New Mexico and Arizona lasted forever. California looked just the same, Neva thought, but it smelled better. She was tired of eating stale bread and cantaloupes and watery soup, tired of sitting, tired of being poked by Charlotte and falling asleep with her neck bent over. She missed Miss McKenna, who was much nicer to her than Charlotte was. She looked at the hills outside the car, sandy and bare except for pokey cactuses, but the hills didn’t look like people at all. They looked like stones piled on top of one another. What if it was all a sneaky trick? What if there was no sleeping Indian like in the postcard Aunt Ida sent, no hilly green feet, no gigantic grass-covered head?
She closed her eyes and when she woke up, everything had changed. The earth on either side of the highways was soft and damp with rain, and there were gentle hills everywhere, as green as can be, even though it had still been winter in Kansas. She thought she saw shoulders and stomachs in the distance, raised knees furred all over with green bushes. It had rained a lot here, it looked like, and in some valleys the clouds hung low like fog.
“Is that it?” Neva asked, rubbing the window to make a better porthole. She wasn’t supposed to ask anymore, but their father said they were getting close.
“No, Neva,” her mother said, leaning forward to check.
“Those hills over there,” Neva said. She thought the two hills looked more like the belly and face of a pregnant woman, but maybe the Indian was fat. She found the postcard on the floor and studied the tinted slopes.
Her mother looked a bit longer out the window. “No,” she decided. “That’s not it, Nevie.”
More miles passed, the green grass by the road striking them all dumb. When they finally spotted a large black-and-white sign with an arrow, Charlotte whooped. “Fallbrook!” she said. “My God, I can’t wait to get out of this car.”
Neva expected Charlotte to get in trouble for saying My God, but she didn’t. “Where is he? Where is he?” Neva almost screamed, kneeling on her seat and rubbing the whole window with her sleeve.
“The arrow just points to the town,” Clare said. “I don’t think you can see the big stiff from here.” That was a mean thing to say, in Neva’s opinion, but he leaned toward the window and helped her look.
Neva started reading the signs out loud. “Sunkist Lemons,” she said. “No Trespassing.” They passed a yellow house that she hoped was it and a falling-down white one that had a dog chained up in the yard. Then a red-and-white sign with a chicken on it said, “Fresh Eggs.”
“That’s it,” Ellie said. “We turn there.”
The car filled with a feeling like Christmas morning. “Well, yaw-hoo,” Charlotte said, sticking her head out the window and breathing in. “I am never, never going to leave California.”
Neva wanted the car to go faster so she could get out and play in all that grass, but the muddy lane was so rutted and puddled that the car jolted, then slid into a furrow and ground to a stop.
“I guess we’ll just have to walk,” her mother said cheerfully, opening the door. She managed to stand up with the leaded glass lampshade, then set it carefully on the seat. Her heels sank in the mud but she didn’t stop to clean them. She didn’t even stop for Neva as she hurried up the hill.
Neva still wore the beret that was just like Miss McKenna’s. She let Artemis off her leash and walked into the grove, where she stopped under a lemon-studded tree. The bark was so thin it looked like brown skin, smoothly covering a trunk that divided in two and then came together again in a twist. Grass like fine hair grew under her feet, and when she reached out to touch a lemon, it came off in her hand, smelling just like candy.
“Don’t pick them!” Charlotte said in her mean way, but then there was the sound, higher up the hill, of a screen door slapping, and Charlotte, too, left Neva behind.
From the house she could hear her aunt saying, “Poor duck, poor duck,” and a man saying, “Welcome to California!”
Neva crouched down beside the tree and found she could see the bit of yard where people were hugging and laughing. Uncle Hurd was a round man, shorter than her father and dressed like a railroad man in a blue work shirt and overalls. The whole time he was talking and listening, he kept rubbing his hand over the dog’s face and ears.
Aunt Ida looked like her mother except with darker hair and bigger arms, legs, and cheeks. She didn’t touch Artemis at all but you could tell from her face lines that she liked to smile. She looked around and Neva could hear her saying, “But where’s little Neva?” and Neva knew she should go up and be kissed but instead she just sat very still.
“She’s probably shy,” Clare said. “She’ll come along.”
“Neva? Come and eat now! I’ve been cooking for two entire days!” Ida called, and the adults—her father last of all—began drifting toward the square white house, out of Neva’s view. Her stomach hurt, and she was hungry, but the grove was so glittery and green. She looked up, and she saw blue sky. She looked back down. A ladybug was crawling on a long stem of grass that arced like a bridge. She put out her hand and extended a finger to the ladybug. Up at the house, Uncle Hurd was laughing like Santa Claus, “Ho ho ho.”
When the ladybug lifted its wings and spun away, Neva stood up and crept to the side of the house. The wooden shutters had been painted bright pink, which gave the house a fairy tale look. A brown chicken shied away from her, and then another. The white plaster wall was warm where she leaned against the corner to peek at the front yard. Rusty machinery and old cars were everywhere. It was too organized to be a dump, though. Sparkly blue bottles had been wired to the branches of a little tree. Some of the bottles were pale turquoise and small like they’d once carried perfume. Some were medicine blue and so heavy that they made the branches droop. More glass bottles, clear and brown and green, had been sorted by color and were heaped in wire crates. Stones lined a winding path that Neva followed. Rainwater glistened on everything, and Neva picked up a clear perfume bottle shaped like a girl’s head.
“Neva!” Charlotte called. She opened the screen door and looked disapprovingly at Neva. “Come in here. We’re going to have chicken and biscuits now.”
Neva set the girl’s glass head down and went in to sit at a round table covered with a printed tablecloth and all sorts of food.