I should have saved those for your scrapbook,” I say to Amber.
She blinks her hazy eyes at that and keeps staring at my white T-shirt like it’s the most interesting thing she ever saw. What gets me about her is that she clings to me like a tiny monkey. She’s got her tummy to mine, and her little fingers clutch onto my shirt and her little legs curl against my belly. It almost seems like if I let go—just dropped the hand that’s cupped around her tiny diaper—she’d stay attached to me somehow.
I flick the cigarette butt out at the gravel and rub Amber’s back up and down, up and down. “Well, what the hell. We’ll be fine, won’t we? Basically, I can’t be any worse than Kay, and I guess I turned out all right, even with a mother like that.” I’m tilting my head down, saying this to her blond hair.
Blond hair. Ridiculous. All along, I thought Amber was a boy and I figured he’d look like us. I was hoping he’d take after Tess especially, with her straight dark hair, tan skin, tall body—Tess who doesn’t need glasses, who’s got straight teeth and a true smile. Not like me with my glasses and crooked teeth and dull brown eyes and stupid thick, wavy hair—hair that sounds like a horse’s mane when I brush it.
Amber, though, is fair, just like her father, Simon. She’s got blue eyes and pale blotchy skin, and like her father she seems too wispy and empty to be real. That’s how every day she’ll be reminding me: Libby, things just don’t turn out like you think they will. Daydream if you want, but expect the opposite to come true. And don’t go feeling sorry for your heart when it registers the difference.
“Libby! You deaf or what? Damn.” Kay’s riding up on her horse, and only stupid Kay would be riding a horse. Every other ranch-hand around here drives a four-wheeler but no, not Kay, because Kay is Kay, and Kay says it’ll be a cold day in hell when she sits on anything as noisy and ugly as that.
“Libby, I’ve been hollering. Didn’t you hear me?” She reins the horse in. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Are you crying?”
“No.”
“Because there’s no use in crying.”
“That’s good, because I’m not crying.”
“There isn’t any point.”
There isn’t any point in talking to her, either, so I stare off into the sky behind her.
She squints at me and sighs. Then she takes off her sunglasses and her beat-up fishing hat and slouches down on the horse like I’ve worn her out. She sits there a while, staring at me with that look that means that I’m a sorry excuse for a human and especially for a daughter. I look back. It’s her hair that makes her eyes look so green, because it’s more white than brown now, and she’s got it back in her usual ponytail, low down at the base of her neck, and the wisps hanging around her face are bright white, and I wonder if she knows how beautiful she is—or could be if she didn’t look so continually pissed off. It’s not just her face, it’s her whole body: ready to attack. She’s wearing a maroon T-shirt covered with bleach circles, and her Wranglers are splattered with manure, and even though she’s slouched down it looks like she’s going to leap up and have it out with the world.
After she’s done staring at me, she puts her hat and sunglasses back on. “Come on over. Baxter decided to work cows after all. We need your help.”
I tilt my head toward Amber.
“Good god. Libby, you’re not the one who gave birth. People have been carrying on with their lives with babies since the beginning of time.” Then she adds, “We’ll put her in some shady spot.”
The horse is dancing all over the place, and Kay jerks back on the reins so much that Luz rears back a bit. When she gets the horse quieted down, she says, “She doing all right?”
I shrug.
“Well, that kid’ll get her days and nights straightened out soon enough, then you’ll get some sleep. Luz, you barn-sour old thing, damn, cut it out!” Kay turns the horse in tight circles, fighting the antsy of the horse and the horse fighting back. Kay wins, and finally the horse stands quiet, flaring her nostrils but holding still.
“Mom, I can’t take a newborn baby out with a bunch of cows.”
“You sure as hell can. Go inside and put on some shoes and get Amber a sunbonnet—you keep a hat on that kid—and get over to Baxter’s.”
I don’t say anything at all to that, but still she throws in, “Quit being such a snot.” Then, “Anyway, we’ve got the cows nearly done. Just help with the calves, just the record keeping. You can hold Amber on your lap. Or she can sleep in her car seat. Whatever, just hurry up.”
Well, that’s what I imagined anyway—that I’d be like one of those women in Africa, like you see in magazines, with a baby strapped to me and the two of us doing everything together. So after Kay kicks Luz into a trot, I get us ready and drive over to Baxter’s. This is where Kay has been working as a ranch hand since we moved here, which was right after I was born, and which is why we get free rent in the old, falling-apart brown house that sits on the edge of Baxter’s land, at the corner of his alfalfa field.
I find Kay and Baxter by the corrals, both leaning against the chute and talking over the head of some tame-looking cow that’s standing there, reaching her tongue into one nostril and then into the other. I can’t get over that, how funny cows look licking out their noses. It makes me love them, and that’s love for you—one little detail and your heart turns tender.
I haul Amber and her clunky car seat over to Baxter and Kay.
“Hey, little baby,” says Baxter, reaching down with a stubby finger to touch her nose. “Look at you, you wrinkly sweet thing, you were up all night, your grandma says. Now that ain’t no good. You be a good sleeper for your new ma, how about?” Amber flails her arm and watches all these words coming at her. Her right eye is squished down a bit, so it looks like she’s attempting a wink, or maybe like she’s already being sarcastic and making a face like I do when I’m thinking, As if, or, Yeah, right.
“Pretty as can be,” Baxter says, backing up from her and looking at me.
I snort. That’s a bit of a lie and we both know it. “She looks like a blond lizard, don’t she?”
Baxter tilts his head, considering, and scratches at his white hair, shaved so close it looks like bristles. He’s got a tan face and green eyes, even lighter than Kay’s, and even today, even working cattle, he’s got on clean jeans and a soft blue western shirt with those silver snap buttons, and that’s why I like him, I guess, because he always looks tidy and put together.
“Naw,” he says. “She looks like an angel. You look like an angel, smiling like that. Like a proud mother.”
“Baxter, she doesn’t look nothing of the sort. She looks like a tired mother, scared shitless. Put her here, Libby.” Kay points to a little nook in the corral in between the chute and a water tank. “You have to be at work at four?”
I nod yes to the four o’clock part, no to the dirt in the corral. “She’ll get kicked there.”
“No cow’s gonna get past me into this corner.” Then she sighs. “Please don’t argue. Please try not to be such a brat. Please just do what I say for once.”
I set Amber down. Kay scowls at me, I scowl back.
Baxter watches us and then says, “She’ll be the youngest helper I’ve ever had. She’ll grow up tough. Probably spend a lifetime giving her guardian angel gray hairs.”
Kay thrusts the record-keeping book at me and says, “Let’s get busy.”
Baxter ignores her, though. “When my brother went to war, the Second World War, I asked my guardian angel to follow him. Promised I’d take extra special care of myself. That’s why my brother made it back, you see. He had two beautiful ladies watching out for him. And look here, now I do!” He spreads