water in the stock
tank; dry food in the dogs’ big dish in the garage; water for the yarrow, the bug-bitten roses, the fruit trees lining the
drive. I liked the work, liked even the word
chore,
which made me feel like a frontier girl, like Laura Ingalls on her prairie:
I’m going out to tend to the hens, Pa. How long till supper’s on?
Some six months after we came to live with the Lindberghs, Bub decided it was time for my sisters and me to have ponies of
our own. Tina had a pony, a brown-and-white Welsh named Patches the Wonder Horse. Patches grew fatter by the year on English
muffins smeared with peanut butter and jelly, fried squash, melon rinds — pretty much anything we’d give him — and was frankly
more of a dog than a horse. We didn’t even keep him corralled most of the time; he roamed wherever he wanted to, mowing the
lawn, drinking out of the fishpond, lumbering into the garage to sample from the dogs’ bowl. Once, he walked right through
the front door and stood in the entrance hall, his big head swinging around so he could look into the kitchen, where we were
eating dinner.
The livestock auction where we went to get the ponies was thrilling: animal smells and snorts and whinnies, folks swatting
flies and throwing peanut shells into the sand at their feet, and above it all, the auctioneer singing about money. When it
was over, we had Princess and Queenie for Penny and me, respectively, and Velvet for Teresa. They were black, all three of
them, with white stars on their foreheads, but differently shaped ones. Queenie’s star was a moon. Her eyes were the softest,
deepest black; her ears were furred like a bobcat’s, alert and expressive.
The new ponies quickly became our pets. We braided their manes and tails, twisted dandelions into their forelocks. We played
a vaulting game that Tina invented, where we ran up behind the ponies, jumped up by putting our hands on their big butts,
scooted across their backs and slid down their necks. It’s a wonder they didn’t kick us in the head for this.
Bub and Tina taught us to ride. We practiced first in the corral, then in the field, and soon we were skilled enough to be
turned loose on the neighborhood, which at that time was so scarcely populated that we could have ridden out to where the
foothills began without running into so much as ten fences. On Saturday afternoons, we’d put bareback blankets on the ponies,
pull canteens over our heads so they thumped against our hipbones and head out for the afternoon. We’d ride along the dry
ditch or toward the orange orchards or over to Shaw, where Tina said developers had tried to get a golf course started, but
no one came out to play. It was so grown over that we were surprised when we’d canter into a sand trap buried under switchgrass
and foxtail, or trot onto the raised flat patch where the golfers were supposed to tee off. It was like
Planet of the Apes,
how we could see the fringe of one abandoned world buried beneath another.
No matter where we headed first, we always ended up at our favorite fig tree. Tying the ponies to low branches, we’d pull
the blankets off to have something to sit on in the shade. We’d take long pulls from our canteens, though the water tasted
like feet and tinfoil, and eat peanut-butter sandwiches, smushed and warm from being in their paper bag. Once, we all fell
asleep like this, sprawled out under the fig tree. It was so hot that day that I felt as lumpy and heavy as a bale of hay.
We each lay on our blankets, not talking, and looked up through the layers of leaves, which shifted and threw soft, spotty
light on parts of the tree and the ground and our bodies. Penny leaned back against the trunk with her eyes closed. Circles
of light moved in her hair. They looked like butterflies.
N EARLY EVERY DAY OF our time with the Lindberghs, Hilde was up by six-thirty and out on the lawn, standing bull’s-eye in the circle of the
tank; dry food in the dogs’ big dish in the garage; water for the yarrow, the bug-bitten roses, the fruit trees lining the
drive. I liked the work, liked even the word
chore,
which made me feel like a frontier girl, like Laura Ingalls on her prairie:
I’m going out to tend to the hens, Pa. How long till supper’s on?
Some six months after we came to live with the Lindberghs, Bub decided it was time for my sisters and me to have ponies of
our own. Tina had a pony, a brown-and-white Welsh named Patches the Wonder Horse. Patches grew fatter by the year on English
muffins smeared with peanut butter and jelly, fried squash, melon rinds — pretty much anything we’d give him — and was frankly
more of a dog than a horse. We didn’t even keep him corralled most of the time; he roamed wherever he wanted to, mowing the
lawn, drinking out of the fishpond, lumbering into the garage to sample from the dogs’ bowl. Once, he walked right through
the front door and stood in the entrance hall, his big head swinging around so he could look into the kitchen, where we were
eating dinner.
The livestock auction where we went to get the ponies was thrilling: animal smells and snorts and whinnies, folks swatting
flies and throwing peanut shells into the sand at their feet, and above it all, the auctioneer singing about money. When it
was over, we had Princess and Queenie for Penny and me, respectively, and Velvet for Teresa. They were black, all three of
them, with white stars on their foreheads, but differently shaped ones. Queenie’s star was a moon. Her eyes were the softest,
deepest black; her ears were furred like a bobcat’s, alert and expressive.
The new ponies quickly became our pets. We braided their manes and tails, twisted dandelions into their forelocks. We played
a vaulting game that Tina invented, where we ran up behind the ponies, jumped up by putting our hands on their big butts,
scooted across their backs and slid down their necks. It’s a wonder they didn’t kick us in the head for this.
Bub and Tina taught us to ride. We practiced first in the corral, then in the field, and soon we were skilled enough to be
turned loose on the neighborhood, which at that time was so scarcely populated that we could have ridden out to where the
foothills began without running into so much as ten fences. On Saturday afternoons, we’d put bareback blankets on the ponies,
pull canteens over our heads so they thumped against our hipbones and head out for the afternoon. We’d ride along the dry
ditch or toward the orange orchards or over to Shaw, where Tina said developers had tried to get a golf course started, but
no one came out to play. It was so grown over that we were surprised when we’d canter into a sand trap buried under switchgrass
and foxtail, or trot onto the raised flat patch where the golfers were supposed to tee off. It was like
Planet of the Apes,
how we could see the fringe of one abandoned world buried beneath another.
No matter where we headed first, we always ended up at our favorite fig tree. Tying the ponies to low branches, we’d pull
the blankets off to have something to sit on in the shade. We’d take long pulls from our canteens, though the water tasted
like feet and tinfoil, and eat peanut-butter sandwiches, smushed and warm from being in their paper bag. Once, we all fell
asleep like this, sprawled out under the fig tree. It was so hot that day that I felt as lumpy and heavy as a bale of hay.
We each lay on our blankets, not talking, and looked up through the layers of leaves, which shifted and threw soft, spotty
light on parts of the tree and the ground and our bodies. Penny leaned back against the trunk with her eyes closed. Circles
of light moved in her hair. They looked like butterflies.
N EARLY EVERY DAY OF our time with the Lindberghs, Hilde was up by six-thirty and out on the lawn, standing bull’s-eye in the circle of the
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