Highwire Moon

by Susan Straight

  What if she never saw her father again? What if Michael never came? What if she never found her mother? She stared at the pay phone. She still knew Sandy’s number by heart.

  She told the operator her name. “Elvia. Elvia.”

  Sandy said, “Is that you?”

  Elvia felt a rush of tears that made her feel like a little kid, and she didn’t like it. “The real me. The biological Elvia. I just took off from my biological dad.”

  Sandy was quiet. Elvia gripped the receiver. She could hear dishes clinking in Sandy’s sink, a radio on the counter. “You got a cordless phone?” she asked.

  Sandy said, “Okay. We’ll just start right up, like I do with my friends when we talk every day. We’ll pretend we’re friends and I’m not your former foster mother who’s been worried for three years about what happened to you, why you never called, whether your dad treated you right.” Forks. Elvia heard silverware tinkling in the white enamel sink where she’d washed dishes so many times. Sandy sighed. “Yes. I got a cordless phone.”

  “My dad treated me fine,” Elvia said slowly. “But his girlfriend was getting us in trouble. So we left, and . . . I got tired of moving.” She pictured Sandy’s face, her blue eyes and narrow brown eyebrows, no makeup, chapstick on her soft lips, her brown hair in a ponytail.

  “So where are you planning to settle, if you’re tired of moving?” Sandy’s voice was light. “Your birthday’s next week, right? You’re not even fifteen yet. So you’re walking?”

  Elvia thought, That’s not even my real birthday. Only one person knows when I was really born. “I’m going to look for my mother,” she said. “I have a couple addresses.”

  Sandy said, “Oh, I hope you find her. I told you—I think she loved you. Maybe you’ll find out what happened.” Then her voice went soft, and Elvia heard a little kid’s question. “Yes, you can have fruit snacks,” Sandy said, her words turned away.

  Elvia said, “You still have foster kids? Mess-ups like me?” She didn’t want to miss it—the kitchen, the linoleum, Sandy’s fingers. Only kids missed that.

  Sandy laughed. “Kids are never mess-ups. Their parents are.” She put her mouth close to the receiver. “Elvia. If you find her, and it doesn’t work out, come here, okay? You remember where? Be careful. If you need me, call me again. Please.”

  She drove into the night, not crying. When she opened the glove compartment looking for tissue, a purple scrunchie fell into her hand. It had fallen from the little girl’s hair when she lay on their laps. Callie had shoved it into the glovebox. Elvia put the velvet to her face. The glittery sparkles scratched. The little girl would never see her mother again. Only foster moms. I hope she got a good one.

  She was at the tangle of pepper trees in the foothills now. Nervous at the silence, she turned on the radio. A Mexican station—swinging trumpets, cheerful accordions, guitars. At one foster home, she’d had her own radio, small and white as a tissue box. She’d listened to Mexican music, trying to teach herself Spanish. “Es mi tienda favorita—Sears.” My favorite store. But then her foster mother, a thin woman with glasses like sideways blue teardrops, had said, “You’re driving everyone crazy. And Spanish is bad for your schooling.”

  A man sang, “Por tu maldito amor.” For your bad love. What will I say if we find my mother in Tijuana? What if she’s got a nice house, says, “So whatcha been up to all these years?”

  I can tell her about Broom Woman’s house dress. TV Woman giving out dinners in trays. Hitting Woman smacking everybody on the butt if they didn’t move fast enough, slapping our hands if we reached for food too quick.

  I can tell her that Sandy Narlette put me up on the counter with gold flecks and talked to me while she stirred in her green bowl. And that I listened.

  Then my dad came to get me. Okay? You didn’t.

  She remembered the burritos in their wrappers that morning. So long ago. The vanilla shake.

  And now I left the only person who ever asked for me, came to get me. I’m waiting right now for somebody who disappeared, too. Like a ghost. To tell him I have a ghost baby inside. To ask him to help look for a ghost woman. Blue-closed eyes and red lips that kissed me goodbye. Forever. If she sees me now, it won’t be forever, and she’ll probably be pissed.

  Gone Woman. Brown feet. Green cactus like hand-sized moons. A sting of spines. Red pomegranates like planets on a tree. White moon when we sat on the porch. She called it yoo. Braids in my hair. Lasú. Wash up. Sándoo. Sleep. Cusū.

  I heard her say that to me in the car. Then she went away.

  You. You went away.

  When the night was black and the air was finally moving cool through the windows, she heard heavy shoes crunching on the sand. Her heart stuttered. “Michael?”

  He put his arms around her, and she felt the smoothness of his neck like polished stone against her forehead. Then he released her quickly. She thought, He feels my stomach is bigger. My chest swelling up. I don’t want to tell him right now. First thing. But he patted the truck and said, “You ripped off your cowboy pops? Shit.”

  “I got tired of walking,” she said lightly, and Hector rolled his eyes.

  “Last bed check was three o’clock. Mr. Jesse sees I’m gone in an hour,” Michael said. But he leaned against the truck and kissed her, put his fingers along her cheek, and whispered, “What I was thinkin, after I first got busted, was you look like you got sand in your eyes. Like when pieces of wine bottle go rollin down a creek, and they get softer? Not so glittery? Like that green.”

  Elvia whispered back, “When things at my house got bad, I remembered your stories. About the desert, the plants, your mom.” The ID card was warm from her body when she handed it to him. “I found an address for my mother in Tijuana. You like being on the road, right?”

  “Not in your dad’s truck,” he said. “I just did five months for that car, remember?”

  “I’ll drive,” she said.

  “You got any money?” She shook her head. “We need to make some dinero real quick.”

  Hector said, “Mecca. We can make some money picking grapes, and St. Jude’s won’t look for you down south. They’ll think you went to Rio Seco or LA.”

  Elvia started the truck, and Michael said, “Your dad takes good care of the engine. He’d kill me if he saw me ridin up here, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Elvia said, but she thought, If my dad knew about the baby, he’d really kill you. She turned the wheel hard, making a doughnut in the dust and heading for the freeway, the guys slumped low like little kids. The sun edged over the mountains, flat and silver as a pie tin.

  The freeway was littered with tire pieces like crow wings. Michael lifted his head to read a few billboards. “Indian Ridge—a Jack Nicklaus golf course. Indian Lakes—an active adult community. They look real Cahuilla.” She laughed at the silver-haired people drinking iced tea, riding in golf carts. “So if you’re not active, you’re dead?” Michael said. “A dead Indian?”

  “You’re dead, in a bed, or playing golf,” she answered, just like her father had said. He used to make fun of the street names—Gene Autry Trail, Bob Hope Drive. Would he really take off for Florida, a new life? Or was he looking for her right now, maybe in Dually’s truck? Dually, Warren, and her father—they’d beat Michael and Hector close to death.

  Twenty dollars of love. Elvia shivered. Whenever someone owed her father or Warren money and couldn’t pay, her father would say, “You can give me the money or I can get fifty dollars’ worth of love outta your face. Make me feel better, since I’m broke.”

  How much love would take care of a stolen truck, a runaway daughter, and a baby?

  Michael said, “You’re on empty. This old truck’ll burn petrol big time down to Mexico.”

  Elvia pulled off in Indio to spend her last five dollars on gas. Hector said, “We can make forty bucks a day in the grapes, if you guys work hard.”


  Michael said, “Hey, remember that long-hair dude, Caveman, from St. Jude’s? He got out last month. Told me to meet him in Rio Seco if I want a hundred bucks. He wants to try the dreaming medicine, just like you. But he has to pay.” He passed his hand over Elvia’s braid and said, “Everybody’s gotta pay. Except you.”

  She shivered again, even in the dawn’s heat, even though the narrow highway already shimmered, like discarded cassette tape stretched out for miles through the sand.

  “You’re not in America now,” Hector said. “You’re in Califas, the brown state.” He and Michael sat up straight now. “Nobody’s gonna notice us here. No white faces except farmers.”

  Trucks passed hauling hay, vegetables, and boxes of grapes. Elvia peered at the next tiny town.

  “Coachella.” Hector pointed at grapefruit packing houses, auto repair shops, Mexican cafes.

  “Arabia,” he said, when the highway plowed through sand again, surrounded by date groves, the dangling amber bunches covered with paper bags.

  Suddenly she saw the grapes, wall after wall of green vines that stretched for acres. Cars were parked along the highway shoulder, plumes of dust rose from trucks driving between fields, and people walked every row. Their faces were covered with bandannas, their heads with baseball caps, and their hands moved quickly as sparrows among the leaves.

  “Mecca,” Michael said.

  “You been here before, too?” Elvia asked Michael.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Just one time. Doin what you’re doin. Trying to figure out how I got here. How my moms met my dad here. How drunk he must a been.”

  He looked away, and Elvia saw his ponytail like a gleaming black rope in the hot sun coming through the windshield. When would she be alone with him, talk to him about why she really wanted to find her mother? He said, “True hell, mano. You got it marked on your map?”

  Hector nodded, tapped on the black leather folder covering his knees.

  “So you have maps of everywhere?” Elvia asked, scared now of the whole day, the whole trip stretching before her. “This is the fucking Wizard of Oz? What are you looking for, Michael?”

  He stared at the fields, not at her. “For some money.” Then he grinned. “And a good time. Nothin else.”

  Mecca was a few stores, a few streets lined with trailers and small houses, and the grapes all around. The smell of burning sugary fruit, fermenting in the sun, nearly made Elvia sick when they got out of the truck at a row of trailers—faded pink, turquoise, and—the one where Hector knocked—pale green as a watermelon rind. But when a man came out onto the single metal step, his huge belly straining against his white undershirt so the material was nearly purple, he frowned at Hector. “Where the hell you been?” he said. “Your jefita gave up on you. In May.”

  Hector bit his lips. Elvia thought he looked like he would cry. Jefe. Boss. His little boss?

  “Where’d they go?”

  “She took two or three hermanos up to Watsonville for straw­berries. Your pops said, ‘Fuck fresas’ and went to Washington. Apples, I guess.”

  His mother, Elvia thought. She gave up on him.

  Hector said, “Tio, I need some work.”

  His uncle looked at the clipboard in his huge hands. “Show up when you feel like it? Damn, Hector. Everybody started at five. It’s seven now. And it’s Thursday. You crazy?” He glanced at Elvia and Michael. “It’s 112 today. They picked before?”

  “Yeah,” Hector lied. “Orale, Tio, I need some money. Please.”

  “Go see Manuel at Block twelve, off Sixty-sixth,” the uncle said. “Tell him I sent you, and don’t fuck up. People here are feedin kids. Not just playin around.” He handed Hector a bag and slammed the trailer door.

  I’m feeding a kid, Elvia thought. She ate the spicy tamale Hector gave her, drank the manzana soda. Apple.

  But Michael said, “Mano, if we’re gonna sweat our asses off, I need somethin to keep me goin. You know.”

  Hector said, “My uncle’s cousin. Guapo. He does the fields.” He looked at Elvia. “My moms doesn’t do speed. But her and my pops—they drink a lot, smoke mota. This is where she’s from. No nothing. That’s why I left last year.”

  Cars lined Sixty-sixth, and the grapes stretched across the hot earth, all the way to the ash-colored mountains. Hector counted off the blocks, and when she parked he said, “Put a long-sleeve shirt over that. Put on some pants. Or you’ll get sunburned and cut at the same time.”

  He and Michael stood by the truck doors while she struggled out of shorts and into her jeans. Her skin was grimy with two days of sweat and dirt. She couldn’t button her jeans at all. She left them undone and let the baggy tee shirt fall over her belly. Then she kicked up white dust on the roadside to keep up with Hector, who was waving at a man under a bright beach umbrella at the end of a row.

  It was hell. Elvia held the clippers Hector gave her and snipped each stem. Crouching alongside the wall of grapevines, breathing the dust that rose from everyone’s steps, from the wheelbarrow’s progress, from the trucks that rumbled down the dirt road with boxes, she thought, Shit, I can do this. I run in the desert all the time.

  But Hector yelled at her after the first box she filled. “Like frosty green marbles, big ones. Not babies. Not yellow. We get our asses kicked if we mess up the box.” She worked slowly, dropping the heavy dangles of fruit into the box at her feet. After an hour, she looked up to see the people around her, their faces obscured by bandannas, their heads covered with baseball caps, their hands reaching through the leaves like blackened mitts. She felt dizzy, her back aching already as if her father’s acetylene torch prodded the muscles above her hipbones. She could barely breathe, the heat like a thousand fire ants on her scalp. Salt trickled into her eyes, and when she wiped it with her hands, dirt and blood stung even worse.

  Hector came by with a water bottle. He poured water into her eyes, into her mouth. Then he and Michael cut and dropped bunches like machines, filling three boxes to her one. Michael carried the full boxes to the end of the long row, where the scale man waited under the umbrella.

  Through the stems and leaves, she could hear people talking in Spanish. She tried to look at the women’s faces—what if her mother was here, right now, picking grapes? Each pair of eyes squinted, dismissing her, searching for the grapes.

  As she touched each woody stem, each bunch of frosty green marbles, she smelled the fermenting juices and breathed the dust. Each breath was sharpened, hot, as if the dust particles carried thorns, and her lungs burned. When she’d filled another box, she bent over, ready to faint, and someone laughed on the vine wall. Melting—you wanted to melt away the baby. Fine. You’ll die, too. She was on her knees when Hector came again, pouring more water onto her head and face, whispering, “You okay?”

  “I can’t breathe,” she gasped.

  Hector said, “There’s pesticides on the grapes. You can’t gulp with your mouth. Breathe through your nose. Don’t give up yet. Come on. At least fake it.”

  A hand thrust through the vines, giving her a bandanna. Elvia tried to see the face, but she heard only laughter. She tied the cotton square around her nose and mouth, thinking it would suffocate her, but she smelled menthol in the cloth. She panted for a few minutes, then began to pick again.

  Lunch was more tamales from a truck, and water. Elvia poured it onto her chest, her neck. She lay in the sandy alley between rows, her head in Michael’s lap, her eyes closed. Melting—was the baby hot inside her, glowing like a tiny doll? No—it didn’t have hands yet. No feet. It was just cells. Cells that might be disappearing into her aching, pulsing muscles and skin.

  She could barely lift herself off the sand when the work began again. The sky and sand and leaves were all white, blinding her as she reached for the grapes, rubbery hot. She panted inside the bandanna. Her mother could be picking beside her. Her mother could be washing these
grapes and popping them into her other children’s mouths. Elvia steadied herself against a pole until she could see again. Then she turned and followed Hector back down the row, where the late-season vines were sending tendrils across the sand to trip unwary feet.

  The green hallways emptied out before dusk, and Elvia was still struggling with her last box.

  “So who’s your ruca, Hector?” someone said behind her.

  “I’m nobody’s ruca,” Elvia answered, spinning around.

  The girl laughed. “You look like nobody. Never seen nobody pick so damn slow.”

  Elvia thought, It’s not my fault, okay? I’m pregnant. But the teenage girl came around the wall of vines, in stretch pants and old sneakers, her belly huge, as if she’d have the baby any day.

  Elvia was so startled she dropped her clippers, and the girl laughed again. “Clumsy, too,” she said. “I was gonna tell Marisela you married Hector so she’d kick your ass.”

  “Shut up, Tiny,” Hector said, grinning. “I’m not here. You’re not talkin to me. I’m not really here. I’m headin back to Rio Seco. City college this year.”

  “Orale, schoolboy, Sally’s still in love with you, too,” Tiny said. Elvia stared at the women coming down the row, waving at Hector. She couldn’t believe he was a big deal here, with his neat ponytail and wide smile, his notebook of maps. He took her box down to the scale man, who was waiting impatiently, and then another girl came up behind Elvia.

  “So that’s your vato buying crystal?” she hissed. “Spending your money you ain’t made yet.”

  Elvia saw Michael now, leaning into the window of a turquoise Mustang that had been cruising the avenue. Hector said, “Guapo. Michael was looking for him. And he’s always looking for somebody like Michael.”

  Just like Dually, Elvia thought, tired, her feet swollen into her shoes. Suddenly she knew—Michael’s gonna sketch all day and night, like Callie and my dad. He hates the world slow and ordinary, one place you know. Like I wish it was.