An Obstinate Headstrong Girl. Abigail Bok

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An Obstinate Headstrong Girl - Abigail Bok


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even more so; but Mrs. Bennet was delighted. The pillared portico, Sub-Zero refrigerator, master shower with jets squirting from all directions, and golf course all expressed the person she wished to appear to be as she made her debut in Lambtown. By the beginning of the next week, their furniture had been delivered and they were settling in.

      The Red and White Ball now became the focus of discussion in the family circle. Inquiries had uncovered the intelligence that it was so named for its dress code—red gowns for the ladies, white tie for the gentlemen—and for its Valentine’s Day theme. On hearing this, Mr. Bennet declared that no force on earth could get him tricked out in a rented monkey suit and demanded to hear no more on the subject—a command that received as much deference as his commands generally did. Mrs. Bennet was torn between concern that their attendance would give the wrong impression and fear that there was no other immediate way to make her debut in the neighborhood. The younger generation, unencumbered by worries about social standing, simply felt it would be fun to dress up and dance. Even Mary thought there was no great harm in a little amusement in the name of charity, once she heard it spoken of at church as a popular annual event. So Mr. Bennet was persuaded to buy tickets for the rest of the family, so long as they agreed not to pester him about his determination to remain at home.

      After a shopping expedition to Santa Barbara to buy their dresses and rent evening clothes for John and Lydon, Lizzy set to work in good earnest on her aunt’s house, clearing out furnishings and possessions that could not be used for the library or by the family—the necessary precursor to giving the contractor recommended by Mr. Perry free rein to destroy and to build what would be required to transform the house into a library.

      She had found a serviceable used pickup truck at a lot in Santa Barbara; once all the excess linens, beds, lamps, and so forth were inventoried, she was ready to deliver them wherever they might be needed. On her rounds of meeting Aunt Evelyn’s friends to deliver their bequests, she had inquired about local charities that would take such goods, but nobody seemed to know of any—Salvation Army, Disabled Veterans, and the like were all too far off to be helpful. It was impossible to drive around the valley, however, without realizing that the poor were everywhere—living in the mobile home village by the highway, working in the fields, cleaning the motel rooms the Bennets had stayed in when they arrived. She decided to call on the priest at the Catholic church, since he had a large farmworker congregation, to seek advice.

      Our Lady of Guadalupe proved to be housed in a repurposed Grange hall at the less desirable end of town, a simple clapboard structure with a corrugated tin roof. The parish offices were around the back, and Lizzy explored the premises until she located Father George Austen, an elderly, fragile, and ill-tempered-looking person. She introduced herself and explained her dilemma.

      Father Austen glared at her for a moment, and then invited her to sit down. “You have some household items for the needy,” he repeated in a cracked voice.

      “Um, yes,” said Lizzy, wondering why he seemed confused about such a simple matter. “Roughly half the contents of my late aunt’s house, in fact. Here, I have a list.”

      Father Austen looked it over, and read it again. “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


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