She peeled the final layer of tape from the box, releasing the lid. In moments, Diana went from remembering her cardboard “hope chests” to what could only be called hopeless chests, from boxes filled with promise to ones packed with crushed dreams and dashed hopes. That’s all Iona Dade Cooper’s boxes contained.
All the while the unopened boxes are stored in the root cellar, Diana had imagined them packed with her mother’s few prized possessions, the treasures arranged with the same loving care Iona had used to pack the boxes she sent to Eugene. Except those boxes held no treasures. What was stowed there hardly qualified as personal effects.
Francine Cooper had gone through her new husband’s house, Iona’s house, packing up only what she didn’t want-the inconvenient onion chopper with its broken blade, the battered metal pie tins Iona used only as a last resort when the season’s current crop of fruit-pumpkin in the fall, mincemeat in the winter, rhubarb in the spring, and fresh peach in the summer-had swamped her supply of good Pyrex pie plates. There were ragged hot pads and oven mitts, not the good ones Iona had used for company meals and church dinners, but the old ones she had used only for canning, and that, by rights, should have been thrown out with the trash long before they were stuffed into boxes.
Resolutely now, Diana ripped open the tape on each succeeding box. One rattled ominously as soon as she picked it up. At the bottom of that one, she found the smashed remains of the only really nice thing Iona Dade Cooper had ever owned-a Limoges salt-and-pepper-shaker set she had inherited from her own Grandma Dade- clattered brokenly around in the bottom of the box without even a paper towel as protection against breakage.
Grim-faced, Diana set a few things aside on the table to keep. The rest was swept into a waiting trash can. Only in the bottom box, the heaviest one, did Diana strike gold. There were books in there-the whole frayed green set called My Book House from which Iona had read her daughter countless fairy tales and poems and fables.
Seeing the books, Diana felt a flash of recognition. From these volumes, she had gained her love of reading, her fascination with the written word. She pulled out each book individually, thumbing through the pages, glancing at the familiar illustrations, remembering her favorite stories, wishing Davy knew them the way she did.
And then, in the very bottom of the box, stuffed in hastily perhaps so Max wouldn’t see, was the real treasure, the one item of her mother’s that Diana had really wanted and had counted lost-her mother’s well-worn Bible. Reverently, she picked it up. One corner of the cover had been permanently bent back. She opened the book gently, trying to smooth out the wrinkle.
As she did so, a paper fell out. Picking it up, she found it was actually three papers, welded by age into a tightly folded, brittle mass. Carefully, she undid them. The outside was a letter. Folded into that were two other pieces of paper-a yellowed newspaper article and a small, flower-covered funeral program dated August 16, 1943.
She glanced at that first, wondering whose it was-Harold Autry Deeson. Harold Deeson? Who was he? She had never heard of anybody by that name, although she read right there on the program that Harold’s parents were George R. and Ophelia Deeson.
George had a son? Diana wondered. How come she never knew about him? How come nobody ever mentioned him by name?
She turned to the newspaper article. The paper was brittle and flaked apart in her hand, but it was from the
Reading through the account of the accident, the whole picture of Diana’s family history suddenly shifted into focus. She started crying long before she ever picked up the letter. It was little more than a note, but Diana knew instinctively what was written there-not exactly, not the details, but the general outline.
“Dearest Iona,” Harold had written in a hastily scrawled, immature hand. “Thank you for tonight. I don’t care what my mother says. You may be Catholic, and my mother’s Mormon, but that doesn’t matter, not to me, and it’s not a good enough reason for us not to be together.
“I can’t make it home from Seattle again for at least a month, but when I do, we’ll run away together to La Grande or Pendleton, or maybe even all the way to Spokane. If we come back married, no one will be able to do anything about it, not even my mother. Please be ready. Love, Harry.”
Diana let the paper drift from her hands onto the table. She didn’t need to count on her fingers. Max and Iona Cooper were married in September of ’43. She was born in May of ’44. No wonder George Deeson had brought her Waldo. George Deeson had been her real grandfather, but why hadn’t someone told her the truth?
Under normal circumstances, Davy would have fought tooth and nail at any suggestion of a nap, but that day, when Rita lay down on her old-fashioned box spring mattress with its frail metal headboard, Davy climbed up onto the bed, while Bone settled down comfortably on a nearby rug. Because of the cast, Rita lay on her back with her arm elevated on pillows. Davy nestled in close to her other side and fell sound asleep.
Davy slept, but Rita didn’t. She looked around the room, grateful to be home, glad to have survived whatever the
The Baileys hadn’t needed another girl-of-all-work, so Gordon found her a job at a farm a few miles up the road. There, barely a month later, she began to feel tired. A cough came on, accompanied by night sweats. She tried to hide the fact that she was sick, because she didn’t want to risk losing her job and being sent home, but finally, when the lady found her coughing up blood, she sent Rita to bed and summoned the one itinerant doctor who treated the valley’s Indian and Mexican laborers.
Dr. Aldus was his name, and Rita never forgot it, no matter how hard she tried. He came to see Dancing Quail in the filthy workers’ shack where she lay in bed, too sick to move. He examined her and then spoke to the foreman who waited in the background to take word to the farm owner’s wife.
“We’ll have to take the baby,” the doctor said. “The girl may live, but not the baby. Go bring my things from the car. Ask the cook to set some water boiling.”
The doctor came back to the bed and loomed over Dancing Quail. “It’s going to be fine,” he said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Those were the exact same words Dr. Rosemead had used all these years later, but with Dr. Aldus, everything was definitely not okay. His breath reeked of alcohol. He swayed from side to side as he stood next to her bed.
“No,” Dancing Quail pleaded, struggling to get up. “Leave my baby alone,” but he pushed her back down and held her pinned until the foreman returned, bringing with him the doctor’s bag and a set of thick, heavy straps. Somehow the two of them strapped her to the bed frame, imprisoning her, holding her flat. The doctor pressed an evil-smelling cloth to her face. Soon Rita could fight no longer.
She woke up much later, once more drenched in sweat. The straps were gone. She felt her flattened belly and knew it was empty. She was empty. The straps were gone, and so was her baby.
She cried out. Suddenly, Gordon was there, leaning over her in the doctor’s stead, his broad face gentle and caring. “Why didn’t you call me?” he asked, speaking in Papago. “Why didn’t you send someone to tell me you were sick so I could come take care of you?”
Rita couldn’t answer. All she could do was cough and cry.
Around four, Rita shook Davy. “Wake up,” she said. “Fat Crack will come soon and I must be ready.”
Davy sat up, rubbing his eyes, “Ready for what? Where are you going?”
“To Sells. For a ceremony.”
“What kind of ceremony? Do you have to leave again? You just got here.”
“It’s important,” she said. “The ceremony’s for you, Olhoni.”
His eyes widened. “For me? Really?”
She smiled. “Really. The singers will start tonight. On the fourth night, you will be baptized. A medicine man
