“If I’m interrupting something I can come back.”
“We’re not holding a world summit,” Rejina says sarcastically, though her Texas drawl makes the sarcasm sound sweet. “We’re just hanging out.” She changes position and rests her head on Bro Boy’s lap, apparently not worried about any of Guadalupe’s rules—candles, drugs, or boys. “So? You going to stand out there all night or come in?”
I slip into her room and close the door behind me.
“What’s up? I never see you hanging out.” She pats the bed. “Join us.”
“I just wanted to ask you something,” I say, in no way interested in a conversational ménage-a-trois. “It’s about Georgia O’Keeffe.”
“Well, if it’s about Georgia…” Her face brightens and she sits up.
“Do you know anything about that white flower she painted? The one in the print downstairs when you come in?”
“Jimson weed? It grows all over the place around here. Georgia was known for her flower paintings. They made up a large percentage of her work. She painted enormous close-ups of flowers and transformed their contours into beautiful abstractions.” Rejina’s turned into some kind of art-curator-Georgia O’Keeffe-talking-head. I try to interrupt, but she’s on a roll. “In the flowers she expressed what she felt, rather than what she had been taught.” She smiles at me, as if waiting for an intellectually informed question from a curious art patron.
“Is it the same plant as Brugmansia?”
She lowers her eyebrows and looks stumped. “I have no idea.”
“Why?” Bro Boy asks, his baked eyes coming to life. “You looking for some liquid gold? I can hook you up. But don’t be messing with jimson weed on your own. You can get off on it, but it’s wicked poisonous. Can kill you.”
I shoot him a look. “I’m not trying to get liquid gold. I’m just curious.” Before he can ask more questions, I thank Rejina for her time and scurry out of the room.
The second I’m in my own room, I turn on my computer and type in jimson weed. I read several pages of facts and learn that jimson weed, also called Datura, is in the family Solanaceae. All parts of the plant are toxic, with the alkaloids hyoscyamine, atropine, and scopolamine giving it its toxicity. There’s a lot of variation in toxic levels among not just individual plants, but parts of the same plant. In Native American tribes of the Southwest, jimson weed was sometimes made into a tea by a Shaman or medicine man and used in rites of passage ceremonies to induce visions. It can result in agitation, uncoordination, hallucinations, and death.
When I’m finished researching jimson weed, I Google Brugmansia and learn that Brugmansia is also in the family Solanaceae; is also highly toxic, and has the same three alkaloids as jimson weed. All parts of the plant are poisonous. It’s used in the Amazon for magical practices, visionary journeys, shape shifting, divination, clairvoyance, love magic, and as an aphrodisiac among other things, and if consumed carelessly, can cause serious mental and physical reactions, and death.
When I cross-check what I learned about each plant, I come up with the following: Both plants have the alkaloids hyoscyamine, atropine, and scopolamine. Both plants cause hallucination and death. Both plants are in the same family. The biggest difference? Jimson weed grows here.
Virg said liquid gold is coming in cheaper than before. Maybe the reason is someone’s not making it from Brugmansia; they’re making it from jimson weed. I look again at my notes. If the range of toxicity in jimson weed is unpredictable and varies between plants, and if that variation contributes to the possibility of overdose, that could be the reason Mari got so sick and Eslee died. If Rudy’s dealing liquid gold, maybe he’s harvesting the plant and maybe he’s making it, too.
There’s one person who might know enough about Brugmansia to tell me if my Rudy theory is possible: Esha. I decide to talk to her tomorrow—after I pay a visit to Holly. I check my phone calendar, which I’ve been keeping like a pro, to see what I’ve got down at work tomorrow. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. I’m about to close the calendar and turn off the lights when something totally different catches my eye. The date.
With everything else going on, I’ve managed to put out of my mind (okay, not deal with) the fact that this weekend is the Fourth of July, which means this weekend is Clem’s concert and Jesse’s visit. I’ve downplayed Jesse to Clem, and I haven’t told Jesse about Clem. A bolt of high-octane, holy-shit shoots through me. I don’t care that it’s midnight. I jump out of bed and race down the hall to visit my friend, the night owl, hoping she’ll know what to do.
Dahlia’s sitting on her bed in Snoopy pajamas, eating potato chips, and playing Solitaire on her phone, when I barge into her room. “Hungry?” she says, holding out the chip bag and patting the mattress for me to join her.
“Starving.” I collapse onto the bed and take a handful. “I’m glad you’re up.”
“I never go to bed before like two. I drive my parents crazy. They say I need to get more sleep, but I’m just a night person. What can I do?” She puts down her phone and stretches out, her head on the pillow. “What’s your excuse?”
I shrug and lie down, sharing the pillow and inhaling potato chips. I feel stupid now coming to her for boy advice and I don’t know how to bring up the topic, so instead of talking about me, I ask about her, hoping she’ll telepathically get what I want to talk about. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
Her face goes crimson and she says, “I’ll get back to you on that. Why, are you having boy problems?”
I cover my eyes with my arms and tell her about Jesse and Clem.
“I have a solution,” she says when I’m done.
I roll onto my side and prop myself up with an elbow, eager for her advice.
“I’ll take Clem. It’s no problem. Send him over.”
I flop onto my back and groan.
“Okay, how about this? Clem already knows about Jesse, right?”
“Yeah.”
“But Jesse doesn’t know about Clem.”
“Right,” I say, skeptical about where this is going.
“So don’t tell him,” she says, brightly. “You and Clem are platonic anyway, so what’s the point in messing things up with Jesse when nothing’s actually happened with Clem?”
My first reaction is that everything’s happened with Clem—just not the physical part, and the physical part is just a manifestation of the chemistry, which is definitely there, but then again, she has a point.
“When exactly does Jesse get here?” she asks.
“Saturday morning.”
“And Clem’s concert’s Friday night, so that means Friday is Clem’s time. And you said his dad is coming, so he’ll be busy with parental stuff after that anyway, so you have the rest of the weekend with Jesse.” She gets up and turns off the light, then climbs back into bed. “I’m wicked tired now. Next time I can’t sleep, I’ll just make sure you’re having boy problems.”
I thank her and go back to my room, grateful I at least have one problem solved.
Nineteen
I haven’t even gotten out of bed yet Tuesday morning when someone knocks. I sleepwalk to the door. Standing in the hall, looking like he hasn’t slept, his hair a bed-head forest, is Clem.
“Cafeteria doesn’t open for an hour,” I say.
“I know, but I couldn’t sleep and I thought maybe you’d be up. I should’ve known,” he then rambles, more to himself than to me. “I shouldn’t be surprised. I was stupid to even believe it.”
“Stupid to believe what?”
He hands me his phone, open to an e-mail, instead of answering. I read:
Hi Buddy,
I won’t be able to make it this weekend for the concert. Sorry. Derrick’s got a big game. It’s playoffs and you know how that is. Good luck. Sorry to miss it. I know you’ll do great. Dad.
“Buddy?” is all I can say
when I hand him back his phone. At least it’s all I can say that doesn’t involve a string of trash-talking four-letter words. Still, I can’t resist a little dig. “Well, he’s a dick. He has no idea what he’s missing. I’ll be there. So will Dahlia. We can’t wait. So screw him.” I get that Clem needs more cheering up, so I follow up with one my favorite mottos: when in doubt, eat, and say, “Let’s get out of here and find some breakfast.”
Fifteen minutes later, we’re in Clem’s favorite breakfast spot and he’s speaking Spanish to the man who seats us. Not just the broken Spanglish any moron can speak, but the real deal. Full back-and-forth sentences that sound, well, like Spanish. As he speaks his mood brightens, the dad disappointment taking a backseat to the musicality of the language.
My mood, however, darkens. The more I listen, the more pissed off I get. I’m half Mexican, which I only found out about, so why should I actually be able to speak Spanish? Still, the idea of Mr. International Man with his one-fourth Hispanic blood being able to speak the language and me not being able to, gets me.
“So, another thing you’re good at,” I say, as if it’s a crime.
“It’s New Mexico,” Clem says, shrugging. “My mom put me in a dual language program in kindergarten. I peed my pants on the first day of school because I didn’t know how to ask where the bathroom was in Spanish and we weren’t allowed to speak English.” He chuckles, reminding me that humiliation plus distance equals humor. “I mostly learned how to speak it on the playground, though. When you’re playing tag with kids who don’t speak your language you kind of figure it out.” He smiles and then says, “But Spanish is probably easy compared to Urdu. You said you spoke that by age three?”
“Two,” I say, cracking a smile.
We turn our attention to the extensive menu. I know that whatever Clem orders I’ll just end up coveting, so I decide to get what he gets. About twenty minutes later a plate of corn tortilla, topped with two eggs, chile, and cheese, served with a side of beans is set in front of me. Corn tortilla. Egg. Sauce. Cheese. What’s not to like? I take a bite. And there we have it. I’ve found my food heaven.
By the time we’re done stuffing our faces, it’s almost eight o’clock, no time for post gastronomic napping before we go see Holly Redding. Clem drives us down Cerrillos Road, (pronounced like sopapilla with the ee sound—I’ve got that part of Spanish, at least) past the Indian School, the School for the Deaf, a bunch of tattoo and skate shops, and ten minutes later we’re standing on a slab of broken and buckled concrete outside of UpsideDown!, a pinkish-beige building that’s in, what I’ve come to recognize, a state of Santa Fe disrepair—stucco chipping, prickly things poking up through cracks in the asphalt, an optimistic tree plopped down in the middle of a barren dirt lot.
Clem knocks. Nobody answers, so he knocks again. I’m thinking we’re too early and nobody’s here when the door opens and there stands Holly, lead veggie from the Farmers’ Market rally. I don’t know if I was expecting her to still be dressed in costume or what, but I’m surprised at how unvegetable-like she is with her denim skirt, black tank top, and little round glasses.
“Can I help you?” she asks, looking surprised to see two teenagers loitering outside her office.
“My name’s Faith and this is my friend, Clem,” I say, realizing I hadn’t thought this through. If I ask about Rudy she’ll get defensive and I won’t get any information. I fish in my sweatshirt pocket for the lighter and find the notepad I was taking notes on the other day when Esha taught me about bioinformatics. With the notebook comes a flash of inspiration: “I’m interested in what you do here. I was hoping I could ask you a few questions for my school paper. Summer school paper,” I quickly add.
She looks skeptical, but agrees and ushers us into a bright, minimally furnished space with sun streaming through the east-facing windows and papers covering every surface. “Sorry about the mess,” she says. “We have a lot going on right now, and we’re short-staffed. We’re a small nonprofit and it’s grant writing season.”
“It’s neat compared to my room,” Clem, ever the friend-maker, says, “Thanks for meeting with us.”
“Yeah,” I add, clumsily tagging onto Clem’s thanks. I sit at the conference table and put my notebook on my lap. “So I wanted to know, I mean, for the paper…we wanted to know…” Clem nudges me. I clear my throat and start again. “I know you’re an environmental group, but what exactly do you guys do here?”
Holly sits at the desk across from the table and stabs her glasses up her nose with a single finger. “Environmental activism. When the other groups fall short, we step in. We believe that traditional means of protest such as litigation and education take too long. So we’re more direct in our methods. GMOs are our big thing right now.”
“Why GMOs?” I ask, scribbling notes, maintaining my role as budding school journalist as I figure out a way to ask about Rudy.
“A lot of reasons. They hurt the environment for one. Do you know about the monarch butterfly?”
“I know they migrate to Mexico,” I say, remembering some nature program Mom and I once watched with a serious-voiced male narrator and startling up-close footage of swarms of migrating monarchs filling the sky. “Oh, and they feed on milkweed.”
“That’s right, and their population is at an all-time low.” She leans forward and knuckles her hands on her hips. “The monarch decline is directly linked to the increase in the planting of GMO crops engineered to tolerate huge amounts of corporate-produced herbicide.” She accentuates the point with a pause while we take in the information and I scrawl more notes, then says. “There’s been an explosion of genetically modified corn and soybeans engineered to tolerate herbicides, and this makes it possible for the big agricultural companies to dump millions of pounds of weed killer on fields and kill off the milkweed. No milkweed, no monarchs.”
“No way,” Clem says. “I love butterflies.”
“Plus GMOs contaminate,” Holly says, plowing on without acknowledging Mr. Nature Boy. “They can cross-pollinate, not to mention that by mixing genes from totally unrelated species, genetic engineering unleashes a host of unpredictable side effects that can result in new toxins, allergens, carcinogens, and nutritional deficiencies.”
“But I also heard GMOs could help feed the world. I mean that’s good, right?” I say. “Hungry people getting food? Innovations to save water and land?”
“GMOs have nothing to offer to the goals of reducing hunger and poverty,” she says, a flurry of blond hair intensity. “They divert money and resources that would otherwise be spent on safer, more reliable and appropriate technologies.”
I crack my knuckles and think about what she’s saying about GMOs. It’s the exact opposite of what Dr. Richmond said. How do you know what’s true when people have such contrasting points of view? Dr. Richmond sounded right, but so does Holly. I realize Holly’s looking at me. If I don’t say something our little interview’s going to be over, and I haven’t even asked about Rudy. “So, is there a big GMO threat in New Mexico?” I blurt out, the first thing that comes to me.
“Huge,” she says. “There are people right here in Santa Fe testing a GMO chile engineered to fight the beet leafhopper, an insect that feeds on weeds and certain crop plants such as chiles, and passes disease from weed to crop.”
“But wouldn’t you want scientists to solve that? If they had the technology wouldn’t you want them to save the chile?” Clem asks.
“People brought the chile from Central Mexico up the Rio Grande to New Mexico a long time ago,” she says, turning her attention to Clem. “You’re not going to undo three billion years of evolution and think you’re going to create something that can fool an insect. Then, of course, there’s the issue with the scientist who’s conducting the research.”
“You mean Dr. Richmond?” I ask, forgetting that I’m not supposed to know anything about the project. “I heard her name somewhere
,” I swiftly add. “What issue does she have?”
Holly steeples her fingers in front of her lips and narrows her eyes as if deciding what to tell us. “She had a serious conflict of interest in a past research position at a company before she came to SCPG.”
“What kind of conflict of interest?” I ask, remembering yesterday’s meeting at work, the funding cut, the awkward between-the-line silences. Was this the thing everyone was tiptoeing around?
“Sonya Richmond owned over fifty thousand dollars in stock in the agrochemical company that sponsored her research on the herbicide they manufacture. She didn’t disclose that information to anyone.” We lapse into silence as she gets up, crosses the room, and pours herself a glass of water. I shift uncomfortably in my chair, corn tortillas and eggs curdling in my stomach, as I take this in. “And what do you think the results of her research were?” she asks, coming back to her seat and looking at me.
I pretend not to understand what she’s getting at. “I have no idea.”
“The results on the herbicide were glowing. Dr. Richmond,”—she air-quotes the word doctor—“looked at the soil microbiome and discovered no detrimental effects from the chemicals in the herbicide. I’d say the positive results were quite convenient coming from someone with so much to lose should the results be negative. When the general public discovered that she had such a stake in the company, her scientific reputation was quite tarnished.” She crosses her legs, letting the top shoe dangle from her toes. “And now I hear SCPG just lost a major funder for the GMO chile project. She’s going to be in a hurry to get those chiles to market. There are many corners one could cut when one’s in a hurry.” She stops just short of directly accusing Dr. Richmond of anything, but duh, you don’t have to be a super brain to connect the dots: If Dr. Richmond lied before, or at least withheld the truth, why wouldn’t she do it again? “Now,” she says, getting up and starting toward the door, “I really do have to get to work.”
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