I had bought Turtle a real bed, junior size, from New To You. Gradually Lou Ann and I were changing the house around, filling in the empty spaces left behind by Angel with ABC books and high chairs and diaper totes and all manner of toys, all larger than a golf ball. One time in a restaurant, she'd once told me, a waiter mistakenly brought her somebody else's dinner and she just ate it, rather than make trouble. It was the first time I could remember her hanging on to her own opinion about something-Lou Ann not normally being inclined in that direction. I had a hard time imagining what kind of magazine would go into something like that, but I wasn't about to argue. And another one, a little pigeony-looking bird, said, 'Hip hip hurroo.' Lou Ann insisted that it was saying 'Who Cooks for Who?' She said she had read it in a magazine. There was a type of woodpecker that said, 'Ha, ha, ha, to hell with you!' I swear it did. There must be transients in the bird world too, rumple-feathered outcasts that naturally seek out each other's company in inferior and dying trees. It's surprising, considering Roosevelt Park, but we always heard birds in the morning. Lou Ann came home from the Ruiz family reunion singing 'La Bamba.' Turtle woke up in one of those sweet, eye-rubbing moods that kids must know by instinct as a means of saving the human species from extinction. I made Estevan a big breakfast, eggs scrambled with tomatoes and peppers and green chile sauce, and sent him home before I could start falling in love with him again over the breakfast dishes. They hadn't pumped her stomach after all because she hadn't taken enough to do much harm. Mattie called first thing to say that Esperanza was going to be all right. It means that things always look different, and usually better, in the morning.Īnd they did. This is another thing Mama used to tell me quite often. Somewhere in the neighborhood a cat yowled like a baby, and somewhere else, closer by, a rooster crowed, even though it was nowhere near daybreak.Įven a spotted pig looks black at night.

Moon soup, I thought, hugging myself under the covers.

Moonlight was pouring in through the bedroom window like a watery version of my mother's potato soup.

The bean trees cover