She left before dawn. On the highway, she felt an exhilaration mixed with fear. When I see him, he won’t believe how I can drive. Then she thought, He’ll see my stomach. The baby.
The wind picked up again as she drove through the Sandlands, pushing tumbleweeds and palm fronds across the road. She glanced up at the cleft of green where Michael might be sleeping in his trailer. East toward Tourmaline, the sun was only an eerie tin thread in the desert.
The sign was rocking at the Sands Motel. No blue truck. The quarry was deserted, where the wind flung gravel against the windshield and she could barely turn around in the parking lot. On the highway, the sand made a glistening sound against the car doors, and she remembered all the winter sandstorms she’d watched from different windows. Her father used to say, “That sand can wreck the truck’s paint job in an hour. And man, people always crash in sandstorms.”
She thought of the grapevines in Mecca, sand shifting the rows where they’d all bent and crouched and talked. “Go outside and you could die,” her father would say. “Your mouth and nose would fill up with sand. You’d be buried and nobody’d find you for a year.” If no one had ever found the dead woman in the desert with the burnt-bark face, she would be covered in drifting sand. No one back in Mexico would ever know what happened to her.
She would never know what had happened to Callie and Jeff, to the dime-eyed little girl. In the sullen dimness of Tourmaline, she saw a green car and new curtains at the old house.
She drove to Palm Springs, trying to remember the name of the construction company, but she could barely keep the wheels on the road in the blowing sand. She couldn’t drive around golf courses looking for new cement pipes. Back on the freeway, with fewer golden sand clouds rolling across the asphalt, she pulled off near the Cabazon market to buy a soda, and on the frontage road she saw the truck, the rust sheen like ancient turquoise.
Elvia drove into the old motor court, “Cabazon Inn,” looking at the thick curtains over the cottage window. What if he was sleeping, after a long sketch? She gripped the wheel.
He peered out his door right away, his face suspicious and hard as always. He must still owe somebody money, she thought. Somebody must be mad at him.
When he saw her, she couldn’t smile, couldn’t wave, couldn’t move. He walked over to the car, his boots untied, the laces grinning wide. “Nice car,” he said into the window. A new scar on his nose, a fingernail moon over the bridge. A bare patch on his temple, where the hair had been shaved off and thin glittery stubble covered a red line held together with black string.
“Stitches,” he said to her stare. “So you made out okay, huh? You don’t need shit from me, so what are you out this way for?” He squinted in the gust that blew between cottages.
“I do need something,” Elvia said slowly, her fingers tightening on the wheel.
“This your new dad’s car?” Her father looked out at the street. He didn’t tell her to come in. He was dressed for work. Flannel shirt, jeans with faded-white knees.
“Sandy’s not—she’s separated.” Elvia swallowed the hotness that had started aching behind her jaw when she saw the scars. “Have you seen Callie?”
“Nope.”
“Do you ever think about her? And Jeff?”
“Nope.” Her father put his laced fingers behind his head and his chest expanded for a minute. She couldn’t believe he’d cried at Sandy’s house—not with the way his face looked now. “No, I don’t, Ellie. If I tried to think about all the people I’ve hung around, remember all of them and what they did or didn’t do, I’d be 5150 certifiable.”
Elvia heard trucks rumble on the freeway behind the tamarisk trees. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I’d have been. If I thought about your mom.”
“Or me,” she said.
“I think about you. All the time.” But he didn’t look at her.
“I think about everybody,” Elvia said in a rush. “Their faces and their names. The foster houses. Everybody at Sandy’s. I think about Callie, and Jeff, and Lee, and her girl.”
His new scar turned whiter when he frowned. “You don’t think I missed you? All that time, you don’t think I got used to seeing your face, even if you weren’t always thrilled to see me? I got used to your voice bitchin about dinner or whatever. You’re my kid, okay?”
“I’m fifteen. I’m gonna get a learner’s permit.”
“Yeah. You can drive, for sure. I didn’t think it was you took my truck. That’s how I got messed up.” He touched the shaved side of his head. “I was so fuckin worried, Ellie. You were gone. I thought Dually took you, for the money Callie owed him. I went crazy, went to his house lookin for you and tried to kill him. But it was the other way around. He almost killed me.”
Elvia stared at the scars and put her face in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I brought the truck back. I didn’t know.”
“Yeah. I was in the hospital for days.” He bent down to lace his boots. “I gotta go to work.”
“At the quarry?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Indian Wells. Another golf course.”
Elvia said, “Dad. I want to stay in Rio Seco. For right now. I want Sandy to be my legal guardian. Don’t get mad, okay? I want to . . .”
He shrugged, his lips set tight under the mustache, and interrupted her. “I tried my best, Ellie. I guess you told me how you felt. You were sayin I was a fuck-up dad. You booked up. Just like her.” He took out his wallet, the same soft-worn leather that wore a white square in his jeans. He pulled out another ID card. “I never gave you this cause I didn’t want you starin at her face, gettin all worked up over somebody who was gone. I found it in the kitchen, when you guys disappeared. Burnt-out candles. Like some ceremony. Like hasta la vista, baby.”
A small dark face, with triangle cheekbones and chin, a frightened look, two wings of black hair and a thick braid, SERAFINA ESTRELLA SOLORIO-MENDEZ. SAN CRISTOBAL YUCUCUI, OAXACA.
“But you look like me, too,” he said, and the dragon’s tail curved from his tee shirt sleeve like a faded green grin. “You got a lot of me inside you. Drivin. Talkin shit. Bein alone. I love you, Ellie.” The wind blew a veil of sand around the corner. “Have a good life,” he said, turning toward his truck.
“You know where Sandy lives,” she called. “You can come see me. You found it before!”
The truck shivered to life, and the deep stutter inside the hood sounded the same. For a moment, Elvia wanted to jump into the passenger seat, crouch down under the dashboard shelf, the dark space like her favorite cave smelling of fresh unsmoked cigarettes and cement dust. Then the truck wheeled past her when her father pulled onto the road.
He hadn’t seen her stomach. Her baby. That’s better, she thought, wiping her face. You’d be just one more person to forget, she told the baby, which was moving inside her like someone tracing a finger on a window. Once I see your face, she thought, I’ll never lose it. Never.
But he loves me. I’ll come back, here or to the golf courses in Indian Wells, when you’re born. I’ll show him your face. Maybe you’ll have green eyes. Maybe not. But you have his blood, too. He can’t lose you so easy.
I’ll put my whole name in the telephone book, when I get a place. Elvia Estrella Mendez Foley. She felt the ID card sharp against her leg. Anybody comes looking for me, my dad or Hector or even you someday, when you’re in college or something, you can find my name and address right there. That easy. Let your fingers do the walking. Here I am.
cloud people
The piercing whistle sounded like a mountain flute from back in Oaxaca. Jesus shouted.
Rigoberto grabbed Serafina’s arms, and she heard the Broncos roaring through the groves. Everyone ran down the arroyo to the tall cane where the riverbed began.
Shouts, bullhorns. No one moved. Then, after an hour of hiding in the cane, they heard rumbling in the distance. Not
la migra’s Broncos. Louder. When Rigoberto ventured back, hiding along the arroyo, he saw the bulldozers.
They returned to piles of wood and plastic lying half buried under mounds of dirt pushed ahead of the blades. Only Araceli’s plywood shelter was still standing, because it was protected by the trees. Don Rana was nowhere to be found, his trailer up on the hill empty.
“Don Rana probably called la migra himself!” Rigoberto shouted, kicking the metal door. “He has my money! He worked me like a burro since I borrowed to pay for you!”
Serafina felt the blood whorl around her jaw, her forehead. She was angrier than she’d ever been at her brother. “Paying for me?” she shouted back. “Like a turkey or burro? I’m not an animal. I’m your sister. I got here myself, and I gave you back that money, after—” She stopped, looking at Florencio. The coyote was theirs alone. Forever. “Your money?” she hissed at Rigoberto, who stood open-mouthed. “I cooked every day, after I picked! I put money into the can. I sent money to San Cristobal with you.”
Jesus said, “Maybe one of those boys on the bikes called.” She remembered their faces when they’d seen the camp, the pig’s blood.
They were all silent, looking down at the arroyo, seeing how it looked from the trailer. A collection of trash flung around by a flood. “Maybe the owner himself called,” Florencio finally said. “Not the one with the baseball cap and white hair. The other one we never saw. That happened to me in the peaches. And once in the grapes. Maybe he didn’t want to pay us.”
As they wandered around the camp trying to salvage what they could, Florencio listened for the Broncos of the immigration men. They might come back. Serafina dug through the sandy earth for her rosary, but she found only odd things: the blue stone from the desert, a tangled blouse, a box of matches, and one spoon. Rigoberto used a pickax, frantically turning the dirt until he found the coffee can with his and Serafina’s money. The bulldozer had pushed the mouth closed, and he pried it open. The dollars were folded and dry.
But Florencio’s things were gone. All of them. The corner of the bulldozer had driven them into the side of the arroyo. And Jesus’s cave had collapsed under the weight of la migra’s Broncos parked at the edge of the camp. Jesus couldn’t even lift the splintered trap door.
“We don’t have time to dig,” Rigoberto said. “They’ll be back. We have to go to the strawberries now. Guadalupe.”
“You are asking la Virgen . . .” Serafina began, and he cut her off.
“The town of Guadalupe. The strawberries in the north. Let’s go.”
Florencio nodded. “We have to follow the crop.”
Serafina went to Araceli’s shelter. Araceli was packing her pots into a box she’d found on the roof. “They left it on purpose,” Araceli whispered. “Because they know we’ll be back. Or someone else will be back, to pick las naranjas. Next season.”
Serafina looked at her own pot, her metate and mano. “Are you coming to las fresas?”
Araceli shook her head. “Fresas are too hard. So much bending. The people are angry and tired. Most of the time they would rather drink than eat.” She closed the box. “I’m going to find a room here. Cook in a taqueria. Maybe El Rey.” She touched Serafina’s arm. “If you come back, leave me a note at the mercado. I will try to help you.”
“Serafina!” Rigoberto was calling her.
She had no choice. She couldn’t stay here alone, and she didn’t want to try to survive without Florencio now. She was used to his arms, his watchful eyes, his presence near her. But she would be back. She stared at the tree trunk, where the image of la Virgen was still praying, where the candle flame had gone out. The barrettes were in her pocket. The helicopter was a drone in the distance.
The teenage girl was beautiful, her black hair collected in ringlets on her head, her white quinceanera dress a swaying bell of satin layers with pearls along the neck and bodice. She held a parasol over her head when she walked down the dirt road between the shacks in Guadalupe. The girl’s parents beamed at her tiny waist, her shy smile, at the boys who watched her.
Serafina pressed her fingers hard to the corners of her eyes. It would have been rude to cry when she saw the girl. She sat in her doorway of damp gray wood. Twenty rooms in a row on this side of the dirt road, and twenty on the other side. A woman with five children sat across from Serafina, her long hair in a braid, her baby at her breast. They all watched the girl walking carefully over the ruts in the road, holding up the hem of her dress.
Jesus stood beside Serafina, his lips thin as a splinter, staring at the rhinestone tiara, at the proud father. After weeks of oranges, he had nothing to send home for his daughter’s quinceanera.
They had gotten here three days ago, after traveling two nights by bus and foot. The other people in this camp had been here for a month, preparing the fields, tearing out the old strawberry plants. Guadalupe was flatland strawberry fields and row houses, a small downtown with bars and stores. Serafina watched the girl reach the end of the road and turn to wave.
Elvia was fifteen now. She had never had a quinceanera. She might not even know what it is, Serafina thought, watching the lace hem disappear. She went back into her room.
Florencio and Rigoberto were talking to the foreman at one of the fields. They had worked Thursday and Friday, punching holes in the plastic-covered rows with a metal tool. She had walked behind Florencio in the mist of this valley near the sea, pushing the cold iron pipe down, taking two steps, pushing it again. Her arms ached. The perfect rows were covered with beads of dew that leapt onto her shoes when she punched. The dark shapes of people moved slowly ahead of her, stiff and straight like soldiers.
But after they finished, it would be time to bend and crouch, to set the young strawberry plants into the holes, then to weed the furrows with hoes, and then to bend again and pick each berry, careful to keep the green fringe like a crown. Florencio said when the crew bosses checked, if your box wasn’t perfect, you weren’t paid.
The room had a hot plate and sink at one corner, three beds, and a toilet behind a curtain. She picked up her comal and put it over the gas burner. Even her wrists hurt, when she mixed the masa and began to make the tortillas. And she felt the salty thin taste rise in her throat—the unease sent to her mouth by a baby.
She knew that’s what it was. She had been weak and dizzy the whole time she worked her rows, and in the predawn darkness, she’d bent over the sink at the smell of coffee drifting out all the windows in the row of rooms. She’d been able to eat only a tortilla or two. She tried to recall when she’d known, with Elvia, but that only made her sad.
A boy called to her in Spanish, from the doorway, and when she turned, he held out a dirty hand in supplication. He must have been watching her make the tortillas. His eyes were cloudy gray, his skin cafe con leche. She put two tortillas in his fingers and he blew, running away so quickly that she could see only his bare heels, like the tiny pale doughballs in her palms.
When Florencio came in, she was holding the barrette.
She looked at the fan of lines beside his eyes, the eyes always steady on her face. No one else ever saw her—not her uncle, or Rigoberto, or Don Rana. Not Larry. They saw her hands holding tortillas or oranges. They saw her back bent, her head bowed. She could love Florencio, because he looked at her as closely as her mother had, but without frowning wild fear.
“You lost the other barrette?” he asked.
“No. I left it. For an offering,” she whispered as he sat down on the bed beside her. “I always have to choose. My father and Luis died, and I had to decide. Stay with my mother or go with Rigoberto. Then I stayed there, in Rio Seco, with Larry. But I had Elvia.” She paused. Her hands’ sweat, dirt, salt, and lime hadn’t corroded the silver. It was Mexican silver, from Taxco. She knew because the woman who’d sold her the barrettes, in the parking lot at the linen plant, had said, “Taxco. Yo soy de Taxco.”
; Florencio took the barrette, held it across his blackened hand, and nodded. “You want to go back. To Yuu Sechi.”
“When the strawberries are finished,” Serafina said. “And you can build me a ñíhin, with the cane from the river. That’s the best.”
Florencio looked at her in astonishment. “A ñíhin?” A sweat house where women went after childbirth, to cleanse themselves and restore the balance of hot and cold in their blood?
She nodded. In San Cristobal, she would have waited another month or so, then told her mother and mother-in-law, who would have told everyone else. It wasn’t right to announce it like this. But this was California. She and Florencio were living as husband and wife, but without a pueblo. There was only Rigoberto, who was like the always-complaining old woman of this new pueblo. That made her smile.
Florencio smiled, too, rubbing his forehead, leaving a streak of dirt. “A baby! When?”
Serafina tried to think. “August,” she finally said. “The same month I had Elvia.”
She took back the barrette, rubbing away the brown smudges from his fingers.
“We will go back before then,” Florencio said, holding her now. “I promise.”
After a while, he left with a handful of tortillas to find Rigoberto. The warm stripes of silver turned cold when she dropped them into her apron pocket. She had bought the apron, a broom, and masa from the mercado. The masa flattened in her hands, and she laid another tortilla on the black circle. She had made thousands of tiny suns, and each one was gone in minutes.
Then she swept the wooden floor, raised the broom to the ceiling, and thought about her prayers to la Virgen, like thousands of straws tied together in a huge broom to collect spiderwebs from the corners of the sky.
The fields were covered with rows of plastic that shone dull silver in the sun, like the tin roofs of San Cristobal. When she walked beside Florencio, moving down each row to plant, she blurred her eyes until she saw home. This was home, with him, for now. Until she could go back to Rio Seco in a few months and try again.
Highwire Moon Page 31