Read Online Wild Indigo by Sandi Ault - Free Book Online Page A

went about with a ten-pound sack of salt and a measuring cup, doling some of the seasoning into each tub. Lupé came with a bucket of rose water to each woman’s starting mixture. She peered in and determined how much was needed, then tipped the bucket and poured what she judged to be the right amount of the liquid into each vat, often adding as much as a gallon or more of the rose-scented water. Another woman took large cans of shortening, one to each tub, and paddled the goop out and into the flour. Then the work began.
    The women bent over from the hips and plunged their large, round upper bodies into the tubs, working deep inside with their hands and arms, muscling around the mixture within until they had huge balls of dough. I followed suit, but found the quantity of flour, shortening, water, and salt made for tremendous resistance to my every attempt to shape and form it. I felt like I was wrestling a giant jellyfish. I couldn’t lift the enormous ball of dough because it was too heavy, and I could barely manipulate it to incorporate in the pan. This fact was not missed by the Tanoah women—all of them laughed at me. Finally a woman everyone called Auntie, who was easily three times my age and looked soft and dumpy for all I could see, shoved me aside. “Let me do, White Girl,” she said.
    And into the vat her arms and elbows went. She pounded and pressed, lifted and plopped, and thwacked and smacked the great dough ball until it looked like a living thing, massive and elastic. The kneading went on all around me.
    â€œCome here,” Momma Anna said. “Do mine. I need rest.” I reached into the vat and pounded on her beautifully formed globe of dough. I punched as fiercely as I could, and then worked hard to try to turn and press and knead the stuff, but it resisted me. Eventually another elder pushed me aside. “White Girl weak,” she said, and everyone laughed.
    At last another auntie found a job for me that I could do. She showed me how to grease the trash cans completely with a thick coating of the shortening. To do this, I had to lay the cans on their sides and crawl in, glopping the stuff on the bottom first, and then working my way back up to the rim in a circular pattern. When I emerged, I had shortening on my forehead, shoulders, and upper arms. The ladies laughed at me. “Silly White Girl,” one said.
    The dough was dumped into the trash cans and covered to rise overnight. It was time to wash up the tubs and put them away. “Let White Girl do,” Yohe said.
    While the bread makers sipped coffee at the kitchen table, and giggled and talked with one another, I worked at the sink to clean the large tubs. Auntie brought in a big basket of gifts she’d prepared for the couple. She showed them to Lupé, holding up bolts of fabric, pot holders, a skillet, and—saving the best for last—a beautiful Pendleton blanket. All the women made enthusiastic oohs and aahs for every item. Lupé started to cry, and Serena got up from the kitchen table to fetch a box of tissues. The others patted Lupé and made little comforting whimpers along with her.
    Momma Anna got up from the table and came to see how I was doing at the sink. I whispered, “Why is Lupé crying?”
    â€œShe lose son. He got new parent now, not her son no more. These two children, when marry, choose sponsors, new parent. Lupé not mother to her boy now.” She shook her head with concern, pressing her lips together and making a little sharp sound with her tongue. She filled her coffee cup and went back to the table.
    When I finished washing and drying all the big tubs and the other implements from the dough making, the women jumped up with amazing vigor and started carrying the tubs outside. They took the benches out, too, and the remaining flour and other supplies, all moving as spryly as if they’d not done a thing all day.
    While the rest of the women busied