Sing Down the Moon (3 page)

The old woman was a Jicarilla Apache and did not understand us when we spoke. The Apaches and Navahos were blood brothers once, but she shook her head and did not answer. In the middle of the hut a fire was burning under a pot of thick stew. Steam came up from the pot and a strong odor stung my nose.

"It is dog meat," I said to Running Bird.

"Yes, it is dog and an old one," she said.

The woman started to fill two bowls with the stew. By signs I told her that we had eaten and were not hungry. I did not try to tell her that my people, the Navahos, never ate stew made of dog meat.

The old woman spread a blanket on the floor for Running Bird and me to sleep on. Then she spread a blanket for herself and lay down in front of the door, so that we could not open it. I was tired, but I did not sleep. I made my black dog lie down beside me. I had seen the old woman eyeing him and I was afraid that if I went to sleep she would kill him to make a stew.

Early the next morning the Spaniard with the white teeth came back. He gave the old woman a silver coin, which she hid in her mouth. Then he
motioned me to follow him. Running Bird held on to me until the Spaniard pulled us apart. I did not know what to say to her. I went out of the hut and the Spaniard got on his horse and I followed him, the black dog walking beside me.

As we left the hut, the old woman hobbled after us and threw a leather rope around the dog's neck and tried to drag him back.

The Spaniard wheeled his horse around. "Let the dog loose," he said, "I will bring you another, a fatter one."

The old woman did as she was told and the three of us left her and went down the street.

There was no one around. When we were almost at the end of the street I saw a girl sweeping the earth in front of a gate. She was an Indian and had the marks of the Nez Percé on her cheeks. She glanced up at me, though she did not stop her sweeping. It was a quick glance, yet in it was something that chilled me. As if she were saying, "Run, run, even though they kill you. It is better to die here on the street."

A
T THE LAST HOUSE
on the street, the Spaniard tied his horse to a tree and pulled on a rope that hung above an iron gate. Bells sounded far off and an Indian girl came running to let us in. What tribe she belonged to I could not tell, but she was smiling and looked happier than the Nez Percé girl.

There was a large place inside the wall where bright flowers were growing. A path led through them and we followed it and went into a big kitchen
at the back of the house. Strings of peppers hung from the rafters, some red, some green, and loops of white onions. Two big pots of beans were bubbling on a stove.

"Are you hungry?" the girl asked me in Navaho.

"No," I said, though I had eaten little for five days. I was rude and did not thank her.

After a moment a young woman came into the kitchen. She wore black shoes and a red velvet skirt and a white camisa. She had blue eyes and her hair was the color of corn silk when it begins to ripen in the summer. To my surprise she spoke to me in Navaho, asking me to walk around the kitchen.

My boots were covered with mud and my leggings stained from the long ride. I did not want to walk around the kitchen. Nor did I know why I should, so I stood in the middle of the room and did not move. I thought, if I stand here long enough they will let me go.

"A surly miss," the woman said in Spanish. "Can't you bring me one with a better disposition?"

"She is frightened," the Spaniard said. "In a few days she will act better. Remember that Rosita was this way when I brought her here two years ago. Now look at her."

He glanced at the girl who was stirring the beans with a big spoon. She turned and smiled at him.

I will never stir the beans nor will I ever smile while I am in this house, I said to myself. Then the Spaniard took my arm in a hard grip and led me back and forth from one side of the kitchen to the other. I pulled away from him.

"She walks pigeon-toed," the young woman said.

"They all do," the Spaniard said, "the Kiowas, the Comanches, the Nez Percés, the Zuñis, and the Apaches. All of them."

The woman said, "The Hopis don't walk like a pigeon."

"I will find you a Hopi, maybe in the fall," the Spaniard said, "but now I have a strong girl who is used to hard work."

"I have two strong girls already," the woman answered. "I need one who can meet guests at the door and wait on table."

She walked around me, gently running her hand across my back. Then she asked me to smile and when I refused she reached out and pushed my lips back with her fingers. On one side I have a broken tooth, which happened when I was very young and fell against a stone.

The woman made a sound with her tongue, but said nothing. Then she walked around me once more and left the room with the Spaniard.

The girl, who had opened the gate for us and who
was stirring the beans, said, "My name is Rosita. I am twelve years old and I come from the White Mesa, in the Navaho country. What is your name? Where do you come from? How old are you?"

I told her one of my names, but not my real one. "I am fifteen and I come from the Canyon de Chelly."

"I have never heard of that place," Rosita said.

This surprised me, for I thought everyone had heard of the Canyon de Chelly. "It is the most beautiful place in the world," I said. "It has the most sheep and the finest wool. It has a river and tall cliffs that catch the sun and make the melons grow bigger than pumpkins. There the cornstalks grow taller than you are."

I wanted to tell her more about the Canyon de Chelly, but my throat filled up with sadness.

Rosita put a bowl of beans and chili on the table beside me, where I could reach it.

"You will be happy here," she said. "The lady is kind and her husband also. He is a soldier and does not come here often, mostly on feast days. There is good food to eat and the work is not hard. It will be nicer when you are in the house. The other girl I do not like. She is a Zuñi."

From the next room I heard the sound of the woman and the Spaniard talking. They talked like
the Anglos who come to our canyon and haggle over the price of wool.

Rosita listened to them for a moment. 'The Señora paid little for me," she said. "But for you she will pay more. You are pretty and tall. I wish you were my sister."

After a long time the Spaniard left. He was carrying a leather pouch. It was filled with coins that jingled.

"I told you," Rosita said. 'The pouch is twice as full as it was for me."

The woman came and led me out of the kitchen. My black dog was waiting for me. We went along a path to a smaller house far in the back. It had á wide, blue door and inside was a room bigger than our hogan and home, where all my family lived, cooking and weaving rugs and sleeping. The floor was not made of common earth like ours, but of adobe mixed with blood. It was smooth and dark and on it were two Navaho blankets.

"You sleep there," the woman told me, pointing to a big bed. She spoke to me in Navaho. Her words had a strange sound but I understood them. She opened the doors of an empty cupboard. "For clothes," she said. "Tomorrow I buy you shoes, dresses, and some ribbons for your hair."

She looked down at my black dog, who stood close to me, as close as he could get. "You keep him here," she said. "Not in house. Never in house. Understand?"

I understood. I think the black dog understood, too.

The woman smiled and patted me on the shoulder. Then she closed the door and we left the black dog in the room and went back to the kitchen. She told Rosita to show we what to do. She left the house and I did not see her until suppertime.

Rosita showed me how to set the table, where everything went, and how to light the three candles.

"When the Señora buys you a new dress," Rosita said, "I will show you how to carry the food in and put it on the table."

I waited in the kitchen until the woman finished her supper. Then I took the food she had left back to the kitchen. There was much of it, enough to feed many people, and Rosita said that we could eat all of it we wanted. I ate little because it did not taste good. In the Canyon de Chelly everyone eats at the same time. We eat out of one big pot and we do not use knives nor forks, but the food tastes better.

I helped Rosita wash the dishes and she showed me how to put them away in the cupboard, everything in neat rows. When we were ready to sleep she
showed me how to get into my bed. I did all the things she told me to, but after she fell asleep I got out of the bed and lay down on the floor. My black dog curled up beside me.

For a long time I lay awake, thinking of the canyon and the mesa and the sheep and my family. I thought about Tall Boy, too. He would come home before spring was ended. He would learn what had befallen me. Surely, he would ride out with his warriors and find me and take me home.

The night was very quiet. I began to wonder what I would do if he did not come home, if he did not come for me. I would steal away. Some night Running Bird and I would go together. We would travel at night and hide in the daytime, like the Spaniards had done.

An owl flew into a tree outside the window. He was silent for a long time and then he began to make churring sounds, the same sounds that the owls made at home. It was a good omen.

T
HREE MORNINGS LATER
the woman took me to the store and bought me two dresses, one of wool and one of velveteen, and a pair of red shoes with buttons on them. She forgot to buy me a ribbon for my hair. I said nothing because I would not need a ribbon for very long. When the next full moon came I would not be there to use it. When the moon was light enough to see by, Running Bird and I would steal away and take the road to home.

Where Running Bird was, I did not know. I asked Rosita if she had heard about her. I looked for her as the woman and I walked up the street and in the store I kept watching, and on the way back. I did not find out where she was until the day after the first new moon.

Rosita and I went to the market on that morning to buy vegetables. While she was picking out a basket of chilies, going over each one carefully because the Señora would punish her if she brought back any that were scarred, I left her and walked around through the market in the hope that I might see Running Bird.

There were many Indian girls there, a dozen maybe, but I did not see Running Bird. I had given up and was on my way back to where Rosita stood when I heard a sound behind me. It was the Nez Percé, the one who was sweeping under the trees the morning the Spaniard brought me into the town.

She held up a basket of things she had and I thought that she wanted to show them to me. But as I looked at them, she said quickly in a low voice, "Do not trust Rosita. Everything you tell her she will tell the Señora. There is a baile at your house tonight. My Señora is sending me to help you get the house ready, me and another girl. Your friend lives in the second house near the market. It has an iron
gate and a pole with a flag on it. My name is Nehana."

The girl said this in one breath and was gone before I could answer.

Rosita had three baskets filled with food. We each carried one and shared the other. As we left the market I looked for the house where Running Bird was. I saw the big iron gate and the flag on the pole, but the gate was closed and there was a lock on it. I did not tell Rosita that the Nez Percé girl had spoken to me.

The three baskets of food we carried back to the house were for the party the Señora had that night. The rest of the day I spent peeling chili peppers. I burned the skins over a fire and scraped them off and split each pod. Then I picked out the hundreds of little white seeds and placed the pods on a platter. Now and again the Señora came and watched me, to make me hurry, I guess.

I did not hurry, yet by late afternoon I had done six platters of chili peppers. My fingers were on fire and I could scarcely see from my eyes. Nehana, the Nez Percé girl, was there, as she said she would be, sweeping the house and the walks and cutting flowers to put in bowls. She acted as if she had never seen me and when I spoke to her she did not answer.

After I finished with the chili peppers the Señora
sent me off to my room to put on the new button shoes and the velveteen dress.

People came when the sun went down. They filled the house and flowed out into the garden. In my new clothes I walked around among them, as I was told, carrying a big tray of food. When one tray was empty I went back to the kitchen for another.

Most of the men were Long Knives. They were like the men who had come to our canyon and threatened to destroy our crops and burn our hogans. The Señora had told me to smile as I passed the food around, but I hated everyone there, the soldiers and their wives, too, and I did not obey her.

I saw Nehana many times while I was in the kitchen or walking around with trays of food, but she never spoke. Once when Rosita noticed that I was looking at the girl, she cautioned me.

"That one you keep looking at," she said, "is bad. Once last year she ran away. She was caught and beaten for it, with a long leather whip. If she talks to you, do not listen. If the Señora catches you talking to her, you will be punished."

During the days I had been a slave in the house, I had learned that Rosita liked the life she was living. She came from a poor tribe and a poor family and she liked all the food she got to eat, the clothes the Señora bought for her, the soft bed, and the big room.
She liked ordering me around and the penny she always got to keep when she went to the market.

If she talks to me, I wanted to say, I will talk to her, whether I am punished or not.

"You will be happy here someday," Rosita said.

Most of the people were leaving and I was in the kitchen. Nehana was bringing dishes in for me to wash. Rosita and another girl were helping the women put on their cloaks. Nehana put a tray of dishes on the table and started out of the kitchen.

She turned at the door and listened. Men on horses were riding away. Someone was playing a guitar in the garden. Women were laughing in the other part of the house.