Alma Mater

Damned if he’s getting a roast on Thursday! He knows they’re for Sundays only, but he still asks for them today. We’ve been married two years, Christopher, and he still thinks he can tell me when to make a roast for him. If he had to slave over this hot stove for three hours making sure the meat was cooked just right, he would flat-out insist on having roasts on just Sundays. Maybe every other Sunday.

He’ll get salt pork tonight, and potatoes. Of course he’ll complain about not getting his precious roast- but he’ll eat it because, Christopher, no one around can make salt pork like your Ma can. It’s not boasting when it’s the truth after all. But that’s really not the point; the roast isn’t even the point, really.

What is the point? Oh, yeah.

Your pa calls it ‘stickin’ to your guns.’ Says it all the time when the bank comes out this way, or when the ranchers the next parcel over harass him about water rights. He just stands himself out on the porch and stares dead at whatever fool banker or ranch-hand comes by- they usually end up leavin’ after asking about the weather. Sometimes if I’m out in the yard doing something, I stand over in a corner and watch your pa make fools out of them... sometimes I help him out.

Lord alive, Christopher, your ma’s having a time coming to the point today... maybe it’s because your pa got all lathered about having a roast today, and when he gets his back up about something it’s hard to get it down. He sticks to his guns around the ranch and in town- I stick to mine in the kitchen.

We’ve got a good life, Christopher, but it doesn’t come easy- still, if it came easy, I don’t know if it would be as good. Sometimes I think your pa’d be happier doing something else other than watching cattle walk around and eat grass all day, but as they say, marriage is the done thing. People think a man should settle down sometime... a woman *has* to settle down sometime. Wish I could have done different, but there you go.

Your parents are stubborn folk, son. Remember that the next time you try to grab a cookie from the jar when my back is turned- remember that I’m not going to let you get away with it, but please keep trying anyway. Stick to your guns, Christopher. Get that cookie, or get caught trying. One day, maybe you’ll find something else worth sticking to your guns for. A lady maybe, or a ranch somewhere... or maybe friends who’d die for you and in turn you’d die for them.

Stick to your guns, Christopher- literally and figuratively.

A man needs conviction, I guess- Lord knows a woman does, too.

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Look at you there, laughing at me! What are you laughing about, if I may ask? Will a tickle get you to spill your secret? Ahh... no, no. Only more laughter- it’s about time you gave something back to me, young man! Besides, I haven’t much next to my father’s name and this too-tight corset; you’ll have the first, but not the second- then again, I doubt you’d want it anyway. It’s no good, really- the whalebone is old and pokes me in the ribs right beneath my breasts, and the laces are just about to go.

You’ve taken one thing from me already- you took it the first time I heard you laugh. That’s my laugh, though a high and babyish version of it, I’m hearing. What are you laughing at, I ask you? Ohh... the man with the trained monkey in the streets? That’s Zeke- the man, I mean, not the monkey- although the monkey is probably better company than he is.

I should know- Zeke likes to punch women when he gets drunk. The monkey can’t get drunk, and so you can see why the monkey would be better company than Zeke is. And Zeke... Zeke is the reason why I couldn’t nurse you last night, Bucklin. I’m real sorry I had to give you a bottle, but I just couldn’t...

Enough of that. Bruises will go away eventually. For now, just sit on my lap and look out the window with me. Look at everyone else besides Zeke and his monkey. Do you see Mr. and Ms. Lucas there, down in front of the store? Now that Mr. Lucas is a real gentleman; he leaves off his wedding ring when he comes around and wears a big, fancy cloak that hides his body, just like the kind a king in fairy tales would wear.

Men... Oh, don’t cry honey. I’m a bit biased, I know. One day you might feel the same way, one day when you get old enough to know what the bruises on my face and breasts mean. You might not understand it, and I don’t expect you to. No man can understand a woman, but maybe I can help you out a bit.

Treat ‘em nice, Bucklin. That’s really all a woman wants in the end, is to be treated nice. When I say ‘nice’, I don’t mean always laying your coat over a mud puddle or opening doors. Any man with a coat or an arm can do that. It’s harder than it sounds- you have to know her, know what she thinks ‘nice’ is. When I was little, I thought ‘nice’ would be a prince come to take me away to his castle. When I was thirteen, I thought ‘nice’ would be the boy down the street with the sweet smile. When I was twenty, I thought ‘nice’ would be the one man that night who fell asleep after the first time.

It’s hard, giving up ‘nice’ so often, but many things are hard, and we might as well make the best of them. That’s a good lesson, Bucklin, for men and women, but for women, it’s sometimes so much harder.

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You’re only two and you have your father’s jaw.

And his eyes, and his hair, and one day you’ll have his body. You might even have his heavy hand, too, when it comes to keeping a woman in the kitchen or at her knitting. I don’t mind it- those who know of a woman’s good works will praise her in the gates, Proverbs says, but I haven’t heard so much as a whisper about my sewing or cooking except when there’s something wrong with it.

You don’t have anything of me, that I can see. Well, you’re his child- I just carried you around for nine months. Ha... you got pretty heavy after a while, Josiah, but you’re a nice weight in my arms right now.

Josiah... He was a character in the Bible. Your father likes those Biblical names; maybe it’s a Sanchez thing. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John... at least there isn’t a Habbakkuk or Haggiai in your family tree. Poor men... Could you imagine introducing yourself as Habbakkuk Sanchez?

Me, my name is Esther- you know, the Jewish princess who destroyed Haman? Now, there was a woman! Judith, Deborah, Ruth... the Bible has so many strong women in it, even if your father preaches otherwise. Proverbs says ‘Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.’ That’s a worthy woman, and I know far more than most men would have you believe.

There are more worthy people, too, than most men would think. Most men of the missionarying sort, at any rate- your father just doesn’t seem to know when to quit. I used to help him, until you came along and now I don’t know if I could ever go back to it. Your father would say I have a weak, inconsistent spirit.

But I’ve seen the angry way the Indians and the Chinese look at him when he starts shouting and I don’t know what they’re saying, but I can tell that they’re curse words. And they throw those same looks at me when I walk to market- they don’t say anything, though. Until you came along, I never noticed those looks or those words; but now I see them and hear them even in my sleep.

There’s lots of different ways a’ thinking, Josiah, and every person thinks his way is right. Lord knows I used to think my way was the right way, but when those people glare at me and gesture... that’s hatred and loss in their eyes, Josiah, not the devil. I have to bear it, though, and help your father- the Lord’s path isn’t an easy one, and I think it’s harder for a woman when missionarying is everything.

Still, sometimes I think there must be something else.

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There has to be something else past this, past cooking and cleaning and more cooking and more cleaning and still more cooking and cleaning.

I figure that it’s you, J.D.

When you’re a single woman there’s not much you can do in the way of earning a living and some of those things I can’t bring myself to do on a regular basis. Cooking, cleaning... I’ve done those things every day of my life and I’m used to them, so I guess I might as well keep doing them. It won’t make a spot of difference to my hands, all rough from lye and holding wet rags all day. Sometimes the silver polish works its way into the cuts on my fingers and burns.

See my hands? All red and chapped, with the skin on my fingers shiny from being used too much, like the leather on the old saddles in the stables you like to visit so much. I have this lotion I buy sometimes but it doesn’t seem to help as much as it should, I’m afraid, and a couple years ago I used it all on you... you got horrible diaper rash.

There’s not much money for lotion nowadays. The war drove the prices up on a lot of things, and bread does a body more good than lotion ever will. Between food and rent and trying to save a little something... well, there’s not much left over.

Maybe you’ll have a better life. I want it as a mother... want you to have a good life with good things and not having to cook and clean and rub lotion into your hands at the end of the day and beg with the landlord to give you one more week on your rent.

One day we’ll see about getting you down to those stables proper-like. It gets tiresome chasing you down there and apologizing to the stablemaster for letting you slip out of my sights again. After the last time when that hunter almost stepped on you when you bent down to look at a cut on its ankle... I swear, J.D., my heart almost stopped dead from fear.

Still, the man did admit you had a way with horses- I hope that’ll be your ticket out of here. That, and that endless curiosity that has you getting into anything you can put your hands on. If I can’t save up money for your schooling, boy, I know you’ll be smart enough to make something of yourself. If you can’t get your book-knowledge in school, then I’ll be the one who helps you learn.

Now come on over here, kid, and let your mother read to ya.

Put that frog down... no, no frogs in the house.

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Do you know how hard it is to be a woman, child?

Of course you don’t- you never. All I can give you is what I know how to do, what can guarantee my survival. And if it can guarantee a woman’s survival, it can guarantee a man’s. Some call it evil, and perhaps they’re right, but it can clothe my back and wrap you in quilts, put food in my belly and milk in yours. Is it truly evil then, to just survive?

I had sisters, you know. Real sisters, your real aunts, not the ones who come from nowhere to take you from me for a weekend. I had two of them, Madeleine and Lisa, both older, both with hair just as blond as mine and eyes just as blue. When we were little, we would chase each other and play together.

As we grew, though, joy ran away like water down the panes of glass in the only window our house had. Madeleine married some man... I don’t even know his name, and never found out; one morning, she just disappeared and Father said she’d run off and eloped with an officer in the Army. Lisa and I couldn’t play outside any more, or go to the store to fetch the few things our mother needed to keep the house in food and clothing.

Instead, we stayed by her side and sewed things, sewed until our eyes stung with exhaustion and the very joints of our fingers burned like the few tallow candles that lit the space around our chairs. But this sewing was good for a few things beyond putting food on our table; my fingers, see how delicate and fine they are? Fingers that can sew a tiny stitch can conceal a card in a sleeve, a pale white hand can distract the eye of a wealthy banker.

When I left, finally, leaving Lisa to care for our mother, I used those hands. I didn’t sew, my child. I stole food and a purse from a fat old man, and begged another to teach me how to play poker in exchange for... Well, I can’t tell you that now, if ever.

And that is how it started. You will not remember me telling you, but perhaps that is the way things should be. I can’t chain you, dear, I can’t make you weak, not when surviving is the key and she who survives- or he- is the strongest.

So you see, Ezra, I will never be sorry for what I’ve done. God may judge me for it, and if He does, I’ll ask him, "What of it?" Life is a game of chance and risk, little boy, and the winners win by cutting their odds, by out-thinking and outsmarting the rest. There is no shame in that.

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Please, never be ashamed of me.

Some day soon we’ll be free, you know. Free in one way or another, I suppose; we shall see each other in the afterlife when these shackles have gone and we no longer have to trudge in and out of rows of cotton. Perhaps soon, perhaps in your lifetime, we will be freed by those who know what is done to us is wrong.

Maybe. But for now, we work and wait and watch; one day, you may look back on us, at the way we lurked in shadows waiting, and burn with shame and wonder why we took it, why we didn’t just do something to end it... to find some justice for ourselves.

Your owner can take many things from you, Nathan. He can take your clothes, the little handcarved toys your father gave you the day you came from my womb, the charms your grandfather laid on your head to protect you from evil spirits. He can take your name, Nathan. He can take us. He cannot take your pride, though, unless you let him.

We were not always like this, you know. Not always the quiet people who spoke softly to the overseer and scorned those whose lighter skin and pleasing features let them serve the master’s family in his house rather than his fields. Your grandmother on my side, she was the first of us here from Africa. She had tattoos and a ring in her nose and woke the sailors on her ship with her shrill summonings of spirits. My mother had spirit, the fire that comes from within, and nothing the master could say or do to her could quench it.

He had the overseer kill her eventually, for setting fire to a corner of the cotton fields, but she called down the curses of her own gods even as the noose tightened around her neck. They said that you could hear her curses whispered in the winds running through the trees, and that they only silenced when the overseer died.

This was before you were born, though, so you do not remember it. You may not remember any of what I tell you know. New lessons will be taught- how to pick cotton quickly, how to mill it and pick seeds out, how to soothe an angry overseer or one of his deputies. There is one lesson I will keep for you, though, and I will give it to you often.

Your pride, my son, do not forget it.

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Your honor, my son, do not forget it.

I’ve never had much to give to anyone, or many great talents to astound the world. I can touch a man as well as any other woman, though, and I can sing. Or at least, until something happened to my throat and made it like a gravel road, I could sing. I don’t know what’s wrong, sweetheart, and I’m scared. Sitting with you here, watching the birds, can make me forget my fear for a time. I try not to sing much any more, but I sing for you, if it helps you sleep.

But once upon a time, your mother could sing, Vin. She sang in big churches and concert halls in the East and little private concerts for rich people and their families. She could sing the popular tunes off the streets just as well as Mozart’s Requiem, she could sing to a full orchestra or to the guitar her grandpa played for her on the porch back home in Missouri.

She doesn’t sing any more. She speaks in whispers now, because there’s precious little call for anything else, and because the lump in her throat won’t let her. With you, though, she can be happy just whispering the names of birds she knows. With you, she can forget the ruin of her reputation and then her voice, as if the second was punishment for the first. Even you, a reminder of that loss, are compensation enough for it, and more.

Reputation... Honor. They’re the same things you know, for a woman. They aren’t for a man. A man can have a reputation as a killer, you know, but have honorable reasons behind what he does. The politician can kiss a baby as well as a mother can, but have the honor of the ghosts that Mexicans say will steal children in the night. Do you see what I mean, Vin? You can’t turn honor on and off like an oil lamp, because then it really isn’t honor. It’s something else.

I’ve done many things I’m not proud of, Vin. Your mama isn’t perfect, and your relatives will tell you that time and time again. Don’t let the things your mama did make marks on you, okay? Do you see that osprey there? Fly free, just like that one. Do what you think is right and good, do what your honor tells you to, and you’ll make me happy. Remember who you are and my soul will dance in Heaven for you.

Boy, you’re a Tanner.

Do you feel them in your heart, my words?

THE END