Manroot (3 page)

He picked up a piece to aid him, and soon found that sniffing helped him make the right choice.

In his absence, the woman turned to Katherine and held out the stick. “Here, girl, stir…the paddle-side down in the kettle, like this.”

Timidly, Katherine took the paddle from her and stirred the pot evenly to keep the mixture from burning.
Watching the girl for a minute, she spoke aloud, though really to herself. “Damn dummy. With chasing him around, I could have broken that paddle – cypress wood. I don’t know where I could have got another one…cypress don’t grow around here.”

“
Yes, ma’am,” Katherine murmured.

Satisfied that the right wood was being fetched and the
girl was stirring properly, the woman left to fetch more spices from the kitchen. When she returned, Jesse appeared, laden with sticks. She took the wood, and piece by piece carefully placed it under the kettle. “Can’t let the wood touch the bottom of the kettle or it’ll ruin the apple butter.”

From her apron pocket, she retrieved several cinnamon sticks and dropped them in the middle of the bubbling mixture.
“Now stir faster, girl. Faster. I’m making this batch out of last year’s dried apples, and it can be tricky. That’s better, but not quite it.” Again rushing off to the kitchen, she returned with a smallish crock. She poured some thick syrup into the kettle and watched it bubble. “Sorghum…it needed more sorghum. It’s tricky working with dried apples instead of fresh.”

The woman circled the pot again, sniffing loudly.
Reaching over, she removed the wooden spoon from Katherine’s hand, took a bit of the apple butter, blew on it and finally touched it to her lips. “That’s it,” she said confidently. “That’s right…now I’ve got the best darn apple butter in Castlewood, if I say so myself.”

They stood in silence as Katherine continued stirring the bubbling mixture.
Sweat formed on her forehead from the effort. Frieda watched carefully, occasionally nodding her head to indicate that everything was okay.

Once again tasting the mixture, she pronounced it
‘done.’ Handing Jesse two large quilted pot-holders, she told him to bring in the kettle.

They followed her into the kitchen. Jesse’s neck bulged as he maneuvered the heavy, scalding pot. She indicated a low porcelain table. “Put it there…it needs to cool.”

The kitchen was spotless, large and bright.
A black wood stove took up an entire corner of the room, and on the wall above it hung bright copper pots of various sizes. The bottom half of the walls were wood painted apple-green, and the top half was papered, in a busy design of trellis with ivy leaves winding through that made the room seem like a covered garden. On the window-sills clay pots of herbs thrived, filling the air with a thick spicy scent. The table was oblong and spread with a cloth of immaculate white linen. The chairs were covered by seat cushions tied to the rungs, and on the back of each chair was a carefully applied decal of fuzzy yellow ducks splashing happily in a puddle. The linoleum shone brightly with numerous waxings and its pattern was one of a real wood floor. You could feel the woman’s pride in the kitchen; she ruled here. Firmly she placed her hands on her ample hips.

“
Now,” she said, looking from one to the other. “What do you want?”

“
Work,” answered Jesse, fighting his urge to say too much.

She gave him a piercing glance.
“We do need a handyman – it’s almost the season. Last handyman we had just took off, that’s why I was using the dummy, but we don’t need any maids,” and she looked toward Katherine.

“
That’s all right, ma’am,” Jesse spoke up eagerly. “That’s my girl, Katherine. You’ll get two for the price of one,” and he listed his skills rapidly, lying through his teeth.

Frieda looked from him to her sternly.
Her heart softened as a mother who had lost her only child. She was drawn to the girl. She studied Jesse’s face carefully. She had seen his kind before – he was a drifter, she’d bet her life on it. She knew the answer before she asked the question, which she put in the form of a statement. “We don’t tolerate a drinking handyman ‘round here.”

Watching the girl, she saw her eyes drop to the floor.

The smell of something burning forced her decision. “Forgot the biscuits on account of that dummy.” She drew open the stove and brought out the trays to cool. The biscuits were far darker than she would have liked.

“
Wait here,” she commanded, and left them standing in the kitchen.

“
Bitch,” he muttered softly at her retreating back. “Red-headed, smart-aleck bitch.”

Katherine, like someone who was used to being turned away, still held her bundle, reluctant to put it down.

In a few minutes, the woman reappeared. “Mr. Taylor, he’s the owner, he said it’s okay. It’s five dollars a week, room and board, but we can’t be paying for any maids.”

Jesse nodded his consent and Frieda went on pushing her luck.
“Well, long as the girl’s here, she can help me in the kitchen, so’s she might learn in case he decides to hire a maid.”

“
Yes, ma’am,” Katherine agreed, liking the prospect.

Frieda smiled at the girl, feeling she had a bargain in her that would be offset with the father.

She led them through to the back, to show them the room that would be theirs. It was beneath the lattices of the back porch that led to the guestrooms.

Theirs was a small room containing two iron beds.
It had wallpaper depicting oversized roses that had once been brilliant red, long since faded to an agreeable pink. The floor was covered with a floral rug, and around the edges, worn linoleum peeked out. A massive wardrobe stood in one corner, next to a matching tiger-wood dresser that gleamed with the industry of a former occupant’s hand-rubbed wax. The mirror above it, while clear, was cracked evenly from one lower corner to the opposite upper corner. The doily on the dresser was starched to a parchment consistency and its fluted edges stood up in graceful curves. The table between the beds had a matching doily, and square in the middle sat a radio.

Frieda caught Katherine
’s glance. “It works. The owner of that radio drowned in the river two summers ago, so now it’s part of the furnishings, and it’s up to me to see that it stays here.” They could not help but grasp her meaning.

She plumped the pillows.
“Real clean we are here, you don’t need to be ‘fraid of no bugs. Pillows are down, real good sleepin’, not like some of the pillows you get today…stuffed with chicken feathers…pert near put your eyes out. This room’s almost as nice as the guests’,” she said with pride.

Then, like a woman who has forgotten her manners in front of company, she said, “
Oh, I’m Frieda Broom.” She caught the man’s smirk and felt the need to go on. “Good Christian name it is, too.” She waited for him to share the same information.

“
I’m Jesse Sheahan. My friends call me Jess – and this here’s my girl, Katherine.”

She nodded, satisfied.
“Work starts around five. I’ll need the wood-basket filled, and then I’ll need help in the kitchen. We serve the guests at eight…’course, it’s light right now, season starts heavy in June.” They all nodded in a curious unison. She left them, closing the door softly.

“
Oh Papa, Papa!” Katherine gushed, her face pink with excitement. “It’s beautiful! Let’s stay here forever.” She ran around the room with unaccustomed gaiety, opening drawers, looking into the wardrobe and finding some old magazines there. She grabbed a couple and sat in the armchair carefully turning the pages, drinking in the sight of beautiful dresses as she studied the advertisements as if they were priceless works of art.

He stood at the sink splashing water on his face and running a broken pink plastic comb through his hair.

“Going out, honey, to see what’s around here.”

They both knew he was goi
ng to spend their last silver dollar.

After looking at both magazines twice, Katherine neatly laid them aside and began unwrapping her bundle. Her two spare dresses she hung in the wardrobe; her cotton nightgown was clean, as she had washed it in a sparkling creek only two days ago. Among her meager possessions was the tattered ‘God’s eye’ Mama Rose and she had made a long time ago; she placed it on the dresser. The twigs were intact and the yarn had started to unravel in only one place. It was the only thing she possessed from her mother – that and the turquoise nugget earrings in her ears. From the bundle she took out a faded Sunday-school card with a picture of Jesus, which had been given to her at a church in Gallup years ago. The remembrance of that Sunday, the sound of the organ and the stern nun who taught at the church school telling her and the other Indian children that they must give up their heathen ways, was not a pleasant memory. Yet Katherine was afraid to throw the battered card way. It was her father’s religion and she kept it for his sake.

After settling her things she put away her father
’s belongings, brushing his worn clothes carefully.

She took off her dusty dress and, using the basin, she dipped the wash-rag
in the luxurious hot water and washed herself clean with the fragrant soap she found there – Camay. She had seen this very soap in the magazines. She replaced the bar, regretting that so much of it was now gone.

Pulling down the white chenille spread, she
climbed into bed, weary with the many miles they had walked today. Remembering, she got up and knelt by the bed and mumbled her father’s prayers, rushing over the words, not feeling the meaning at all. He had taught her the ‘Our Father’ when she was very small, and she said it every night no matter where they slept, but to her it was merely a superstition she kept for his sake. She tumbled over the words rapidly until they became one long, unintelligible sound. Climbing back into bed, she quickly reached the place between sleep and wakefulness; then she heard it – soft strains of music coming up from the river. She shivered with exhaustion and happiness. As the strangers danced under the lanterns and stars at Castlewood, she slept. She never heard her father come in, even though he stumbled, bumped into the furniture, cursed loudly and finally fell into bed, fully dressed. He snored loudly and before morning he had soiled his clothes.

Chapter 2

They learned the work, Katherine doing hers well.
Secretly she did some of her father’s chores, too, so they would be allowed to stay. Frieda took to the girl in her rough way; not knowing how to express her affection she was often gruff. Her words to another person might have given offense but Katherine, who had not known the company of other women, took none even when the older woman compared her unfavorably with her lost daughter, Anna.

Over shelling the peas or peeling the potatoes, this close kitchen w
ork often promoted talk of the lost Anna.

Frieda was a well-kept woman for her age, her figure large and ample, not really fat, just large and raw-boned.
Her best feature was her naturally curly hair, the once-brilliant red now kept bright by a henna rinse to cover the grey. She pretended even to herself that it was a treatment like hot oil, not really an alteration of the truth. After all, the package bragged that Egyptian women used it, perhaps even Cleopatra had…it was a shampoo, a treatment, not a dye.

Her cheeks needed no rouge as they were often red from the stove in the kitchen, but she liberally applied color to her full lips; a major portion of her small check was spent on cosmetics of various kinds.
On Mondays when there wasn’t much kitchen work Frieda often painted her nails a brilliant red and wore rhinestone rings that turned her fingers green. Katherine had never seen her without the large pair of gold cameo earrings that dangled from her ears as a permanent adornment. They must have been a gift or an heirloom as they were far too expensive for her to have bought them out of her salary. Her eyes were large, piercing blue, and rather cold. She had learned about the world a long time ago and the way that it worked.

On Monday afternoon Katherine fol
lowed Frieda’s leisurely pace. With the weekend over and the rooms vacated and cleaned, they had only to prepare supper for the staff of five. As they worked, the snap of the peas broke the silence between them. Frieda cleared her throat once or twice, which was her way of introducing talk of some kind.

“
No, my Anna would never have been in this kitchen the way you are. She wasn’t cut out for this sort of menial work.”

Katherine nodded in agreement.

“No, not my Anna. She’s probably sitting in a fine parlor somewhere.”

“
She is?” Katherine blurted out, for up until now, reference to Anna had always been in the past tense, as if she had died in some romantic, tragic manner.

Frieda threw her a withering look, and Katherine stared down into the bowl of shelled pe
as. Satisfied that there would be no more interruptions, Frieda continued: “No, maybe not a parlor, maybe they couldn’t let her go. She could be sitting on an emerald-green lawn somewhere, her arms heavy with gold bracelets. He could be singing to her…love songs, probably.”

She grew silent, enjoying the pictures in her mind.
After a time, she continued her monologue.

“
But if that’s where she is, the King must have chosen her to be his Queen. How marvelous, Anna so fair…imagine her as Queen of the gypsies. Yes, if she’s still with them, then surely they must have chosen her to be their Queen.”

Katherine
’s hands shook with anxiety; she bit her lip hard to still the questions that flooded her mind and imagination.

The clock ticked, the stove sputtered, and in h
er private reverie Frieda was still. She would tell it in her own way, in her own time.

Frieda rose and put a pan of water on the stove, retrieved the bowl from Katherine, and the water again sputtered as she tipped in the peas.
From the boiling kettle she poured two cups of sassafras tea, added three heaped teaspoons of dark honey to her cup, and stirred it slowly.

She took a sip then looked at Katherine, an unnamed anger in her face.
“She was a beauty, beautiful baby she was,” and she peered at the girl unkindly. “Not dark like you. No, she wasn’t dark – her skin was like polished ivory, so white, so fair. Anna’s hair curled around my little finger…her hair wasn’t straight like yours. The ringlets, golden like burnished brass, it hurt your eyes to look at that crop of hair in the sunlight, and her eyes…so blue, like the sky on a summer day. She was a beautiful child, my Anna. That’s why I lost her.”

Frieda
’s eyes misted and she drew up the corner of her apron; wiping her eyes, then blowing into the cloth she cleared her nose. Katherine took no offense at the unkind words. She knew instinctively that this was like the times Papa was drunk and said cruel things. Some deep pain within the older woman ached so, that she took comfort in saying these things to Katherine.

She continued, her voice a monotone, “
But what’s a mother to do? It’s a mother’s sorrow that she was born so special. They couldn’t help it, I know that…they couldn’t help stealing my baby.” Frieda leaned across the table and clutched Katherine’s hand as she imparted the information. “It was the gypsies. They do that – they steal very special children.”

Katherine squeezed the older woman
’s hand. “I’m sorry. Oh Frieda, I’m so sorry,” she said. Tears brimmed in her eyes.

Frieda pulled her hand away and said roughly, “
No sorrier than I.” Then her face crumpled and she began weeping quietly again.

In an attempt to console the woman, Katherine committed the gravest error.
“They’re awful, those gypsies. We saw them once in their camp drinking wine and dancing. My father said they were dirty, so dirty, their minds always plotting things…awful things.”

Whatever else Katherine planned on saying was frozen in her throat as Frieda looked up, her mascara smeared with tears.
She leaned toward Katherine, her eyes blazing with fury and she hissed at the girl: “No, no! Those that stole my Anna were different. It was the caravan of the King. They sat on velvet cushions – drank their wine from golden goblets, and the music…their violins sang with voices like angels. They camped behind our house in the woods, the house I used to live in. They saw Anna where I laid her in the sun on a snowy blanket…and they were dazzled.” Her head shook with remembering. “Oh, I snatched her away many times when I saw them creeping in the bushes, their eyes feasting on my baby’s beauty. Oh no, they wanted her to marry their prince. I saw him – a dark handsome child, carried around in a carved chair. It was them that stole her and in her place they left these earrings.” She raised her hands to feel them now. She nodded, affirming the tale, rose wearily and went to the stove to stir the pots.

Katherine shook with horror and fascination at the telling, and that night she barely ate her supper.
In bed she shivered and could not decide whether it was horror or joy that she felt at Anna’s destiny. She got out of bed twice, mumbled the ‘Our Father,’ and fell asleep thinking that she was safe, for she was not beautiful and Frieda had told her she was too dark.

The summer
went by in a series of easy days and long nights. She heard tales from the maid, Sally, of dancing and men who gave her presents, and how they loved her. Sally often coaxed her to come along to Castlewood, but Katherine would not go. Instead, she sat on the hill and listened to the music, watching the shadows in the distance of couples around the pool dancing close, under paper lanterns.

Her father went there every Saturday.
Combing his hair into a pompadour, he set off to the clubhouse and played cards and drank; many times he came home smelling of cheap perfume.

It was a night in August when she first heard it.
The moon was full – an orange ball against the sky. Katherine lay in the tall grass on the hill and found Ursa Major. She traced Orion’s belt and she was happy in a vague way. It came at first as a low wail, eerie, calling, crying, seeking its place. She knew…Me Maw had told her of it – it was the ‘Oh mu.’ She had never heard its cry, but she remembered her grandmother’s words…

When she was a child in Gallup, Katherine had loved staying with her grandmother. The adobe house at the edge of town was small and intimate, with windows that opened out onto a vast space. In the distance she could see Window Rock. It looked like the entrance to the world. She was happy roaming in the yard and running around the rocks, the dust rising as she played with the sticks that became her companions. She chased lizards, wanting to feel, just for a moment, their coolness squirming in her small brown hand.

It wa
s here in this very house a long time ago that she had awoken at dawn as the morning star rose and a cock crowed in the darkness, and she had felt it to be magic. She had crawled into Me Maw’s bed to tell her of it and the old woman held her, shivering and rocking, murmuring against her silken hair, the ancient words spoken in the Navajo tongue.

On that particular day she had been given permission to play with the colorful maracas from
Laredo, brought here by her grandfather whom she didn’t remember. She skipped outside in the blowing dust and tried to make music, and eventually the sun set over the rocks into a purple twilight and she smelled the cooking of corn cakes. In the wind she felt an unknown excitement, and seeing a clump of tumbleweeds spinning in the dusk, she began spinning with it. She spun around and around, the world passing her by, again and again, her head swimming dizzily. The scene rotated wildly about her – house, rocks, purple sky…visited again and again in her mad whirling.

Finally, unable to keep her balance any longer, she lurched and fell laughing to the hard earth.
The bush scratched her cheek and when the ground stopped spinning, she saw a large hare, not two feet from her, poised, ready to leap away. Instead he stretched toward her, his nose twitching, and from under the soft fur, his throat worked. She heard a soft peal of sound…something she had never heard before.

The hare turned and hopped away.
Katherine ran screaming with excitement to the house, knocking over a bundle of dried herbs in the doorway, scattering them across the floor.

“
Me Maw! Me Maw! Oh, Me Maw –”

Her grandmother opened her arms to catch the frantic child and held her against her ample bosom.
A small fire played shadows on the wall, and she tried to calm the child.

Katherine whispered into the old woman
’s ear.

The corn cakes on the table were forgotten.
While her grandmother found a clean cotton rag, she put a bottle to heat on the stove.

“
Perhaps it’s a small mosquito buzzing in your ear,” she said, reassuring the child.

Katherine allowed the old woman to put the sweet oil in her ears.

“Me Maw, it wasn’t a mosquito. I don’t hear anything now.”

The old woman held her close, wishing to protect her.
She said solemnly, “The rabbit is small and insignificant, always before it – temptation. Its life runs rapidly across the land, it gives birth to more than one and it lives in silence. Only in the moment of its death can it squeal in protest. It knows that it is better not to tell!” She rocked the child, who believed she was telling another story.

“
But Me Maw,” she interrupted. “It said it very clear. It spoke to me. I understood it!”

“
Yes, child, tell me again. What did it say?”

“
It said,
‘You are one of the ones who knows.’”

The woman shivered and embraced t
he child tightly for, like all her people, she believed the hare was the totem and the child had been born under an unlucky star…

“
It is a gift, Katherine,” she said, calling her by her given name. “It would be better if you could, to give it back, but that is not possible.”

So instead, from that day on, she began to teach the child the magic!

Now, leaving the Oh mu, Katherine rose and ran stumbling back to their room in the hotel.
She must not sleep. She bolted the door. She worried about her father, for often he drank too much and slept somewhere on the road. It was too dark; she could never find him.

She worried about Frieda.
She knew she could never explain the danger to her, but she must try.

She knocked loudly on Frieda
’s door, and finally it was answered. The older woman was wide awake; her hair was mussed and she wore a filmy black gown. “What is it?” she snapped.

“
That sound,” Katherine blurted out. “It’s the Oh mu.”

Behind Frieda she could hear the creak of bedsprings and a man
’s voice saying, “What is it, Frieda?”

It was Mr. Taylor.
Frieda thought, what’s the difference? Now she knows how the world works. Women do what they must. Jobs all season were hard to find.

The air split with the shrill whistle from the firehouse.

“It’s nothing,” Frieda yawned. “Go back to bed. It’s only the siren from the firehouse – it means someone has drowned in the river.”

But it was not the sound of the siren that Katherine meant, for it had come well before the shrill whistle.
Back in bed, the girl stayed awake until she saw the first light of dawn.