bedspread flapping around my legs I ushered them through the kitchen into the adjoining living room. Herbert lowered his six feet, four inch, 200-plus pound frame onto the scratchy red-sand-colored couch and stretched out his legs. Leaning his head against the back cushions, eyes closed, he breathed deeply and wearily. He pulled Beverly down beside him, encircling the little girl with one huge arm, as I escaped to the bedroom. I needed more suitable clothes, the stabilizing influence of my husband, and a few minutes to organize my thoughts. And Herbert needed a few quiet minutes to unwind. Even without the emotional upheaval of having his wife take their two-year-old son and leave him, the three-hundred-mile, six-hour drive to Flagstaff and back was enough to unsettle the strongest man. We lived in an isolated community in Northern Arizona on the Navajo Indian Reservation. Aside from having the post office farthest from a railroad anywhere in the United States, and having been a site for a T.B. Sanitarium prior to, during, and a few years after World War II, the place had little claim to fame. Most of us didn't know where it was before we came there, and after we arrived we still weren't sure. The town had some of the qualities of a boom town, and we were part of the "boom." A federal school and dormitory installation, one of several built to provide a home and education for the burgeoning Navajo population, had brought an influx of about two hundred people to fill teaching, administrative, maintenance and service staff positions. Herbert and many other Negroes had faced impossible conditions in Texas after completing college. Trained as teachers, they were unable to obtain employment in any but segregated, sub-standard schools. Federal employment offered equal pay, equal housing, and equal opportunity for advancement, and many of them had taken advantage of the fortuitous circumstances. Involved as we were in the problems of helping to prepare about five hundred Navajo students for what they would face when they finished fourth grade and went "outside" for further schooling, we were isolated emotionally from the rest of the world. There were 150 miserable unpaved miles between us and the nearest town of any size, so we were isolated geographically. Many of us had thought about segregation, or integration, but the question had been academic; there was no opportunity to become involved personally. Suddenly, we were there, the Negroes were there, and we were all on an equal footing. We worked together, played together, lived side by side and shared together the advantages and inconveniences of our isolated existence. At first we were all almost self-consciously broad-minded and tolerant with each other, but this was a transient thing. We became not "Negro" and "white", but acquaintances, neighbors, friends. When Earline appeared at my open kitchen door one morning with Beverly in tow, peered in through the screen at me scrubbing and waxing the green asphalt tile and told me, "My Lord, woman, you're working like a nigger," we laughed until we were limp. Proximity had much to do with our relationship at first; the Marshalls were our next-door neighbors in the duplex and our children ran freely in and out of both homes. Our two boys, Tony, four, and Kenneth, two-and-a-half, became two-thirds of an inseparable trio. Beverly was the other third. These thoughts raced around in my head as I left Herbert and Beverly on the couch and hurried back to the bedroom. My husband had been awakened by the activity and he was already out of bed when I went into the room. As we dressed, we talked about what had happened and what could be done. We had heard some rather unrestrained discussions between the Marshalls concerning the "God-forsaken, isolated" place we all called home, and we'd felt it was only a question of time before Earline either convinced Herb they should leave or she left without him. However, we thought she must have made her decision to go without Beverly impulsively, probably after an argument, and would be back in a few days. Over breakfast a little later, we discussed various solutions, but there was only one answer -Beverly had spent more time with us than with anyone else except her family and it seemed reasonable things would be easier for her in a familiar environment. Much of the time we were on the reservation, I was providing day-care for a varying number of pre-schoolers because I was one of the few non-working women in town. My husband made the observation regularly, "Help! We're being invaded by pygmies!" I shared his feeling of mock dismay, but lacked whatever it took to say "No," when children were involved. My "daytime family" began arriving, the men Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principle one was, that they escaped teething. Mark Twain 10 left for work, and I settled into my usual daytime routine; one extra four-year-old doesn't make that much difference when you already have five to ten pre-schoolers around all day. Beverly played with the other children as she had always done, running, jumping, swinging, chattering and screaming. Her excited laughter sounded as frequently as ever, and she was no more and no less mischievous than she had been while her mother was there. Only with me was she different - reserved and withdrawn. She seemed to be waiting - and I waited too. Busy with the many things that have to be done when there are small children around, I managed to ignore the problem of her hair for a few days, but there came a time. "Beverly! Beverly!" I called, poking my head around the frame of the screen door and scanning the windswept, hard-packed, grass-resistant expanse of the back yard. "Let's do something about that hair of yours. She grimaced slightly, showing white teeth, but offered no other sign of resistance. "Oh, all right - but it'll pull!" With an air of resignation she came into the house, clambered up the steps of the yellow kitchen stool I indicated, and prepared herself for the ordeal. And ordeal it was, indeed, for both of us. The tightly plaited strands of hair were matted and tangled from the days of neglect, and the problem was compounded by sand, caked on her scalp and held there by perspiration and petroleum jelly. I unbraided, untangled, combed, shampooed, struggled, considered swearing, crying, shaving her head, leaving home anything! I had ignored the problem of the hair for so long because I didn't know exactly how to approach it. I had watched her mother comb and plait order into the kinky black wooliness several times, and she used generous globs of petroleum jelly to plaster it down with. Although I hadn't wanted to admit it, even to myself, I was frankly squeamish about the job, and I was more than a little unhappy with myself for feeling the way I did. I was determined not to use the heavy, greasy petroleum jelly, and it took much experimenting to find a suitable substitute. I finally settled on a hair dressing we'd bought for our boys that proved too heavy for their blonde Nordic hair. It had been taking up space in the bathroom because I couldn't bring myself to throw out a full bottle of anything, even if we had no immediate need for it. Feeling vindicated for my thriftiness my husband calls it pack-rat- itis, but I choose to ignore him - I worked zealously at bringing order out of the tangled chaos. Although Beverly had been around much of the time, I had never actually felt her hair before. It looked stiff and wiry to me, almost like steel wool, and I was surprised at the softness after the sand and grease were finally shampooed out. At last it was finished - two fat black braids, clean and fragrant, and tied with crisp pink satin ribbons to match the pink and white checked gingham shorts outfit she was wearing. She was beautiful, and to my surprise - and hers - I impulsively kissed the little hollow at the back of her neck where the hair was parted. She smiled almost shyly, slithered down from the stool and was out the door, joining again the noisy, sandy bunch in the back yard. The sand had presented another problem in addition to being in everything, always. I had been pleasantly surprised to discover the children could roll and tumble in it all day without looking dirty. They were dusty, but it wasn't a grimy, black dirt like the mountainous soil where we'd lived B.R. (That's "Before Reservation," a term common among reservation exiles.) I'd heard Beverly's mother scold her for getting so "ashy," and now I Knew what she meant. Beverly and the sand were a troublesome combination; on my boys the reddish-brown sand and dust simply accentuated their sun-browned color. On Beverly's dark skin it was indeed "ashy;" there was no other word to describe it. After a little experimenting I found a baby lotion that kept her skin smooth and satiny without providing a greasy foundation for the sand to cling to. As I rubbed the lotion into the smooth dark skin of her sturdy arms and legs, I admired the beautiful contour of her perfectly formed body. Children seem to take naturally to cooking, and Beverly was no exception. As soon as she heard the rattle of the aluminum measuring spoons she was in the kitchen, chattering and eager to "help." She especially liked to help bake bread and she became surprisingly adept at forming the loaves to bake in the miniature loaf pans I kept for the children to use. She kneaded and shaped the dough, gravely intent on the task at hand, copying my every movement. I smiled as I saw her pink tongue protruding from between her lips as she worked - then smiled still more, somewhat sheepishly, as I realized I was doing the same thing! She showed flashes of almost adult humor - she would form her fist into a smooth Training is everything The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. Mark Twain 11