“Do you mean you wish to sell these goods?” he barked.
“No, selling them seems like unnecessary trouble, and from what I’ve seen around here, there are plenty of people who might find them welcome.”
“That’s not what most people see when they come to the Santa Ynez Valley,” said Father Austen drily. “They see vineyards and tourist shops and beautiful scenery.”
“Well, naturally! But surely the locals know better!”
“The locals are mostly ranchers. As a group they tend to value hard work, frugality, and self-reliance; and they expect those who work for them to share those values.”
“Self-reliance and frugality mean one thing to a landowner and something very different to an immigrant farmworker, I imagine,” replied Lizzy.
“Many people don’t believe in providing assistance to illegal immigrants—and it can be hard to tell who is legal and who isn’t.”
“I’m sure it is,” said Lizzy, “but it hardly makes sense for the community as a whole to deny people basic necessities for fear that their papers are not in order.”
Father Austen’s grim frown bored into her. “You are a peculiar young woman,” he said.
Lizzy, undeceived, grinned at him brazenly. “I most certainly hope so.”
“Humph.” He picked up the phone and pressed the intercom button. “Rose, come in,” he said, and hung up again.
A nervous-looking middle-aged woman entered from another room. “Yes, Father?”
“This Miss Bennet has some things to donate. Work it out between you,” he snapped, dismissing them both.
Once out of the priest’s presence, Rose proved to be as effusive as he was laconic. She exclaimed again and again over Lizzy’s list, waving her hands and running off onto tangents about this family of parishioners and that until Lizzy was completely bewildered. “Oh, mercy me, look at all these things—five beds? And the chairs and desks—and a convertible sofa! There will certainly be competition for that item, since it takes up so little space during the daytime. I was just with the Ortiz family the other day, and their uncle Hector has arrived; his wife is already here, of course, and two of their children, we had to establish their residency so they could go to school, though they always miss the first few weeks during the grape harvest—oh, this is too much, are you sure? I’m sorry, dear, I don’t mean to cry, but—really, a computer? And eight sets of towels, six in good condition—oh, bless you, you can’t imagine!”
Finally Lizzy pieced together the intelligence that Rose managed a storeroom of donated goods at the church, and needy people could take what they needed from it on Sundays after Mass.
“That will be perfect for the linens and clothing and small items. But do you have any ideas about how to distribute the furniture?”
Indeed Rose did, though it required all Lizzy’s attention and ingenuity to understand what they consisted of, buried as they were in a rush of detail about families Rose had visited, children for whom she was seeking to obtain asthma inhalers, fathers injured in the fields, housing issues, food prices, transportation problems, and more. Eventually it was agreed that Rose would telephone Lizzy as she sorted out the particular needs of individual families, and Lizzy would load up the appropriate items in her truck for them to make deliveries together.
Lizzy was not overly confident of Rose’s ability to pursue such an organized plan of action, but it turned out that her scattered style was confined to her habits of speech; in short order they were coordinating almost daily deliveries of furnishings to households all around the valley.
For Lizzy, accustomed as she was to seeing urban poverty, it was an eye-opening experience. She had not known that anyone in the United States lived the way migrant workers did. Extended families, those lucky enough to have shelter, crowded a dozen men, women, and children into a tumbledown two-room trailer with no functional heat or plumbing; children slept on the floor; clothes or empty sacks of rice or cornmeal were used to cover holes in the windows. Women worked in the fields with the men except for a designated caregiver for several families’ children; this courageous soul tried to keep her charges from coming to serious harm while cooking, washing, hauling water, tending the sick, and nursing the youngest. Lizzy saw water supplies kept in old pesticide drums, perishable food lying unrefrigerated on open shelves, untreated gashes and sores on children playing in muddy yards. How do these people stay alive? she wondered, and the possessions she had to offer seemed pitifully inadequate.
Expecting her Spanish to be stretched to its limits, Lizzy found that many of the families didn’t even understand it: natives of remote villages in Mexico and Central America, they spoke Quechua and a variety of other ancient tongues dating back to before the Spanish conquest. It was difficult to imagine how people facing such a struggle to supply their most basic needs were able to function in modern American society.
The children seemed often more adapted to their surroundings than their parents, picking up a little English and Spanish with their secondhand clothing and toys. The bolder ones would designate themselves intermediaries between the adults in their household and the two Anglo visitors, explaining such matters as they deemed sufficiently important to transmit across the gulf.
Rose was evidently a trusted confidante to those able to communicate, and Lizzy overheard a great deal about men who provided or who drank away their earnings, women’s and babies’ health problems, older children who were good and helped out and went to school, or who ran wild and brought greater burdens on their families. The church worker took in all this information and did everything she could to provide advice, encouragement, and relief in crises.
Back at the parish office, Rose was organized and tenacious in her pursuit of elusive items such as schoolbooks, medicine, and food. Those potential donors who resisted all her persuasions were ruthlessly turned over to Father Austen, who in a few pithy words could shame or terrify merchants into generosity. Lizzy came to enjoy her visits to the simple little church, whose almost sole adornment was the striking Virgin of Guadalupe statue she had seen in the Candlemas parade. The passion of its two inhabitants lent a fierce joy to their nonstop battle to keep their poorest parishioners off the edge of the precipice.
Lizzy didn’t say much to her family about these activities: her father would have worried about her safety, her mother would have been all amazement at her wishing to mingle with Catholics and in such sordid surroundings. Mary’s religiosity took an emotional, not a practical, turn, and the younger ones were off every day in Jenny’s car seeking diversion in places more lively than Lambtown. John was trying hard to find work, with no success so far, and she didn’t want to add to his anxieties. His tender heart she feared might break if he witnessed the scenes of extremity that were revealed to her, so she referred to her expeditions only in the most general of terms, and allowed his imagination to fill in the details according to his own gentle fancy.
Chapter Seven
With so much to do, Valentine’s Day weekend and the Red and White Ball were soon upon them. When all her children appeared, arrayed in their finery, before her, Mrs. Bennet could not but be certain that their conquest of Lambtown was assured of success, for “I can’t imagine that a handsomer family will be seen anywhere! Nobody ever had better-looking children than ours.”
Mr. Bennet looked up from his book. “And you are as handsome as any of them,” he said. “Perhaps I should be going to this affair, to ensure that no manly rancher rides off with
