“Are you headed somewhere nearby?”
Maria Josie didn’t know any women who drove, and besides that, the people of Saguarita still rode wagons pulled by tired mules. “I’m headed to Denver, se?ora.”
The woman laughed, and even through twilight, lipstick was visibly smeared over her teeth. “You’re not getting to Denver tonight, or tomorrow night, or probably the night after that. Not walking at least.”
“Figured I’d get a ride from someone going that way.”
“Haven’t run into any?”
Maria Josie pushed her hat higher on her head and turned her shoulder to the rising moon. She noted that the woman spoke with a strange and quick cadence. Her clothes were finer versions of the dresses modeled in The Saturday Evening Post. “Time has gotten away from me.”
“Haven’t you got a family?”
“No.”
“A husband, anyone?”
“Pardon me. I need to keep walking.”
“You’re liable to be killed by a bear out here. Why don’t we give you a lift?”
Maria Josie was startled to see a narrow black German shepherd sitting tall in the back seat. “Is your dog nice?”
“Nice enough.”
* * *
—
They drove in silence for several miles, leaning into the road’s forested walls. There were the engine’s breathing sounds, and the black dog panting behind Maria Josie’s neck. The woman seemed preoccupied, asking few questions. She looked small behind the steering wheel, and her eyes focused on every stray animal streaking silver across the road. Smart. She was a smart woman. She said her name was Millicent. Her husband was away with their son on a hunting trip and did she ever feel more free? No. She did not. “You’re an Indian, correct?”
“My father was,” said Maria Josie.
Millicent shifted in her seat. She gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I’m somewhat of a collector. I have several pieces from this area. Hopi?”
Maria Josie told her no. She peered out the window.
“I’m going to my father’s ranch. You can stay with me tonight. There’s plenty of room.”
Maria Josie thanked Millicent for her kindness, but said that she’d hate to put her and her father out.
“He won’t be there. It’ll just be you, me, and Noche.” She said this without gesturing toward the dog. It was understood she had an animal named night.
Millicent turned down a dirt road that was almost invisible in the dark. She drove for several minutes, the car hopping over gravel, the sounds of spitting rocks whipping the bottom of the Pierce-Arrow like hail in reverse. There was no fancy iron gate to welcome them to the ranch. The wooden home stood in the dark with a single light glowing from a window. It was enormous and appeared vacant. Millicent stopped the car in a paved lot.
“Is this a cattle ranch?” asked Maria Josie.
“My father is in the oil business. This is more of a vacation home than a ranch.”
“My father was in the theater business,” said Maria Josie, with a certain amount of bite.
“I thought you didn’t have a family.” Millicent laughed. She whistled for Noche as she stepped out of the car. “Come on, Maria Josefina, you’ll catch cold.”
The home was a cavernous space with levels and staircases and echoes of emptiness. Noche trailed Millicent as she walked a hallway in her high-heeled shoes, lighting the lamps and opening doors. At each stop, the house revealed itself to be more grand. Maria Josie now understood what she meant by collector. There were Diné squash blossom necklaces in glass cases, Zuni pottery on high shelves, beaded Ute wedding dresses pinned to the walls as if an invisible and crucified bride watched them as they walked. Where did it all come from? Were the makers all dead? Maria Josie moved toward a mask of the Talking God. The mask was larger than half her torso and hawk feathers poked down a long trail from the skull, while the eyes were black slits in a square leather face. Turquoise dripped from the side panels, and the center, where humans have their mouths, was a familiar circular hole. The rabbit fur was tattered, and the spruce branches lining the neck were disintegrated.
“It’s one of my father’s favorites. Navajo, I believe.”
“Pretty.” She didn’t tell Millicent that masks are their own spirit. She wondered if it had been fed recently, or if it was angry or sad. When she was a child, there was a hoop dancer in her father’s show who kept a mask. He fed it cornmeal, cared for the spirit as if it were alive.
Millicent had started a fire in the main room. Noche stood beside her like a statue come to life. Through the massive windows, the sky was a dazzling lid, turned and tightened above them. The rocks and pines were moon blanched. There were dark pillars of smoke across the mountainside. Someday, and someday soon, Maria Josie thought, these sights will be gone from my life. Millicent stood at a cart with glasses and crystal bottles. She poured something brown and offered it to Maria Josie. They were both young, though Millicent was maybe a decade older. She had crow’s-feet around each eye.
Maria Josie said, “Se?ora, I’m very tired. Could I have some water?”
“For heaven’s sake. How rude of me. You must have walked all day.” She snapped her fingers, leading Maria Josie into the washroom. “I’ll heat water for a bath and fix you some tea.”
It wasn’t long after Maria Josie began to bathe herself that she felt like weeping into the reddish water. She couldn’t go back now. She had made her choice. It struck her then that this night was the beginning of her new life, one without anyone else. She worked the sides of her belly with Ivory soap. She listened to the dings and tics of the house sighing beneath the water. When she sat up again, Millicent and Noche stood in the doorway, a cold breeze pushing into the washroom. She held a towel. “You’re not carrying anymore, are you?”
Maria Josie dropped her hands from her breasts to her belly.
“The father?”
Maria Josie watched the black dog, how its tail coiled like a snail’s shell. “Hauenstein. He’s a German man, a doctor.”
“These things can be so complicated.” Millicent then did something peculiar. She leaned over the tub, wrapped Maria Josie in the towel, and kissed her hair.
Before dawn, Maria Josie dressed herself in a change of clothes she carried in her satchel and walked several miles in the dark. As she approached the main road, the sky purple with dawn, a brown pickup truck slowed its crawl over the mountains. A white-haired farmer carrying a load of chickens said in Spanish, “Where to?”
“Denver,” said Maria Josie, and hobbled into the truck bed, where she found a pile of wool blankets surrounded by feathers.
THIRTY-TWO
To the Wedding
Denver, 1934
On the Sunday afternoon of Lizette’s wedding, Luz sat with her in the stone-walled bridal chamber of Saint Cajetan’s Catholic Parish and watched as her cousin stepped into her gown as if dropped into a pail of cream. Teresita was there, too, a relative’s baby affixed to her hip in her mother-of-the-bride silver gown. Maria Josie stood nearby dressed in her finest pin-striped suit, a red rose clipped to her hair. Girl cousins in lilac dresses moved in and out of the chamber, women convening in an underground tunnel.