“My school?” Lucy sat down cross-legged on the roof and lit a cigarette. “Certainly. Tell me if you want it and I’ll write you a letter tonight. I should think it would be just the thing for you. Phyllis was such a problem before I sent her there. They always are difficult at a certain age, don’t you think?” She turned and flicked an ash at Phyllis, who ignored her by chatting with Janie.
The singing fell to an abrupt end and in the silence shuffling feet were heard. Over an array of backs, fidgeting sweaty backs, they saw green branches jogging, being carried out of the plaza. A fluttering wisp of red shirt moved in the same direction, seen in little jerks as it passed between two fat ladies in khaki hats.
“Oh,” cried Mary, “it’s over, isn’t it? I haven’t really seen anything of it.”
“No, no,” Bob said soothingly. “They start again in a minute. What was all that at your school about psychoanalysis, Lucy? Tell her about it.”
“Won’t she be bored? I always forget the other people may want to watch the dance. It seems impossible that anyone here could be seeing it for the first time. How many times have we seen it, Bob?”
“Oh, I couldn’t say. It’s nothing to what it used to be. I remember a dance at Jemez that I stumbled on by sheer accident. It was in the old days when I was collecting. I was taking a trip to San Ysidro to get a blanket—you could still pick up good things in those days. I was driving with poor old Gertrude and we suddenly turned into the village and there it was. Very shocking.”
Lucy leaned forward and ground out her cigarette against a stone. The sun was paling as if the air had grown suddenly thick. Behind a high yellow sandy cone back of the town, a black cloud peeped.
“Tell us about it,” said Lucy. Down in the plaza the singing swelled triumphantly.
“I couldn’t really. They were having something ceremonial and private—I don’t know just what. There were baskets of fruit and plates of food; the men made obscene gestures with the bananas. Fertility and all that, I suppose. Gertrude was as white as a sheet; she screamed and drove away as fast as she could, but they didn’t pay any attention to us. I was helpless with laughter. You can imagine Gertrude.”
“It’s a wonderful story,” said Lucy. “I should have heard it before. Gertrude never mentioned it to me, but naturally she wouldn’t. Well, Mrs. Lennard....”