The Bean Trees

“Because they’re choking? For all eternity?” Lou A

“No,” he said. “Good guess, but no. They are starving because they only have spoons with very long handles. As long as that.” He pointed to the mop, which I had forgotten to put away. “With these ridiculous, terrible spoons, the people in hell can reach into the pot but they ca

“Now,” he went on, “you can go and visit heaven. What? You see a room just like the first one, the same table, the same pot of stew, the same spoons as long as a sponge mop. But these people are all happy and fat.”

“Real fat, or do you mean just well-fed?” Lou A

“Just well-fed,” he said. “Perfectly, magnificently well-fed, and very happy. Why do you think?”

He pinched up a chunk of pineapple in his chopsticks, neat as you please, and reached all the way across the table to offer it to Turtle. She took it like a newborn bird.

EIGHT

Of all the ridiculous things, Mama was getting married. To Harland Elleston no less, of El-Jay’s Paint and Body fame. She called on a Saturday morning while I’d run over to Matties, so Lou A

When I called back Mama didn’t sound normal. She was out of breath and kept ru

“Cosmos, no, it’s not even the end of April yet, is it? I’ve got sugar peas in that little bed around to the side, but not cosmos.”

“I forgot,” I told her. “Everything’s backwards here. Half the stuff you plant in the fall.”

“Missy, I’m in a tither,” she said. She called me Taylor in letters, but we weren’t accustomed to phone calls. “With Harland and all. He treats me real good, but it’s happened so fast I don’t know what end of the hog to feed. I wish you were here to keep me straightened out.”

“I do too,” I said.

“You plant things in the fall? And they don’t get bit?”

“No.”

At least she did remember to ask about Turtle. “She’s great,” I said. “She’s talking a blue streak.”

“That’s how you were. You took your time getting started, but once you did there was no stopping you,” Mama said.

I wondered what that had to do with anything. Everybody behaved as if Turtle was my own flesh and blood daughter. It was a conspiracy.

Lou A

“Everybody deserves their own piece of the pie, Taylor,” Lou A

“She’s got me.”

“She does not, you’re here. Which might as well be Red Taiwan, for all the good it does her.”

“I always thought I’d get Mama out here to live. She didn’t even consult me, just ups and decides to marry this paint-and-body yahoo.”

“I do believe you’re jealous.”

“That is so fu

“When my brother got married I felt like he’d deserted us. He just sends this letter one day with a little tiny picture, all you could make out really was dogs, and tells us he’s marrying somebody by the name of She-Wolf Who Hunts by the First Light.” Lou A

“Gra

We were sitting out with the kids in Roosevelt Park, which the neighbor kids called such names as Dead Grass Park and Dog Doo Park. To be honest, it was pretty awful. There were only a couple of shade trees, which had whole dead parts, and one good-for-nothing palm tree so ski

“Look at it this way, at least she’s still kicking,” Lou A

“It does seem like one foot in the grave,” I said.

“If Mama ever got married again I’d dance a jig at her wedding. I’d be thrilled sideways. Maybe it would get her off my back about moving back in with her and Gra

“Cabbage, cabbage, cabbage,” she said.

Lou A

“Your mother wouldn’t be marrying Harland Elleston,” I told Lou A

“Of course not! That big hunk is already spoken for.”

“Lou A

“Well, I can’t help it, I wouldn’t care if my mother married the garbage man.”

“But Harland Elleston! He’s not even…” I was going to say he’s not even related to us, but of course that wasn’t what I meant. “He’s got warts on his elbows and those eyebrows that meet in the middle.”

“I’ll swan, Taylor, you talk about men like they’re a hangnail. To hear you tell it, you’d think man was only put on this earth to keep urinals from going to waste.”

“That’s not true, I like Estevan.” My heart sort of bumped when I said this. I knew exactly how it would look on an EKG machine: two little peaks and one big one.

“He’s taken. Who else?”

“Just because I don’t go chasing after every Tom’s Harry Dick that comes down the pike.”

“Who else? You never have one kind thing to say about any of your old boyfriends.”

“Lou A

“Well, where in the heck do you think I grew up, Paris, France?”

“I notice you didn’t stick with home-grown either. You had to ride off with a Wild West rodeo boy.”

“Fat lot of good it did me, too.”

“Well, you did get Dwayne Ray out of the deal.” I remembered what Mama always said about me and the Jackson Purchase.

“But oh, Taylor, if you could have seen him. How handsome he was.” She had her eyes closed and her face turned up toward the sun. “The first time I laid eyes on him he was draped on this fence like the Marlboro man, with his arms out to the sides and one boot up on the bottom rung. Just chewing on a match and hanging out till it was time to turn out the next bull. And do you know what else?” She sat up and opened her eyes.