Hers the Kingdom (20 page)

     "It is good to see him happy," Arcadia said.

     "Yes," Willa answered, looking at the door through which Wen had just run, her hand poised lightly on her stomach.

     Arcadia noticed. "Willa," she said quietly, "are you going to have another baby?"

     Willa looked at her, surprised.

     "How did you know?" she asked.

     "Your hand," her friend answered, "the way you have it there, where the baby is. Women do that."

     Willa sighed. "I haven't told anyone yet, not even Owen."

     "He will be ecstatic," Arcadia answered.

     "I know," Willa said, "it's just that, well, I want to be quiet about it still, for a while."

     Arcadia nodded. She didn't understand, but it didn't matter. Arcadia did not always need answers.

"We have no say about it whatsoever," Owen was saying as he checked the cinch on his big roan. "The sea will pull back for a few
hours and let us in—
mirabile dictu
—but it won't wait. We go in at lower low tide, my friends, or we don't go in at all." He lifted easily into his saddle and turned, startled to see that the rest of us were mounted and waiting for him.

     
"Mirabile dictu,"
the laughter spilled out of Arcadia, and the rest of us—even usually somber Ignacio—joined in.

     It was dark, still, as we made our way north along the beach. It looked as if it should be chill, but it wasn't. The air lay gentle against our skin, cool but not cold. The lower low tide was at dawn. We would have to make our way through the Natural Arch and on past Topanga Canyon by the first light.

     "We look like a gypsy caravan," Willa called back to us. She and Owen led, riding side by side. They were followed by the wagon.

     Wen sat between Ignacio and Trinidad on the front seat while little Aleja rode in the back. On the hard sand, where the riding was easy, Ignacio let the boy hold the reins. In a small voice made shrill, Wen called out to the team: "Watch it there, Maude. Move on, Nell." Wen's pony, Jack, was tied to the back of the wagon.

     Arcadia and I formed the rear guard. We rode at a good pace, urged on by Owen and the relentlessness of the tides. Now and then Arcadia would look over to me and smile, and I would smile back to show that I, too, felt the excitement of this trip.

     Owen, wearing a pale chamois shirt tied at the neck, urged us on. "Laugh all you like, Señorita," he called to Arcadia, "when you wash out to sea, I'll wave to you."

     "And I'll write you a letter from China," Arcadia called back.

     Our spirits were high. Ignacio began to sing, a low and beautiful and very sad song in Spanish. When he finished there was a long pause. Then Wen began, "Oh, Susanna, oh don't you cry for me . . ." all off key, but lively. Arcadia quickly joined in. Even Trinidad, who had no notion at all what the words were, clapped and laughed and shouted, "Oh, Susanna" on every stanza.

     Ahead of us I saw Willa reach out to Owen. They rode side by side, holding hands. By the time the sun had turned the sea a
glowing silver and pink, we had cleared the narrow, rocky passages where the mountains came down to the water, and were safe on the long, straight stretch of beach. Safe, and sealed off from the world beyond.

     "It's like a secret kingdom, isn't it?" Arcadia asked. And it was. In all of California, I thought, this must be one of the last of the untouched places. This must be the farthest point.

     We stood ankle-deep in sand and looked about us: The mountains stood close to the sea, leaving only a scant ribbon of land in between—but such a ribbon, such land. We stood, saying nothing at all, listening to the quiet.

     The mountains were not covered with trees, but with chaparral, so it seemed they had been smoothed, shaped by some giant hand. The sounds were those of the ocean, punctuated by a birdsong, and now by the low snorting of our animals.

     The day would be clear and bright. We could mark the far line where the deep blue of the water met the lighter blue of the sky.

     Willa was standing, face raised, looking all about her. I realized that this was the first time she and Owen had seen it together. Owen was watching her.

     "Do you feel up to riding another half hour or so?" he asked. "There is a place I want you to see."

     We stayed to establish camp on the beach. Owen and Willa picked their way up the dry creekbed, their horses moving carefully over the rocks. Soon they were climbing, and it became necessary to ride single file through the shrubbery. Then, without warning, they came into a clearing.

     "Look," Owen said, lifting his arm. Below them was the sand and the sea, a long curve of it, buff and smoky blue in the distance. Above and behind them was the safe embrace of the mountains.

     "Owen," she breathed out, "this is . . . exquisite."

     "I know," he said, looking at her, pleased. "I discovered it on my last trip up here, and decided I would save it for you."

     They dismounted and walked to where the view was open.

     A peculiar sensation traveled up Willa's spine; she caught her breath with a small intake of air.

     "What is it?" Owen wanted to know.

     "I'm not sure," she told him, with an embarrassed laugh, "I feel so
safe
here," she said, wonder in her voice, "and that is strange, because I can't remember ever not having felt safe before . . . I'm not certain . . ."

     Owen interrupted her to say, "I feel it too. I suppose we feel that way because we are safe—the mountains to our back, the sea to our front—sealing off almost all entrance. If we should ever move up here, this would be a good place for a house, don't you think?"

     She looked at him. She did not know he had thought of moving to the Malibu; it was the first he had said of it. Perhaps he had only thought of it now.

     "Yes," she said, "perfect."

     "This land is truly virgin . . . undefiled," he went on.

     "Do virgins tempt you?" she asked, so that he could not tell if she were teasing.

     He was about to continue, but stopped.

     "I do sometimes wonder," she went on, archly.

     "Come here," he said, "sit on my knee and talk to me of virgins." He pulled her toward a fallen log which lay, like a pillow, looking out over the valley.

     She began to undo the buttons on her blouse. He helped her, pulling the fabric back, releasing her breasts. He slipped his hand under one breast, bent his head and began to touch the nipple with his lips.

     She looked to the sky, breathing deeply, loving the weight of his head on her breast, loving him, feeling herself warm and moist and ready.

     They lay together for a long while, watching the sun poised high over them, crossed once by the unmistakable flight of a falcon. "A peregrine," she said to him, and he turned to watch with her as
the bird caught a thermal and rose with it, up and up, soaring high until they could see only the place where it had been, the smallest dot on the blue.

     "Do you know that in Spanish
peregrino
means 'wonderful'?" he asked.

     And she answered, "Then let's call this Peregrino Hill."

     She lay her head against his chest and closed her eyes, pretending to doze so that they might stay longer, knowing that they would have to leave soon, very soon.

     "You are listening," he said.

     "I'm listening to your heartbeats, counting them against the crash of the waves on the shore."

     "Ah," he had answered, "against the beating of the ocean's heart."

     Willa knew then, she told herself so she would remember, that she was as happy as it was possible to be. And she knew, too, that she had the power to make this man who lay with her, his heart beating in rhythm with the sea, happy too.

     "I am going to have a child," she said, and she watched his face, saw the softness come into it, saw the tears rising.

     He could not speak, but only pulled her to him and held her, and their bodies were together, she was with him as she had always wanted to be.

Rancho Malibu y Sequit:
The Early Years
1893 - 1895

TRINIDAD MOVED HEAVILY to a place behind a large rock, sheltered from the breeze that had come up off the water, out of sight but not out of sound of the rest of our party. Behind the rocks it was still and the sun felt warm on our skin.

     Trinidad, grown heavy, fumbled with the front of her dress and, after much grunting and heaving, managed to free both of her great, pendulous brown breasts.

     
"Uno momento,"
she said to the squirming baby perched on her hip. "Little one, do not bite your
mamacita
."

     "Ah, the . . ." she searched for the word, "the tooths . . . already Pablito has the tooths."

     With Pablito firmly attached to her left breast, she reached for Thad, waiting patiently, as ever. I handed him to her, holding on to him until he was tucked under her right breast, where the milk was flowing already, wetting his tiny chin. It took Thad a while to get started. Trinidad had to coax him.

     "You eat, little baby boy," she scolded. "You need for to get big like my Pablito."

     "Pablito's twice the size of Thad," I told her. "It's hard to believe that he's only two weeks younger."

     
"Pobre
T'ad," she said. Poor Thad.

     "Why are we always saying 'Poor Thad'?" I wondered out loud, but Trinidad did not answer. It was not the sort of thing she thought about.

     Sitting in the soft sand, we stretched our legs to the sun, secure in our privacy, and talked about the babies. It was all Trinidad wanted to talk about. Willa called her "The Monumental Mother," and she was that—both in size and in spirit. At first I had been embarrassed at the sight of Trinidad's bare breasts with their enormous nipples, at the slurping and gasping and smacking noises the babies made when the milk began to flow, at the loud flatulence as they emptied their bowels. But none of it bothered Trinidad; it was all part of being a mama. She would laugh and clean their bottoms and love her babies. She was proud of her milk, proud that she had plenty to feed both babies, proud even of her big, bulging body. With the birth of her second child, Trinidad had left girlhood behind her forever.

     When their time was near, Willa had explained that her doctor would deliver both of the babies. At first Trinidad had pretended not to hear, not to understand. When Willa confronted her, Trinidad's face became set. Her eyebrows knit to form a single line across her face. She had spoken to the
comadrona
, she said. It was all arranged, it was as it should be . . . as it had been, as it would always be for her people. The
comadrona
would deliver her baby. Willa had scolded and fussed at her, had told her that she was being superstitious and selfish and ignorant. Willa had talked and talked, but it was as if she were speaking a language that Trinidad had never heard before.

     And when her hour came, the old woman—the
comadrona
—went into her room. Three hours later she emerged with Pablito, big and brown with a thatch of wild black hair, and weighing twelve pounds. In a few more days, for all of Willa's sputtering, Trinidad was back in the kitchen, expecting to take over her chores.

     It had not gone so well for Willa. Her labor began in the afternoon and went all the long night and throughout the next day. It was a difficult birth. When it was over and Thad was born, the doctor had said that Willa was fortunate, very fortunate. Willa did not look fortunate, she looked as if she had known all there was to know of pain. She was weary beyond comprehension, she told me.

     Thad was a small baby. When the doctor handed him to me, minutes after his birth, I thought that he looked like nothing so much as a sad little newborn rabbit, wet and wizened, too frail to utter more than a pathetic little squeak.

     Now, three months later, Willa had yet to shake the lethargy that had dogged her for months. The sand and the sea and the Malibu would help her regain her strength and her spirit, Owen was sure. Even little Thad was thriving in the warm sea air. He was small, but he seemed healthy.

     Life on the ranch was as different from Seaside Avenue as Seaside Avenue had been from the prairie. Our days were long and sunlit, filled with the lulling work of the ranch, the peace of being in a place apart, the sounds of the sea over it all. The long horseback ride, timed to the tides, kept all but the most determined visitors away. Here, the world could be held at bay—which is just what Willa wanted.

     Owen was caught up in the excitement of becoming a rancher. He could be found in his office, surrounded by seed catalogues and government booklets explaining the latest in farming methods, full of ideas and plans.

     "This is to be a working cattle ranch," Owen liked to remind us, "but we are going to grow all of our own food, too." We were going to be self-sustaining. We were going to live on the land, on this island in time, as Owen liked to call it. He was beside himself; his enthusiasm was contagious. We were all, every one of us, actors in Owen's play. We went to sleep each night eager for morning.