Amends

It has been raining for hours. Rain pellets the skylight. Water streams from the eaves in sheets. Wind shakes and rattles unhinged doors and loosens screens.

Cheyenne and I are hunkered on the porch futon. The chiminea glows brightly, the fragrant apple wood crackling and spitting as it burns.

I am re-reading Susan Schwartz's Silk Roads and Shadows. Alexandra is battling a killer sandstorm and demons--inner and outer--halfway across the vast Sahara on her way to save her ancient city and her heritage when Cheyenne's toe finds its way to mine under the comforter and tickles me.

"We have company," she says.

Sure enough, through the heavy slanting rain, huddled together under a useless umbrella, race the Twins.

Cheyenne is up before me and has the door open just as the girls reach the steps. A gust of wind and rain slam in with them, and I am already helping them strip their wet windbreakers while Cheyenne pulls the door shut.

"Whatever are you girls doing running around in this weather?" I chide, handing them each a woolly afghan to drape around their wet heads and shoulders.

Shivering, June laughs. "We have a present for you, Rose."

"But first we gotta dry off," Kami says, shaking her wet mop of curls.

I run into the bedroom and pull two sets of sweatshirts, pants, and socks from the dresser, stopping at the linen closet for a couple of towels. By the time I return, the girls have their shoes and socks off.

"Take these into the bedroom and change your clothes. Bring everything back out here and we'll hang it to dry by the fire."

Kami pulls a bag, one of Janine's hand-woven designs, from under her sweatshirt and lays it on the rattan table next to the futon. Somehow, soaked as she is, she kept that bag dry.

When the girls return, glowing with the exhilaration of running in the rain, I pour tea from the pot Cheyenne and I have been sharing this afternoon, but they are already warm and quickly set their cups aside.

"We came to apologize for the other day, Rose," Kami says.

"And to tell you we're sorry we broke the bowl," June finishes.

Before I can open my mouth to respond, to tell them it is I who should apologize to them, Kami continues.

"We forgot, you see," she says. "After you left, Janine wheeled her chair over, raised herself as high as she could, and picked up where you left off."

My head swivels back and forth as the two tell their tale, finishing each other's sentences.

"She said we should have known better. . . "

"We forgot that yesterday was the day Marita died."

"Not the day, Silly, the anniversary of the day. . ."

"You know what I mean," June continues. "We forgot. We know how much she meant to you."

"We loved her too, Rose. Really we did. She was always so kind to us. Whenever we got on everyone else's nerves, Marita would just laugh and give us one of her great big hugs and invite us in for cookies."

"Marita taught us how to make kites . . ."

"And took us all up on the hill . . . "

"All the kids, every one, and showed us how to fly 'em."

"Remember Rose? Remember when the whole village made kites and flew 'em?"

"I do," I laugh at the memory. "I laughed so hard that day that my face and belly ached half the night."

"The kites were beautiful," Cheyenne says. "I remember yours especially, Kami. Yours was a Phoenix, and you would not stop chattering about how every time it lifted, someone's dream was lifting with it. Do you remember?"

"Yes." Kami actually blushes. I don't believe I have seen her blush. "My first kite didn't turn out so well, and I wadded it up in a ball and threw it at June, 'cause her kite was so pretty."

"Yeh," June says, "Marita picked up the ball and tossed it in the fireplace. Then she winked at me, and grabbed Kami's hand. She said they were gonna make a Phoenix rise from the ashes."

"'Because everyone's dreams can take wing if they get a little lift,' that's what she said," Kami finishes.

June grabs the brightly colored bag from the table and pulls out two oat straw dollies.

"We've been saving them since the harvest over in Central Village," Kami says.

"We were going to return them to the field in the spring, like the ancients did, but we want you to have them instead, Rose."

"They're absolutely beautiful!"

"We know!" the girls chime in unison, but it's joy in the beauty, not pride I hear in their voices.

I turn the dollies over, one at a time. Only young, nimble fingers can braid the long oat fibers so daintily.

"But Rose," June says, "You know how Ralph is always saying that nothing is permanent?"

"Especially oat straw dollies," Kami says. "Plenty of Central Village children made dollies last summer for the fertility festival this spring. No one will know our two dollies didn't make it back to their fields."

"We decided to give them to you, Rose," June again. "We're sorry we were careless and unmindful yesterday."

"What June means is, we're sorry we forgot that you,"

"And most everybody else!"

"Were remembering Marita, and maybe feeling sad."

"Corn dollies are beautiful, but just like people are fragile and don't always live out their lives, and, well, the corn dollies might not make it till spring either." June turns to Kami. "You tell her."

Cheyenne puts her arm around June. Kami leans in to her other side.

"We thought," Kami seems embarrassed, "well, maybe it's silly, but we thought maybe you could plant them in the garden or something, to show that you forgive us, and as a reminder that, that . . ."

"That things always grow back if the ground is well-tended, or something like that!"

I am momentarily speechless, so deeply touched at the girls' sensitivity.

"You want to have a ritual of some kind to show your love and remembrance for Marita and 'bury the hatchet' so to speak?"

The girls nod, their eyes bright, and the near-irrepressible grins hover around their mouths, waiting to return.

"I have an idea," Cheyenne says, glancing to see if I agree. "Let's toss the corn dollies in the chiminea and watch them burn. Like Marita, they will burn brightly for a moment and be all too soon gone."

"And so will any sense that any of us owes the other an apology for our behavior yesterday. What do you say, Girls?" I wink at Cheyenne, who nods her approval.

The Twins grab Cheyenne's hands and pull her to me.

"Group hug!"

We hold each other a moment, each in our own thoughts. My mind is flashing with images of the Twins and Marita, their mutual exuberance, at times so exasperating, at other times so full of joy that we mere ordinary folk could only observe, laugh, and enjoy ourselves to the fullest.

Kami pulls away, hands me her straw dollie. I admire its beauty one more time, then toss it on the fire, followed closely by June's.

The fire flashes. The straw crackles and snaps. The brightly colored ribbons that decorated the dollies flare on their own, then wither to ash.

I hug the girls, each in turn, while Cheyenne heads to the kitchen. The lid of the cookie jar clinks, and Cheyenne returns quickly with a plateful of white-frosted ginger cookies.

"Mmmmm! Our favorite!" June grins, and pops one nearly whole into her mouth.

"This is the real reason we came over," Kami says impishly.

"Yeah," June's words are muffled. "We smelled the ginger baking yesterday."

I glance at Cheyenne over their heads, and say a thank you prayer to Marita for her goodness and love, and another for the generous hearts of these two young women.

May the village ever be blessed with ones such as these.

Red!

I don't know what got into me today. I stormed from the kitchen in a fit of pique.

Oh sure, sometimes I let the Twins get to me with their high-energy goofing around--teasing each other mercilessly or playing catch with everything from carrot sticks to china cups.

"We won't break Mary's pretty bowl, Rose, we promise!" Kami laughed, deftly tossing the blown glass to June who, momentarily distracted by my ire--I admit--missed and watched in horror as the bowl crashed to the floor.

Usually, I enjoy their enthusiasm and unbridled zest.

Today I snapped at them. Didn't they understand the hours of training and work that Mary had endured to make that beautiful piece for our kitchen? What were they thinking? Had they no respect . . . on and on until I realized what I was doing, dropped the biscuit cutter, wiped the flower from my hands, and left.

You would think a woman my age would have better control of her emotions. But here I am, stomping across the meadow with no never-mind, as Aunt Rind used to say, paying no heed to the tiny florets popping their heads through the winter grasses, no care what rabbit or titmouse I am starting from the brush.

Clomp! Clomp! Clomp! I jab the dry winter ground hard and loud with my heavy garden boots. I'd like to squash something right into the ground. Smear it to nothing.

What is wrong with me today?

I stride at break-neck speed past the harrowed fields, past the plum trees blooming pink in the upper orchard, hardly giving them a glance, past the old dam long since abandoned, and a good five miles from the village.

Good lord, have I slogged five miles already?

Turkey vultures circle overhead. Some poor coyote or deer probably got suckered by a mountain lion. Well, it was her time, that's all. When it's your time, it's your time.

Cold.

I stop cold. Sweat drips from my hair into my ears. It is warm this sunny January morning, 67 at least, but it is not only the exertion that causes me to perspire. I'm having a hot flash. Yet, here I stand, shivering in my sweat-soaked clothes.

Why didn't I think of it sooner?

A huge weight sits down on my heart, hard, and heavy as a cast-iron griddle.

I plop to the ground, grunt painfully as the sharp edge of a rock the size of my fist scores my backside.

I deserve that.

Chest heaving, I crumple all the way to the ground, sobbing into the thin dry grass, overcome by a grief I thought long suaged.

I grasp at the few wispy blades of grass, dig my fingers into the hard-packed soil surrounding their roots and cry out loud into the dirt, not caring that I taste it, gritty on my lips and tongue.

Then, momentarily lucid, I smell scat--fox. Where? I raise my head, but the tears come all the more. Alone here on the open hills, I wail, and on the in-breath, that scat again.

Nostrils wide, I concentrate on the fresh scent in a vain attempt to distract myself from this pain. Still, the guttural sobs come, from deep in my belly, forcing themselves up and out, and I give way at last, to a retching so violent I fear I'll break a rib.

Marita, I miss you so. I had forgotten today--anniversary of your death. Dear friend. How long you've been gone. How far away.

Jacob nearly a man now, though still a child--those awkward years between bright-eyed innocence (his lost too soon) and striding adult. He works like a man, with his father's broad shoulders.

Ah, Marita, but he has the heart of a healer. No one more gentle than your Jacob.

I pour my sorrow into the ground and, finally spent, fall asleep where I lie until something tickles my nose.

My own sneeze, rude and harsh, wakens me. Jacob's face is next to mine, his eyes at once sad and mirthful.

"You're crying for Mom, aren't you, Rose?" he says.

I'm ashamed he's found me so. I sit, brush my hair back.

He reaches to pull a tiny clod of dirt and a ladybug from my hair.

"She's still in quasi-hibernation," he says, placing her tenderly in my palm. "No aphids for her to eat yet."

The ladybug lifts her wings and takes flight on the breeze that lifts my shirt-tail as well.

My shirt is askew, a button loose on its thread. Fiddling with my clothing, I do not speak. Then I reach over and give Jacob a bear hug so tight I might break both our ribs.

"I wish I knew her the way you did, Rose," he says. "Tell me something about her. Anything you want." His voice is strong, deep, momentarily lacking the familiar adolescent crack of recent months.

A shock of red hair, so like Marita's, falls across his left eye and he brushes it away distractedly, the gesture also hers.

"Oh my god, Jacob," I say, swiping at a fresh slab of tears on my face. "So many things."

"Her laugh. That's what I liked best. Any time you were near Marita and Jonathon, there was laughter. Your mom laughed from the belly, without apology. She laughed with her whole body. She was a hearty woman, Jacob, filled with the joy of life! I never understood why she had to be taken from us like that. It infuriates me to this day!"

"You loved her," he says simply, leaning back on his elbows.

Lazily, he lifts one long arm and points to the sky. "Look, a red-tail hawk."

"Your mom's favorite bird. She told me once that when she saw a red-tail hawk, she always imagined, for a tiny second, that she could fly. She said it was a body-memory. She said she could remember flying. She wasn't the least bit apologetic for that either."

Jacob does not move, nor does he take his eyes from the raptor circling overhead, but his voice is cottony when he speaks.

"Long as I remember, whenever she saw a red-tail, Mom stopped what she was doing and watched until it was out of sight. She told me once that I would always know she was watching over me when I saw a red-tail."

"Do you feel that way, Jacob? That she is watching over you?"

"Let me put it this way," Jacob sits up, straightening his spine and lowering his voice in the self-conscious way of young men whose vocal chords have become unreliable. "More than once when I was little and alone on the hills, a red-tail hawk saved me."

"Why Jacob, I didn't know! Tell me!"

"Well," he runs his fingers through his hair, "once before I knew better, I was out here somewhere running through the grass. It was summer. The grass was high as my chest, and I was a horse galloping on the prairie.

"I was just a little kid, see, and I still pretended a lot," Jacob twists a small stick in his hand and scratches at the ground with it, his face lowered. His cheeks are redder than usual when he raises his head to watch the hawk again.

"A red-tail spiked down in front of me from nowhere--I swear it wasn't there until that second--and grabbed a rattlesnake. Right there, Rose. Right in front of me. If I had taken one more step, I'd have been bit for sure."

"And there were other times?"

"Lots of them." Jacob jumps to his feet. "Gotta go, Rose. I'm glad you're okay. Scared me seeing you on the ground like that. Thought maybe you fainted or somethin'. See ya'."

He lopes away on his gangly legs, across the meadow, past the stand of live oaks. I watch him disappear up and over the crest of the hill.

You have a fine son, Marita.