Hard Red Spring (10 page)

“What is vacation?” Ixna asked, with flour in her eyelashes.

“Vacation means you go and visit your family in Xela. And I'll pay you to do it.”

Ixna's vacation started immediately. She was not even allowed to finish cooking dinner. Mother handed her her square basket and pushed her out the front door. Then she tried to cook dinner herself.

Mother had not cooked in a long time. Her feeble attempts at the bread made her cry, as did the soup. She stirred and stirred for over an hour, weeping, while Evie did her best to help. “It's not difficult,” she kept reassuring Mother. “Ixna usually doesn't stir it that much. And she punches the bread, but not so much.”

“I don't need cooking lessons from some dirty Indian, or from you, Evie. Sit at the table and color the newspaper.”

That day's newspaper was all bananas. Big bunches, trainloads, and boatloads of bananas, loaded by smiling Indians. No use coloring them, Evie knew from experience, but she did as Mother said. The yellow didn't work. Too light to show, it just rubbed the ink to make a sickly gray. Like everything covered in ash.

Dinner was impeccably set and awful. The bread burned, the soup boiled into a brown, sour mush. Father, confused, navigated carefully through the meal. As did Evie. Mother's moods sprang from a more mysterious source than Father's. He merely toiled for a harvest, feeling happy when it worked and frustrated when it didn't. Mother's ambitions, however, depended on things like manners, civilization, propriety. Shifting principles, shifting every day, like the plates in the ground Father had told Evie about. So, understanding only this, both Evie and Father ate the miserable meal without hunger, without question, but for the first question:

“Mattie, where's Ixna?”

“Her mother's sick, so she'll be in Xela for the week.”

Evie shoved burned bread into her mouth. Two lies now, between them. The difference being when Father lied, he looked right at Mother. But Mother did not see Father once, all evening. Nor had she seen Evie, not even when she picked the floury lumps out of her soup with her fingers. Mother didn't eat any of the dinner she had tried so hard to cook, but stood on the porch, clutching a towel to her stomach like it hurt.

“Evie,” Father asked, in a whisper, “did you tell her about our visit to Ubico? What did you say? Did you get confused and say something?”

She had said nothing at all, she insisted, insulted.

“Did Ixna tell you another scary story?”

The cookies, baked by Ixna the day before, were fantastic. Evie snuck them from the kitchen and she and Father ate them secretly, ravenously. They finished a whole dozen, licking the crumbs. Which reminded Evie. She could not believe she'd almost forgotten.

“Father, I got an Indian to eat a cookie today! I was right, cinnamon worked! Though Tomás is a Mestizo. Does he count?”

But he didn't seem to hear, or to understand the importance of this feat. “Did you use that word with Mother today? Mestizo? Is that why she's upset?”

“I think Mother just has a stomachache.”

After dinner, Mother put Evie to bed, though it was only seven o'clock. She piled blankets on, not hearing her protests that it was still hot out, it was still light.

“But I have to tell Father that I got Tomás to eat a cookie! I tried to tell him, but he wouldn't listen. Tomás is an Indian, isn't he? Does he count as an Indian?”

“Yes, he certainly does. Don't worry, I'll tell him all about it.”

~~~~~

Two things happened while Evie slept. First, Father worked the men until morning and, miraculously, they were ready to harvest the cochineal. But it took at least a week to get a cochineal harvest in, and they had only a day before the men were taken for the draft. But Father seemed to believe in his own pronouncement that Ubico might help him and Evie began to wonder if she had misunderstood the entire conversation between the government man and her father. Maybe the bribe had worked.

The second thing that happened woke Evie up. Ixna had gone to Xela for the night, but now she was back.

“Go back home!” Evie, lying in bed, heard Mother pleading.

Evie shuffled into the piano room to see Ixna on the porch, standing next to the massive pile of ash-blackened clothes still awaiting the wash.

“Go home! We don't need you! I'm giving you the whole week! It's called a vacation, I'm paying you!”

But Ixna merely set down her square basket and began to gather their clothing in her arms, ready to work again.

Whenever Ixna went back to her home in Xela, she'd return with her hair braided in an elaborate crown, with her costume scrubbed and smelling like lemony flowers, earrings glinting on either side of where her smile would be, if she smiled. It seemed all her family and neighbors came together to fix her up and make her beautiful, and this time was no different. Cousins made jewelry, friends braided her hair. Even her father contributed to the effort, weaving her new skirts with thin, multicolored vertical stripes, shot through with strange patterns. She was like a princess the whole community would rally around and love.

“Ixna, is that a new blouse?” Evie asked, helping her carry the laundry out back.

“Yes.”

“It looks new. But it looks a lot like the old blouse.” She considered the bright, brocaded tunic. “The colors are the same as all the other blouses in Xela. Is that on purpose? Is there only one store for Indian shirts?”

“My mother made it. Every
huipil
from Xela tells the same story in colors.”

“And what's the story of Xela?”

“It is very sad,” she said in a bored voice, sifting through their ashen clothes.

Evie politely studied the flowers and what looked like eggs and birds clustered thickly around the neck in clashing colors. The bird, she saw, was just like Magellan. A green bird with a red breast and a long, long tail. A quetzal, Ubico called it.

“But not all the blouses in Xela have birds on them, or eggs, or those diamond patterns,” Evie said.

“No. Those are my story.”

Evie squinted skeptically. How could a bird tell her story? It was hard enough imagining her visiting her family, Ixna doing anything but sweeping, scrubbing, and cooking.

Ixna bent over the cold, weak dry-season stream behind the house, and beat the ash out of their clothes with rocks. She held a dull, round stone in her fist, dunked one of Mother's skirts, and struck it repeatedly, while holding it underwater.

“Mother won't like you being so rough with her clothes,” Evie warned her. “You've already ruined all her nice dresses.”

“That's okay. You're going back to New York tomorrow. You can all get new clothes there.”

“We are? Did Mother say so?”

Ixna nodded. Evie knew this time was different, because Ixna did not lie. She did not lie because she didn't care if her words upset Evie.

~~~~~

Father worked the Indians all day and all night, again. He came into the house a few times for a nap, and while he napped, Judas worked the men.

No one takes a goddamned piss
, her father had decreed.
I'm going to get two years' work out of you in two days.

And he did. When Evie saw an Indian worker in the field, he would look dazed, his hands stained red from the cochineal. The clatter of their brushes and nets, sounding like swords, kept her up all night. She lay awake, thinking of New York, trying to remember anything about it. When she tried to think of the new clothes they would all get, she could only imagine cleaner versions of what they already had.

The draft took all the men at dawn. Even Judas. Transported to the Piedmont in covered wagons, they would not know where they were, so they could
not run away, Mrs. Fasbinder had explained. Evie had fallen asleep to the clatter of their tools and had awoken to the sound of her mother packing. Just as Ixna had said.

“We're going home, Evie. What do you think of that?”

She had thought about it all night, and just now, looking around the quiet house, the question came to her. “Is Father coming?”

“I don't know.” She vigorously stuffed Ixna's washing into burlap sacks. The clothes still damp and gray from the ash. How gray, they would not be sure until the clothes dried completely. Mother hefted these sacks through the front door and onto the porch, where she meant to pile them with other things she wanted to load onto the cart. But she paused over the trunks and cases, then turned and chucked the sacks over the railing.

With a flushed, smiling face, she strolled back into the house and said, “I don't know why I packed those old things. Of course, once we're back in New York, we'll buy all new clothes! And shoes and ribbons and hats. I'll have my face powder back, and curls and earrings. And you'll need a winter coat. What color do you want?”

Evie didn't know. There were too many colors to choose from, ones that surely didn't exist in Guatemala. So many things existed in New York and not here. There must be colors she did not even know about.

“Well?” Mother's aggressive cheer began to sour with Evie's hesitation.

“Green and orange?”

“A
green and orange
coat.” Mother studied her, disappointed. “Those colors don't even match, Evie. You've acquired the fashion sense of an Indian.”

Evie sat on the porch and packed the silverware into its velvet-lined box, trying to decide if she was happy to leave. She always thought she missed New York, but she missed things her mother had told her about, not what she actually remembered. And by now she knew her parents' descriptions of a place should not be trusted. Electricity and toilets could turn out to be just as disappointing as being rich in the land of bananas. The best she could do at imagining New York was to picture a bigger version of the Frenchman's shop: a land so full of nice, expensive things that broke too easily to have much fun with them. Of course, that was why manners were so important there.

She had decided upon a cautious joy, convincing herself that of course Father would come along. This was what she was thinking when she saw the lone figure walking up their road. A head rising over the crest, then shoulders, then a body. An odd illusion: someone being born from the road itself.

She watched at first unafraid, because she saw that the figure had shoes on, was nicely dressed. Not a ghost. Then she the remembered Mr. Ubico, how nicely he had been dressed with his pistol and savage smile. And here he was, in the same cream-colored suit. She cried out in fright, remembering how he'd touched that gun and looked at Father. How he'd said he was in charge of everyone, not just Indians.

“Well, isn't that a sight?” Mother frowned, with her hand shading her eyes in the open doorway. “Don't be afraid, Evie. It's just Judas. In a new suit.”

Father rolled out of bed to see for himself. He looked as stunned as Evie to find his meeting with Ubico had been a success.

“We're still going, Robert,” Mother said, watching Judas part the clinging mountain mists. “You can come if you want.”

“No,” Father murmured, looking at nothing with his blue eyes, veined with red. “No one's going anywhere, Mattie. There's no money left behind the bureau. I gave it to Ubico.”

With a gasp, Mother rushed into the parlor. She struggled with the weight of the bureau, but Father did not help or even turn around. “How did you find it? Evie, did you show him?”

“I didn't!”

“I'm sorry, Mattie.” And he did sound sorry. “I don't have the energy anymore to start new somewhere else. I have a plan.”

“Do you realize we're trapped here?” She shook her head in amazement, trying to process this terrifying turn, while sinking to the floor. “We have
nothing
. Not a peso.”

“That's not true, Mattie. We always have your mother.”

“The telegraph's still down, Robert. It'll take weeks for a letter to reach her, weeks for a reply. Your credit's run out at the bank. We have nothing. We couldn't leave if a mob of Indians stormed the house with machetes.”

Evie felt her mouth drop open. Machetes? Then she felt a hand on her head.

“Mattie, you're scaring Evie. She doesn't realize you're joking.”

“Of course I'm just joking, Evie.” Mother stood up, wiped her eyes clear with a trembling hand. Then she steadied herself on the bureau.

Father picked Evie up, smiling. “There are no Indians left, except women. And we processed two bags of cochineal last night. With Judas's help, we'll have more today. We'll have enough to buy tickets in three days if we must.” He turned to Mother, but she had already walked out of the room. “You wouldn't have even known it was gone.”

—

Father carried Evie out past the mule shed. “I have a very important task for you, Evie. Can I count on you to get it done?”

“Yes.”

“I need you to supervise Judas. There's so much to do, I need you to stay close to him. None of our other workers were exempted, so we have to make sure Judas works extra hard. Can you do that?”

“But I thought we were going home! The Indians are eating cookies, didn't you know? I got Tomás to eat a cookie!”

“Yes, I heard about the cookie, Evie. That's very good, it's amazing you convinced him. But we have a million more to convince, you know.”

Evie stared over the henhouse fencing at the hens, which were suspicious at their arrival. Heads cocked midstep, listening. “So, Guatemala's problems aren't solved?”

“Not yet, honey. But thanks to you, we're a little closer. I promise to take some cinnamon cookies to the market. But right now we have to worry about the harvest. It's a big responsibility, I thought you might be too young. If you can't, that's okay—”

“I can! I can watch Judas!”

He let her down at the chopping block, where Judas had begun to stack the firewood the other workers had chopped. “I'm counting on you.” Then he strolled back to the house, whistling.