The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [33]
Except for their hair, the boys could be sons of ranchers in their blue cotton shirts, the hems fraying some in their too-short pants. The older boy, the one what was almost grown up, had a ponytail pulled back with a strip of leather. The little boy’s hair was cut so close that it stood up in peaks. He looked to be about John’s age.
“Mrs. Fills the Pipe,” I said, smiling. “Hello.”
“Mrs. DuPree.” She wasn’t smiling.
“Please sit down. I just happened to put some tea on. You can stay, can’t you?”
“Tea?”
My smile froze. Water from the well was all I had ever offered Mrs. Fills the Pipe. Tea? At the house? Lord, what had I done? No wonder she was frowning, Inez too. You’re right, Mrs. Fills the Pipe, I wanted to say. Why don’t you just turn around and go on home. Ranchers and Indians don’t mix. Everybody knows that.
But it was too late to say such a thing. “Please,” I said, pointing at the rockers. “Stay awhile. If you can.”
Mrs. Fills the Pipe hesitated for a moment and then nodded. Like me, she knew it was too late to turn around and go back to her wagon. Lifting her skirt a little, she stepped up onto the porch and sat down in one of the rockers.
“Mary,” I said, “get the other rocker for Inez.”
After that everything went by in a big hurry. Mary carried out my bedroom rocker and pulled the three rockers close to the house to catch the shade. I brought out a pitcher with a little water in it and, giving Liz a warning look, I told her to pass the cup around to the boys what stood stiffly at one end of the porch. Liz was just as stiff. She glared at them as they took long drinks from the cup. I offered the biscuits to the boys. Mrs. Fills the Pipe said to take only one. I told my girls to take the boys down to the cottonwood where there was a touch of shade. I could tell Mary wanted to stay on the porch with us; she was staring at Inez, admiring her city clothes. I shook Mary off, telling her with my eyes that Inez was all grown up now and that she wasn’t.
“Let Rounder out of the barn,” I said to the girls. “If you think he’ll behave. It’s too hot in there.”
The teakettle whistled. In the kitchen I got out my third porcelain cup for Inez. There was a dried-up spider in the bottom; I turned the cup over, then dusted it out with my apron.
“Beautiful plate,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said a few minutes later when I passed her the biscuits. She took one. Inez did too.
“Why, thank you,” I said, my heart puffed up with pride. “It was a wedding present.” I eased myself into the rocker on the other side of Mrs. Fills the Pipe. The three of us were lined up in a row, the sun on our knees but our laps and our faces in the shade. “It’s from my brother, Johnny. He lives near St. Louis now.”
Inez caught my eye. She was on the other side of her mother and had crossed her legs at the ankles like a lady does. But it was her shoes I couldn’t stop looking at. They were the color of a newborn tan calf and they fit as tight as kid gloves. A row of cloth-covered buttons started at the instep and ran clear to the top, just a few inches above Inez’s anklebone.
That must be what fashionable women were wearing in Chicago. Folks there would take one look at me in my shapeless brown dress covering my big belly, see my scuffed, dusty work boots, and take me for a backward country woman. And they’d be right.
I blinked back the tears of shame that came up from nowhere. Through the blur of them, I watched the string of children as they meandered to the cottonwood, Mary going out of her way to stop and pat Jerseybell, tethered by the root cellar.
Mrs. Fills the Pipe blew on her tea, then took a sip. She nodded her pleasure. “Chokeberry tea.”
“Oh,” I said, coming back to myself and remembering my manners. “Chokeberry’s my favorite. Glad