The Bean Trees

Sister, indeed. I remembered begging my mother for a sister when I was very young. She'd said she was all for it, but that if I got one it would have to be arranged by means of a miracle. At the time I'd had no idea what she meant. Now I knew about celibacy.

Mrs. Cleary returned in due time, rolling a chair on its little wheels, and asked several questions about what forms would need to be typed up. We shuffled around again as we made room for Estevan and the new chair, and Mr. Armistead finally agreed to come down from his great height and roost like a long-legged stork on the chair behind his desk.

"It became necessary to make formal arrangements," Estevan explained, "because our friend is leaving the state."

Esperanza nodded.

"Mr. and Mrs. Two Two, do you understand that this is a permanent agreement?" He spoke very slowly, the way people often speak to not-very-bright children and foreigners, although I'm positive that Mr. Armistead had no inkling that the Two Two family came from any farther away than the Cherokee Nation.

They nodded again. Esperanza was holding Turtle tightly in her arms and beginning to get tears in her eyes. Already it was clear that, of the three of us, she was first in line for the Oscar nomination.

He went on, "After about six months a new birth certificate will be issued, and the old one destroyed. After that you cannot change your minds for any reason. This is a very serious decision."

"There wasn't any birth certificate issued," Mrs. Cleary shouted. "It was born on tribal lands."

"She," I said. "In a Plymouth," I added.

"We understand," Estevan said.

"I just want to make absolutely certain."

"We know Taylor very well," Estevan replied. "We know she will make a good mother to this child."

Even though they were practically standing on it, Mr. Armistead and Mrs. Cleary seemed to think of "tribal land" as some distant, vaguely civilized country. This, to them, explained everything including the fact that Hope, Steven, and Turtle had no identification other than a set of black-and-white souvenir pictures taken of the three of them at Lake o' the Cherokees. It was enough that I, a proven citizen with a Social Security card, was willing to swear on pain of I-don't-know-what (and sign documents to that effect) that they were all who they said they were.

By this point we had run out of small talk. I was over my initial nervousness, but without it I felt drained. Just sitting in that small, crowded office, trying to look the right way and say the right thing, seemed to take a great deal of energy. I couldn't imagine how we were all going to get through this.

"We love her, but we cannot take care for her," Esperanza said suddenly. Her accent was complicated by the fact that she was crying, but it didn't faze Mr. Armistead or Mrs. Cleary. Possibly they thought it was a Cherokee accent.

"We've talked it over," I said. I began to worry a little about what was going on here.

"We love her. Maybe someday we will have more children, but not now. Now is so hard. We move around so much, we have nothing, no home." Esperanza was sobbing. This was no act. Estevan handed her a handkerchief, and she held it to her face.

"Try, Ma?" Turtle said.

"That's right, Turtle," I said quietly. "She's crying."

Estevan reached over and lifted Turtle out of her arms. He stood her up, her small blue sneakers set firmly on his knees, and held her gently by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. "You must be a good girl. Remember. Good and strong, like your mother." I wondered which mother he meant, there were so many possibilities. I was touched to think he might mean me.

"Okay," Turtle said.

He handed her carefully back to Esperanza, who folded her arms around Turtle and held her against her chest, rocking back and forth for a very long time with her eyes squeezed shut. Tears drained down the shallow creases in her cheeks.

The rest of us watched. Mr. Armistead stopped fidgeting and Mrs. Cleary's hands on her papers went still. Here were a mother and her daughter, nothing less. A mother and child-in a world that could barely be bothered with mothers and children-who were going to be taken apart. Everybody believed it. Possibly Turtle believed it. I did.

Of all the many times when it seemed to be so, that was the only moment in which I really came close to losing Turtle. I couldn't have taken her from Esperanza. If she had asked, I couldn't have said no.

When she let go, letting Turtle sit gently back on her lap, Turtle had the sniffles.

Esperanza wiped Turtle's nose with Estevan's big handkerchief and kissed her on both cheeks. Then she unclasped the gold medallion of St. Christopher, guardian saint of refugees, and put it around Turtle's neck. Then she gave Turtle to me.