Pros: lessons in love, responsibility, humility, and the truth about what makes a family
Cons: slightly dated
The Bottom Line: Taylor Greer learns that life's true blessings are in its subtleties; and that sometimes the best gifts are those you didn't think you wanted at first.
scmrak's Full Review: Barbara Kingsolver - Bean Trees
If you grew up in the USA in the fifties and the sixties (as I did) there's a better-than-average chance that the word "family" conjures up a fairly specific image. It's easy to see why; your malleable young mind was constantly bombarded with images of an allegedly quintessential American Family: the wise but bumbling white-shirted Dad who brings home the bacon; the perky and slightly ditzy Mom who wears high heels and pearls to do the housework; the dreamboat jock big brother who dates the head cheerleader; the bright-as-a-penny kid sister who will certainly grow into a beauty once she sheds her glasses and braces. And of course, the tastefully-furnished split-level suburban home; the mellow, woolly dog; the obligatory wacky neighbors; and the inescapable mischievous little blonde boy across the street. A family of four, evenly split along gender lines, isolated from the cares of the world: did sweet, innocent little Kitten ever have nightmares after practicing "Duck and Cover" drills at school? No, she lived out her simple life in a black and white la-la land, a dimension peopled entirely by the likes of the Andersons, the Nelsons, Wally and the Beav, Dennis Mitchell, Darlene and Annette (sigh...)
My life wasn't like that, was yours?
He proved wise, to be sure, but my Dad never wore a white shirt and tie to work, and he never carried a briefcase: one toted a black steel lunch pail as one shuffled through the green-painted iron gates at the General Electric plant. Mom didn't even own a string of pearls, much less wear fine jewelry while doing housework. She had little enough time to get the housework done before teaching three afternoon piano lessons, thank you, without the bother of tripping around in high heels. The elder child? well, she's never been very athletic and I can assure you that she never dated a pretty blonde cheerleader -- I can just imagine that scandal! Only the braininess of the younger child was true to form, if you'll pardon the immodesty. Nope, no split-level suburban house (a two-story on fallow farmland), although 'yes' to a string of beloved dogs. Oh, and wacky neighbors? I had one neighbor who was his half-sister's cousin and another who raised champion purebred cocker spaniels (dozens of 'em) in the house, though I didn't consider them particularly wacky. All in all, though, I assumed I led a pretty normal childhood. You see, we didn't have a television until I was thirteen.
Yep, that's right: I grew to adolescence ignorant of the Wonder-bread model of the American family; and I also missed the weekly lesson that any family problem can be solved in thirty minutes (less six minutes for commercials). I never learned that families are a rigid social structure related only by the miracle of gene and chromosome or the legal mass of marriage and adoption. To me, a family is both broader and narrower; circumscribed by shared music and laughter, love, joy, and sometimes pain. So call me an iconoclast. I'm in good company, 'cause Barbara Kingsolver's one, too -- and she proves it in The Bean Trees.
Not your ordinary family
When Marietta "Missy" Greer graduated from Pittman County High School, she reckoned she was ahead of the game -- in her home town half the girls her age were already dandling toddlers on their knees and had a second bun in the oven. It came as no surprise to her mother, then, when Missy took her meager life savings, sank half of them into a barely mobile 1955 VW Beetle, stuck the other half in the pocket of her jeans, and headed for parts unknown. Given that traveling east from her old Kentucky home meant immediately climbing the Appalachians, she started west. A day's drive later in southern Illinois, she began a metamorphosis: she shed both her name and nickname to become Taylor Greer, woman of the world.
The ramshackle state of her little car changed Taylor's life -- not once, but twice. When a busted rocker arm grounded her for a week in central Oklahoma, she found herself with a passenger: a silent, sexless, dark-eyed Cherokee Indian infant thrust into her unwilling arms by a round woman who quickly disappeared into the night. No name, no history, only a blanket that the child clutched as if it were the one truth in life
The child's hands constantly caught my fingers and wouldn't let go. "You little booger," I said, shaking my finger and the little fist. "You're like a mud turtle. If a mud turtle bites you, it won't let go until it thunders." And so the child -- a girl -- became Turtle Greer.
A few days later as the incipient family rolled into Tucson, Arizona, the German innards of Taylor's aging guardian angel worked their fateful magic again. Taylor and Turtle limped into Jesus is Lord Used Tires on January second looking to fix a flat, and never left.
And the hits just keep on comin'
It seemed that Tucson was just littered with Kentucky women, for Lou Ann Ruiz had settled there too after eloping with a rodeo cowboy. Five years later, Angel Ruiz disappeared himself into the night on Hallowe'en, leaving Lou Ann seven months pregnant and alone. Her son was born on January first. To make the rent and groceries in her little house, Lou Ann advertised for a roommate -- and guess who showed up on her doorstep? The two Greers -- Taylor and Turtle. An extraordinary family was slowly assembling itself, like a brilliant crystal precipitating out of solution, in the little house across the street from Taylor's job at Jesus Is Lord Used Tires. The two women and their fatherless children adopted three grandmothers, not least of whom was Mattie, proprietress of JILUT. But not a man in sight, less'n' you count the infant Dwayne Ray... "Who needs 'em, anyway?" Taylor mused.
"So one time when I was working in this motel one of the toilets leaked and I had to replace the flapper ball. Here's what it said on the package; I kept it till I knew it by heart: 'Please Note. Parts are included for all installations, but no installation requires all of the parts.' That's kind of my philosophy about men. I don't think there's an installation out there that could use all of my parts."
And so it goes...
So you think you have problems?
And there they were: two women and two children, eking out quiet lives on the south side of the poverty line. No television, no air conditioner, the poor side of town beside a sun-blasted park. One child too young to talk, the other apparently fixated on vegetables: Turtle's first word was "bean." Not an idyllic life, by most people's standards, but a full one.
A slow trickle of quiet, dark-skinned, dark-haired people through the living quarters above Mattie's garage resolved itself finally into the persons of Estevan and Esperanza. Guatemalan refugees stranded at Mattie's underground railroad terminal, they, too are enfolded into the growing family across the street. It is through quiet hours and late-night conversations with Estevan that Taylor learns there are worse places to grow up than the hills of eastern Kentucky. She discovers that there are other, horrible uses for a telephone; and that loved ones -- even little children -- can disappear without a trace. Her life suddenly appears tranquil and blessed when compared to that of her refugee friends.
Taylor learns, too, from Turtle's tiny body, that not every parent loves a child. As Taylor finds her self in the role of mother, she learns that the child she considers her daughter can be taken from her: physically by the state or emotionally by trauma. So she retraces her steps to Oklahoma, hoping to be granted legal possession of the child that possesses her heart. The family reshapes itself once more as Estevan and Esperanza -- now Steven and Hope -- are delivered to another station on their journey to safety.
Such a wondrous thing as this family, it seems, does not remain static: it grows, it changes, it takes new life through time. Binding it together are the ties of love and laughter, responsibility to the other members, and anguish at their departure. It looks as though Turtle will grow up in a true home.
Kingsolver and consistency
No tale from biologist-turned-writer Barbara Kingsolver is complete without her special insight on the setting. Two thousand miles away from the verdant hills of her native Kentucky, Taylor finds the special, hidden beauties of the desert. A midwestern transplant to Tucson myself years ago, I well remember the slow dawning of respect, of a newfound love for the stark desert environment. In the desert, there are no showy vistas of pine-clad and snow-capped mountains, nor the blazing hues of a New England autumn. A desert is a place of subtlety, of myriad tiny points of beauty instead of awesome grandeur that slaps the viewer across the face. Kingsolver, too, must have come to this realization slowly, for she has written Taylor's awakening just that way.
One of the plumes of rain was moving toward us. We could see big drops spattering on the ground, and when it came closer we could hear them, as loud as pebbles on a window. Coming fast. One minute we were dry, then we were being pelted with cold raindrops, then our wet shirts were clinging to our shoulders and the rain was already on the other side of us...
That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we stretched out our hands we could practically feel it rising up from the ground. I don't know how a person could describe that scent. It certainly wasn't sour, but it wasn't sweet, either, like a flower. "Pungent" is the word Estevan used. I would have said "clean." To my mind it was like nothing so much as a wonderfully clean, scrubbed pine floor.
After spending two years hiking the Arizona desert, I can smell, even taste that same scent today; it is like no other. Barbara has it nailed.
Kingsolver also touches on another of her usual themes: the character of Mattie is a strong women with a liberal bent. Out of the oddly-named garage left her by her dead husband, she manages a clandestine operation to help political refugees escape war-torn Guatemala. All the while, Mattie's giving subtle child-rearing hints to Taylor, unprepared for the mantle of motherhood thrust upon her. Mattie is cast as earth mother, a role that fits her to a tee.
We are family
And so, on a shabby street in a desert town, a young woman comes of age and in the process learns a valuable lesson: some things in life are meant to be, some are not -- and wisdom is knowing which ones to fight for. Another young woman finds her self-worth. A mature woman quietly saves the lives of people she has never seen before and will never see again. An abandoned child finds a mother, finds her voice, and finds a home beneath the bean trees; the wisteria vines of Roosevelt Park. And although it will surely take more than thirty minutes (less six minutes for commercials) to solve most problems in this particular family, we can rest assured that even the knottiest situation will be untangled with patience and understanding. Fate has chosen well.
Plot Summary: The wisteria vines on their own would just barely get by, is how I explained it to Turtle, but put them together with rhizobia and they ...More at HotBookSale
Taylor Greer grew up poor in Kentucky in the 60s and 70s, managed to avoid pregnancy through high school, and earned enough money to buy a Volkswagen ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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