Chapter 11
"Do you still like tacos?" Rita asked Zach in her Spanish accent. Her English was improving every week, according to Kara.
"Oh, yeah, they're my favorite," Zach, sitting across the dining table from her, confirmed heartily. "Mom lets me make them sometimes."
Craig, slicing a tomato in the kitchen, listened in. He had only been able to blink, stunned, when Kara had informed him about Rita. Zach's nanny! How could she be right there in their church? Questions had piled into Craig's head, one atop the other—questions he wanted to ask her, questions that had tugged at him and Kara since they had met Zach. Supreme over them all was, of course, the question of who had given him birth.
Kara had invited Rita and her daughters over for lunch, and by the time they had stepped into the house, Kara had confirmed that Rita had indeed been Zach's first nanny and that the youngster had been locked away in the house most of the time. Craig ached to search out the details of the story, but he waited as patiently as he could, helping Kara prepare tacos while Zach and Rita got reacquainted at the table and Rita's girls got acquaint with Paws on the patio.
"I remember you always like the tacos," Rita continued. "Do you—oh, what is the word?" Rita broke into fluent Spanish, expressing the thought she couldn't convey in English.
Craig, slicing a tomato, moved toward the side door to call one of Rita's daughters in to translate for her; it was funny how kids picked up languages so much more quickly than adults. Suddenly, though, he froze. Zach spoke, replying to her—in Spanish!
As one, Kara and Craig turned and stared at their son. Without taking her eyes off the youngster, Kara whispered to Craig, "Did you know he could do that?"
"No… Did you?" he returned.
"No idea." For a full minute they stood and gaped at their son as he carried on a conversation with Rita in her native tongue. He stumbled several times, trying to find the right word or to say it the right way, and she helped him along graciously.
"Mom," he said, turning to Kara a moment later, "Rita's the one who taught me how to make tacos! When I was seven! I couldn't remember who taught me."
"He ask for tacos every week when I am his nanny," Rita laughed, "so I finally give up and teach him how to make his own. Then I get one night off from cooking every week!" She grinned at the youngster, and he grinned back. They were old friends reunited, reliving old memories.
Kara shook her head slowly. "How do you know Spanish, Zach?" she asked.
"Rita taught me," he said as if it were no big deal.
Kara just stared at him, dumbfounded.
They continued talking, alternating between English and Spanish, until the tacos were ready and Rita's girls had taken their places at the table. The older one, Isabella, was nine years old and a grade behind Zach; the younger, Sofia, was seven. Both had come from Mexico with Rita. Their father and brother expected to join them by winter. After only six months in the United States, their English already exceeded their mother's.
When the food had been passed around the table, Rita turned to Craig and Kara. "I am happy for Zach to have so good parents," she told them, not the least bit ashamed of her blunders with English grammar, "who take care of him and take him to church…and feed him tacos." She smiled at that. "And muchas gracias, Kara, I love the flowers. I love all plants. In Mexico, I help my family work in the…er, the tree farms."
"Really?" Kara asked. "What kind of trees?"
"Naranjas," she answered, "oranges. We plant the trees, we cut the, er, branches, we pick the fruits. My dad, he work hard, he teach me. I come to the States to work on the apple farms in Yakima. But before I start, Zach, his grandfather find me and offer me a job and very good pay. He give me enough to live in Seattle and also send money to my family in Mexico. So we save up, and then when I lose the job, I go home to my family. This year we come back."
"Can you tell us about Zach's grandfather?" Craig requested between bites from his taco. "We never got to meet him."
"You never meet him?" Rita straightened in surprise. "I never meet him, either. How do you find Zach? His grandfather say his parents die before he hire me. That's why he hire me—no parents, his grandmother move away and then die in an accident, his grandfather have to travel much…"
Reluctantly—he wanted to collect information, not provide it—Craig shared the story of Zach's arrival, of their doubts about him, of the DNA tests that had swept away the doubts, and of their failed efforts to discover his origins, save that he must have been adopted out as an embryo. That last thought took some effort to communicate; Rita didn't know the word "embryo" yet, and the three children had no idea how to translate it.
Still, Craig could tell that Rita understood when her eyes went wide and she nodded. "Yes," she said, "that is very bad, if they do not tell you. But he is yours. I see it. He is very like you. He look like his papá." She smiled at Craig. "And he is happy here; I see that, too."
"Do you know Grandfather's name?" Zach spoke up, having just finished the last of his tacos. "He never told me what it was. Or Grandmother's, either."
Rita shook her head sadly. "No, I never hear his name. Always he talk with me through a company—the company call, the company send my paycheck, the company tell me to call if I have problems… Always the company say, 'His grandfather want it this way, his grandfather want him to follow this rule to always stay inside.' I ask them, 'Who is the Grandfather?' But they never tell me. Only one time I see him. Always when he come, he send me a message to take Zach to school and then go to my own home, come back on a certain day. But one day I take Zach to school, and then I come back later to see if anyone pick up Zach. And I see Grandfather—he is in the car, an older man but not too old, and little Zachy know him and go with him."
"Little Zachy?" Kara repeated with a playful look at Zach, who blushed.
Rita grinned. "I call him that until one day, after he turn seven, he tell me he is only 'Zach,' because he is big now. I say okay, but big boys have to take their own bath—with soap"—Zach blushed again—"and help with dishes, and take garbage out. He say that is fine, and we make a deal. After that, he is big Zach, no more little Zachy." She beamed as she told the story. "I think he like to take garbage out so he can play with the neighbor dog when he think I do not see."
Zach looked up at her, surprised and a little guilty. "You knew?" Rita just laughed again.
"So you never met his grandfather or grandmother?" Craig marveled.
"No," Rita replied. "Both of them I never meet—met. Grandmother move away before I come. Zach tell me about her, but I never see her, and there are no pictures. Then the company call with a message from Grandfather to say Grandmother die in a car crash. And never any pictures of Grandfather, either. It is very strange."
"Can you tell us what company his grandfather used to hire you?" Kara suggested.
"West Coast Nanny, with PO box in Tacoma," she answered. "But I think it is a very small company, because when I call, the same voice always answer. And I look in the phonebook, but it is not there. I go to the—" She paused to say a word to her daughters in Spanish.
"Library," Isabella translated, then returned to eating her salad.
"I go to the library and look on the Internet, but I find nothing. I don't understand, and I want to ask and find out more, but I am afraid to ask because I am very new in this country. I don't want to make anyone mad at me." She looked from Kara to Craig, gauging their reactions. Craig nodded in understanding.
Kara spoke again. "Zach says you were the best nanny he had."
"I had fourteen!" Zach told Rita. "Thirteen after you!"
"Thirteen in three years?" she repeated, amazed. "Why so many?"
"I don't know," he responded. "They never stayed very long. And every time one of them left, we had to move to a new house."
Rita considered that statement. "Do you move after I leave?"
"Yeah, the ve
ry next day," he recalled. "I was really sad. I lived in that house all my life until we moved away."
Craig leaned forward in his chair. "Rita, do you remember where his house was? Can you take us there?"
"Oh, yes, I remember," she nodded. "You want to see?"
Kara nodded eagerly. "Yes, please!"
Rita glanced at her girls, who were still nibbling at the last few bites of their food. She spoke to them in a stern tone, in Spanish. They gulped down what remained, and Rita looked back at Kara and Craig. "I will take you there now."
*****
The Boy Who Appeared from the Rain Page 67