The Bean Trees

Our mouths opened and shut and we froze where we sat. I suppose we could have honked and waved and it wouldn’t have raised any more pandemonium than this poor mother already had to deal with, but instead we held perfectly still. Even Turtle. After a long minute or two the quail got her family herded off the road into some scraggly bushes. The truck’s brakelights flickered, like a wink, and Estevan drove on. Something about the whole scene was trying to make tears come up in my eyes. I decided I must be about to get my period.

‘You know,” Lou A

Knowing that Turtle’s first uttered sound was a laugh brought me no end of relief. If I had dragged her halfway across the nation only to neglect and entirely botch her upbringing, would she have laughed? I thought surely not. Surely she would have bided her time while she saved up whole words, even sentences. Things like “What do you think you’re doing?”

I suppose some of Lou A

But neither of us could interpret the significance of Turtle’s first word. It was “bean.”

We were in Matties backyard helping her put in the summer garden, which she said was way overdue considering the weather. Matties motto seemed to be “Don’t let the grass grow under your feet, but make sure there’s something growing everywhere else.”

“Looky here, Turtle,” I said. “We’re planting a garden just like Old MacDonald in your book.” Mattie rolled her eyes. I think her main motive, in insisting that Turtle watch us do this, was to straighten the child out. She was concerned that Turtle would grow up thinking carrots grew under the rug.

“Here’s squash seeds,” I said. “Here’s pepper seeds, and here’s eggplants.” Turtle looked thoughtfully at the little flat disks.

“That’s just going to discombobble her,” Mattie said. “Those seeds don’t look anything like what you’re saying they’ll grow into. When kids are that little, they don’t take much on faith.”

“Oh,” I said. It seemed to me that Turtle had to take practically everything on faith.

“Show her something that looks like what you eat.”

I scooped a handful of big white beans out of one of Matties jars. “These are beans. Remember white bean soup with ketchup? Mmm, you like that.”

“Bean,” Turtle said. “Humbean.”

I looked at Mattie.

“Well, don’t just sit there, the child’s talking to you,” Mattie said.

I picked up Turtle and gave her a hug. “That’s right, that’s a bean. And you’re just about the smartest kid alive,” I told her. Mattie just smiled.

As I planted the beans, Turtle followed me down the row digging each one up after I planted it and putting it back in the jar. “Good girl,” I said. I could see a whole new era arriving in Turtle’s and my life.

Mattie suggested that I give her some of her own beans to play with, and I did, though Lou A

On the way home Turtle pointed out to me every patch of bare dirt beside the sidewalk. “Humbean,” she told me.

Lou A

“I don’t know about shingled,” I said, “but you’ve got to draw the line somewhere or you’re going to end up like this guy that comes into Mattie’s all the time with a Mohawk. He has ‘Born to Die’ tattooed onto the bald part of his scalp.”

“I might as well just shave it off,” said Lou A

She was possessed of the type of blond, bone-straight hair that was, for a brief period in history, the envy of every teenaged female alive. I remember when the older girls spoke so endlessly of bleaching and ironing techniques you’d think their hair was something to be thrown in a white load of wash. Lou A

“It looks like it plumb died,” she said, tugging on a straight lock over one eyebrow.

I was tempted to remind her that anything subjected so frequently to a pair of scissors wouldn’t likely survive, but of course I didn’t. I always tried to be positive with her, although I’d learned that even compliments were a kind of insult to Lou A

“I ought to be shot for looking like this,” she’d tell the mirror in the front hall before going out the door. “I look like I’ve been drug through hell backwards,” she would say on just any ordinary day. “Like death warmed over. Like something the cat puked up.”

I wanted the mirror to talk back, to say, “Shush, you do not,” but naturally it just mouthed the same words back at her, leaving her so forlorn that I was often tempted to stick little notes on it. I thought of my T-shirt, Turtle’s now, from Kentucky Lake. Lou A

On this particular night we had invited Esperanza and Estevan over for di

Eventually Lou A