The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver Page A

Mama, and you know it.”
    “Remember you have to use both sides. If you just nurse him on one side you’ll go dry.”
    “Don’t expect I’ll see him again a-tall,” Granny Logan grunted. “Not his old great-grandmaw.”
    “Mama, I wish you’d wait till Angel gets home and we could drive you down to the station. You’re going to get all confused if you try to take the bus. You’ve got to change downtown.” The way they had both managed to avoid Angel he might as well not have moved back in.
    “It’s a sin to be working on Sunday. He ought to be home with his family on the Lord’s day,” Granny Logan said, and sighed. “I guess I oughtn’t expect better from a heathern Mexican.”
    “It’s shift work,” Lou Ann explained again. “He’s just got to go in when they tell him to, and that’s that. And he’s not a heathen. He was born right here inAmerica, same as the rest of us.” Just because he wasn’t baptized in some old dirty crick, Lou Ann added in a voice way too low for Granny Logan to hear.
    “Who tells him to?” the old woman demanded. Lou Ann looked at her mother.
    “We’ll manage, with the bus and all,” Ivy said.
    “That don’t make it right, do it? Just because some other heathern tells him to work on the Lord’s day?”
    Lou Ann found a scrap of paper and wrote down the name of the stop and the number of the bus they would have to take downtown. Ivy handed back the baby and took the paper. She looked at it carefully before she folded it twice, tucked it in her purse, and began helping Granny Logan on with her coat.
    “Granny, you’re not going to need that coat,” Lou Ann said. “I swear it’s eighty degrees out there.”
    “You’ll swear yourself to tarnation if you don’t watch out. Don’t tell me I’m not going to need no coat, child. It’s January.” Her old hand pawed the air for a few seconds before Ivy silently caught it and corralled it in the heavy black sleeve.
    “Lou Ann, honey, don’t let him play with that ink pen,” Ivy said over her shoulder. “He’ll put his eyes out before he even gets a good start in life.”
    The baby was waving his fist vaguely in the direction of the blue pen in Lou Ann’s breast pocket, although he couldn’t have grabbed it or picked it up if his little life depended on it.
    “All right, Mama,” Lou Ann said quietly. She wrapped the baby in a thin blanket in spite of the heat because she knew one or the other of the twowomen would fuss if she didn’t. “Let me help you with the stairs, Granny,” she said, but Granny Logan brushed her hand away.
    Heat waves rising from the pavement made the brown grass and the palm tree trunks appear to wiggle above the sidewalk, making Lou Ann think of cartoons she had seen of strange lands where palm trees did the hula. They reached the little bus stop with its concrete bench.
    “Don’t sit on it,” she warned. “It’ll be hot as a poker in this sun.” Granny Logan and Ivy stepped back from the bench like startled children, and Lou Ann felt pleased that she was able to tell them something they didn’t already know. The three women stood beside the bench, all looking in the direction from which the bus would come.
    “Pew, don’t they make a stink,” Mother Logan said when the bus arrived. Ivy put her arms around both Lou Ann and the baby, then picked up the two bags and boarded the bus, lifting her feet high for the two big steps. At the top she turned and reached down for her mother-in-law, her sturdy, creased hand closing around the old knuckles. The bus driver leaned on his elbows over the steering wheel and stared ahead.
    “I just wish you wasn’t so far away,” Ivy said as the doors hissed together.
    “I know,” she mouthed. “Wave bye to your great-grandmaw,” Lou Ann told the baby, but they were on the wrong side to see.
    She imagined herself running after the bus and banging on the door, the bus driver letting her climb up and settle herself and the baby onto the