Even with worries like that it was mostly fun for me. Why couldn’t it be like that for Bethie? Why couldn’t I give her part of my fun and take part of her pain?
Then Dad died, swept out of life by our Rio Gordo as he tried to rescue a fool Easterner who had camped on the bone-dry white sands of the river bottom in cloudburst weather. Somehow it seemed impossible to think of Mother by herself. It had always been Mother and Dad. Not just two parents but Mother-and-Dad, a single entity. And now our thoughts must limp to Mother-and, Mother-and. And Mother-well, half of her was gone.
After the funeral Mother and Bethie and I sat in our front room, looking at the floor. Bethie was clenching her teeth against the stabbing pain of Mother’s fingernails gouging Mother’s palms.
I unfolded the clenched hands gently and Bethie relaxed.
“Mother,” I said softly, “I can take care of us. I have my part-time job at the plant. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of us.”
I knew what a trivial thing I was offering to her anguish, but I had to do something to break through to her.
“Thank you, Peter,” Mother said, rousing a little. “I know you will-” She bowed her head and pressed both hands to her dry eyes with restrained desperation. “Oh, Peter, Peter! I’m enough of this world now to find death a despair and desolation instead of the solemnly sweet calling it is. Help me, help me!” Her breath labored in her throat and she groped blindly for my hand.
“If I can, Mother,” I said, taking one hand as Bethie took the other. “Then help me remember. Remember with me.”
And behind my closed eyes I remembered. Unhampered flight through a starry night, a flight of a thousand happy people like birds in the sky, rushing to meet the dawn-the dawn of the Festival. I could smell the flowers that garlanded the women and feel the quiet exultation that went with the Festival dawn. Then the leader sounded the magnificent opening notes of the Festival song as he caught the first glimpse of the rising sun over the heavily wooded hills. A thousand voices took up the song. A thousand hands lifted in the Sign ….
I opened my eyes to find my own fingers lifted to trace a sign I did not know. My own throat throbbed to a note I had never sung. I took a deep breath and glanced over at Bethie. She met my eyes and shook her head sadly. She hadn’t seen. Mother sat quietly, eyes closed, her face cleared and calmed.
“What was it, Mother?” I whispered.
“The Festival,” she said softly. “‘For an those who had been called during the year. For your father, Peter and Bethie. We remembered it for your father.”
“Where was it?” I asked. “Where in the world-?”
“Not in this-” Mother’s eyes flicked open. “It doesn’t matter, Peter. You are of this world. There is no other for you.”
“Mother,” Bethie’s voice was a hesitant murmur, “what do you mean, ‘remember’?”
Mother looked at her and tears swelled into her dry burned-out eyes.
“Oh, Bethie, Bethie, all the burdens and none of the blessings! I’m sorry, Bethie, I’m sorry.” And she fled down the hall to her room.
Bethie stood close against my side as we looked after Mother.
“Peter,” she murmured, “what did Mother mean, ‘none of the blessings’?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I’ll bet it’s because I can’t fly like you.”
“Fly!” My startled eyes went to hers. “How do you know?”
“‘I know lots of things,” she whispered. “But mostly I know we’re different. Other people aren’t like us. Peter, what made us different?”
“Mother?” I whispered. “Mother?”
“I guess so,” Bethie murmured. “But how come?”
We fell silent and then Bethie went to the window where the late sun haloed her silvery blond hair in fire.
“I can do things, too,” she whispered. “Look.”
She reached out and took a handful of sun, the same sort of golden sun-slant that had flowed so heavily through my fingers under the cottonwoods while Bub dangled above me. With flashing fingers she fashioned she sun into an intricate glowing pattern. “But what’s it for?” she murmured, “except for pretty?”
“I know,” I said, looking at my answer for lowering Bub. “I know, Bethie.” And I took the pattern from her. It strained between my fingers and flowed into darkness.
The years that followed were casual uneventful years. I finished high school, but college was out of the question. I went to work in the plant that provided work for most of the employables in Socorro.
Mother built up quite a reputation as a midwife-a very necessary calling in a community which took literally the injunction to multiply and replenish the earth and which lay exactly seventy-five miles from a hospital, no matter which way you turned when you got to the highway.
Bethie was in her teens and with Mother’s help was learning to control her visible reactions to the pain of others, but I knew she still suffered as much as, if not more than, she had when she was smaller. But she was able to go to school most of the time now and was becoming fairly popular in spite of her quietness.
So all in all we were getting along quite comfortably and quite ordinarily except-well, I always felt as though I were waiting for something to happen or for someone to come. And Bethie must have, too, because she actually watched and listened-especially after a particularly bad spell. And even Mother. Sometimes as we sat on the porch in the long evenings she would cock her head and listen intently, her rocking chair still. But when we asked what she heard she’d sigh and say, “Nothing. Just the night.” And her chair would rock again.
Of course I still indulged my differences. Not with the white fire of possible discovery that they had kindled when I first began, but more like the feeding of a small flame just “for pretty.” I went farther afield now for my “holidays,” but Bethie went with me. She got a big kick out of our excursions, especially after I found that I could carry her when I flew, and most especially after we found, by means of a heart-stopping accident, that though she couldn’t go up she could control her going down. After that it was her pleasure to have me carry her up as far as I could and she would come down, sometimes taking an hour to make the descent, often weaving about her the intricate splendor of her sunshine patterns.
It was a rustling russet day in October when our world ended-again. “We talked and laughed over the breakfast table, teasing Bethie about her date the night before. Color was high in her usually pale cheeks, and, with all the laughter and brightness the tingle of fall, everything just felt good.
But between one joke and another the laughter drained out of Bethie’s face and the pinched set look came to her lips.
“Mother!” she whispered, and then she relaxed.
“Already?” asked Mother, rising and finishing her coffee as I went to get her coat. “I had a hunch today would be the day. Reena would ride that jeep up Peppersauce Canyon this close to her time.”
I helped her on with her coat and hugged her tight.
“Bless-a-mama,” I said, “when are you going to retire and let someone else snatch the fall and spring crops of kids?’”
“When I snatch a grandchild or so for myself,” she said, joking, but I felt her sadness. “Besides she’s going to name this one Peter-or Bethie, as the case may be.” She reached for her little black bag and looked at Bethie. “‘No more yet?”
Bethie smiled. “‘No,” she murmured.
“Then I’ve got plenty of time. Peter, you’d better take Bethie for a holiday. Reena takes her own sweet time and being just across the road makes it bad on Bethie.”
“Okay, Mother,” I said. “We planned one anyway, but we hoped this time you’d go with us.”
Mother looked at me, hesitated and turned aside. “I-I might sometime.”
“Mother! Really?” This was the first hesitation from Mother in all the times we’d asked her.