Spoilers-ish!
Quite the apropos day to start my latest book review with the following reflection from Barbara Kingsolver’s 1988 book, The Bean Trees. The main character, Taylor, is despairing over another character, Estevan, whose daughter was taken by the Guatemalan government (the government was going after the teacher’s union they were part of and used their daughter as “bait”), and she can’t believe that instead of taking the bait to get their daughter back — which would necessarily entail “ratting out” the other 17 members of the teacher’s union still alive — Estevan, and his wife, Esperanza, decided not to. Estevan asks her what she would have done. Taylor says, “I don’t know. I hate to say it, but I really don’t know. I can’t even begin to think about a world where people have to make choices like that.” To which Estevan astutely points out, “You live in that world.” Later, Taylor’s roommate, Lou Anne, will riff in a similar way to Taylor that “this is the only world we got.” It is a world where we simultaneously can’t believe we exist within it, from our localized horrors to far-flung ones, and also must reckon with it being the one we got. It is the world where, despite the horrors, despite the limitations and the odds stacked against us, the beans will grow on the tree, nonetheless. Nonetheless is all we have, after all. It’s our world, too.
Taylor is from eastern Kentucky, where national cultural trends and issues arrive delayed, everyone ends up pregnant, and growth is within a very small plot of land, so to speak. She decides to head out west for a different life, chasing whatever is out there. I imagine that this sort of thing still happens, but it’s certainly not as common as it used to be — just going somewhere without much money or a plan and it sort of hodgepodge works out. As it does for Taylor. Not before she “ends up pregnant” in the sense of, someone literally drops a Native American child, who suffered some sort of physical and sexual abuse, into her car and leaves. The classic “leaving a baby in a basket at the doorstep” scene except it’s the passenger seat of Taylor’s beat-up Plymouth. She takes to calling the nearly catatonic child Turtle and continues on her journey. For whatever reason, instead of turning the child over to the hospital or Child Protective Services, Taylor decides to keep her. Along this journey when she needs new tires, she meets Mattie of Jesus Is Lord Used Tires. Mattie, as it turns out, has been “smuggling” refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador and hiding them upstairs until she can figure out a different arrangement for them. This is where Estevan, a former English teacher turned by necessity dishwasher at a Chinese restaurant, and Esperanza, come in. Then, Taylor realizes she needs a place to stay and it so happens that Lou Ann’s husband, Angel, up and left her, so she is looking for a roommate to go along with her and her newborn son, Dwayne Ray. Lou Ann’s disposition is that of a self-deprecating hypochondriac doomsayer, who is afraid of germs, anything going wrong, and dying. But she’s also from Eastern Kentucky and they instantly bond. Taylor is more the image of a “tomboy,” who is rather smitten with Estevan and his way with words and his chiseled Mayan body.
You see, Taylor and Estevan (and Esperanza) are on similar, albeit very different, tracks. For all intents and purposes from Taylor’s vantage point, Arizona, where she’s found herself with Turtle and Lou Ann, is as different culturally from Eastern Kentucky as Guatemala City, Guatemala is from the United States for Estevan and Esperanza. Taylor has a child now in Turtle who she can’t lay claim to in any legal sense and thus, is at risk of being separated from her. In addition to already being separated (forcefully) from their daughter, Estevan and Esperanza are also deemed “illegal” by the United States government and are at risk of being returned to Guatemala where they would surely be in danger. (More context: Guatemala was mired in a civil war from 1960 until 1996.)
One of my favorite passages from the book, or any book I’ve read, comes at a dinner party at Lou Ann’s with Taylor, Turtle, Estevan, Esperanza, and two older women who are Lou Ann’s neighbors. One of them, Virgie, makes it known what her view is on immigration: send the “illegals” back. To which Estevan relays this story about heaven and hell:
“If you go visit hell, you will see a room like this kitchen. There is a pot of delicious stew on the table, with the most delicate aroma you can imagine. All around, people sit, like us. Only they are dying of starvation. They are jibbing and jabbering, but they cannot get a bite of this wonderful stew God has made for them. Now, why is that? They are starving because they only have spoons with very long handles. With these ridiculous, terrible spoons, the people in hell can reach into the pot but they cannot put the food in their mouths. Now, you can go and visit heaven. What? You see a room just like the first one, the same table, the same pot of stew, the same spoons as long as a sponge mop. But these people are all happy and fat (well-fed). Why do you think?”
Then, Estevan took a chunk of his pineapple in his chopsticks, reached all the way across the table, and offered it to Turtle.
I’m not sure more needs to be said.
Taylor finds the whole situation with Estevan and Esperanza dismaying, hence her incredulity at something like that existing in the world or in the world she knows (the United States where they refer to humans as “illegal”). At first, the weight of it all, including the state of Arizona planning on bringing Turtle into Child Protective Services, is enough to crush her like a barely-blossomed flower in the Arizona desert. But it’s Lou Ann, of all people, who has found her confidence through staying away from Angel and having her first real job, that compels Taylor to fight back. To be the strong person Lou Ann imagined her to be early on. So, Taylor does. With Estevan and Esperanza’s help, she convinces officials in Oklahoma — where there is also a sanctuary church for Estevan and Esperanza — that the couple is handing Turtle, real name April, over to her custody. It works. Estevan and Esperanza make it to the sanctuary church, and Taylor and Turtle are on their way back to Lou Ann. In their little way, Taylor, Lou Ann, Mattie, Estevan, and Esperanza made a difference for Turtle, and made a difference for each other in a world that seemed at once insurmountable and perhaps still is in the grand scheme, but nonetheless. Indeed.
For some reason, Kingsolver’s book took me a second to get into the rhythm of, but once I caught on to her style and cadence, I was hooked into this world of two women and their children trying to make it in a world not meant for them to make it, along with Estevan and Esperanza. Her words were poetic, hard-hitting, with humor as dry as the Arizona weather included, and poignant. I will be thinking about the two passages I’ve conveyed at the front and end of this review for a long time to come, particularly relevant again in the United States.
Milam's Musings 