“If any of them give you any trouble, let us know,” M'Lady One said in as threatening a tone as she could produce. Natani looked at her without expression, then turned and beckoned for us to follow him.
I watched Gia and Mindy working. They still seemed to have little or no interest in the three of us. To me they were like people who had suffered a lobotomy or something. Were we doomed to become like them?
“This is good ground,” Natani explained, and waved his hand over the earth before us like a priest blessing it. “It can bring all our seeds and plants to blossom and feed them what they need. It has sun all day and there are no big rocks, just little ones to remove. Here we have little wind. We must turn the earth on its back and then again to soften it and make it welcome our seeds and the roots of the plants we introduce to it.”
He nodded at three wheelbarrows full of plants.
“It is the same for us, for we want to be welcomed wherever we go to live and grow. There is much to learn from the earth and the wind, the sky, and even the rocks. Never turn your back on anything and never stop listening.”
“Oh, brother,” Teal said. “We're in the hands of some crazy Tonto. Next we'll see the Lone Ranger.”
Natani did not look like he heard or understood, but something in his aged face told me he had.
“Let's just get this over with,” I muttered. “I'm starving and thirsty.”
“We will turn over the ground and then we will with trowels dig holes for our tomato plants.”
“Just what I always wanted to do,” Robin said. “Plant tomatoes. Like I didn't work hard enough on my grandparents' farm. They raised sheep, and talk about stinks,” she said, holding her nose.
“Here we have goats,” Natani said. “And we make cheese with the milk.”
“Goats? I thought those were pigs,” I said.
“Pigs, too.”
He smiled wider and we could see he was missing some teeth. He spread us out and showed each of us how we should use the shovels and how to turn theearth. We started to do it, and Teal immediately cried about her hands.
“This is hard. I'll get blisters!”
Robin and I worked quietly, glancing every once in a while at Mindy and Gia, who stopped working and left the garden.
“Where are they going?” Robin asked jealously. “I didn't hear any bells ringing.”
We worked on, Teal moaning the loudest, but soon all three of us were muttering to ourselves. I didn't think it was possible to get this tired and sore. Every once in a while, Natani would take the shovel from one of us and again demonstrate how to use it efficiently. He seemed to have magical hands, making it all look so easy.
At one point he knelt by Robin and picked up a rock. It glistened.
“She has waited a long time to see the sun again,” he said.
Robin looked at me and shook her head. “She?”
Teal groaned and cried, “I'm going crazy. How is this a school? I nearly froze to death out there last night.”
“What choice do we have at the moment?” Robin asked dryly. “It doesn't look like there's a bus station nearby.”
“I don't care. The whole thing, this idea of this being a school, all of it is someone's idea of a sick joke. My parents probably arranged for all this just to scare me to death. Well, I'm not ashamed to admit they have. I just want to go home.”
“Big deal what you want, what any of us want,” Robin said.
Teal looked at her with a mixture of disgust andanger. “You might be willing to hang around and take all this crap, but I'm not.”
“Yeah?” Robin rested on her shovel. “And what are you going to do, call your daddy?”
“I might just do that and wave good-bye to you when they take me home.”
Robin laughed.
Teal looked like she would go at her, but for the fact that M'Lady Two appeared and announced we could go to breakfast. My mouth was so dry from the heat and the dust, I couldn't swallow. We laid our shovels down, and like truly obedient puppy dogs, we followed her back to the main house. Outside the door, we were told to take off our clodhopper shoes and wash our hands in the springwater coming out of a pipe in an outside wall. We were also permitted to take a drink. Water had never tasted as good or as refreshing.
Suddenly, Dr. Foreman appeared in the doorway. She looked as elegant and composed as she had the first time we had met her. One thing was for sure—she never did any chores on this farm, I thought, not with those fingernails.
“Good morning, girls,” she said. “I understand you've had a good beginning. There will be merit points waiting for you at the day's end if you continue to behave and follow our rules.”
Robin raised her hand and Dr. Foreman nodded at her.
“Will they get us mattresses, pillows, and blankets?”
“They could. Let's wait and see, but you're thinking on the right track, Robin. That's good. That's reality. Now come in, take from the food table, and sit at the dining room table. One of Natani's nephews is our cook and he's very good.”
We walked into the entryway and looked to our right where a table of fruits, juices, breads, cereals, and hard-boiled eggs were displayed. At the long dining-room table, Mindy and Gia ate quietly, neither looking up at us nor at each other for that matter.
M'Lady Two came up behind us. “Remember, when you meet each other, when you meet one of us, you say, 'Excuse me. I'm sorry,' ” she instructed. “We'll be listening for it.”
We were herded to the food table.
“Do not make a pig of yourself or you will sleep with the pigs,”
