Harriet Doerr by The Tiger in the Grass Read Free Book Online Page B

it, carved in high relief, swam two mermaids, tails curled, breasts high.
     
     
    Morgan adjusted quickly to the pace of life in her house on the hill. Each empty day was a prism to hang on a chain. Stretched out on a long chair under the shade of a plum tree, she watched Carlos at his work. His smooth, honey-colored fingers tied up vines or clipped grass with easy familiarity.
    “You have had experience in gardens,” she said.
    “No, señora,” said Carlos. “Ever since primary school, I’ve worked for my uncle, who is a potter.” He looked up and attached his steady gaze to her face. “Until your husband employed me last year,” he went on, “and gave me better pay.”
    And Morgan realized that his talent with plants was the result not of training but simply of instinct.
    Another morning, while Morgan half sat, half lay in the garden, with a straw hat over her eyes, she asked, “Where do you live?” and Carlos pointed in the direction of a village on the back of the hill, where the slope was less steep. Later she visited this place, where a scatter of adobe huts appeared to have been spun off by a derelict plaza into fields and gullies and a stand of tall weeds.
    Goya, the cook, also lived behind the hill. Like Carlos, she had come with the house. Morgan made one inspection and, after that, avoided the kitchen, where the gaunt, lined woman padded barefoot across the spotted floor. Goya’s molting parrot, when not set free to roam the shelves, hung by its beak from the wires of its cage and set off showers of seed and feathers over platters of enchiladas and pots of refried beans.
    The cook, like Carlos, had a thin curved nose and the same deep eyes.
    “Is she your grandmother?” Morgan asked.
    “No, my mother,” Carlos said, and Morgan suppressed a gasp. So great a space of time between them, one so old and one so young. But the resemblance was there, the inheritance of fine bones, handed down through long generations of Tarascan Indians, whose land this state of Mexico once was.
     
     
    With the mermaids at her head, Morgan woke every morning to a brilliant early sun and the sound of a girl singing. The high clear voice, which at first she confused with birdsong, came over the wall from the garden of the house next door.
    Tracing its source, Morgan found that a side window of her bedroom overlooked an enclosed jungle of hibiscus and mock orange. In one corner a trumpet vine strangled a mimosa, in another a fig tree bent under a climbing rose.
    “That is the house of the sick inglesa,” Carlos told her. “The girl who sings is her maid, Lalia.”
    “She is very young for that work,” said Morgan.
    “She is fifteen,” said Carlos. “She lives in my village.”
    The sick Englishwoman was Fliss McBride. Morgan found out her story from other neighbors on the hill. Soon after Fliss moved here, ten years ago, she contracted pneumonia. It was a simple case, followed by complete recovery, but from then on Fliss never left her bed.
    When she was recuperating, the doctor had told her, “Sit in a chair tomorrow. Go downstairs Sunday. Spend some time outdoors,” and finally, “You are well.” But he had to give up in the end.
    The people on the hill visited Fliss and brought her gifts, custards and sweets, and sometimes slips of plants for Lalia to press into the crowded earth. At Christmas they came with poinsettias and hand-knit throws, and hung tin stars and angels from her bedroom walls.
    Morgan, a week after her arrival, noticing an excess of flowers in her garden, thinned them out and delivered a basketful by way of Carlos to her neighbor.
    Fliss sent back a note. “You have turned my room into a bower. Come for tea some afternoon. Lalia will tell you when. I am not strong.”
    But, Morgan told herself, sequestered as she is, feeding as she does on gossip and desserts, she is bound to outlive us all.
    Morgan had never seen anyone as happy as Lalia. Singing, she emptied dishwater on the scruff of