The Bean Trees (29 page)

I went over and squatted beside her at the foot of the tree. “I’ve got to explain something to you, sweet pea. Some things grow into bushes or trees when you plant them, but other things don’t. Beans do, doll babies don’t.”

“Yes,” Turtle said, patting the mound of dirt. “Mama.”

It was the second time that day she had brought up a person named Mama. I registered this with something like an electric shock. It started in my hands and feet and moved in toward the gut.

I kneeled down and pulled Turtle into my lap. “Did you see your mama get buried like that?” I asked her.

“Yes.”

It was one of the many times in Turtle’s and my life together that I was to have no notion of what to do. I remembered Mattie saying how it was pointless to think you could protect a child from the world. If that had once been my intention, it should have been clear that with Turtle I’d never had a chance.

I held her in my arms and we rocked for a long time at the foot of the pine tree.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s awful, awful sad when people die. You don’t ever get to see them again. You understand that she’s gone now, don’t you?”

Turtle said, “Try?” She poked my cheek with her finger.

“Yeah, I’m crying.” I leaned forward on my knees and pulled a handkerchief out of my back pocket.

“I know she must have loved you very much,” I said, “but she had to go away and leave you with other people. The way things turned out is that she left you with me.”

Out on the lake people in boats were quietly casting their lines into the shadows. I remembered fishing on my own as a kid, and even younger going out with Mama, probably not being much help. I had a very clear memory of throwing a handful of rocks in the water and watching the fish dart away. And screaming my heart out. I wanted them, and knew of no reason why I shouldn’t have them. When I was Turtle’s age I had never had anyone or anything important taken from me.

I still hadn’t. Maybe I hadn’t started out with a whole lot, but pretty nearly all of it was still with me.

After a while I told Turtle, “You already know there’s no such thing as promises. But I’ll try as hard as I can to stay with you.”

“Yes,” Turtle said. She wiggled off my lap and returned to her dirt pile. She patted a handful of pine needles onto the mound. “Grow beans,” she said.

“Do you want to leave your dolly here?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Later that night I asked Esperanza and Estevan if they would be willing to do one more thing with me. For me, really. I explained that it was a favor, a very big one, and then I explained what it was.

“You don’t have to say yes,” I said. “I know it involves some risk for you, and if you don’t feel like you can go through with it I’ll understand. Don’t answer now, because I want to be sure you’ve really thought about it. You can tell me in the morning.”

Esperanza and Estevan didn’t want to think about it. They told me, then and there, they wanted to do it.

SIXTEEN

Soundness of Mind
and Freedom of Will

M
r. Jonas Wilford Armistead was a tall, white-haired man who seemed more comfortable with the notarizing part of his job than with the public. Even though he had been forewarned, when all of us came trooping into his office he seemed overwhelmed and showed a tendency to dither. He moved papers and pens and framed pictures from one side of his desk to the other and wouldn’t sit down until all of us could be seated, which unfortunately didn’t happen for quite a while because there weren’t enough chairs. Mr. Armistead sent his secretary, Mrs. Cleary, next door to borrow a chair from the real-estate office of Mr. Wenn.

Mr. Armistead wore a complicated hearing aid that had ear parts, and black-and-white wires and a little silver box that had to be placed for maximum effectiveness on exactly the right spot on his desk, which he seemed unable to find. If he ever did, I thought I might suggest to him that he mark this special zone with paint as they do on a basketball court.

The silver box had tiny controls along one side, and Mr. Armistead also fiddled with these almost constantly, apparently without much success. Mrs. Cleary seemed during their working coexistence to have adjusted her volume accordingly. Even when she was talking to us, she practically shouted. It had an intimidating effect, especially on Esperanza.

But we all managed small talk while we waited. Which was all the more admirable when you consider that not one word any of us was saying was true, so far as I know. Estevan was an astonishingly good liar, going into great detail about the Oklahoma town where he and his wife had been living, and the various jobs he’d had. I talked about my plans to move to Arizona to live with my sister and her little boy. I think we were all amazed by the things that were popping out of our heads like corn.

Sister, indeed. I remembered begging my mother for a sister when I was very young. She’d said she was all for it, but that if I got one it would have to be arranged by means of a miracle. At the time I’d had no idea what she meant. Now I knew about celibacy.

Mrs. Cleary returned in due time, rolling a chair on its little wheels, and asked several questions about what forms would need to be typed up. We shuffled around again as we made room for Estevan and the new chair, and Mr. Armistead finally agreed to come down from his great height and roost like a long-legged stork on the chair behind his desk.

“It became necessary to make formal arrangements,” Estevan explained, “because our friend is leaving the state.”

Esperanza nodded.

“Mr. and Mrs. Two Two, do you understand that this is a permanent agreement?” He spoke very slowly, the way people often speak to not-very-bright children and foreigners, although I’m positive that Mr. Armistead had no inkling that the Two Two family came from any farther away than the Cherokee Nation.

They nodded again. Esperanza was holding Turtle tightly in her arms and beginning to get tears in her eyes. Already it was clear that, of the three of us, she was first in line for the Oscar nomination.

He went on, “After about six months a new birth certificate will be issued, and the old one destroyed. After that you cannot change your minds for any reason. This is a very serious decision.”

“There wasn’t any birth certificate issued,” Mrs. Cleary shouted. “It was born on tribal lands.”

“She,” I said. “In a Plymouth,” I added.

“We understand,” Estevan said.

“I just want to make absolutely certain.”

“We know Taylor very well,” Estevan replied. “We know she will make a good mother to this child.”

Even though they were practically standing on it, Mr. Armistead and Mrs. Cleary seemed to think of “tribal land” as some distant, vaguely civilized country. This, to them, explained everything including the fact that Hope, Steven, and Turtle had no identification other than a set of black-and-white souvenir pictures taken of the three of them at Lake o’ the Cherokees. It was enough that I, a proven citizen with a Social Security card, was willing to swear on pain of I-don’t-know-what (and sign documents to that effect) that they were all who they said they were.

By this point we had run out of small talk. I was over my initial nervousness, but without it I felt drained. Just sitting in that small, crowded office, trying to look the right way and say the right thing, seemed to take a great deal of energy. I couldn’t imagine how we were all going to get through this.

“We love her, but we cannot take care for her,” Esperanza said suddenly. Her accent was complicated by the fact that she was crying, but it didn’t faze Mr. Armistead or Mrs. Cleary. Possibly they thought it was a Cherokee accent.

“We’ve talked it over,” I said. I began to worry a little about what was going on here.

“We love her. Maybe someday we will have more children, but not now. Now is so hard. We move around so much, we have nothing, no home.” Esperanza was sobbing. This was no act. Estevan handed her a handkerchief, and she held it to her face.

“Try, Ma?” Turtle said.

“That’s right, Turtle,” I said quietly. “She’s crying.”

Estevan reached over and lifted Turtle out of her arms. He stood her up, her small blue sneakers set firmly on his knees, and held her gently by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “You must be a good girl. Remember. Good and strong, like your mother.” I wondered which mother he meant, there were so many possibilities. I was touched to think he might mean me.

“Okay,” Turtle said.

He handed her carefully back to Esperanza, who folded her arms around Turtle and held her against her chest, rocking back and forth for a very long time with her eyes squeezed shut. Tears drained down the shallow creases in her cheeks.

The rest of us watched. Mr. Armistead stopped fidgeting and Mrs. Cleary’s hands on her papers went still. Here were a mother and her daughter, nothing less. A mother and child—in a world that could barely be bothered with mothers and children—who were going to be taken apart. Everybody believed it. Possibly Turtle believed it. I did.

Of all the many times when it seemed to be so, that was the only moment in which I really came close to losing Turtle. I couldn’t have taken her from Esperanza. If she had asked, I couldn’t have said no.

When she let go, letting Turtle sit gently back on her lap, Turtle had the sniffles.

Esperanza wiped Turtle’s nose with Estevan’s big handkerchief and kissed her on both cheeks. Then she unclasped the gold medallion of St. Christopher, guardian saint of refugees, and put it around Turtle’s neck. Then she gave Turtle to me.

Esperanza told me, “We will know she is happy and growing with a good heart.”

“Thank you,” I said. There was nothing else I could say.

It took what seemed like an extremely long time to draw up a statement, which Mrs. Cleary shuttled off to type. She came back and was sent off twice more to make repairs. After several rounds of White-out we had managed to create an official document:

We, the undersigned, Mr. Steven Tilpec Two Two and Mrs. Hope Roberta Two Two, being the sworn natural parents of April Turtle Two Two, do hereby grant custody of our only daughter to Ms. Taylor Marietta Greer, who will from this day forward become her sole guardian and parent.

We do solemnly swear and testify to our soundness of mind and freedom of will.

Signed before witnesses on this —— day of ——, in the office of Jonas Wilford Armistead, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Mrs. Cleary went off once again to Mr. Wenn’s office, this time to borrow his secretary Miss Brindo to be a second witness to the signing. Miss Brindo, who appeared to have at least enough Cherokee in her to claim head rights, had on tight jeans and shiny red high heels, and snapped her gum. She had a complicated haircut that stood straight up on top, and something told me she led a life that was way too boring for her potential. I wished she could have known what she was really witnessing that morning.

In a way, I wish all of them could know, maybe twenty years later or so when it’s long past doing anything about it. Mrs. Cleary’s and Mr. Armistead’s hair would have stood straight up too, to think what astonishing things could be made legal in a modest little office in the state of Oklahoma.

We shook hands all around, I got the rest of the adoption arrangements straightened out with Mr. Armistead, and we filed out, a strange new combination of friends and family. I could see the relief across Estevan’s back and shoulders. He held Esperanza’s hand. She was still drying tears but her face was changed. It shone like a polished thing, something old made new.

They both wore clean work shirts, light blue with faded elbows. Esperanza had on a worn denim skirt and flat loafers. I had asked them please not to wear their very best for this occasion, not their Immigration-fooling clothes. It had to look like Turtle was going to be better off with me. When they came out that morning dressed as refugees I had wanted to cry out, No! I was wrong. Don’t sacrifice your pride for me. But this is how badly they wanted to make it work.

SEVENTEEN

Rhizobia

I
t had crossed my mind that Turtle might actually have recognized the cemetery her mother was buried in, and if so, I wondered whether I ought to take her back there to see it. But my concerns were soon laid to rest. We passed four cemeteries on the way to the Pottawatomie Presbyterian Church of St. Michael and All Angels, future home of Steven and Hope Two Two, and at each one of them Turtle called out, “Mama!”

There would come a time when she would just wave at the sight of passing gravestones and quietly say, “Bye bye.”

Finding the church turned out to be a chase around Robin Hood’s bam. Mattie’s directions were to the old church. The congregation had since moved its home of worship plus its pastor and presumably its refugees into a new set of buildings several miles down the road. I was beginning to form the opinion that Oklahomans were as transient a bunch as the people back home who slept on grass-flecked bedrolls in Roosevelt Park.

The church was a cheery-looking place, freshly painted white with a purple front door and purple gutters. When Mattie used to talk about the Underground Railroad, by which she meant these churches and the people who carried refugees between them, it had always sounded like the dark of night. I’d never pictured old white Lincolns with soda pop spilled on the seats, and certainly not white clapboard churches with purple gutters.

Reverend and Mrs. Stone seemed greatly relieved to see us, since they had apparently expected us a day or two earlier, but no one made an issue of it. They helped carry things up a sidewalk bordered with a purple fringe of ageratums into the small house behind the parsonage. Meanwhile Estevan and I worked on getting possessions sorted out. Things had gotten greatly jumbled during the trip, and Turtle’s stuff was everywhere. She was like a pack rat, taking possession of any item that struck her fancy (like Esperanza’s hairbrush) and tucking another one into its place (like a nibbled cracker). Turtle herself was exhausted with the events of the day, or days, and was in the back seat sleeping the sleep of the dead, as Lou Ann would put it. Esperanza and Estevan had already said goodbye to her in a very real way back in Mr. Armistead’s office, and didn’t think there was any need to wake her up again. But I stood firm.