The Orphan Daughter

by Cari Noga

  If you can work more efficiently, that does benefit her, the voice argues. Less rushing around. More time. You could take her to that movie, instead of Esperanza.

  Or maybe hire Esperanza to do the picking and packing tomorrow, and take Lucy to the movie yourself. The flip side of the idea springs up out of nowhere. On its heels, a dozen “buts” clamor. Esperanza doesn’t know my systems, where I keep everything, how I like it done. She wants to learn English, and Lucy can help her better than I can. Lucy’s already expecting her to go along and won’t want me instead. And at the core of it all, a guilty truth: I’d rather work on Plain Jane’s.

  Hauling the sprinkler down to the dry end of the lettuce plot, I imagine my guilty thoughts spinning out of my head just like the water. Now to patch the irrigation line. I affix it carefully, with my soil-blackened fingers and adhesive, tacking on a prayer.

  I wait until evening to turn it back on, cutting the volume by half to keep the pressure down on the hose. I’ll leave it on longer to make up. I look back at the house. It’s so strange to see a light on upstairs now, evidence of another inhabitant, even if she does mostly hibernate. Lucy didn’t say much at dinner, but she did eat, gobbling up Señora López’s tamales and rice. I added a jar of salsa I canned last year and a bowl of strawberries, which Lucy ate most of. Sitting there together reminded me so much of me and Gloria, back in high school. Déjà vu all over again. I thought about asking about the grass phobia, whether she had ever seen a counselor or tried to overcome it, but the movie plan seems to have mollified her, at least for the time being, and I didn’t want to spoil the détente. No Sarge or Lexie confrontations, even. I guess that’s progress.

  The next morning, though, I go out to a failed patch. The geyser is more of a burble today since it was turned on so low. Another hot, dry forecast and another lost night of moisture. This section won’t make it another five days. The only solution is a Saturday farmers’ market day, sell what I have before it’s no longer saleable. So I’ll get to show Lucy Traverse City, after all.

  Chapter 23

  LUCY

  Esperanza Ramirez does wear a lot of jewelry, especially bracelets and big, dangly earrings. She seems quiet, but maybe she just doesn’t speak much English. “Papers,” she says, showing Aunt Jane something.

  “Good.” Aunt Jane looks relieved.

  “The bus will come at nine thirty,” Miguel tells Jane. “I’ve got to take Juan over to a job.”

  “All right.” Aunt Jane seems preoccupied, as usual. “That sounds fine.”

  As soon as they’ve gone, she stands up and grabs her flap hat.

  “I’ll see you two this afternoon, after lunch?”

  “¿Después de comer?” I translate for Esperanza.

  “Sí.” She nods.

  The kitchen’s quiet. Esperanza looks over at Sarge’s food dish on the floor. “¿Tienes un gato?”

  “That’s my aunt’s cat. Mine’s upstairs.” That reminds me, I’d better make sure Lexie’s safe in her cage. “I’ll be right back.”

  I look all over before I finally find her on the hall windowsill, looking out. “Don’t get any ideas,” I say, taking her back to my room, where the M encyclopedia volume from Matt’s room lies on my bed, open to the Mexico entry. Reading the encyclopedias is something to do, and the climate section was really good news. “Much of Mexico, especially the northern regions, has a dry climate with infrequent rainfall.” So not much grass! I was right when I told Mr. Langley it would be better than here.

  “Lucy!” Esperanza calls upstairs. “El bus.”

  “Coming!” I close the book to finish later and get Lexie safe in her cage. She meows and scratches at the bars. She’s doing that more and more.

  Downstairs, Esperanza isn’t in the kitchen. She’s not in the living room or bathroom, either. Where did she go? Then the side door opens.

  “Lucy? ¡Venga!” She’s waving me over from outside, pointing at the road with her other arm. “¡El bus está aquí!”

  I look through the living room window and see it, one of the funny white short buses they have here, pulled over on the road, the front yard between us.

  Step on a crack, break your mother’s back. Step on the grass, make her car crash. I can’t walk out there.

  She’s already dead, a voice inside me whispers. Make the bus crash, then. With us on it.

  Leaving Lexie all by herself, for Sarge to have for lunch or something. No way.

  “Lucy?” Esperanza’s back inside now, frowning at me.

  “I can’t,” I tell her, then remember. “No puedo.”

  “No te entiendo,” she says, shaking her head.

  No one understands. “Simplemente no puedo. I just can’t. I’ll have to stay here,” I say.

  Behind Esperanza, Aunt Jane’s face appears, looking tired even though it’s morning. “Grass again, right?”

  I nod.

  She sighs. “I’ll ask the driver to pull in.”

  The driver opens the door, and I watch Aunt Jane talk, pointing back to the house. The bus doesn’t move. She points back again, then stands with her hands on her hips.

  The door closes, and the bus starts to move down the road. Esperanza rouses, as if to try to stop it, but then the back lights start flashing and the bus is slowly backing down Aunt Jane’s driveway. Aunt Jane follows it and waves to the driver, a bald man who looks pretty mad, and comes back in the kitchen.

  “Doorstep service.”

  “Actually, the door’s on the wrong side,” I tell her, looking at the floor.

  She doesn’t say anything. I hear a loud exhale, then some muttering.

  “All right, then. In for a penny, in for a pound,” she says, turning around. “Climb on.”

  I straddle her back. She does it better this time, not so wobbly. Esperanza follows, not saying anything.

  On the bus steps I slide down. The whole bus is empty. Esperanza sits down next to me. The bus driver looks curiously at us in the rearview mirror.

  “Downtown? State Theatre?”

  “Yes,” I say, watching Aunt Jane’s face as the bus moves. She still looks tired, but something else, too. Resigned? Resentful?

  I prop my phone next to the window, filming the endless green. Phoebe will never believe it if I don’t show her. That’s all there is, the whole drive to town, except when we pass a police car with its flashers on, the officer outside, standing next to the car he pulled over. Esperanza slides down in her seat, even though there’s no way he could have seen her.

  Downtown isn’t much. A couple of blocks of stores. No skyscrapers. No newsstands. People walk around drinking coffee from paper cups and looking at their phones. They’re all wearing shorts and T-shirts. No one’s dressed for work or really going anywhere, just wandering around. Some people have dogs on leashes.

  But I’m safe from grass at least. There’re trees and flowerpots, but the trees are boxed into little squares cut in the concrete and the plants into baskets hanging from streetlights.

  The theater marquee says “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” at ten thirty. That’s it? One movie in this whole city? Esperanza looks at me and shrugs.

  I guess it is, and since it doesn’t start for half an hour, we buy the tickets and walk around, too. Across the street is a kind of plaza. Some kids a little older than me are skateboarding. Another little group is bunched next to the bike rack, talking. They’re all white. Other than that, it’s the most normal-looking thing I’ve seen since I came to Michigan. I watch one girl who has her nose and eyebrow pierced. She’s laughing at some boy. She looks about Graciela’s age. I still don’t know if she’s sent any more messages on Facebook.

  “Uh-oh. I smell bacon,” I hear the boy say.

  I follow his gaze to a police officer, coming from the other side of the plaza.

  “Break it up, kids. No skateboarding here, you know that.”

  “Vamos, Lucy.” Esperanza pulls at my arm. She’s acting nervous again, like on the bus when we passed the police ca
r. “Tengo calor. Let’s go in, where it’s air-conditioned.”

  I let her pull me into the theater. “How come you get so nervous when you see a police officer?” I ask once we’re sitting.

  She looks at me but doesn’t answer. I ask again, in Spanish. “I thought you had a visa or whatever.”

  “It’s always better not to attract attention.”

  I think of Mom. Her bright clothes and her huge bright smile. Her life-size picture on the bus-stop shelter. The plan for the West Coast edition of her show, so the whole country could see her. Now not even I can. My stomach tightens.

  “Why?”

  She shrugs. “It’s the way it is for us.”

  “For Miguel, too?” He doesn’t seem like Esperanza and Juan. He’s loud; he’s always in front. She shakes her head.

  “Miguel is an American.”

  “He is?”

  “Sí. Born here. Tiene suerte,” she says.

  “Lucky how?”

  “His parents were migrants. They came up here to work in the orchards every summer. Las cerezas, las manzanas. One year, Miguel was born on their way home. In Texas.”

  Where Daddy went to school. So Miguel’s Tex-Mex, too.

  “How do you know all that?”

  “Our families are friends in Mexico.”

  “Wait. He lives here, but his family lives in Mexico?”

  “Sí. Fue terrible.” She shakes her head.

  “What was terrible?”

  “Los deportaron. All but Miguel.”

  “Deported?” It sounds like a story Mom would tell on the news, not something that would happen to anybody I know.

  She nods. “A long time ago. There were three niños by then, Miguel, Ana Maria, and Jorge. Back and forth they went, every year, until one year their parents decided, why not stay?”

  “And they did?”

  Esperanza nods. “For a long time, no hubo problemas. Miguel’s mama wrote mine, so proud her children were in school. Learning English.” She sighs and shakes her head again.

  “What happened?”

  “Immigration came for his parents while they were at school. Then they waited for the school bus. Su hermana, Ana Maria, was only nine years old.”

  Younger than me. But she had her parents. Poor Miguel. All by himself. Just like me. Tears rise.

  I rest my head on the back of the seat, hoping they won’t trickle out. The black theater ceiling is covered with bright white lights, like a starry sky. I think of the Spanish song I put in the slide show for the funeral. “Abrázame muy fuerte” by Juan Gabriel. Daddy used to always sing it to me. I picked it because he said it was our song. It means hold me tightly. I can’t translate it all, but it’s about loving somebody more than anything else. My favorite lines were the ones about every star in the sky saying “I love you.” I remember after Daddy sang it to me at bedtime, he’d point out the window and say, Hay miles de millones de estrellas, niña.

  Billions of stars. Billions of I-love-yous. I brush away a leaking tear. Esperanza, still talking about Miguel and his family, doesn’t notice.

  “They took them across the border, to Ciudad Juárez, and dumped them.” Her voice is quietly mad. “El padre, he found work washing dishes. Miguel and a priest from el Norte found the rest of them locked in a filthy hotel room. They were there for weeks, las ventanas, las puertas, all locked.”

  Windows and doors locked for weeks? “Why?”

  “Ciudad Juárez, it is not safe. Many criminals. Drugs, gangs.” She shakes her head, pressing her lips together. “Miguel brought enough money to get them back to our village. Ana Maria, all she had was her Dora school backpack.”

  I look down at my flip-flops, Hello Kitty’s face peeking back at me between my toes.

  “Now, in the country, they are safe, but Miguel has to work very hard to support them.”

  “At Aunt Jane’s.”

  “Sí, her farm and others. Plus he drives the school bus, delivers newspapers . . . no hay trabajo en México.”

  “Oh.” Why isn’t there any work? “Is that why you and Juan came here?”

  “Sí.” She nods. “But it is harder now. Papers, all that.”

  “Maybe that’s why my cousin can’t come to see me. She lives in Mexico.” That’s what Mr. Langley said. I didn’t believe him, but if Esperanza’s story is true, maybe he wasn’t lying.

  Esperanza nods. “Miguel’s family cannot come see him. They have a lifetime ban because of the deportation.”

  I think about that. Would it be worse if Mom and Daddy were alive but I couldn’t see them? The theater lights are starting to dim.

  “He can visit them, claro. He will go back for Ana Maria’s quinceañera,” Esperanza says.

  Then the lights go out all the way, and I can let the tears come as the star ceiling sparkles with I-love-yous that I can’t reach.

  Chapter 24

  JANE

  Saturday. Farmers’ market day. I check in with the market master. Since I’m not a regular, I have to settle for one of the secondary spots, which isn’t shaded, nor do I have a canopy. It’s clouding up, though. I tie on the carpenter’s apron that I filled with change last night and set out my price list. Strawberries, six dollars per quart. Zesty mixed greens, washed, five dollars a bag. Mild mixed greens, washed, five dollars a bag. Rhubarb, two dollars a bunch. That’s everything. I prepped it all last night, while Lucy was at the computer in the kitchen.

  “This Internet is so slow!” She pounded her fist on the desk, then stood up abruptly, Sarge yowling as her chair almost squashed his tail. “I can’t load anything.”

  More complaints. She’s been here less than a week and it’s been all complaints. I plumb down deep, trying to tap into more sympathy. I know it’s rough, moving so soon after a death. Oh, how well I know. I try to cut her slack, like arranging that movie trip with Esperanza, but she keeps reeling it in. The grass. Sarge. The crate in the barn. That she can’t go anywhere. Now the Internet.

  “High-speed service is expensive.” With effort, I kept my voice neutral.

  “I have money! Mr. Langley said.”

  He talked to her about money? Well, I know she was aware of the apartment selling. A sixth grader could certainly figure it out. “You will, but it’s not accessible yet.”

  She sighed, pacing back and forth like a caged animal. In a way she is, refusing to go outside. She keeps her earbuds on a lot, curled up with Lexie on her bed.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the leafy green-and-pink variegated stalks that darken to curved fuchsia ends, where they snapped off at the soil line.

  “Rhubarb.”

  She touched a stalk tentatively.

  “Ever tasted it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Want to try?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Go on. Just try it.” I snapped a stalk in half, handing her the pinker, sweeter end. She nibbled, then made a face. “Yuck.”

  “Too bitter?”

  “People eat this?” She stares at the stalk like it’s infectious.

  “Most people cook or bake with it. Usually they add something. Strawberry-rhubarb jelly, apple-rhubarb pie. Maybe”—I had a brainstorm—“maybe even salsa.”

  “Ewww.” She tried to hand it back to me.

  “Put it in here.” I held out the ice bucket I turned into my countertop compost container, half-full of coffee grounds and eggshells.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Compost.”

  She looked at me blankly. So much to learn, so much she doesn’t get. I changed the subject.

  “Plan to get up early tomorrow. We’re going into town for the farmers’ market.”

  “How early?”

  “Five a.m.”

  “Five?” She was incredulous. “No one gets up that early.”

  “Farmers do,” I told her. “Sorry. They’ve got free wireless downtown, so you can get online there. Or you can sleep in the truck. But there’s no getting out of i
t.”

  She took my words literally. She hasn’t stepped out of the truck, even though the market is set up on an asphalt parking lot. Not so much as a toe has touched grass yet, as far as I know. In the cab I see her hunched over the iPad.

  Customers are starting to arrive. “Your strawberries fresh?” asks a middle-aged man wearing a Mackinac Island sweatshirt.

  “Picked ’em yesterday,” I say as brightly as I can.

  “Then I’ll take two.” He hands me a twenty-dollar bill. With effort, I put Lucy out of my mind and settle down to business.

  An Amish family is set up across from me. In between customers I watch them, as covertly as I can. The oldest girl looks about Lucy’s age, but plain and severe in her long dress and apron, her brown hair captured in braids. Like Lucy’s was the first day, in New York, but hasn’t been since. No Hello Kitty in sight. Nor did she spend the last evening complaining about the slow Internet. I count three other younger kids, two boys and a girl. The mother is pregnant with a fifth. I wonder whether the balance will tip in favor of boys or girls. Or will it change at all? She looks far enough along. She’s done it before. That’s what I thought, too.

  Even not counting a baby, that’s already six people in the household. How do they navigate so many relationships? Parent and child, brother and sister, brother and brother, sister and sister. Husband and wife. I was so drained by the one that ended before it even started. Maybe relationships are an exponential kind of strength. The more you have, the stronger each grows. If I’d carried our daughter out of Alaska, how would life have been different? As a family of four, would we have been stronger—a solid square instead of a tipsy triangle? If Jim weren’t in Florida starting over, would I resent Lucy’s arrival less? Is it all a vicious circle, with only myself to blame? My body denied Matt a sister, my grief the mother he deserved, and drove Jim to the warmth and comfort of another woman’s arms.

  By eleven the salad greens are gone and I’m down to just a few quarts of strawberries. Mostly rhubarb remains. Lucy’s tastes weren’t so far off the mark. I survey the Amish family again. A lot of bakery items have left their table. Maybe I can arrange a barter.

  “Morning.” I address the girl Lucy’s age. “Could I talk to one of your parents about a trade?”