Zia (8 page)

"They work us hard here at the Mission," he said. He looked at me. His eyes were small but very bright and he had a mustache as thin as a thread, which he plucked carefully every day. "Where do you come from?" he asked me. He had asked me this before.

"Far to the east," I said.

"If you were there would you be working hard in the hot sun?"

"We work and rest, both," I said.

"When you wish—one and then the other. We do not do that here. We are not allowed any wishes. Here we work every day, sun and rain, winter and the summer. Sometimes I stop and I ask myself,
Mayordomo,
why do you work so hard? Do you ever say this to yourself?" he asked Rosa.

"Sometimes."

The
mayordomo
went away to talk to the other people who were planting seeds. He gave them a drink from the olla, talked for a while, made jokes, and went down the other rows talking and handing out water.

Everybody looked up to Gito, not only because he was the son of a chieftain and a
mayordomo,
but because he was an Indian. Everyone felt he was a friend, and therefore an enemy of the white man, who had taken our lands, an enemy of this new world that the gringo had brought that was so hard for us to live in and understand.

We planted melon seeds until the bells rang at dusk. Then we started back to the Mission for mass and supper.

I have spoken of our
mayordomo
as Gito Cruz. Perhaps I should say that we all called him "Manos de Piedra," which he liked better than his real name, because he had fists like stones and a heart that I think was stone too.

Anyway, on the trail home, Stone Hands said to Rosa, "Are you tired,
muchacha?
"

"Yes," she said.

"This happened before you were born," he said, speaking to us all. "I was not born then either but I have heard. This was when the first Mission was built away from here in San Diego. The Indians did the building, the hard work; they got tired, tired as we are now, and one night they burned down what they had built and fled into the mountains. They went back to their homes."

We had come to the top of one of the hills that enclose the valley, from where we could see the Mission and its belfries.

"The Mission in San Diego was made of wood," Stone Hands said. "But our Mission is made of mud bricks so it will not burn. Not much of it anyway. There is little to burn. But we can go away. We can leave the Mission and go back to our homes."

Stone Hands had spoken this way before but no one ever thought he was serious about it. But he was serious now, looking at each of us to see that we were listening.

"On Sunday night. This one that comes," he said, "there is a fiesta. After the fiesta everyone goes to their rooms. The girls to their rooms, the boys to theirs. We will not undress. We will pretend to sleep, but when the bell rings for ten o'clock, each one will get up and bring his blanket."

He looked around to make sure that everyone heard.

"The doors are locked," someone said.

"Do not worry. I will take care of the locked doors," Stone Hands said. "All of you will move quietly on bare feet. We will come together in the garden. Nobody will appear except the young. The old women and the old men will stay. And when the bell strikes we will meet. I have food hidden away to last for many days. We will take the food and our blankets and go to the river. There we will walk toward the north, in the water that leaves no prints. We will walk all night and reach a cave I know of and sleep. The soldiers will not hear that we are gone until morning. There will be no prints to which have gone."

We all stood, saying nothing, looking down at the Mission. Everyone thought that Stone Hands wished to make himself the chieftain of a tribe. And there were many who would follow him. But not all. A few hesitated. These he knew by name.

He spoke to them now, each one, and to all of us.

"They have come to our villages and taken us away by making us great promises," he said. "They have taken us to their Missions and made us work. If we do not feel like working they flog us. If we run away they send men to bring us back. Is this not true?"

Everyone said, "Yes, it is true," even those who from fear hesitated. "Not always, but sometimes."

"We leave our villages because of promises," said Stone Hands, "and the promises are seldom kept. If they work us from dawn until dark. If they punish us when we do something they think is wrong. When we can endure no longer and leave they send their vaqueros after us with chains and muskets." Stone Hands paused, waiting for his words to be heard deep and felt in the heart. "If this happens to us, then I ask you all, those especially who cannot make up their minds one way or the other. I ask you, what are we?"

He waited for an answer.

"Slaves," said my friend Anita.

"Slaves," others said.

"Slaves," everyone now said, even those who had not made up their minds before. It was not true that we were slaves. The fathers at the Mission wanted us to believe in their God and they made us work hard and were strict and often were impatient with us. Yet they loved us as if we were their children. Everyone sided with Stone Hands because they liked and feared him both and because many of them felt like slaves.

Stone Hands said, "Since we are slaves, what is left for us? What is the thing we can do?"

"Flee," one of the workers said and then everyone nodded his head and said, "Flee! Flee!"

He paused again and waited a long time. Then he said, speaking each word slowly, "If anyone here says a word, this I promise him." He drew a finger swiftly across his throat.

We started down the hill to the Mission as Stone Hands went on talking.

"San Diego, our brothers burned down long ago. And they burned San Juan Capistrano. This Mission of Santa Barbara was shaken down by earthquakes. It was burned by fire. The sweat of Indians has put it back together from the earth four times over. We have lost our lands to the Missions and the gringo. But our lands and forests and rivers we shall take back. Again they will be ours. And remember my warning, all of you, each of you alike. You know me, Stone Hands. You know that I do not speak words just to hear them." Again he drew a finger his throat.

At the bottom of the hill, just as we were going through the gate into the Mission, he took my arm and pulled me aside. He waited until everyone had passed us and gone into the Mission.

"Some asked about the locked doors," he said. "There are two, as you know. The door from the boys' quarters is locked. The door from the girls' quarters is also locked."

He turned his back upon the Mission and faced me. "Wrap this in your shawl and show it to no one. I made it from the key the old lady carries around. I got it from her when she was asleep and made one like it. I have tried the key on both of the doors and it works."

He laughed. "I should become a locksmith." With these words he put the key in my hand and I slipped my shawl over it. The key was heavy and awkward. I took it at once to my bed and hid it under the blankets.

Before the bell rang for mass, I climbed into the belfry and looked off toward the west in the direction the boat had gone, thinking that something might have happened to cause them to return. But I saw nothing on the sea. The water was calm and the nearer islands of Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz stood up very clear against the sky.

Beyond them, far out where it was sometimes stormy it was also calm. But I could not see the Island of the Blue Dolphins because it was too far away, perhaps because the world was shaped like an orange, like Stone Hands said.

After mass Father Merced talked to us while we ate but many were not listening. They were thinking about what Stone Hands had said when we had come home from the fields.

Chapter 15

S
TONE
H
ANDS
had chosen Sunday night because of the fiesta, but also because of the full moon, which would make traveling easier.

It was a quiet fiesta. There were paper globes, which had colored candles in them, looped around the courtyard and three boys played guitars and one played a violin and everyone danced, even the old ones. It should have been a noisy fiesta but everyone was quiet, thinking his own thoughts.

Stone Hands danced with me first.

In the few months I had been at the Mission he had paid more attention to me than to any of the other girls. He brought me a flower sometimes, which he picked in the garden. No one else was allowed to pick flowers from the garden, except the padres. Sometimes he brought me a sweet from the kitchen, which he was not supposed to do either.

But when we were in the fields or were dancing he said very little. Usually, he asked me where I had lived before I came to the Mission. He asked me this over and over. I guess he could not think of anything else to say. Sometimes I told him different stories.

I did not want to get married. I was fourteen years old and the age when most of our girls got married, but I did not want to.

Especially, I did not want to marry Gito Cruz. I did not like the way he talked or did not talk, or the way he made his mustache into a thin line, or the name he chose for himself, or the way he strutted around. There was nothing I liked about him at all.

My friend Rosa said, "You will get used to his mustache."

"Maybe to his mustache," I said, "but not to all the other things. Marry him yourself."

"I would if he would ask me," Rosa said.

As we danced that night, Stone Hands said, "You have told me about your aunt who may come back from the island. I understand how you feel. I understand that you would not wish to go away and have her come here and find no one she knows. I understand all these things. So I do not expect you to come with us tonight. Later, after one moon, I will send you a message and tell you where we are. Then you will come to us with your aunt. I will send you a map, which will tell where we hide."

"I will think about what you have said," I replied, but I did not want a map, nor did I wish to know where they would hide.

It was nearly the end of the fiesta and we were dancing gravely together, saying little to each other.

Anita danced a bamba, which is difficult, with a tumbler of water on her head, while with her feet she picked up from the floor a handkerchief with two corners tied together.

Then Rosa danced a jarabe with Stone Hands, while singers stood in a circle and broke in with short verses. She held her skirts above her ankles to show off her feet, which were tiny, and the rest of us drummed with our heels.

One of the boys had gotten a dozen duck eggs from somewhere, emptied and then filled them with perfume water that he got from Rosa. He pelted all the girls he liked with the perfumed eggs, which made them shriek and chase him through the courtyard.

Again Stone Hands and I were dancing together, saying nothing to each other.

Then he said, "I have asked you where you came from. I have asked many times and each time you give me a different answer."

"I am a Digger Indian," I said. The Diggers were the lowliest tribe anywhere on the coast. They lived near San Diego and got their names from the gringos because they spent most of their time digging roots out of the ground.

"Someday you will tell me the truth." He smiled and his thin mustache twinkled, but he was angry. "Someday before long, before I die, perhaps."

"I will tell you now so you will not have to die waiting. My mother came from the Island of the Blue Dolphins. As you already know, she was the sister of Karana who is the girl who still lives on the island and has been there since before I was born. Our tribe when the ship brought them to Santa Barbara did not like it here and they left. You know this also."

"There are many that think the same," Stone Hands said. "At every Mission from San Diego to San Francisco, they think the same."

"I do not know where any of them went except my mother," I said as we danced slowly around and around. "My mother married an Indian from Mission Ventura and went to live at Pala which is a village south of here many leagues."

"I know Pala," Stone Hands said. "The Cupeños owned a wonderful country of streams and plumes of steam that came out of the ground and thousands of acres of grazing land and many cattle and horses. You know what happened then? A gringo came and married a young lady who was brought up by the governor's mother."

I knew this story and it always made me mad to hear it. It still makes me mad.

"Warner, the gringo, got his wife to talk to the governor's mother, who talked to the governor himself, and then within the time of two moons the land of the Cupeños, which they had owned for hundreds of years, was given to Warner. A gift of fifteen square miles of the best land in California was made to a gringo. Just as though you were passing out a plate of beans, he received fifteen thousand acres. You know what happened to the Cupeños?"

"I remember."

"They were moved away, many miles away, to a place that even the coyotes shunned."

"That was where my mother lived and where I was born and where my mother died of a disease the gringos brought," I said.

"You know what I talk about therefore."

"Yes," I said, "I know it well."

Never again would Stone Hands have to ask me where I was born when he could not think of anything else to say. I would have told him before if all of this had not been so bitter to think about and to say.

Chapter 16

W
HEN THE
fiesta was over and everyone went to bed I waited until the bell in the big tower struck. This was the signal I had waited for.

I slipped out of bed and found the iron key that Stone Hands had made. The other girls—there were fifty-nine of us—were out of bed now and were fixing their blankets into tight rolls.

I went to the door that led outside to the hallway and downstairs into the garden. I put the key into the keyhole. I was fearful that it would not fit, that it would go into the keyhole but not turn the lock. I worked quietly and carefully.

The door made a squeak, as it always did, but it came open. In their bare feet, clutching their blankets, the girls passed me and went silently down the stairs. Then I opened the door to the boys' room, although I did not like what they were going to do. They were ready and came out fast, but noisier than the girls. In a moment I heard them in the courtyard, just a faint sound of bare feet moving away.