the bean trees by Barbara Kingsolver chapter 10 the bean trees even a spotted pig looks black at night this is another thing mama used to tell me quite often it means that things always look different and usually better in the morning and they did Maddie called first thing to say that Esperanza was going to be alright they hadn't pumped her stomach after all because she hadn't taken enough to do much harm I made Estevan a big breakfast egg scrambled with tomatoes and peppers and green chili sauce and sent him home before I could start falling in love with him again over the breakfast dishes turtle woke up in one of those sweet i rubbing moods that kids must know by instinct as a means of saving the human species from extinction LuAnn came home from the Ruiz family reunion singing la Bamba if surprising considering Roosevelt Park but we always heard birds in the morning there must be transients in the bird world too Rumple feathers outcasts that naturally seek out each other's company and inferior and dying trees in any case there were lots of them there was a type of woodpecker that said hahaha to hell with you I swear it did and another one a little pigeon he looking birds at hip-hip arou Luanne insisted that it was saying who cooks for who she said she had read it in a magazine I had a hard time imagining what kind of magazine would go into something like that but I wasn't about to argue it was the first time I could remember her hanging on to her own opinion about something Luanne not normally being inclined in that direction one time in a restaurant she once told me a waiter mistakenly brought her somebody else's dinner and she just ate it rather than make trouble it was beef shingles on toast gradually Luanne and I were changing the house around filling in the empty spaces left behind by on with ABC books and high chairs and diaper totes and all manner of toys all larger than a golf ball I had bought turtle a real bed junior size from new to you we turned the screen porch in the back into a playroom for the kids not that Duane ray did any serious playing yet but he liked to sit out there strapped in his car seat watching turtle plant her cars and flower pots the fire engine she called domain Oh whereas the orange car was carrot or sometimes she called it - - which is what I had named my bolts wagon after the man who profited from my rocker arm disaster I had what had considered putting Turtles bed out there on the porch - but LuAnn said it wouldn't be safe that someone might come along and slash the screen and kidnap her before you could say Jack Robinson I never would have thought of that but it didn't matter the house was old and roomy there was plenty of space for turtles bed in my room it was the type of house they called a rambling bungalow the term reminded me somehow of Elvis Presley movies with wainscoting and steam radiators and about 50 coats of paint on the door frames so that you could use your thumbnail to scrape out a history of all the houses tenants as far back at the 60s when people were fond of painting their woodwork apple green and royal blue the ceilings were so high you just ain't learn to live with the cobwebs it wasn't unreasonably hot yet and the kids were bouncing around the house like super balls this was mainly turtle with Dwayne Ray's participation being mainly vocal so we took them out to sit under the Arbor for a while the wisteria vines were a week or two past full bloom but the bees and the perfume still hung thick in the air overhead giving it a sweet purplish hue if you ignored the rest of the park you could imagine this was a special little heaven for people who had lived their whole lives without fear of bees LuAnn was full of gossip from her weekend with their Ruiz cousins apparently most of them spoke English all the men were good-looking and loved to dance and all the women had children Dwayne Rey's age she had about decided that every single one of them was nicer than on hell a conclusion to which they all heartedly agree even on Hills mother a large portion of the flock were preparing to move to San Diego I can't believe it she said first mani and Ramona you remember the friends I told you about that saw the meteor shower and now a two of unhealth and their wives and kids you'd think they discovered gold out there on hell you used to always talk about moving to California too but I'll tell you this right now mama would have had an apoplectic she thinks in California they sell marijuana in produce sections of the grocery store maybe they do maybe that's why everybody wants to live there not me LuAnn said not for a million and I'll tell you why - in about another year they're due to have the biggest earthquake in history I read about it in someplace they say all of San Diego might just end up in the ocean like noodle soup I guess the Sharks will be happy I said Taylor I swear these are my relatives are talking about on hell's relatives I said you're practically divorced not to hear them tell it LuAnn said turtle was staring up at the wisteria flowers beans she said pointing bees I said those things that go buzz are bees they sting the way I pointed out but Turtles shook her head bean trees she said as plainly as if she had been thinking about it all day we looked where she was pointing some of the wisteria flowers had gone to seed and all these wonderful long green pods hung down from the branches they looked as much like beans as anything you'd ever care to eat will you look at that I said it was another miracle the flower trees were turning into bean trees on the way home LuAnn went to the corner to buy a newspaper she was seriously job hunting now and had applied at a couple of nursery schools though I could just hear how LuAnn would ask for a job really ma'am I can understand why you wouldn't want to hire a dumb old thing such as myself turtle and I walked the other way since we needed to stop in at the leasing market for eggs and milk LuAnn refused to set foot in there these days saying that leasing always gave her the evil eye Luann's theory was that she was mad at her for having had Wayne Ray instead of a girl going against some supposedly foolproof Chinese method of prediction my theory was that Luanne suffered from the same disease as snow boots feeling guilty for things beyond your wildest imagination in any case today leasing was nowhere to be seen she often went back to check on her famous century-old mother the source of Maddy's purple beans whom neither LuAnn nor I had ever laid eyes on though not for lack of curiosity according to Maddy no one had cited her for years but you always had the feeling she was back there leasing had left her usual sign by the cash register be back one minute please do not steal anything leasing I spotted Edna poppy in paper goods the next aisle over from the dairy case as best I can see and there was sniffing different brands of toilet tissue Edna miss poppy I called out when I needed to call her by name I generally hedged my bets and used both first and last her head popped up and she seemed confused looking all around it's me Taylor over here I came around into the aisle where she had parked her cart where's mrs. Parsons today I stopped dead in my tracks Edna had a white cane Virgie is still in bed was ill in bed with a croup I'm sorry to say she sent me out to get fresh in a drop of whiskey and of course a few other unmentionables she smiled dropping a package of orange toilet paper into the cart can you tell me dear if these are linens or lives I have she ran her hand over her goods and held up a lopsided plastic bag of yellow fruits and the poppy was blind I stood for a minute staring trying to reorganize things in my mind the way you would rearrange a broom full of furniture Edna buying all her clothes in one color ever since age 16 Virge ease grip on her elbow I remembered the fantasy I constructed the day of our dinner party Edna happily discovering red bobby pins in the drugstore I had had it completely wrong it would have been virtue maid who would who found them plucked them down off the rack of Oreo cookie breath and purchased them for her friend are you with me dear I'm sorry I said lemons they're kind of small but they look just fine when I got home I asked LuAnn if she knew she insisted I was making the whole thing up is this a joke she kept asking but if it is it's a sick one it's not a joke she had a white cane she asked me if what she had was lemons or limes think about it the way she kind of looks over your head when she talks the way Virgie leads her around how Virgie always says everybody's name when the two of them come into a room LuAnn was horrified oh my god she said oh my merciful heavens I feel about this big when I think about all the times I've just bounced over there and said see you this see you that thanks for keeping an eye on Dewayne ray I don't think she'd mind her eyes are her hands and Virgie she has her own special ways of keeping an eye on things I told the wind and this seemed to make her feel better on Monday afternoon I asked if it would be okay if I went up to see Esperanza I had never been upstairs at Maddie's and for some reason I felt it was off-limits but she said fine to go on up I went through the cramped study which of course was still piled high with Maddie's dead husband's magazines I knew by now that he had been dead many years so it seemed unlikely that his mess would clear up anytime soon and on up the staircase into Maddie's living room it had the same crowded higgledy-piggledy look as the office downstairs though the stuff here had more to do with everyday living junk mail bills pencils magazines with color pictures of people like Tom Selleck and the president not Jesus a folded newspaper with half work crossword puzzles the occasional pliers or screwdrivers it was the type of flotsam and jetsam a pair of words I had just learned from the dictionary that washes up on your coffee table lies around for a week or so and then makes way from whatever comes in on the next tide every surface was covered tables chairs walls over the fireplace there was a big cross made up of hundreds of small brightly glazed pieces of tile each one shaped like something a boy a dog a house a palm tree a bright blue fish together they all had it up to a cross I had never seen anything like it the wall cross from the fireplace was covered with pictures of every imaginable size and shape there were snapshots of people squinting into the Sun a few studio portraits of children pictures of Maddie flanked by other people all of them dark and shorter than herself they were a number of children's drawings I remembered matter Maddie telling me when we first met that she had something like grandchildren around how that had struck me as such a peculiar thing to say I noticed that practically all the kids had guns in them somewhere and huge bullets suspended in the air hanging on the dotted lines that flowed like waterfalls out of the gun barrels there were many men in turtle shaped army helmets one picture showed a helicopter streaming blood the living-room had no windows just doors opening off in four directions an old woman came in with a cardboard box and looked at me with surprise asking something in Spanish I had never before seen anyone whose entire body looked sad her skin just seemed to hang from her especially from her arms above the elbows and her jaw Esperanza I said and she nodded toward a door at the back that room seemed to belong in another house it was empty the walls were an antique looking shade of light pink completely bare except for a cross with two palm fronds stuck behind it over one of the beds the two beds were neatly made up with rough-looking blue blankets but surely no one would sleep under in this weather Esperanza was not in either bed but sitting up in a straight back chair by the window she looked up when I knocked on the door casement hi I came to see how you were doing she got up from the chair and offered it to me she sat on the bed I don't believe she had been doing anything at all just sitting with her hands in her lap we looked at each other for a second then looked at other things in the room of which they were painfully few I didn't know why I thought I'd had the nerve to do this how are you feeling now are you feeling better your stomach's ok I put my hand on my stomach Esperanza nodded then looked at her hands I had lost my direction somewhere when I came into the house I looked out the window expecting to see Roosevelt Park but just was not that window we were at the back of the house from where you got a terrific bird's-eye view of Leigh sings back I wondered if you might catch a peek of leasing Szold mother from up here if you stayed at your post long enough I've been meaning to tell you I said I think Esperanza is a beautiful name Estefan told me it means to wait and also to hope that in Spanish the same word means both things but I thought it was pretty even before I knew it meant any anything it reminded me of I don't know a waterfall or something she nodded Taylor doesn't mean anything that's interesting a tailor hems up people's pants and stuff like that her mouth stretched a little bit in the direction of a smile but her eyes with the blank dark black holes you understand basically everything I'm saying right she nodded again I think that's how turtle is too but people always forget they think she doesn't take in any more than she puts out but I know better I can tell she understands stuff it's something about the way she looks at you Esperanza kept staring at her empty hands I wished I had something to put in them something that would be wonderful for her to look at I hope you don't mind me talking about turtle her eyes flew up at me like a pair of black birds scared out of safe hiding Estefan told me about his meaning I said I'm sorry when I first found out you taking pills I couldn't understand it while you'd do such a thing to yourself to Estefan but when he told me that God how does a person live with something like that she looked away this conversation would have been hard enough even with two people talking no matter what I said it was sure to be the exact wrong thing to say to someone who recently swallowed a bottle of baby aspirin but what would be right whether there's some book in the library where you can look up such things I guess the main thing I came up here to tell you is I don't know how you go on but I really hope you'll keep doing it that you won't give up Esperanza I thought of that last night Esperanza is all you get no second chances what you have to do is try and think of reasons to stick it out she had tears in her eyes but that seemed better somehow than nothing at all it's terrible to lose somebody I said I mean I don't know firsthand but I can imagine it must be but it's also true that some people never have anybody to lose and I think that's got to be so much worse after a long time I said he's crazy about you I went over and took one of the hands in her lap and held it for a second her skin felt cold and emptied out like there was nobody home as I left to go back to work I saw the woman with the cardboard box still in the living room she was sorting through a handful of possessions she had laid out on the sofa a black skirt a small book bound in red vinyl a framed photograph a pair of baby sneakers tied together by the laces and carefully putting them back into the box on Wednesday just as I was finishing up the last patch of the day and getting ready to head for home I spotted LuAnn stepping off the bus at the Roosevelt stop I yelled for her to wait up and she came over and talked to me while I used the water hose to wash the black dust off my hands one thing I can tell you right now about tires they're dirty business LuAnn had just been for a job interview at a convenience store on the north side she'd left turtle and Dewayne Rae with Edna and mrs. Parsons so the first thing the guy says to me is we got a lot of armed robberies in here sweetheart he kept on calling me sweetheart and talking to my boobs instead of my face this big flabby guy with greasy hair and you just know he reads every one of those porno magazines they keep behind the counter lots of stick up sweetheart how do you hold up under pressure he says hold up that was his idea of a big hilarious joke jeez the whole thing gave me the creeps from the word go I could see that she had dressed up for this interview a nice skirt iron blouse stockings pumps in this heat the humiliation of it made me furious something better is bound to come along I said you could hold out I wiped my hands on a towel hollered goodbye to Maddie and we headed down the sidewalk I hate that place she said nodding back over her shoulder at Fanny heaven yeah I said but on the bright side Maddie says they don't do a whole lot of business she thinks having a place called Jesus as Lord right next door kind of puts a hex on it Luanne shuddered that doors what gets me the way they made that door handle like a woman is something you shove on and walk right through I try to ignore it but it still gets me don't ignore it then I said talk back to it say you can't do that number on me you for brains or something like that otherwise it kind of weasels its way into your head whether you like it or not you know those hard-boiled eggs they keep around in jars of vinegar and bars it's like that after a while they get to tasting awful and it's not the eggs fault what I'm saying is you can't just sit there you got to get pissed off you really think so I do the thing about you Taylor is that you just don't let anybody put one over on you where did you ever learn to be like that Luanne wanted to know Nutr school