• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 481 0

dress-up clothes in satiny fabrics as brittle as paper. Our best playroom was the sunny alcove crammed with plants where we stalked lions through the parlor palms, dressed in our finery, more glamorous than Beryl Markham and the Baroness von Blixen could have managed to be in their dreams. We confronted real dangers in the form of rickety iron stands holding heavy, breakable pots and fragile plants. The African violets were furred like pets, and the prayer plants had leaves like an old woman’s hands, red-veined on the back, that opened wide in the sun and folded primly together in the shade. Abuelita instructed us to sit and watch them, to try and catch them in the act of closing their leaves. Hallie always waited the longest, patient for enlightenment long after Emelina and I had returned to our rowdy diversions.

“You know, I’m so used to J.T. being gone,” Emelina said, bringing me back. “I think he’d be underfoot if he were here. I’d give us about ten days, then I’d probably shoot him. Husband murder in Grace, oh boy.” She seemed to be answering a question, however circumspectly, that I wasn’t sure I’d asked.

“How long has he been on the railroad?”

“Just since the mine shut down, which was…” She frowned at the glass she was drying, decorated with white pigs in red bow ties. “Ten years, about.”

“They used to always say they’d hire again up there when the price of copper went up.”

“Well, you know, that’s talk. Nobody’s waiting around anymore, Now it’s pecans and plums. And the railroad, thank God for that. I think we could live off the orchards if the boys didn’t eat like horses and outgrow their shoes every ten days. Get this, now they’re too fashion conscious to wear each other’s hand-me-downs. Remember when boys didn’t give a shit what they wore? We never should have got satellite TV.” She turned around, drying her hands on her apron. “Is that rascal gone to sleep? Thanks. Codi. I’ll take him upstairs and put him down for his nap.” She lifted the baby onto her shoulder like a sack of valuable flour. “You got big plans for today?”

“I thought I’d make an excursion into the city,” I said. “Check out the dry goods at the Baptist Grocery.”

She laughed. “If you can wait awhile I’ll go with you. Grammy can listen for the baby. She ought to be home pretty soon from her meeting.” Emelina rolled her eyes as she left the kitchen. “Stitch and Bitch Club on Mondays, bright and early.”

I stood at the window looking out at the grove of trees that ran the length of the canyon. Plum, pear, apple. And quince, I believe, though I couldn’t identify a quince tree to save my life. I only remembered the word because of the way people here pronounced it—“queens”—with their Spanish-influenced vowels. In the distance I could make out white satellite dishes perched among the cacti on the red cliff—one to each house, like dogs. Well, that was something new. The sky was overcast. In the orchards on the other side of the river I could see men working among the trees. I remembered them beating the branches with long poles, bringing down scattered showers of pecans. Frailing, that was called. In the older orchards sometimes they had to climb up into the tallest trees to reach the upper branches with their poles. But it was too early in the year for that. Pecans didn’t ripen till late fall.

Hallie and I had played in this house once or twice as children, when a pair of pigeon-toed girl cousins of J.T.’s had lived here. Now it belonged so securely to Emelina. It was hard to realize how fully life had gone on. Of course, it would. I could have stayed here, or gone away as I did, it made no difference to Grace.

I washed the baby’s cup, running my finger around the inside rim. While the sun left the windowsill and moved on to other things, I noticed, the prayer plants had closed up when I wasn’t watching. They stood in a self-satisfied row, keeping their thoughts to themselves.

“You keep some of the dirt on them, and you just stuff them down in paper bags and keep them somewhere dark,” said Lydia Galvez. “Do you have a root cellar?”

“No, uh-uh.