Delta Girls Read online

  “What?” She whipped around to face him. The dense air jiggled, nearly viscous, against her skin.

  “I’m sorry for before,” he said. “If I was a jerk.” He corrected himself. “When I was a jerk.”

  Something inside Karen unknotted, but she tried not to let it show on her face.

  “This is a big deal, this competition,” he said.

  Karen was about to say “I know,” but he kept talking.

  “I know I shouldn’t take my stress out on you,” he said, “but my dad is in the hospital, and I let myself get all wound up …”

  Karen hadn’t thought about Nathan having parents before, especially not sick ones. He hadn’t said a word about them; as far as she knew, they had never been to any of his competitions. She couldn’t imagine him as a baby, a boy. He seemed like someone who had always been twenty-three. Who would always be twenty-three. Who had sprouted fully formed, clad in spandex, from the center of a rink. It was strange to imagine an older version of Nathan out there somewhere, a compromised version, his head pressed against a scratchy hospital pillow. Strange to think that somewhere she had a father, too. At least someone who had donated sperm; she was a turkey baster baby, her mother had told her, bred to be a skater. From championship stock, just like a show dog. She might as well have sprung from the ice, herself.

  “It’s okay.” She was pleased to see his face soften, his breath release. And even though she didn’t, not really, she said, “I think I understand.”

  THEIR FREE SKATE felt different this time. More emotional. When Nathan, as Tristan, died at the end, a wave of real grief crashed over Karen. She had never seen Nathan as vulnerable before, as mortal, even in all their months of fake dying. Now, seeing his eyes closed, his body quiet against the ice, she knew, knew in her bones, that someday he would not be in the world; even with his occasional jerkiness, this seemed a fact too horrible to bear. As she died in his arms as Isolde, she had to swallow down the urge to sob. A few tears escaped anyway, trailed into her ear, dripped against Nathan’s face.

  “I see I got you wet,” he whispered as they stood and bowed to thunderous applause, and even though it was kind of a gross thing to say, it was a Nathan thing to say. She put one arm around him and squeezed tight as she waved to the audience, happy to feel his heart thumping against her shoulder.

  “THAT WAS AMAZING.” Isabelle ran up to them as they walked to the kiss-and-cry, still wrapped around each other. “Total goosebumps.” She held out her arm to show them her pale stippled flesh.

  “Thanks.” Karen tried to keep her voice calm, crisp; she didn’t want to upset Nathan by seeming too excited to see Isabelle.

  “Do you want to go check out Kennedy Space Center with us?” asked Isabelle. “It’s just a couple of hours away.”

  Karen could feel Nathan’s body stiffen. “I better not,” she said. “We have training to do.”

  “What training?” laughed Isabelle. “You just finished competing! You should let yourself have some fun.”

  “We’re going to Nationals,” Karen said, even though they hadn’t received their scores yet. “But that’s something you wouldn’t know anything about, now, is it?”

  Isabelle looked as if Karen had just slapped her in the face, but Nathan pulled her closer, so for a moment, it felt like a decent trade-off.

  “Fine,” said Isabelle. “Have fun with the asshole.”

  Karen wanted to chase after her, to say Wait, to say Nathan’s not so bad, to say yes, she actually did want to go the Kennedy Space Center with them, but Nathan kissed the top of her head and it felt like an air gun, like something nailing her into place.

  FROM THE PIER THE NEXT MORNING, I COULD SEE A TENT set up in the field, not too far from our car. The dark green dome looked like a giant brussels sprout rising from the earth. I didn’t want to go past it and whoever was potentially staking us out inside, but there was no other way to get to the car, get to work.

  “Let’s tiptoe,” I told Quinn. “They might be sleeping.”

  She grabbed my hand and we crept forward like cartoon spies, Quinn stifling giggles.

  The tent door unzipped with a loud metal whine when we neared the car; we both jumped back, my heart pounding wildly. I was relieved when a sleepy-eyed woman with blond dreadlocks emerged, sunburn across her freckled chest. She was probably around thirty-five, maybe a bit older. No camera or gun, as far as I could tell. Her breasts hung low beneath her tank top. Her Indian print wrap skirt was coming undone; there was a large gap at the slit. I tried not to look at the slice of pubic hair it revealed next to her sturdy thigh.

  “So this is the women’s camp.” She walked over to introduce herself. Her accent was thick, Australian, and I couldn’t quite make out her name. It sounded like Absadee. Her handshake was firm and enthusiastic.

  “Absadee, like rhapsody?” asked Quinn, clearly entranced.

  “You could say that.” She smiled and shook Quinn’s hand. Quinn winced at the hard squeeze. “Are you a poet?”

  “No.” Quinn looked embarrassed, as if the woman had asked if she picked her nose.

  “You have the vocab,” she said.

  It’s because of me, I wanted to say as Quinn beamed; I bought her all those books.

  “I’m a poet myself,” the woman said with pride. “Abecedarian.”

  “ABC what?” I was glad Quinn asked. I had never heard the word in my life.

  “All my poems follow the alphabet. Just like my name—A-B-C-D-E.”

  “That’s how you spell your name?” Quinn’s mouth was wide open. Abcde nodded.

  “I bet your teachers were confused,” I said.

  “Nah,” she said. “I was Abbie back then. Changed it to Abcde when I started publishing.”

  “I’m Izzy,” I said. “This is Quinn.”

  “Z and Q, great letters,” she said. “Ten points each in Scrabble.”

  “Except you can’t use proper names,” said Quinn.

  “True,” said Abcde.

  “And there’s only one Z,” Quinn said.

  “We’ll have to play sometime,” said Abcde. “I can tell you’re a worthy opponent.”

  I suddenly felt possessive of our boat, our game, a travel set with tiny magnetic letters. “Our board is missing a few tiles,” I said.

  “Just makes it more of a challenge.” Abcde shrugged. “A lipogram.”

  A lipogram sounded like a medical procedure, or an envelope filled with globs of fat, but before I could ask what it really was, Quinn asked if she could touch Abcde’s hair. I tried not to feel jealous as Abcde bent down and Quinn reached out to pet the thick woolly ropes.

  “Are you from Australia?” Quinn asked when she took her hand away.

  “Perth,” said Abcde, stretching back up.

  “What brings you here?” I asked, wanting to break the smile between them.

  “A beautiful California.” Abcde swept her arms out to take in the pear trees and the river and the heat of the day. The hair in her armpits was almost as thick as the hair on her head.

  “ABC,” Quinn said with a grin.

  “Exactly.” Abcde winked. “Actually, I’m teaching at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers later this month.” She slid her ribs from side to side, like isolations at the beginning of a dance class. “I flew in early to explore the Golden State.”

  “How’d you end up here?” I gestured to her tent.

  “I heard about the Delta and had to check it out,” she said. “Delta is the letter D, you know.”

  “In Greek,” said Quinn.

  “Exactly.” Abcde smiled. “Couldn’t pass up an alphabetical place.”

  “Alpha, beta, gamma, delta …” Quinn rattled off.

  “D was actually a hieroglyph before it was a delta,” said Abcde, and Quinn looked so eager for the knowledge, it made me want to weep. “A pictogram for a door, or perhaps a fish.”

  “The letter D does kind of look like a fish,” said Quinn, rapt. I shot her a look to make sure she wouldn�
��t say anything about the whales.

  “Anyway,” said Abcde, seeming to suddenly remember I was there, “I just stumbled upon the farm last night. They said I could set my tent back here—other women around and all.” She winked at Quinn.

  “How long are you planning to stay?” I asked. Not long, I hoped.

  “Don’t know,” she said. “Thought I might hang around a couple of days. Heard they need some help picking pears.”

  “It’s hard work.” Her arms looked too soft for picking. She’d be full of scratches within five minutes.

  “I’m up for it,” she said. “A poet’s got to use her body every once in a while.”

  Her muscles would be screaming within half an hour. Less.

  “Besides,” she said, “it’s good to be in the dirt. Most of America is a bit clean for my taste.”

  “A Bit Clean.” Quinn was grinning. This had become a game for her.

  “Automatic soap dispensers at the airport, even. That white spurt—it’s like some stranger ejaculating in your hands.”

  “Ew,” said Quinn. I hoped she had no idea what that really meant.

  “Ew, indeed,” said Abcde. “Cleanliness is not next to godliness, as far as I’m concerned. Dirt is where life comes from—what could be more divine than that?” She pinched some soil from the ground and rubbed it over her heart; specks of it tumbled down the front of her shirt.

  “A Bit Crazy,” I whispered to Quinn, who tried not to laugh.

  I SURREPTITIOUSLY CHECKED Abcde’s nails as we walked over to some trees at the edge of the orchard. They were short, boxy—bitten, maybe. That was good. Long nails could break right through the skin of a pear. Another reason there aren’t many women pickers, Mr. Vieira had told me.

  I had always kept my nails short, but they used to be polished, usually a clear opalescent sheen, each nail a gleaming oval, like its own tiny ice rink. My hands used to be smooth as pears, carefully manicured, kept in soft gloves at night, slathered with lotions. Now they were callused and scratched and caked with dirt, and I loved them because they did work that mattered.

  “I should give you some pointers before you start picking,” I told Abcde, glad to have a chance to boss her around a little.

  It actually felt nice to be in the role of the teacher, to tell her about lifting, not pulling, about limb rub, about sunburn, about what size pear to pick, what to leave on the tree; I was glad to know I had gained some useful skills in my short time there, ones I could pass down to others, especially others who seemed to think they knew it all already. We practiced on a tree at the edge of the orchard. She was a willing but sloppy student, her face determined, but her hands tender, easily tired. “Arms be courageous,” she said to herself under her breath. “Don’t endanger fruit.”

  I WAS WORRIED—and, to be honest, a little hopeful—that the other pickers would tear Abcde to pieces. They had accepted me reluctantly, and that was only over time, as my picking improved. She moved through the branches slowly, ploddingly. Plus there was the whole ABC thing. But for some reason, the other pickers were happy to welcome her to the team. Maybe because she spoke Spanish. Maybe because she didn’t wear a bra. Maybe because a few more pickers had left in the wake of the ICE paperwork, and everyone knew the more pears picked, the better, even if it was by a weirdo Australian poetess. I’m sure it also helped that she wasn’t getting paid.

  “You should probably stay off the ladder,” I told Abcde as we joined the crew in the field. “Your center of gravity is low.”

  “Goddess hips,” she said, nodding. She stared up at the tree and took a deep breath, steeling herself for the work.

  I cranked my ladder open. I was glad to climb up it, to be able to look down upon her fuzzy, befuddled head. Everything always felt more manageable from high up in the air.

  ———

  ABCDE SURVIVED THE morning shift a little worse for wear—some of the scratches on her arms looked fierce and swollen and she was clearly exhausted—but to her credit, she didn’t complain. When lunchtime came around, Quinn and I went off for our own picnic, as usual, but Abcde chose to stay and eat with the other workers.

  I spied on them later, after I left one of the porta-potties in the middle of the orchard. From behind a tree, I could see Abcde sitting on the ground with the pickers and sorters. They were heating flour tortillas over a small fire they had made with old pear branches between two rows of trees. Blisters and brown spots broke out over the pale discs like some sort of disease, but the toasty scent made my mouth wet. Everyone was laughing and speaking in Spanish, including Abcde, as they spooned beans from a plastic container onto the tortillas, drizzled on salsa from another container. I hid behind a tree and watched. I wished I understood more Spanish; I was familiar with a few words like ándale and más—“faster,” “more”—words I heard every day in the orchards, but I never would have been able to join a conversation like Abcde. Her Australian accent made Spanish sound like a new language entirely, but everyone seemed to be able to understand her. I wondered if she spoke alphabetically in more than one language.

  The Vieiras weren’t around the fire, but when they spoke Spanish, it sounded different, too. The Portuguese pronunciation was more nasal, their vowels longer; a few of their words were different. When they were with the workers, though, everyone still understood each other. Even the ones who spoke Mixtec, Mayan, Zapotec at home. Quinn and I were the odd men out as far as Spanish was concerned.

  “Hey, what are you doing back there?” yelled Abcde. I hadn’t done as good a job of camouflaging myself as I had hoped.

  A couple of sorter women yelled and gestured for me to join them. Most of the men glanced over at me, then looked away.

  “No, it’s okay,” I said with a wave, and went back to join Quinn and our lunch of cheese and crackers and pear preserves.

  “DO YOU WANT to hear one of my poems?” Abcde asked later, after we were back to picking.

  “Sure,” I said, even though I didn’t, not really.

  “I have one about fruit,” she said. “That would be most appropriate, given the setting.” She stood still for a moment, took a deep breath, then recited the poem from memory:

  “Apple brownbetty cures depression.

  Eat fruit generously; hunger is just

  kindling, lurking minutes north

  of pleasure. Quit rationing;

  start tasting unlimited varieties,

  wanting x-tasy, yumminess, zest.”

  My mouth watered in spite of itself.

  “Do you have more?” asked Quinn, who was sitting beneath the tree doing word problems.

  “Hundreds,” said Abcde.

  I started picking faster; it was clear she wasn’t going to start working again anytime soon.

  “Can I hear another one?” Quinn stood, as if to hear the poetry more clearly.

  “Coming up.” Abcde took another deep breath and intoned:

  “All bodies create desire.

  Especially fleshy girls

  have instant juju. Kissed

  lips may not obey propriety;

  quiet rustlings spawn

  tempestuous undulations,

  vault wild x-tasy,

  yawning zippers.”

  “That one?” I glared at her. “Not so appropriate.”

  “You used ‘x-tasy’ twice,” said Quinn, unfazed.

  “More times than that.” Abcde winked at me and I felt a little sick. “X is a big challenge—there’s only so much you can do with it.”

  “Xylophone,” said Quinn. “Xerxes.”

  “Not always easy to fit those in a poem.” She was smiling.

  “A Big Challenge,” Quinn said.

  “You better get back to work,” I said to both of them. The foreman was walking toward us. Rather than chew Abcde out for not picking, though, he said something in Spanish that made her laugh, and she said something that made him laugh in return. He patted her on the shoulder and she started to gather pears again in her awkward, plo
dding way.

  “YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE the stories these guys have,” said Abcde after the foreman was out of sight. “What they have to go through just to get here.”

  “I want to know,” said Quinn, and Abcde began to give us the litany, thankfully not in alphabetical order.

  Jorge had five children. He made enough during the harvest to live comfortably with his family the rest of the year in Guatemala. Back home, he was a carpenter and musician, but he couldn’t find enough work to make ends meet.

  Hector came from Michoacán to look for his father, who had left to find work over the border and disappeared. He never found his father but he did find plenty of work. He hoped to bring his mother and sister up soon.

  Tomas carved birds out of fallen pear wood. He sent them back to his family in El Salvador, who sold them to tourists at marketplaces.

  Vincent had a wife in Jalisco but also had two children with Estrella, one of the sorters.

  Several of the sorters were from the Delta area, daughters of former pickers. Most of the men had come from somewhere else; a few of the women had, too.

  Gertrudis’s husband was ill with pancreatic cancer; she crossed the border to find work so they could afford his medical bills. She hoped to bring him across for better treatment when he was up to the journey.

  Evalina came because her parents had wanted a better future for her, their only child.

  They came hidden under onions, under rice, under piles of blankets. They came stuffed into the trunks of cars, packed into the backs of trucks, holding on for dear life atop speeding boxcars. They came through guard dogs and sirens, rivers that rose up to their ribs. They came through desert, through blisters and dehydration and hunger. Some of them had to try two, three, four times, before they made it across the border. Some of them had Social Security cards of those who had come before, who had become legal but had to go back home; some of them had fake cards; some had the cards of dead men and women. Some had worked at farms where there were no porta-potties, no drinking water. Where they were beaten. Some knew people who had died of heatstroke in the fields. Some had worked for farmers who docked so much of their paycheck for food and housing, they had nothing left to send home to their relatives. Some had worked for farmers where no housing was offered, so they slept behind bushes on flattened cardboard boxes. The Vieiras’ horse stable was the cushiest place some of them had lived this side of the border. Some were legal but had been detained anyway, sent to a center where no one read them their rights, where they weren’t allowed to make any phone calls, where they were let go after two months and no one told them why they were released, why they were even held to begin with.