Hard Red Spring by Kelly Kerney Page A

vertical stripes, shot through with strange patterns. She was like a princess the whole community would rally around and love.
    â€œIxna, is that a new blouse?” Evie asked, helping her carry the laundry out back.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIt looks new. But it looks a lot like the old blouse.” She considered the bright, brocaded tunic. “The colors are the same as all the other blouses in Xela. Is that on purpose? Is there only one store for Indian shirts?”
    â€œMy mother made it. Every
huipil
from Xela tells the same story in colors.”
    â€œAnd what’s the story of Xela?”
    â€œIt is very sad,” she said in a bored voice, sifting through their ashen clothes.
    Evie politely studied the flowers and what looked like eggs and birds clustered thickly around the neck in clashing colors. The bird, she saw, was just like Magellan. A green bird with a red breast and a long, long tail. A quetzal, Ubico called it.
    â€œBut not all the blouses in Xela have birds on them, or eggs, or those diamond patterns,” Evie said.
    â€œNo. Those are my story.”
    Evie squinted skeptically. How could a bird tell her story? It was hard enough imagining her visiting her family, Ixna doing anything but sweeping, scrubbing, and cooking.
    Ixna bent over the cold, weak dry-season stream behind the house, and beat the ash out of their clothes with rocks. She held a dull, round stone in her fist, dunked one of Mother’s skirts, and struck it repeatedly, while holding it underwater.
    â€œMother won’t like you being so rough with her clothes,” Evie warned her. “You’ve already ruined all her nice dresses.”
    â€œThat’s okay. You’re going back to New York tomorrow. You can all get new clothes there.”
    â€œWe are? Did Mother say so?”
    Ixna nodded. Evie knew this time was different, because Ixna did not lie. She did not lie because she didn’t care if her words upset Evie.
    ~~~~~
    Father worked the Indians all day and all night, again. He came into the house a few times for a nap, and while he napped, Judas worked the men.
    No one takes a goddamned piss
, her father had decreed.
I’m going to get two years’ work out of you in two days.
    And he did. When Evie saw an Indian worker in the field, he would look dazed, his hands stained red from the cochineal. The clatter of their brushes and nets, sounding like swords, kept her up all night. She lay awake, thinking of New York, trying to remember anything about it. When she tried to think of the new clothes they would all get, she could only imagine cleaner versions of what they already had.
    The draft took all the men at dawn. Even Judas. Transported to the Piedmont in covered wagons, they would not know where they were, so they couldnot run away, Mrs. Fasbinder had explained. Evie had fallen asleep to the clatter of their tools and had awoken to the sound of her mother packing. Just as Ixna had said.
    â€œWe’re going home, Evie. What do you think of that?”
    She had thought about it all night, and just now, looking around the quiet house, the question came to her. “Is Father coming?”
    â€œI don’t know.” She vigorously stuffed Ixna’s washing into burlap sacks. The clothes still damp and gray from the ash. How gray, they would not be sure until the clothes dried completely. Mother hefted these sacks through the front door and onto the porch, where she meant to pile them with other things she wanted to load onto the cart. But she paused over the trunks and cases, then turned and chucked the sacks over the railing.
    With a flushed, smiling face, she strolled back into the house and said, “I don’t know why I packed those old things. Of course, once we’re back in New York, we’ll buy all new clothes! And shoes and ribbons and hats. I’ll have my face powder back, and curls and earrings. And you’ll need a winter coat. What color do you