Down from the Mountain (4 page)

I almost trip when a guy scooting on a little board with wheels darts in front of me. “Sorry,” he yells out. I watch him fly down the hill we just climbed. He pushes off with the foot he has on the ground, and he’s off. It looks like more fun than anything I’ve ever done in my whole life!

Rachel backs up and loops her arm around mine. “Don’t get any ideas. I don’t want to scrape you up off the sidewalk. Besides, we’re here.” She points to a sign on the next building: Beads Galore. Then she swings open the door, setting off a sweet jingle sound.

Five

The store is wall-to-wall beads. Not just the plastic and ceramic beads I’m used to working with, but every kind and size you can imagine! There are itsy-bitsy beads called seed beads and others as big as a fist. I quickly see that they’re divided into sections depending on the substance. There are wooden beads, glass and clay beads, beads made from shells—even gemstones and crystals. And if that weren’t enough, there are drawers and drawers of gold and silver clasps, and even more drawers of spacers that you can put in between the beads to create something unique.

I’m most drawn to the gemstones and pearls that hang in strands on the back wall and fill bunches of bins. Almost immediately I forget about Rachel and Esther altogether and head for the crystals and gems. They’re so pretty, they make me want to sing.

I can’t help myself. I have to touch everything. All these stone beads in different sizes and colors. I run my hands over one of every kind, loving how the different textures feel on my fingers. Little signs tell me their names: jade, the color of our evergreen trees when the sun hits them just so. Rose quartz—some smooth with only a hint of color, others cut into shapes of hexagons and octagons, some even square. I like the ones shaped like teardrops. When I fan them out, they look like newly blossomed wildflowers in the spring. I begin to picture them in various combinations and lose myself in new ideas.

The pearls tug at my heart for some reason. They come in several sizes. Some are labeled “natural” pearls and others say “freshwater.” I begin to weave a strand of freshwater pearls with similar-sized rose quartz. They’re beautiful together.

“Have you looked at the prices of these precious stones?” Esther hisses in my ear when she discovers me. “We don’t have that kind of money, so put those back.” She lumbers off to another room of the expansive store.

I look around for Rachel. She’s leaning over a drawer filled with clasps, spacers, and wire. When I get her attention, I motion for her to come over.

“Can I help you?” someone asks from behind me. She’s a short teen wearing a white apron and a name tag that says
Marcy
. I pull in a sharp breath at the swath of purple hair that’s only on one side of her head because the other side is shaved.

“Oh, no, um … I’m just looking.” A sudden chill pinpricks my body. A heathen is talking to me.
God protect me from any evil influence
. She starts to turn away.

“Wait!” I say to the clerk a little too loudly. “I noticed that a lot of shoppers have those little boxes with fabric lining the bottom.”

“Yes,” she says. “Those are the best tools to lay out jewelry ideas. I can get you one or two of those as well as a basket.” She returns smiling. “I’m Marcy, by the way.” She holds out a hand for me to shake, and I reluctantly take it. “You can get really creative in here. Have fun!” She looks my clothes up and down. “Ah retro,” she says, nodding her head approvingly. “Nice.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I like the word so I repeat it in my head:
retro
. At least she said it with a smile, like it was something good.

“If you’re interested,” she says, “you could take a look at our jewelry display right over there.” Marcy points to three glass cases above the cash register. “It may give you some ideas if you need any. Also we have classes so you could learn to make some of these if you wanted.”

I follow her to the cases. The bead combinations are beautiful—mostly of stones I’ve never seen before. One combines clear crystals and deep blue stones that the sign refers to as lapis. Another combines a stone bead called hematite with rose quartz and lots of silver beads in between.

“Can you tell me what these numbers mean?” I ask Marcy, who has returned with a sheet showing the class schedule the store offers. I’m referring to the two sets of numbers under each piece of jewelry.

“Sure. The top number is the suggested retail price, and the bottom number is what it costs to make.”

“What?” I know it makes me sound dumb, but I want to understand.

She looks mildly surprised but explains anyway. “Retail is how much you’d charge for it, while cost is how much it costs to make it using our supplies. The difference is your profit.”

I go from one jewelry piece to the next with this new little formula. Retail minus cost equals profit.

I look up to see Rachel approaching. She’s picked up several magazines with jewelry designs. “Rachel, have you seen these?” I ask.

“Sure,” she says. “But most of them are more than we can afford, and people don’t want to spend that much at farmers’ markets and flea markets.”

“Who told you that?” Marcy asks.

Rachel swings around to face Marcy.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Marcy continues. “But people in this town love nicer jewelry and think of the flea markets as an opportunity to get higher-end stuff for less. I think that if you can make this stuff and make it well, you’ll be able to sell it at high-end prices. You may even find that people commission certain pieces at the flea market and farmers’ markets.”

“Really?”

Rachel seems truly surprised. But the supplies are so much more expensive.

Encouraged, I start going down the line. “This one sells for eighty dollars and the materials cost thirty-eight dollars, so that’s over a fifty percent profit. We only make a few dollars’ profit on the cheaper ones.”

“That’s true. But we’d need a lot of money to make such a big change,” Rachel says.

“You could always space these with less expensive beads,” Marcy says. “Look at how many pieces of jewelry combine different types of beads.” She glances at the line that’s formed by the cash register and excuses herself to assist those customers.

“Couldn’t we give it a try?” I must sound like a begging child. And I’m not sure why this is so important to me, but I actually
long
to work with the gemstones, especially the pearls and rose quartz that I just now realize I’m still holding.
“It wouldn’t take us any longer to make a necklace out of gemstones than it takes to make them out of wood or plastic or ceramic beads, and if we make more money …”

“Mother Esther would never go for it,” Rachel says.

“No, I would not,” Esther says as she approaches us. She holds a basket filled with plastic and wooden beads, cord, fish wire, and clasps. “I’m going to sit over there while you two finish up.” She points to a comfortable-looking chair on the opposite side of the room. “Put the gemstones back, Eva. I told you that. We can talk about all this later.”

I avoid the gem shelf and find myself clutching the stones harder than before. I can’t put them back. It makes no sense, but somehow they speak to me, and I want them badly.

Get on with it
, I command myself, but it’s Ezekiel’s voice that I hear in my head.

I reach to hang up the rose quartz in obedience, but everything gets fuzzy because my eyes are watery. I miss the hook and they smash to the ground. When I scramble to recover the rose quartz, the pearl strand slips and beads fly everywhere. They hit the shelf behind me; they roll into the aisle and under displays. I slump to my knees and scramble to pick them up, but my actions seem to be in slow motion.

A chorus of voices swells behind me. Several people, including customers and store clerks, help with the pickup. So many people are scrambling to recover the beads.

“Oh no, Eva,” from Rachel.

“Look what you did!” from Esther.

“Let me help you,” from Marcy.

“You know we’ll have to pay for these,” Esther hisses.

“I’m afraid so” from Marcy. She points to a big sign above the displays that says “You break, you buy.”

I’m crying, and all the words seem to be going through a long tunnel before they reach me. I can barely see the beads on the floor.

“It’s okay,” Rachel says, hugging me. She lifts my face to meet her eyes. “Eva, my goodness, you’re pale and shaking. It’s not the end of the world.”

I am barely aware of leaving the store and walking back to the van. My dad’s face floods my brain, and I suddenly remember what these beads mean to me.

The last time I saw my father was on my fourth birthday. I remember driving Mother crazy because he was coming to the house and I couldn’t stop jumping around in excitement. I was a daddy’s girl, but all of my begging never made a difference.

Some things about that day are so clear in my mind that they could have happened this morning. Other things are fuzzy, and I’m sure there’s lots I’ve forgotten.

I do remember the fancy dress Daddy got me because it was so beautiful. It was white with purple puffy dots. I don’t know the name of the fabric, but it was soft and wispy and layered. If you picked up just one layer, you could see through it. Mommy did something special with my hair. She pulled back hair from both sides, braided it, and attached a bow where the braids came together on the back of my head. It matched my dress and made me feel beautiful. I couldn’t wait for Daddy to see me.

Daddy only lived three blocks away, but it was so hard for Mother to be around him that our visits weren’t anywhere near as often as I wanted.

Even now I can feel his prickly mustache against my cheeks and the beard that tickled me when he kissed my face. I would pretend to hate his beard and yank on it a little. He would pretend that I was hurting him. Then we’d both giggle.

Mommy started yelling at Daddy about something. I think it was because he let me dive right into opening my presents instead of making me slow down and open the card first.

I know he gave me several presents and that made Mommy mad. “You’re spoiling her,” she said. Daddy would yell back that he only had one daughter and he could spoil me if he wanted to. But only two of the gifts stand out in my mind. One was a red-and-white tube with ribbon on both ends. The other was a little box with a bow on it.

I tore open the first but Daddy had to explain what it was. “It’s a calendar for two years. That’s how long I’ll be in China. Every time you wake up in the morning, you put an
X
on another day and each
X
brings us closer to the time we can see each other again.”

I probably shrugged the calendar off because I hadn’t grasped how those little boxes related to time passing. And I didn’t want to think about him going far away to teach. I was much more interested in the little box. I’m sure I ripped it open eagerly.

Inside was a pink and white necklace that I thought was beautiful.

“Your name is hidden in this necklace,” he said. I loved puzzles, but no matter how hard I studied it, practically crossing my eyes, I couldn’t find the puzzle. Finally he laughed and told me the secret. “The pearls are lily white. That’s for the Lily part of your name.”

I laughed.

“And the pink stones are …”

“Rose!” I shouted.

“That’s right, rose quartz for my favorite girl—Lily Rose!”

He told me he had filled each bead with love and that when I wore them, they would remind me how much he loved me. He folded me inside a bear hug for a long time after that and reassured me that he would send me letters every week and call me whenever he could. I was to wear the necklace always, and when I needed Daddy’s love, it would be there.

I wish that had turned out to be true.

Every day after that, I hid behind the living room curtain, begging in my heart for him to drive up in his blue car. I missed him so much that I would have gone to China with him. Or maybe he’d come back just to be with me. I watched for the mailman every day, but whenever he came, Mommy would say there was no mail for me. The phone didn’t bring Daddy back either.

Last year, in one of the secret conversations we’d hold while gardening or in the hayfield, Mother told me that we had lived in Hyde Park because it was near the University of Chicago, where Daddy taught Chinese. When the divorce got messy, he took two years off to go to China.

When I was little, it made me so mad that he broke his promise that I ripped the calendar into little pieces. There was no way I could put it back together again and I was sure I could never get him back now, because I had destroyed his gift. But at least I still had the necklace. I would wear it as long as I could.

I press my cheek against the cold window until it feels numb. If only I could numb these memories.
Stop it!
I yell at myself inside. He left me. He’s a heathen. And it’s a sin to think about him. I force my attention back in the van just as Rachel skillfully navigates a hairpin turn on the mountain road.

It wasn’t long after Daddy left that Mother brought Reverend Ezekiel home for dinner one night. He was a traveling preacher and she wanted him to have a good meal while he was in Chicago gathering souls. He invited his wife to join him, and together they stayed another two weeks. By that time Mom believed in him fully and we went with him back to Arizona.

I watch Rachel maneuver the van around sharp curves and barely make it around a pile of rocks that had dropped from the mountain since we were here this morning. We collectively let out a sigh of relief when we’re safely back on the road again.

“I’ve been thinking about all your ideas for jewelry,” Rachel says now. “Since we already have the gemstone beads, let’s be as creative as possible and see how we do at the next flea market. As long as we make a good profit, I don’t think we need to report you to Community Concerns. What do you think, Mother Esther?”

“Well, I don’t know. I told her to put them down and she disobeyed. That sounds like an offense against the community to me.”

I hate that she’s talking about me as if I’m not here. “I’m very sorry that I didn’t put them down the minute you told me to, Mother Esther. But it truly wasn’t my intention to disobey. I simply got distracted and didn’t realize I was still holding them.”

“Your disobedience cost us more than money, dear. It cost us so much time, having to select the findings and clasps and—everything—that we could combine with your gemstones.”

“You’re right,” I say, feeling humble and physically weak. I don’t dare beg for her not to report me because then she’d have the begging to report.