Sister Salt liked to slip away from Indigo when she wasn’t watching; then Sister Salt hid and waited until Indigo realized she was gone. Indigo learned to track her in the sand so Sister Salt used sagebrush to wipe away her footprints. She loved to crouch down just around a turn in the trail and jump out at Indigo to hear her scream. When it was too hot to play chase, plunging and rolling down the steepest slopes of the high dunes, they played their favorite guessing game — they called it Which Hand? — with a smooth pebble.
After the first beans and squash were harvested, Grandma Fleet left her shelter by the peach seedlings less and less often. The girls helped her walk through the gardens, where she surveyed the sunflowers, some small and pale yellow, others orange-yellow and much taller than they were; then she examined the brilliant red amaranth. The sunflowers and the amaranth were so robust they would have food all winter. The gardens were green with corn and bush beans; a few pods had already ripened and split, scattering beans on the sand. Sister Salt bent down to pick up the beans but Grandma Fleet shook her head firmly.
“Let them be,” she said. That way, the old gardens would reseed themselves and continue as they always had, regardless of what might happen.
“What could happen, Grandma?” Indigo’s question brought a groan of impatience from Sister Salt, who made a face at her, but Grandma laughed, then stopped to catch her breath. They had completed their walk past the garden terraces near the spring.
“Anything could happen to us, dear,” Grandma Fleet said as she hugged Indigo close to her side. “Don’t worry. Some hungry animal will eat what’s left of you and off you’ll go again, alive as ever, now part of the creature who ate you.
“I’ve been close to death a few times,” Grandma Fleet said as she slowly made her way up the path. “I was so surprised the first time I wasn’t even scared; after my first baby, your mother, was born, the bleeding would not stop.”
“Did it hurt?” Sister Salt asked.
“Oh no, I felt no pain, that’s why I wasn’t scared. I thought dying hurt a great deal.”
“But you didn’t die,” Indigo said.
“No, the old medicine woman gave me juniper berry tea and told me, ‘You are needed here. We need you. This baby needs you.’ ” Grandma Fleet paused to catch her breath.
“The old woman scolded me while I drank the tea. ‘Don’t be lazy, young woman!’ ”
“Why did she say that, Grandma?” Indigo tried to imagine how one person scolded another for bleeding to death.
“Because dying is easy — it’s living that is painful.” Grandma Fleet started walking again, slowly, leaning on the girls to steady herself.
“To go on living when your body is pierced by pain, to go on breathing when every breath reminds you of your lost loved ones — to go on living is far more painful than death.”
Big tears began to roll down Indigo’s cheeks, but she didn’t make a sound. Their mother must be dead or she would have come back by now. What had eaten Mama? Was she crawling around as a worm or running as a coyote?
They walked the rest of the way in silence. Sister Salt held her left arm and Indigo the right as Grandma inched her way down, down into her little dugout shelter by the apricot seedlings. Grandma Fleet settled down on her blanket with a loud sigh of pleasure and stretched herself out for a nap. She joked about sleeping so much and becoming lazy in her old age. Relaxed, with her eyes closed, Grandma Fleet talked about their dear ancestors, the rain clouds, until her words came slower and slower and she was snoring softly. Sister Salt felt her heart suddenly so full of love for Grandma, who always loved them, who always was there to care for them no matter what happened. Sister looked at the tiny figure on the old blankets breathing peacefully, and she realized, when the time came, Grandma Fleet intended to be buried there under her little apricot trees.
Indigo was the first one up the path that morning on her way to wash at the spring. As she passed Grandma Fleet’s shelter, she called out, “Good morning,” but was not alarmed when Grandma did not answer; in recent weeks Grandma slept later and later. Indigo was washing her face at the pool when Sister Salt came running and cried out Grandma was dead.
Indigo refused to help, but Grandma Fleet weighed hardly more than a big jackrabbit as Sister Salt gently shifted her body to wrap the blanket more securely. Indigo refused to scoop sand over the body. She sat flat on the sand, a distance away, with her back to her sister, too angry to cry, too angry to bury Grandma Fleet. All day Indigo sat on the same spot, with her back to the mound of sand, while Sister Salt tended the gardens as Grandma would have, pulling weeds around the squash and beans.
Late in the afternoon Sister Salt came slowly up the trail with gourd bowls in both hands. She placed the bowl full of squash and bean stew on the grave, then filled the other gourd bowl at the spring and arranged it next to the bowl of stew. She did not disturb Indigo but went back to get the remaining stew for her and Indigo to share.
At first Indigo refused to join her sister, who ate stew next to the mound of sand that covered Grandma Fleet. But the delicious odor of the stew finally won her over and Indigo, her eyes swollen and red, sullenly joined her sister. They ate in silence. Sister Salt watched the sun drop behind the sandstone cliffs and felt the breeze become cooler; the days were shorter though they were still quite warm, but the nights were already uncomfortable without a blanket.
Sister Salt continued to follow all of Grandma Fleet’s instructions: as the beans and corn ripened, she dried them in the sun, then stored them in the huge pottery storage jars buried in the sand floor of the dugout house.
Indigo refused to sleep anywhere but the shallow hole she scooped out beside Grandma Fleet’s grave. All day while Sister Salt toiled in the gardens, Indigo ignored her sister; Indigo had a favorite sandstone boulder next to the pool at the spring; here she spent most days, looking off into the distance, watching the trail to the big wash and the river because this was the trail Grandma Fleet used for her visit with Mrs. Van Wagnen, and when Mama returned, she would probably follow the same trail home.
As the days became shorter and the nights cooler, Indigo spent all day on the boulder, where the sun’s heat felt delicious. She carried on imaginary conversations with Mama and with Grandma Fleet to pass the time. She told them how she and Sister Salt worked to put away the harvest, and she imagined how this must please them and the words of praise they would give if they were there. Sometimes she made up stories to amuse herself; she imagined that a golden eagle mother flew down and lifted her by the back of her dress, off the boulder, high into the sky. From so high up Indigo saw the entire world. She saw the river but it looked like a child’s belt, thin and green on the edges and muddy red down the middle; the giant dunes glittered like big glass beads. Indigo searched for signs of the Messiah and his followers, but the mother eagle flew too high for Indigo to see human beings.
At night Indigo rolled herself tightly in her blankets and slept next to Grandma Fleet’s grave and the apricot seedlings. She was not afraid because Grandma Fleet was right there even if Indigo couldn’t see her, and she would protect Indigo from harm. Some nights Indigo heard voices by the spring, people speaking in happy tones with laughter; she knew she must not listen too closely or she might want to join them.