She told Claire that her grandmother on her mother’s side was a high priestess. Her mother, a schoolteacher, scorned all that, thought it was what made the island backward, but after giving birth to Minna she suffered from a darkness. Depression, melancholia, or postpartum, whatever it was, she stopped caring for her baby, or anything else. The grandmother said an evil spirit inhabited her. They exorcised it in a ceremony, fed her herbs, and she was fixed. Afterward maman was willing to learn the old ways. She was a full priestess by the time grandmother passed.
Claire was thrilled with this revelation, the most Minna had told her about her past so far. Even though Claire remained skeptical of the folk remedies, none of it bothered her enough to put a stop to it, although her former healthy self might have been offended by such nonsense. In her sickness, her new vulnerability, she had grown superstitious, willing, within limits, to latch onto any promise of relief and succor, any magic trick capable of helping her find her way back to health. Wasn’t it like hoping a cosmetic might erase the signs of age? She had as little faith in Minna’s potions and chants as she would a palm reader, but with no expectation, she was pleased simply with the novelty of the undertaking.
* * *
After the first few weeks had passed, the honeymoon phase of the relationship, they had grown accustomed to each other’s rhythms — Claire woke early, while Minna slept in. They both were incurable night owls.
Despite Minna’s explanation, the phone call from weeks before still bothered Claire. Was it partly resentment about Minna’s ongoing affair with Don? Claire had gone as far as to discuss it with Forster and Mrs. Girbaldi. Later she regretted this lack of faith on her part, wished she had kept her mouth closed. Predictably, the two had arrived at the same conclusion: Mrs. Girbaldi thought Minna should be fired right away; Forster thought that her explanation had been a logical one, which made it even more necessary to get rid of the girl. But the more everyone jumped to find fault with her, the more Claire was inspired to be loyal. Minna was like a stray that fears the world will turn on it again at any moment. Perhaps they would never understand certain things about her. How well did any human being know another, after all?
* * *
Claire slipped Minna’s pay into an envelope and put it on the bombé chest in the entry hall where she left mail, although no mail ever came for Minna, and none seemed ever to go out. As Claire sat reading in the living room, Minna came in holding the check. Claire looked up from the book, embarrassed to be confronted with the bare workings of their relationship.
“I wonder if you could advance me a few weeks?”
Claire waited, but no explanation was forthcoming. “If you need it,” she finally said.
Without making a decision to be deceptive, Claire neglected to pass on this news to Forster or Mrs. Girbaldi, already sensing that their misgivings would turn to full rebellion against keeping Minna. Did it really matter that she was paid in advance?
Minna’s need for money seemed insatiable to Claire, who never observed her shopping or buying anything personal. It was a mystery what the money was for. How large could the debt to the cousin possibly be?
* * *
The girls’ calls marked the week, taking turns every other day: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. How’re you? Fine. How’re you? Great. Couldn’t be better. Once in a while on Friday through Sunday, Claire called them, and they would answer, startled, apprehensive. “Everything is fine,” Claire would say. “I simply miss your voice.” And she did. Having someone in the house again, especially a young woman the same age as they were, made her long for the companionship of the old days.
She was too shy to talk to them of the torture of the chemo treatments, how her stomach was in knots the morning of the first treatment before they got in the car, how as she walked down the hallway to oncology, her body broke out in a sweat, and Minna, sensing her panic, held her hand and began to talk of their plans to plant a vegetable garden in the backyard.
The first few treatments she had not felt sick; the nurses had been hopeful she would be one of the lucky ones with few side effects, but after the third treatment they came with a crushing ferocity. She refused to burden the girls with how she would be so nauseated and disoriented on the way home, she vomited into a plastic shopping bag. Most of all, Claire felt she needed to protect them, as if they were still too young to be exposed to this kind of suffering. But Minna, younger than Lucy, insisted on sharing this burden. So on Monday: How’re you? Here, let me put Minna on. On Tuesday: How’re you? Tired. Wednesday: Talk to Minna.
* * *
Blossoms dropped off, replaced with small, green, marble-size lemons, just as Claire’s hair began to fall out. Paz did the spring cleaning, finding strands of hair everywhere. Crying, she stayed outside, ostensibly to air the pillows for the outdoor furniture, even though Claire wasn’t allowed to be in the sun. Feeling helpless, Paz was almost glad that Minna had the job of caring for Claire.
As the first speckle-skinned Blenheim apricots ripened, ulcers broke out inside Claire’s mouth, and unable to eat, she sat on the linoleum kitchen floor, defeated, while Minna spooned honey in her mouth to sooth the burning.
“I can’t do it,” Claire said.
Minna held her forehead, her hand, held her body up when Claire was too dizzy to walk. She put her in a chair and rubbed her back while Paz hurriedly changed the bedding, then they both helped her lie down. “You will get through this. I’m going to make you a special drink, an elixir my maman taught me. It heals everything.”
True to her word, Minna spent hours in the kitchen boiling all sorts of herbs, flowers, and plants. Strange smells issued from the kitchen, but when Claire tried to go in, she was shooed away. The elixir was addictive; it always tasted different, but always made Claire feel the same. Calmer, healthier. Unaware, Claire began her first steps into magical thinking, the idea that Minna’s cures could indeed heal.
On the one day a week Paz was there, she and Minna found everything to fight about. Minna disliked how her things were moved around when her room was cleaned. She complained that too much detergent was used in the laundry, claiming it gave her a rash. Said dust was accumulating everywhere, bad for Claire’s breathing, and what was the girl doing all day long anyway?
Paz told Claire that Minna left dirty clothes and dishes everywhere, that the bathroom was a nightmare to clean, that when she cooked in the kitchen, it was a disaster afterward — the sink clogged and a sticky tar burned on the bottom of the pots.
One day Paz snuck into Claire’s room and woke her as she napped. “I don’t think Minna is right in the head. She gets so angry, she’s messy, she always is lying around, not working. This is not the right person to care for you.”
“She’ll get better.”
“Let me come and care for you.”
Claire took Paz’s hands. “Law school is your father’s dream. I want to live long enough to be at your graduation. Give me that.”
Paz hugged her as they both heard the creak of the floorboard. Minna shifted her weight; obviously she had been standing there listening.
* * *
In May the fog lifted by noon, and then the sun, magnified by being denied all morning, scorched the edges of the rose petals, turned the skin on the figs a dark purple even though the flesh inside remained unripe.
In the evening, the fog returned, a salve on the bruised vegetation. The women waited for the cooler temperatures to work in the garden. Since Claire hadn’t had the energy to plant seeds earlier, she cheated. Although she knew Forster didn’t want to come to the farm or watch the ravages of her illness, she traded on his guilt and asked him to fill the back of his pickup with seedlings from the local nursery. When he unloaded and realized the women were facing the task of planting alone, he relented and picked up a shovel. All day the three of them transplanted tomatoes and squash and basil into Octavio’s neat, ready-made rows.