Free Gardens in the Dunes by Leslie Marmon Silko Page A

squealed with delight at a direct hit as the stones or branches fell.
    Sister Salt liked to slip away from Indigo when she wasn’t watching; then Sister Salt hid and waited until Indigo realized she was gone. Indigo learned to track her in the sand so Sister Salt used sagebrush to wipe away her footprints. She loved to crouch down just around a turn in the trail and jump out at Indigo to hear her scream. When it was too hot to play chase, plunging and rolling down the steepest slopes of the high dunes, they played their favorite guessing game—they called it Which Hand?—with a smooth pebble.
    After the first beans and squash were harvested, Grandma Fleet left her shelter by the peach seedlings less and less often. The girls helped her walk through the gardens, where she surveyed the sunflowers, some small and pale yellow, others orange-yellow and much taller than they were; then sheexamined the brilliant red amaranth. The sunflowers and the amaranth were so robust they would have food all winter. The gardens were green with corn and bush beans; a few pods had already ripened and split, scattering beans on the sand. Sister Salt bent down to pick up the beans but Grandma Fleet shook her head firmly.
    â€œLet them be,” she said. That way, the old gardens would reseed themselves and continue as they always had, regardless of what might happen.
    â€œWhat could happen, Grandma?” Indigo’s question brought a groan of impatience from Sister Salt, who made a face at her, but Grandma laughed, then stopped to catch her breath. They had completed their walk past the garden terraces near the spring.
    â€œAnything could happen to us, dear,” Grandma Fleet said as she hugged Indigo close to her side. “Don’t worry. Some hungry animal will eat what’s left of you and off you’ll go again, alive as ever, now part of the creature who ate you.
    â€œI’ve been close to death a few times,” Grandma Fleet said as she slowly made her way up the path. “I was so surprised the first time I wasn’t even scared; after my first baby, your mother, was born, the bleeding would not stop.”
    â€œDid it hurt?” Sister Salt asked.
    â€œOh no, I felt no pain, that’s why I wasn’t scared. I thought dying hurt a great deal.”
    â€œBut you didn’t die,” Indigo said.
    â€œNo, the old medicine woman gave me juniper berry tea and told me, ‘You are needed here. We need you. This baby needs you.’ ” Grandma Fleet paused to catch her breath.
    â€œThe old woman scolded me while I drank the tea. ‘Don’t be lazy, young woman!’ ”
    â€œWhy did she say that, Grandma?” Indigo tried to imagine how one person scolded another for bleeding to death.
    â€œBecause dying is easy—it’s living that is painful.” Grandma Fleet started walking again, slowly, leaning on the girls to steady herself.
    â€œTo go on living when your body is pierced by pain, to go on breathing when every breath reminds you of your lost loved ones—to go on living is far more painful than death.”
    Big tears began to roll down Indigo’s cheeks, but she didn’t make a sound. Their mother must be dead or she would have come back by now. What had eaten Mama? Was she crawling around as a worm or running as a coyote?
    They walked the rest of the way in silence. Sister Salt held her left arm and Indigo the right as Grandma inched her way down, down into her little dugout shelter by the apricot seedlings. Grandma Fleet settled down on her blanket with a loud sigh of pleasure and stretched herself out for a nap. She joked about sleeping so much and becoming lazy in her old age. Relaxed, with her eyes closed, Grandma Fleet talked about their dear ancestors, the rain clouds, until her words came slower and slower and she was snoring softly. Sister Salt felt her heart suddenly so full of love for Grandma, who always loved them, who