The Bean Trees
Page 77
Estevan and I talked about everything you can think of. He asked me if the alligator was a national symbol of the United States, because you saw them everywhere on people's shirts, just above the heart.
"Not that I know of," I told him. It occurred to me, though, that it might be kind of appropriate.
He told me that the national symbol of the Indian people in Guatemala was the quetzal, a beautiful green bird with a long, long tail. I told him I had seen military macaws at the zoo, and wondered if the quetzal was anything like those. He said no. If you tried to keep this bird in a cage, it died.
Shortly after sunset we left the interstate to take a two-lane road that cut through the mountains and would take about two hundred miles of New Mexico off our trip. I wished we could keep New Mexico in and cut out two hundred miles of Oklahoma instead, but of course Oklahoma was where we were going. I had to keep reminding myself of that. For some reason I had in the back of my mind that we were headed for Kentucky. I kept picturing Mama's face when we all pulled up in the driveway.
I squinted and flashed my lights at a car coming toward us with its brights on. They dimmed.
"Do you miss your home a lot?" I asked Estevan. "I know that's a stupid question. But does it make you tired, being so far away from what you know? That's how I feel sometimes, that I would just like to crawl in a hole somewhere and rest. Go dormant, like those toad frogs Mattie told us about. And for you it's just that much worse; you're not even speaking your own language."
He let out a long breath. "I don't even know anymore which home I miss. Which level of home. In Guatemala City I missed the mountains. My own language is not Spanish, did you know that?"
I told him no, that I didn't.
"We are Mayan people; we speak twenty-two different Mayan languages. Esperanza and I speak to each other in Spanish because we come from different parts of the highlands."
"What's Mayan, exactly?"
"Mayans lived here in the so-called New World before the Europeans discovered it. We're very old people. In those days we had astronomical observatories, and performed brain surgery."
I thought of the color pictures in my grade-school history books: Columbus striding up the beach in his leotards and feathered hat, a gang of wild-haired red men in loin cloths scattering in front of him like rabbits. What a joke.
"Our true first names are Indian names," Estevan said. "You couldn't even pronounce them. We chose Spanish names when we moved to the city."
I was amazed. "So Esperanza is bilingual. You're, what do you call it? Trilingual."
I knew that Esperanza spoke some English too, but it was hard to say how much since she spoke it so rarely. One time I had admired a little gold medallion she always wore around her neck and she said, with an accent, but plainly enough: "That is St. Christopher, guardian saint of refugees." I would have been no more surprised if St. Christopher himself had spoken.
Christopher was a sweet-faced saint. He looked a lot like Stephen Foster, who I suppose you could say was the guardian saint of Kentucky. At least he wrote the state song.
"I chose a new name for myself too, when I left home," I said to Estevan. "We all have that in common."
"You did? What was it before?"
I made a face. "Marietta."
He laughed. "It's not so bad."
"It's a town in Georgia where Mama's and my father's car broke down once, I guess, when they were on their way to Florida. They never made it. They stayed in a motel and made me instead."
"What a romantic story."
"Not really. I was a mistake. Well, not really a mistake, according to Mama, but an accident. A mistake I guess is when you regret it later."
"And they didn't?"
"Mama didn't. That's all that counts, in my case."
"So Papa went on to Florida?"
"Or wherever."
"Esperanza also grew up without her father. The circumstances were different, of course."
In the back seat Esperanza was stroking Turtle's hair and singing to her quietly in a high, unearthly voice. I had heard enough Spanish to understand that the way her voice was dipping and gliding through the words was more foreign than that. I remembered Estevan's yodely songs the day of our first picnic. They had to have been Mayan songs, not Spanish. Songs older than Christopher Columbus, maybe even older than Christopher the saint. I wondered if, when they still had Ismene, they had sung to her in both their own languages. To think how languages could accumulate in a family, in a country like that. When I thought of Guatemala I imagined a storybook place: jungles full of long-tailed birds, women wearing rainbow-threaded dresses.
"Not that I know of," I told him. It occurred to me, though, that it might be kind of appropriate.
He told me that the national symbol of the Indian people in Guatemala was the quetzal, a beautiful green bird with a long, long tail. I told him I had seen military macaws at the zoo, and wondered if the quetzal was anything like those. He said no. If you tried to keep this bird in a cage, it died.
Shortly after sunset we left the interstate to take a two-lane road that cut through the mountains and would take about two hundred miles of New Mexico off our trip. I wished we could keep New Mexico in and cut out two hundred miles of Oklahoma instead, but of course Oklahoma was where we were going. I had to keep reminding myself of that. For some reason I had in the back of my mind that we were headed for Kentucky. I kept picturing Mama's face when we all pulled up in the driveway.
I squinted and flashed my lights at a car coming toward us with its brights on. They dimmed.
"Do you miss your home a lot?" I asked Estevan. "I know that's a stupid question. But does it make you tired, being so far away from what you know? That's how I feel sometimes, that I would just like to crawl in a hole somewhere and rest. Go dormant, like those toad frogs Mattie told us about. And for you it's just that much worse; you're not even speaking your own language."
He let out a long breath. "I don't even know anymore which home I miss. Which level of home. In Guatemala City I missed the mountains. My own language is not Spanish, did you know that?"
I told him no, that I didn't.
"We are Mayan people; we speak twenty-two different Mayan languages. Esperanza and I speak to each other in Spanish because we come from different parts of the highlands."
"What's Mayan, exactly?"
"Mayans lived here in the so-called New World before the Europeans discovered it. We're very old people. In those days we had astronomical observatories, and performed brain surgery."
I thought of the color pictures in my grade-school history books: Columbus striding up the beach in his leotards and feathered hat, a gang of wild-haired red men in loin cloths scattering in front of him like rabbits. What a joke.
"Our true first names are Indian names," Estevan said. "You couldn't even pronounce them. We chose Spanish names when we moved to the city."
I was amazed. "So Esperanza is bilingual. You're, what do you call it? Trilingual."
I knew that Esperanza spoke some English too, but it was hard to say how much since she spoke it so rarely. One time I had admired a little gold medallion she always wore around her neck and she said, with an accent, but plainly enough: "That is St. Christopher, guardian saint of refugees." I would have been no more surprised if St. Christopher himself had spoken.
Christopher was a sweet-faced saint. He looked a lot like Stephen Foster, who I suppose you could say was the guardian saint of Kentucky. At least he wrote the state song.
"I chose a new name for myself too, when I left home," I said to Estevan. "We all have that in common."
"You did? What was it before?"
I made a face. "Marietta."
He laughed. "It's not so bad."
"It's a town in Georgia where Mama's and my father's car broke down once, I guess, when they were on their way to Florida. They never made it. They stayed in a motel and made me instead."
"What a romantic story."
"Not really. I was a mistake. Well, not really a mistake, according to Mama, but an accident. A mistake I guess is when you regret it later."
"And they didn't?"
"Mama didn't. That's all that counts, in my case."
"So Papa went on to Florida?"
"Or wherever."
"Esperanza also grew up without her father. The circumstances were different, of course."
In the back seat Esperanza was stroking Turtle's hair and singing to her quietly in a high, unearthly voice. I had heard enough Spanish to understand that the way her voice was dipping and gliding through the words was more foreign than that. I remembered Estevan's yodely songs the day of our first picnic. They had to have been Mayan songs, not Spanish. Songs older than Christopher Columbus, maybe even older than Christopher the saint. I wondered if, when they still had Ismene, they had sung to her in both their own languages. To think how languages could accumulate in a family, in a country like that. When I thought of Guatemala I imagined a storybook place: jungles full of long-tailed birds, women wearing rainbow-threaded dresses.
