's
here now, isn't he
? she asked herself, and grabbed her purse.
She mumbled quick instructions to the tile man and let Logan offer
her a hand as she stepped up into the passenger side of his
truck.