by Ilie Ruby
“Work carefully,” my mother said, before she turned away. I saw her reach up toward the sun and then flip her hair back. She checked the drip-irrigation system, and I lost sight of her. I looked at the number on my yellow card. It would soon be covered with punched holes, one for each basket of berries that I delivered to the truck. Soon, the paper, like my hands, would be stained with red juice. Within hours I wouldn’t be able to read the number.
I put my card in my pocket. I scoped out the plants in my row. My eyes searched for the green, well-attached stems that would lead me to the best fruit, just as Felix had told me.
I moved quickly, focused on the berries, careful to avoid the white or green skins, picking the best berries that were unmarred. I tried to be gentle so I wouldn’t tear their skin, but all I could think about was my new friend and the fact that my mother’s back was probably aching from the cold damp morning.
Within an hour my pants were wet, my hands freezing, and I was imagining a warm beach bonfire and the smell of whiskey.
My eyes blurred as I moved quickly down the furrows, pushing my cart. I pushed, scanned the plants, and then bent over, brushing away leaves to my left and right, picked the berries, placed them in baskets, checked the plants, and moved on, all in one fluid motion. I took care not to pull but to twist the berry off the stem, leaving the green leaves on the fruit. I selected only berries of the proper size, firmness, shape, and color, arranging them neatly in baskets to catch the shopper’s eye. Once my baskets were filled, I rushed to have them tallied. Then I rushed back and began the process again.
Dolly was ahead. She had more holes punched.
I picked up speed, not straightening up once, thinking of the money we would make today.
“Be careful or he won’t pay you.” It was Felix. He had made his way over to me. He plucked a white berry from my basket and held it in his dirt-creased palm. He tossed it away.
Dolly whistled from the furrow a few feet over. “Hurry up.”
“Don’t look up. Don’t watch her,” Felix said. Then he was gone.
I may have picked a few white berries, but I counted on the fact that Dolly would probably go for the largest, overripe ones.
I tried not to watch her. Each time I looked up at her, she seemed busy, flicking bits of leaves. Then, when I kept my eyes focused on my own plants, I could feel her eyes on me. I forgot to be careful. Strawberries fell; some stems broke. I crushed a few berries under my feet and kicked them aside with my sneaker. Something darted in and out, bending the stems, showing me where the ripest, reddest berries were. Perhaps it was the wind. I kept reaching for more berries.
Suddenly, there was a scuffle. I looked up. About twenty feet across the field, Felix was shouting, “La migra.” You could see hands trembling in the fields now that the border police had arrived. You could see the strawberries falling from the workers’ hands, all through the field, little red triangles falling onto brown mud.
Two uniformed men took Felix’s father away, leading him through the field. I watched Felix and his mother run, hugging him. I saw them talking with Mr. Takahashi and counting money. Then the police car drove away with the father in the back. Felix stood in the middle of the road, watching. He had been left, too.
Then he disappeared.
“Keep working,” said Dolly. I tried to tear my eyes away from Felix’s car, now just a pile of dust.
“How can they do that? How can they let that happen?” I asked.
Mr. Takahashi walked over to me. He plucked a berry covered in brown streaks from my basket. He held it up to my face, so close that I could smell his sweat and the coffee on his breath. I could see every tiny rip in his skin. He turned to my mother. “Diana, you don’t like the way I run this ranch, I think? Not good enough for you?”
I dropped my basket. Bruised strawberries spilled out across the ground. He glared at Dolly and shook his head. “I keep saying no to you, but you don’t give up, Diana. You want to be free, so now you’re free, eh?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pile of cash.
“Walk, girls—don’t look back,” my mother said. “Just act normally. No, not that way. Faster.” I climbed into the car. “He’s still in love with me,” my mother whispered, her knuckles going white on the steering wheel. “So, that’s that.”
I pulled my hood down over my face.
I still thought about the sea lion, the one I’d left to die in the hot sun. And about Dr. Brownstein, who had protected us when she could have walked away. I fantasized about a different ending to the day, about sitting around with the workers and their children, about making real friends. This was the first place I’d ever felt at home, and now I was forbidden to ever come back. In my fantasy, my mother took out her guitar to play, and everyone thought her extremely beautiful and talented, begging her to sing the Hebrew prayer Shalom Rav and the Spanish “Malagueña.” Because of her, they would think I was special, too, not just a big-boned girl with pink Coke-bottle glasses, with a sister who was mad at everyone. They’d see that I, like my mother, was someone worth knowing, too.
“What are we going to do now?” Dolly asked.
My mother started the car, her eyes welling up. “Don’t know. I’m not sure I can keep going like this. We’re down on our luck.”
It was time to head back to the civilized world, she said, where the real people lived, away from the in-betweeners. It was time we had a stable life. “We’re never coming back here. I won’t humiliate myself again with that farkakte man.” I started to cry.
“What’s wrong, Ruthie? What is it?”
“Can I come back to see Felix? He was my friend.”
“You didn’t even know him,” said Dolly.
“Ruthie,” my mother said. “Don’t make me do this. We’re both too old, and soon you won’t want me to come back for you.”
She explained that we would do something fun now. We could become pirates.
Dolly cheered.
I suddenly thought about the child I would have, my Naida. I asked my mother how long I’d have to wait for her.
“She’ll be ready when it’s time, don’t worry. Children always are.”
I noticed that she didn’t say, “Mothers always are.”
Chapter Four
IT WAS EASY to become night pirates, casing the streets in the rich section of town. The waning moon, which rose like a great orange ball in the sky, would bring us a productive and protected night of trash picking. The moon’s position in the sky made it appear larger, looming, as if it would be traveling right along with us.
Grateful to have left the fields, we drove into the city, passing the streetlights and the dank smells that filled the alleys between the crowded apartment buildings. My mother, undaunted, kept driving. Within a few minutes, we hit the part of town where people left their undesired belongings in bags at the end of their driveways. So began a night of plundering trash for treasures. This, we knew how to do. We had done it before so many times.
We folded bandannas and put them around our heads. We slashed wet plastic garbage bags with pencils, groping for good finds, our hands spilling strings of fake pearls through our fingers. It was free to anyone who drove up and could fit a toaster, a wicker basket, a lime green beanbag chair, or a pile of vinyl records into a car.
Dolly reached into a bag full of old clothes and pulled out T-shirts covered in rainbows and peace signs, and one that had KC and the Sunshine Band on the front. She slipped it on over her undershirt and slapped on a straw hat, torn at the brim. My mother retrieved a set of neon green plastic patio dishes and matching cups. She also found a bag of costume jewelry that contained three plastic bangles. “No one will buy those, Mom. They’re cheap plastic,” said Dolly.
“Oh, really? Where’s my 409?” my mother asked, sliding a chunky carved red bracelet over her wrist. “This, I’ll tell you right now, will make us very rich. This is at least thirty dollars right here. Bakelite. Bangle. Bracelet. There’s probably more,” she said, spil
ling the contents of the bag onto the hood of the car. “This is a deco black and yellow, and this one is a paprika-and-cream-corn zigzag. Girls, we’ve hit the jackpot. A ring, too,” she said, wiggling her fingers in the moonlight. “I almost don’t want to sell it. But of course I have to.” Dolly grabbed a bottle of 409 from the back, along with a Q-tip from the box where we kept our toiletries. Dolly shined a flashlight on her lap while we sat on the curb and my mother tested the jewelry. She sprayed 409 on the inside of each bangle and rubbed it with a Q-tip. “Nicotine yellow, girls! It’s all real Bakelite, which means we’ll be dining at Sizzler in Culver City a lot.”
It would go to whiskey and bananas.
I looked up at the moon, pressing my palms together in thanks. I knew the moon was happy with us, providing all this light for us to do our work, to harvest our goods. I thanked it. Abundance was everywhere; at least it would be for the next couple of days. I couldn’t imagine anything as good as this lucky night.
The scent of onion and garlic wafted from the open windows of a large house, blowing the palm fronds so as to cast feathery shadows across the street. By the end of the night, after four more streets, I had found two Monopoly games with all the pieces intact and an old red Oriental rug so full of dust that my mother had to pound it with my sneaker before Dolly and I rolled it up and stuck it in the car. I also found a white satin blouse with covered buttons, a pair of women’s black riding boots, and an old pair of red-tag Levi’s, two sizes too big, which I knew my mother would say I’d grow into. Dolly collected T-shirts and two silver crucifixes and then went to sit on the curb to pout. She was tired and knew we would keep little for ourselves.
This was, in some sense, a tease for us all. We would take most of our treasures to the pawnshop and junk collector, Mr. Ott, and make some real money. Just before we left, my mother found a tin box, and inside, a miniature dagger with a bible, old and cracked. She shut the lid, shoved it under one of the car seats, and forgot about it. She also draped a necklace with an amulet of St. Augustine, which she said she’d just found, around her neck. But she lied. I’d seen it before.
I looked back at the long line of driveways, holding bags of riches in my hands. My mother said she felt like an outlaw, a queen, like she had been reborn. She had snagged a burgundy Danskin dress and strappy shoes. Indeed, we were moving up in the world now. By the time the moon had faded from the sky, my back ached. When we pulled up to the pawnshop the next morning, my mother sold our things. My sister had passed out in my lap, hand on her forehead, wearing a yellow Bakelite bangle that she had begged my mother to let her keep.
Chapter Five
WE WERE FINISHED with farm work and trash picking, my mother said. The cool dry winds confirmed her feeling about it, making her back seize into what felt like a line of tiny fists. La Niña had followed on the heels of her brother, El Niño, conspiring against the crops. I was thrilled we were moving on. Seasonal work with fruits and vegetables was too strenuous, and trash picking too unpredictable, my mother said, especially while chasing her own moods, which had been erratic since she had started drinking again. We sat at an outdoor café in Malibu, sipping orange juice and watching her circle job postings for a housekeeper. Finally, she smiled. Music to her ears: In-law. Apartment.
She walked over to the phone booth, leaving it open a crack so she could motion to Dolly and me. “He’s an executive at an oil company in Long Beach!” she whispered, one hand over the receiver. She hung up. “He’s not married, either. That’s why he needs help. Not sure where the wife is, but I’ll find out. He wants me there in twenty minutes for an interview.”
Dolly and I followed her into the café bathroom, where she drew a fake beauty mark on her chin with a pen and Dolly teased her black hair with a fork. She slipped into the tight burgundy dress and slapped on her black strappy high heels. “Well, it’s overkill for an interview, but it looks good, right?” she sighed.
“Elizabeth Taylor’s sister,” Dolly said.
Off she went, marching down the slate walkway toward the large house, swinging her arms as Dolly and I waited in the car. The scent of desert evening primrose wafted through the air, its bright purple and white flowers shifting in the breeze. We eyed the huge magnolia tree that covered the patch of grass, with its thick shiny leaves and heavy rope swing. Papery white blossoms spilled from a rusty spray of tiny flowers near the crook of its branches. The house looked like one of those castles I had seen only in books, with a row of neatly trimmed hedges under the windows.
Our mother landed the job. She would be a live-in housekeeper. We would live in the apartment above the garage. She’d put us in school.
Not only that, but we would have a new friend. The place was home to a seven-year-old named Tiffany, with thin stringy hair and a small pink mouth. She wore Levi’s jeans with Levi’s checked shirts, infinitely cooler than either Dolly or me in our Toughskins and T-shirts. I imagined she didn’t know about trash picking or half the things we did. She reigned over a beautiful purple bedroom built of lilacs. A huge white comforter flowed across her canopy bed. “Wicked,” Dolly whispered, assuming, like I did, that we would spend most of our time playing in Tiffany’s bedroom, and not in the in-law apartment, which was covered with soot and filled with car fumes. Still, our mother fancied herself moving up in the world. With a little elbow grease, she’d get the place sparkling in no time, she said. The problem was that she loved to clean. She’d spend one day on a single room, not practical.
“Did you lose a bet?” was the first thing Tiffany said to me. I was wearing my straw hat and shiny red shoes with the purple high-water pants I had found trash picking.
“Lose what?” I asked.
“How old are you? I’m seven.”
“Us, too,” Dolly lied. “We’re twins. But not by birth.”
Tiffany looked confused. “Well, you look older than your sister,” she said to me.
I took off my glasses. My shirt was orange and black, with the words “President of David Cassidy Fan Club” on the front. I had my Partridge Family lunch box in my hand.
“She’s a little runt, and you’re sort of a fatty,” said Tiffany. “But I’ll let you play with me, seeing as you’re our help.”
“Big boned,” I heard myself say. I felt my cheeks turn red and tears begin to spill.
“Do not cry,” ordered Dolly.
Tiffany smiled. “Don’t bother,” she said, and skipped off.
“Ignore her,” my mother said. “She’s just jealous.”
I ran inside and changed my pants. I put on Dolly’s brown corduroys. They were too small, but anything was better. “Look at her. Like Tiffany’s so great,” Dolly said. “She’s got a face like a prune. That’s because she’s mean inside. I thought being pretty was hard. Both are. Stay in between so no one hates you, Moose.”
MY MOTHER SET out a canister of roses that first night. She placed it in the center of the small butcher-block table. She took out her guitar. She was tired from mopping all the floors in the house, but her sweet voice filled the apartment. Dolly and I looked on, thrilled that she was so happy. Surely we were turning over a new leaf.
A few nights later, she decided we should get to know Tiffany’s father better, given that we were all living under the same roof. She put on her paisley minidress and black high-heeled boots, touched up her eyebrows with pencil, and painted her lips with frosted lipstick. We stood beside her as she knocked on the door of his study, where he liked to sit in a leather chair reading The Wall Street Journal. There were toy ships on the bookshelves and photographs of the ocean hanging on the walls. “Would you like to join us? We thought we’d play a little music,” my mother said, holding up her guitar.
He laughed, rubbing his gray beard. My mother’s face turned red.
“No. No, thank you. The bosses threw a little party for us last night down at the beach. Big old mansion called Weathering Heights. I hope you don’t mind,” he said. Behind him, a woman in a wrinkled peasant top and bell-b
ottom jeans looked up from a chair, holding a half-filled wine glass. “Charlotte,” he said, motioning to the woman. Then he turned back to my mother. “It’s Dana, right?”
My mother looked surprised. “Me? No, it’s Diana. Diana Gold. I apologize. I didn’t see a car, or I would never have—
“That’s okay,” he said.
“Wait, I know you,” said Charlotte, getting up. “I was admiring your beautiful house last night. It’s the yellow one on the corner, right? With all the rosebushes?”
“No, I live here. Why do you ask?” my mother said, somewhat flattered.
“Because you were standing in the lawn in your nightgown last night, cutting down all your roses.”
She’d been drinking. “What? No, that wasn’t me,” my mother said. She smiled, wiping her eyes as we walked across the grass, her skirt swishing in the moonlight. Dolly and I kept a safe distance behind her, worried about the aftermath. Humiliation. Though we understood its source, we also knew it was the straightest path to fury.
She set her guitar on the grass, waved us away, and got in the car. She shut the door. I knew she had a bottle of whiskey in the glove compartment. She sat there all night, drinking and smoking Winston Lights. Smoke filled the windows to the point where I couldn’t see inside anymore. “She is trying to smoke herself to death,” said Dolly. “I’m going to check on her again. She wouldn’t leave us now. She needs us.”
When Dolly went to check on her, she found an empty car. My mother was gone.
THERE HAD BEEN an incident once at the Santa Monica Pier. Dolly and I were little, no older than six and four. We were hot and tired from sitting in the heat, watching the seagulls crash into the waves. People were throwing money into a musician’s straw hat on the pavement. We were whining from stomachaches, corn dogs, and popcorn, which we had been living on. My mother picked up a tambourine and began singing. Every so often he passed her a brown bag. When the crowd thinned, we followed them down to the beach, where they continued to drink. My mother began to roll around in the sand, saying she was a mermaid. She pretended she could not walk, struggling with her tail as the breeze captured her hair. People laughed at her. Dolly and I fell asleep, curled against the guitar case. When we woke up, she was gone, had left us, swum out to sea. We ran across the parking lot in bare feet, broken glass biting into our soles.