A Different Blue (42 page)

“The police report says they had a tip from someone in Oklahoma who swore that a girl matching your daughter's description was caught shoplifting several items from a convenience store. The shop owner ended up not pressing charges because he felt bad for the girl. She was stealing diapers and milk. He ended up giving her the milk, some groceries, and a case of diapers, along with some money. When the store owner saw her picture on the news, he remembered your daughter and her little girl and called the police.”

“Oklahoma?” Stella Aguilar seemed stunned, and she shook her head, muttering under her breath. “No . . . that isn't possible.”

“The police say nothing ever came of it. It only muddied the waters without giving them anything more to go on,” I interjected. “I just noticed it because my father – the man who raised me – had family on a reservation in Oklahoma. I wondered what in the world she would be doing there.”

“What was your father's name?” Stella Hidalgo's voice was faint and there was an odd stillness about her, as if she were waiting for an answer she already knew.

“James Echohawk . . . I called him Jimmy.”

Stella slumped back in her seat, shock and dismay written in bold across her face. She stood up abruptly and raced from the room, leaving us without a word.

“Something's wrong. Do you think she knows Jimmy?” I whispered.

“She sure acted like she recognized his name,” Wilson replied, his tone just as hushed. We were interrupted by crashing and muttering, and we rose to our feet, all at once anxious to leave.

“Maybe we should go,” Wilson said loudly. “Ms. Hidalgo? We didn't come here to upset you.”

Stella rushed back into the room holding a box.

“I'm sorry, but I need you to wait . . . please. Just wait . . . for a minute.” We sat back down reluctantly, watching Stella as she pulled the lid from the box and lifted out a photo album. Frantically, she flipped through the pages and then stopped short.

“Some of the pictures are missing. Someone has taken some of the pictures!” Stella tore through the pages, her eyes flying from one photo to the next. “Here. This isn't a very good shot . . . but it's him.” She tugged the picture from beneath the plastic covering. It had obviously been there a long time, and it had adherred to the plastic sheet. She tugged and the picture began to tear. She gave up and brought the book to me, walking across the small space on her knees as if she were six instead of sixty.

“Do you recognize the man in this picture?” she demanded, tapping the page.

I looked down at a picture that had a faintly yellow cast. The clothing and the cars in the background dated it sometime in the '70s. A man and a woman were in the shot, and for a moment my eyes were delayed by young Stella Hidalgo, slim and smiling in a deep red dress, her hair hanging over one shoulder. She looked so much like me that my head swam. Wilson stiffened beside me, clearly noting the resemblance as well. Then my gaze moved to the man standing next to her, and time ceased its steady ticking.

Jimmy looked up at me from a decade long past. His hair was a deep black and hung around his shoulders from a center part. He wore jeans and a brown patterned shirt with the large pointed collars that were popular in that day. He looked so young and handsome, and though his eyes were on the person taking the picture, his hand was wrapped around Stella's, and she clung to his arm with her free hand.

“Is that the Jimmy Echohawk who raised you?” Stella demanded again.

My eyes shot to hers, unable to comprehend the meaning of what I was seeing. I nodded dumbly.

“Blue?” Wilson questioned, completely confused.

“What are you trying to tell me? What is this?” I gasped, finding my voice and shoving the book toward Stella, who still knelt in front of me.

“Jimmy Echohawk was Winona's father!” Stella cried out, “He wasn't just a..a . . . random stranger!” Stella opened the book once more. Her shock was as clearly as pronounced as my own.

“Bloody 'ell!” Wilson swore next to me, his curse ringing out in the little sitting room that had turned into a house of mirrors.

“Ms. Hidalgo, you need to start talking,” Wilson insisted, his voice firm and his hand tight on mine. “I don't know what kind of game you think this is –”

“I'm not playing games, young man!” Stella cried. “I don't
know
what this means. All I know is that I met Jimmy Echohawk when I was twenty-one years old. It was 1975. I had just graduated from college, and I accompanied my father to several Indian reservations throughout Oklahoma.” Stella shook her head as she spoke, as if she couldn't believe what she was saying.

“My father was a member of a tribal council that was trying to get federal status restored to the Paiute people. The Paiute tribes had had their Federal status terminated in the 1950s. Which meant maintaining our lands and our water rights – what little we had – was almost impossible. The Southern Paiutes had dwindled to near extinction. We went to several different reservations in addition to the remaining bands of Paiutes trying to build support among other tribes for our cause.”

My head was swimming, and the plight of the Paiute people was, sadly, way down on my list of things-I-need-to-know-at-this-very-minute.

“Ms. Hidalgo, you're going to need to move this story along a little,” Wilson prompted.

Stella nodded, obviously at a loss as to where to start or what was even relevant.

“It was love at first sight. I was reserved, and so was he. Yet, we were instantly comfortable with each other. We weren't in Oklahoma long, and my father did not like Jimmy. He was worried that I would be distracted from the future I had planned.” She shrugged her shoulders. “He was right to be worried. I had dreamed of being the the next Sarah Winnemucca, and all at once the only thing I could think about was becoming Mrs. Jimmy Echohawk.”

Hearing Jimmy's name on Stella's lips in that context was another jolt. I didn't even ask who Sarah Winnemucca was. Another day, another story.

“We wrote letters back and forth for almost a year. By then I was working for Larry Shivwa, who later worked in the Carter Administration in Indian Relations,” Stella rushed on. “Jimmy wanted to be closer to me. He came out West . . . just to be near me. He was an extremely talented woodcarver. He had received some national recognition for his work, and had started selling his carvings. He had been saving to open a shop . . .”  Her voice dwindled off, and she seemed reluctant to continue. But the time for silence was past, and I pushed her forward.

“Stella? I need you to tell me what happened,” I demanded, forcing her to look at me. Her eyes were filled with regret and her shoulders narrowed with defeat.

“Jimmy took his savings and bought a pickup truck and a camp trailer. And he came here. He knew my father wouldn't support a marriage at that point. My career was really taking off. And I had a responsibility to my community. I was the first in my family to graduate from college, and one of the first Paiute girls ever. I had been groomed for bigger things. So . . . we saw each other behind my parents' backs. I was angry with them. I was an adult, and Jimmy was a good Native man. I didn't understand why I couldn't have both. But I proved them right in the end. And, truthfully, I blamed them because it was easier than blaming myself. I used my parents as an excuse. The truth was, I was ambitious, and I feared losing my ambition. I feared becoming like my mother, stuck on a reservation, poor, unnoticed, unremarkable.”

“What happened?” Wilson urged her on.

“Jimmy Carter was elected President in 1976, and I was invited to go back and work in Washington, DC in the office of Indian affairs as an assistant to Secretary Shivwa. My father was sure I would be instrumental in getting the Paiute Tribal status reinstated. So I went. Jimmy never told me not to go. He told me he loved me . . . but he never begged me to stay.

“I found out about six weeks later that I was pregnant. I stayed in Washington DC until my boss, who was good friends with my parents, called them and ratted me out. By that time, I was seven months pregnant, and I wasn't able to hide my figure in high-waisted dresses and shawls. I was too far along to fly home, so I stayed on, even though I was embarrassed and my parents were ashamed. When Winnie was born, I left Washington DC and came home. But Jimmy was long gone. And I was too proud to find him.”

“Jimmy never knew?” I whispered, devastated for the man who raised me.

“I never told him.”

“But then . . . how did . . . how did he find me?” I had no other conclusion to draw. Somehow Jimmy had found me . . . and he had taken me from my mother.

“I don't know,” Stella whispered. “It doesn't make any sense.”

“Winona never knew her father?” Wilson asked gently. He was the only one who seemed capable of stringing two thoughts together.

“We allowed her to think my parents were her parents. I called them Mom and Dad and that's what she called them, and we all lived together when I wasn't traveling. My mother raised her while I continued to work as a liason for Indian Affairs. And in 1980 President Carter signed legislation that restored federal recognition to the Paiute tribes and called for a Paiute Reservation. I like to think I had something to do with it. It made the mess I'd made of my personal life a little easier to bear.”

“But what about Jimmy?” I whispered, stunned that he might have never even known he had a child. The Jimmy I knew had lived so simply and had had so little. I felt anger rise in my chest at this woman who had never even told him about his daughter.

“I didn't know how to find him, Blue. I should have tried harder, I know. But it was a different time. In the 1970s, you didn't just make a quick phone call to an Indian reservation. In fact, you can hardly do that now! I managed some contact with Jimmy's mother, but she died a few years after Winona was born. Jimmy's brother said he didn't know where he was. I was pretty conflicted. I loved Jimmy, but I had traded him for my dreams . . . and I lost him. I thought someday we would find each other again, and maybe I would be able to explain.”

“Maybe Winona did find him,” Wilson pondered out loud. “She was seen in Oklahoma. Why else would she have gone to Oklahoma?”

“But . . . I don't think Jimmy ever went back. She wouldn't have found him there,” Stella protested, clearly befuddled by it all.

“But she wouldn't have known that, would she? Is there any way she might have discovered who her father was?”

“My dad passed away when Winnie was fifteen, and my mother died the very next year. Their deaths were very hard on Winnie. I decided it was time to tell her that I was her mother. I thought it would make her feel less alone, not moreso. I don't seem to have very good instincts with such things because she didn't deal with it well. She wanted to know everything about her father . . . about why he didn't stick around. I had to explain that it was my fault. But I could tell she didn't believe me. I showed her some pictures of him. I wonder if she was the one who took these.” Stella fingered the empty squares as she continued with her story.

“She started acting out in school. She had some run-ins with the police over drugs. It wasn't long after that she got pregnant. All talk of her father ceased. And I thought she had let it go, that she'd moved on to other concerns. We never spoke of her father again.”

Stella Hidalgo began putting the photo album back in the box when she hesitated and felt around the box, pulling various items from inside.

“The letters are gone,” she announced and looked up at me. “The letters are gone! I kept all of Jimmy's letters. They were here. I haven't opened this box since I showed Winona those pictures more than twenty years ago.”

“The letters would have given her some valuable information, including a return address,” Wilson proposed. Stella nodded, and she was silent while she digested the possibility that Winona had gone looking for her father.

“The last time I talked to Winnie, she kept ranting about men who never take responsibility . . . about the injustices of life.” Stella's voice was thoughtful, and her expression suggested she was examining the memory. “I just thought she was talking about Ethan. She said she was going to confront him and make him answer for what he'd done. I thought she was talking about Ethan,” Stella insisted again, almost pleading. “I was afraid. She was so angry, talking about getting even. I even called Ethan and warned him. I didn't like Ethan Jacobsen, or his parents, for that matter, but I didn't want him hurt, for Winnie's sake as much as for his own.”

“She didn't find Jimmy in Oklahoma, but maybe Jimmy's brother told her about Cheryl,” I said, chewing on possibilities. Stella frowned at me, clearly puzzled.

“Cheryl? Cheryl was quite a bit younger than Jimmy. She was only about twelve when Jimmy and I met, and she didn't live on the reservation. Her mother was a white girl who had an affair with Jimmy's father. I only knew about her because Jimmy had a lot of hard feelings toward his father, and the affair was a big part of it.”

It was hard for me to imagine Cheryl at twelve. She was in her late forties now and didn't wear her age well.

“Cheryl lives in Nevada. She raised me when Jimmy died,” I supplied, hoping Jimmy's death wouldn't come as a shock, but my grandmother nodded as if she knew.

“Jimmy's brother sent me a letter when they found Jimmy's remains. He never mentioned anything about you,” Stella said tearfully.

“Why would he? I never met any of them. They knew nothing about me,” I explained.

We sat in silence, each of us mentally unwinding the tangle of secrets and supposition that had led us to this point in the story.

“Jimmy said he found me in a restaurant booth. I'd been asleep. He waited with me until my mother returned. He told Cheryl that that my mother acted strange, but he thought it was because
he
was a stranger, sitting with her child. Maybe it was because she recognized him, and he had taken her by surprise.”

“We know Jimmy didn't hurt your mother, Blue. The police found the man who did,” Wilson offered emphatically, as if he knew where my thoughts had wandered.

“Jimmy would never have hurt a soul,” Stella agreed. “But I don't understand how you ended up with him.”