“And I noticed something else, too.” Her voice lowered. “Chiang’s claws tapping the floor when she walks don’t sound rhythmic any more.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Diapers flapped in Jean’s face. She pushed the basket along the dirt with her foot and guided her own movement by touching the clothesline above her. She reached down to the damp pile, pulled out a shirt and hung it. A breeze gathered momentum, not the dry desert winds of a Santa Ana, but a humid, skittish wind. It made the windmill across Ash Street thrum and then rattle. At least the air’s moving, she thought. She had an odd sensation that her face could slide right off her if she stayed out there long, so she hurried to get the laundry hung and go back into the cooler house. She bent and stretched, bent and felt the inner sides of the basket. Nothing more. She picked it up, hesitated and turned what she thought was 180 degrees, back toward the house. Accuracy about direction was more important now that Chiang was gone. Slowly she put one foot in front of the other. She still thought of Chiang nearly every time she walked outside and had to get her bearings by herself. But it wasn’t just Chiang’s help she missed. It was her constant presence near her as well, her companionship.
She sometimes thought she had traded Chiang for another child. Months earlier, when she wrote to The Seeing Eye that Chiang was petted, teased, and played with by a toddler and that another child was due, they advised her that perhaps Chiang’s purpose had been served. A Seeing Eye dog could not be treated as a family pet. Yes, a guide dog should be loved and petted by his master, but not played with by a child. Furthermore, if Chiang’s movements suggested lameness and a vet confirmed that, prolonging her life when a child’s teasing could not always be detected and stopped was not a kindness. Even though she half expected their response, her hands traced the line of Braille over and over until she’d memorized it. Still, she had sat there. The washing machine stopped but she didn’t get up. In the new quiet she recognized with a start the sound beneath it, Chiang’s snoring. It had grown comforting, a part of her life. Not hearing it would leave a void.
Chiang’s vet recommended the same awful solution. In the next several weeks Jean leaned down often to stroke Chiang’s bristly coat, and stood so close she could feel Chiang breathing against her leg. One night when she put Forrie to bed, Chiang nuzzled against her as she stood by the crib. Her heart pounded. It was as though Chiang knew. She sunk to the floor and buried her face in Chiang’s thick neck, her arms around the sturdy body. Chiang wiggled her hind end, and her coat above the stub of a tail wrinkled in a way that always told Jean Chiang was happy. “Thank you, Chiang,” she said. “For being unselfish. I love you.” She wondered if Vic and Ham and the others still had their dogs. She’d probably never know. She stayed on the floor with Chiang for several minutes, her tears wetting Chiang’s coat.
When she stood up, she found that Forrest was right there beside her. “I know,” he whispered.
She swallowed to try to stop her throat from throbbing. “When I go to the hospital, will you and Earl take her?” Of all the commands she’d ever given, all the thousands of times she’d said “hop up” or “forward” or “fetch,” that was the hardest to give.
“Yes.” Forrest drew her head close to his chest. “I guess you’ll just have me to pet.”
So now she had to be even more alert to know her position around the property. She headed slowly back to the house, her basket in front of her. Each step she planted firmly, squeezing her toes down in her shoes to feel through the soles for any clues about where she was. A big part of life was still learning how to move. But she had done fine back in Bristol when she was maid of honor in Lucy’s wedding and had to walk down the aisle without Chiang. Publicly it may have been Lucy’s moment, but privately it was Jean’s personal triumph. Now every day she had to repeat it.
“Come in house, Señora.” Celerina’s voice directing her from the kitchen sounded alarmed. The wind whipped Jean’s skirt and threw dust in her eyes. Needs of the day always prevented her from grieving. Just as well. Besides, there was Faith to attend to now, round baby Faith. “
La niñita roja
,” Celerina called her because of her wispy reddish curls. Jean set down the empty basket in the hall and made her way toward the new baby sounds, little growls actually, cross and aggressive. She picked up Faith to try to quiet her. Faith felt sturdier than Forrie had and her face was rounder. She fussed almost all the time, it seemed.
“Where’s Forrie?” Jean asked.
“Here. He eats.” The wind threw grit against the window. “Oh, no, Señora. It comes.” Outside a wild funnel of leaves and dirt and twigs twisted and whooshed through the yard, spraying the flapping laundry.
“What happened? Is it a dust devil?”
“Oh, Señora, I sorry. It come to the clothes.”
The sound retreated. Jean sighed, put Faith down, picked up the empty basket and went outside again. She squinted into the glare, the heat making her dizzy. She felt for the laundry. Grit clung to the damp diapers. “Dammit,” she muttered. They’d have to be done again. She groaned and began taking them down again. At least she had a washing machine now.
A washing machine, yes, and a house of her own, and soon a larger adobe one, thanks to Father’s generosity and Forrest’s willingness to accept. In fact, Forrest’s enthusiasm about building a house turned out to be stronger than his pride. And there were other things too, a perfect son who could walk and talk and finally feed himself—whoopee! A healthy baby girl with firm arms and legs, and a husband who had a business of his own—she often rehearsed these steps in the progress of their lives. Gratitude, Forrest sometimes said, equips us to receive more. Gratitude for everything was sometimes hard to squeeze out.
Perhaps for Forrest it worked; his adobe business was prospering. He made nearly two hundred bricks a day, and more orders came in all the time. One man ordered four truckloads a day for three months. Forrest told her, “We’ll make more on the hauling than on brick making.” And now five people worked for him, including his old friend Ed Nelson, their nearest neighbor who had just moved back to town.
Jean smiled in remembrance as she brought the soiled laundry back inside. When she was in the hospital with Faith, Forrest had come every evening. “We made a hundred and twenty-four bricks today,” he had reported. “A hundred-thirty-six,” he had said the next day. When he and Mother Holly brought her home with Faith, he had planned a celebration. All day, in anticipation of her coming, his workers wore ties. No shirts, but ties. With their dark-skinned bodies caked with a plaster of dusty sweat and bitumen, they worked with ties hanging in their way. Ed’s wife, Franny, described them, and Jean smelled their tar grime. It was hard work, but Jean knew Forrest was proud of his little brick empire, for it was real, and his, and it was growing.
Every week Ed drove Forrest in the truck west over the rugged grade, through Escondido to the coast and then north toward Los Angeles for their supply of bitumen. Each trip Forrest loaded empty barrels into the truck, and at the depot he held the spout for the liquid asphalt to be poured into them.
Late that afternoon, just as Jean was hanging the laundry again, she heard the truck grind up the dirt road. Forrest headed right for the house instead of the brickyard.
“Jean, help me get this stuff out of my hair.”
She followed him inside to the kitchen sink. “What stuff?”
“Bitumen. Hurry. Wash it out with this.” He lifted a can to the sink ledge.
“What is it?”
“Gasoline.” She gasped. “Just do it.”
She dug her hands into the gooey, wadded-up mess of his hair that had been hardening for the hour trip home, and felt the gasoline begin to dissolve the tar. She felt him wince more than once, but all he said was, “Can’t you get it out any faster?” She tried not to breathe deeply, but her eyes still watered and she felt nauseous. It must be worse for him, she thought, stinging him terribly, but saying anything more would be admitting defeat or forsaking his credo of gratitude.
“How did it happen?”
“I just bent down over a barrel at the wrong time and got rained on is all.”
She struggled with the matted hair. “I can’t get it all out.”
“Then cut it. Get the scissors and cut it off.” He sounded impatient.
She did as he asked. “I hope I don’t make you look lopsided.”
“Just hurry. I got to get back to work.” She was hardly through when he left abruptly to help unload the truck. After dinner he loaded it up again with an order of adobes to deliver with Ed that night. Jean was with him for only twenty minutes at dinner, a wilted, warmed-over dinner.
After Jean got Forrie and Faith to bed, she heard someone come down the dirt path. Franny Nelson. She often came when the two men had a long night delivery.
“You still doing dishes, Jean?”
“Yes. Celerina left again. She just took off without saying anything. I thought she was in the kitchen, but when I said something to her, she didn’t answer and Forrie said he saw some man outside with a bag and a blanket in his hand. I guess it was Ezequiel.”
“Maybe they’re wetbacks. They hear about border authorities coming over the mountains, so they hide somewhere.”
“Mother would absolutely die if she knew. They come back a week or so later, but in the meantime, all the socks get mixed up and the ants attack the kitchen.”
The evening dragged on longer than usual. Jean dumped a mountain of laundry on the double bed to sort it while she had some help. Franny matched the socks and wrapped them so they’d stay together. Then they lay down on the bed with the windows open and talked of their own families back home and marriage and getting by.
“What time is it?” Jean asked.
“Quarter after eleven and it’s hardly cooled off at all.”
“They’re late.”
They shifted positions, they jumped at a noise outside, they sighed, they repeated news of the day, the bitumen in his hair, the dust devil, but neither of them spoke their worry. “I’m glad you’re here,” Jean said. “It’s nice to have somebody besides family. Mother Holly is good to me, but it’s different to have someone who doesn’t have to be a friend, but is.”
“I know.”
“Have you met any other women in this town, someone that maybe we could play bridge with, or talk about something other than diapers and family? I have Braille cards, and they could call out their plays.”
“You need something more out here, don’t you?”
“Don’t
you
?
Franny grunted agreement. “Will you play something on the piano?”
“What do you want to hear?”
“Play ‘Night and Day’.”
Jean went through all the popular music she could remember and was starting on “Moonlight Sonata” when they heard the old truck clatter to a stop.
“Any ladies here?” Forrest asked when he came in.
“Yes. Two. Why are you so late?”
“Just be glad we’re here at all.”
“Why?”
“Big ole buddy here, he didn’t know how long the hill was. Wore out the brakes on Banner Grade, so when we headed down Cigarette Hill afterwards, we didn’t have any.”
“The pedal fell clean to the floor,” Ed said. “So Forrest tells me it’s all right, not to worry. ‘Just kick it out of gear and coast. The road’s a straight arrow for two miles,’ he says. But he didn’t see those trees up ahead.”
“So, big buddy, he starts weaving back and forth to try to slow down. He takes it up the left side, up a bank, swoops down and then up the right side. Bounced me from here to kingdom come.”
“I had to. There was a bunch of cattle up ahead. I wish you could have seen that last steer take a flying leap over the bank. Yee-up.”
“Jumped over the moon, did he?” Forrest laughed, too.
“But why did that make you late?” Franny asked.
“The bricks,” Ed said, his voice fallen. “They slid off the truck bed and spread all over the road behind us.”
“We only found 30 good ones out of the 280,” Forrest reported.
“Do you know how hard it is to find bricks spread out over a half mile in the middle of the desert? In the dark?”
In the days that followed, Jean thought more about starting a bridge group. Of course, it would not have the ordered calm of Mother’s bridge groups in the living room at Hickory Hill, but it would be what she could offer, a card table in the cramped living room with brick workers talking in Spanish outside, hired men working on the new house Forrest was building for them only twenty feet away, and a whiff of bitumen whenever the breeze chose to contribute it. Her need for companionship beyond family had become stronger than embarrassment. Besides, this was Ramona, not Bristol. Franny suggested some women, and Jean invited them the next week.
If she timed it right, Faith would take a long afternoon nap and Forrie, well, she could tie him to a tree. She’d done it before when alone and hard pressed, a long rope knotted intricately to his belt loop. He was too old for the playpen. The Chinese elm was the solution. That would give her enough retreat from mothering for a few hours to do something other women did. She had lovely china and could make an almond cake. Cooking was not so threatening to her now that she’d learned to identify spices and flavorings by smell and had become accustomed to cooking by taste rather than by measuring.
Interruptions piled up that morning so she had to hurry to get the cake done on time. When she poured the almond extract into the batter, she couldn’t seem to get enough flavoring from it so she kept adding more. Finally she gave up and shoved it into the oven.
Franny arrived a few minutes early. “What in the world did you get into, Jean?” she squealed. “You’ve got green stuff all over your face.” Jean scowled in puzzlement. Gradually the truth dawned.
“Oh, Franny, I think I made a mistake.” She uncovered the cake. “Is it—?”
“Green! A greener cake I’ve never seen. Kelly green.”
“No wonder I didn’t smell the almond.” Jean laughed until her eyes were wet. “Well, too bad it isn’t St. Patrick’s Day.”
Before the other women arrived, she found Forrie and tied him by his belt loop with a long horse rope to the Chinese elm and put his toys around him. He could swing on the swings or play with his trucks. He seemed contented enough. He didn’t cry, maybe didn’t even notice.