Delta Girls Read online

  Karen liked lifts because everything looked smaller, more manageable, from the air. The judges with their score sheets. The television people with their cameras. Her mother in fur boots leaning against the boards. For those few seconds of height, none of them mattered. They were earthbound, finite. She was soaring; she was towering; she was sweetly, briefly above it all. The closest she could get to escape.

  ———

  NATHAN MAIN WAS different from Karen’s skating partner of five years, Brian. Nathan didn’t treat her like a princess or a butterfly. He didn’t apologize for shoving his hand between her legs during a lift or catching a couple of strands of her hair under his blade during a death spiral. “You can take it,” he said, and she realized that she could. Nathan treated her like a woman. A body. Strong and capable, worthy of desire. Her mom, Deena, treated her like a body, too, but a body that needed to be changed, perfected, a body that was never quite right. Platinum dye since eleven, nose job at thirteen, a countless string of diets. With Nathan, it was “Here we are in our skins. What are we going to do about it?”

  Karen was nervous when her mom first suggested pairing with him. His latest partner, Tabitha, was recovering from a concussion and a fractured vertebra. Karen’s partner, Brian, had gone off to Harvard to study French literature and be surrounded by smart boys. Regionals were only two months away. Part of Karen hoped her mom wouldn’t find her a new partner; part of her hoped she could sit this competition cycle out, stay away from the ice long enough to want to get back on, but she knew her mom would never let that happen. Especially not with the Olympics coming up in a little over a year.

  “He has the best triple axel of any pairs skater out there,” Deena said. “Just think of it. With your jumps, you’d be brilliant together.”

  Deena had groomed her daughter to be a singles champion, but when Karen was twelve and placed sixth at Junior Sectionals, Deena told her she didn’t have the chops to go it alone. “You have the jumps, sweetheart,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact, her eyes calm, “but not the pizzazz.”

  Brian had stellar technicality, enough to get them on the podium of most regional competitions and close to placing at Nationals, but Nathan—Nathan had pizzazz. Groupies followed him from town to town—a few raised “Go Tabathan” signs for the pair, but most held signs like “Marry Me, Nathan” and “Watch Out, Tabitha, Nathan’s Mine!” He and Tabitha had placed third in Nationals the previous year, and had done respectably at Worlds. They were considered America’s next great hope until he dropped her in the middle of a Detroiter—a lift banned from competition—during a summer tour.

  Karen was seventeen, Nathan twenty-two when Deena arranged a private early morning tryout session, the sun just starting to send a hint of itself into the sky. Nathan showed up at the rink in Connecticut on a pale green Vespa in jeans and a tight yellow T-shirt, his skates in a black leather backpack, just as Karen and her mom pulled up in their BMW. He wore a multicolored knit beanie instead of a helmet, his dark shaggy hair swooping out in tufts. Karen tried not to look at the nipples poking under his shirt. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days; his blue eyes were bloodshot when he took off his sunglasses.

  “Not used to getting up so early,” he said as he shook Deena’s hand. She gave a coquettish shrug that made Karen wince.

  “But you’re worth it, sweetheart.” He turned to Karen, looking her up and down. “You’re worth every second of missed sleep.”

  NATHAN STEPPED ONTO the ice before Karen, which startled her; Brian had always given her the courtesy of entering the rink first. Nathan’s hair was a bit flat on top after taking off his beanie, but it streamed up like flames as soon as he started to stroke quickly around the rink. Karen took more-leisurely strokes, waiting for him to catch up with her rather than racing to catch up with him. He held out his hand as he drew near; she grabbed it and he surged ahead, practically ripping her shoulder out of its socket.

  “Find your rhythm!” Deena yelled from the penalty box, looking giddy and nervous.

  Karen sped up and Nathan slowed down and soon they were stroking side by side, doing crossovers at the end of the rink, their legs moving in perfect tandem, his left arm behind her back, her right across his front as they held hands. Nathan was taller than her other partners, older. She could feel the difference in the way he held her hand, in his smell of sweat and cigarettes and some sweet musky scent Karen couldn’t name, in his physical presence beside her—Nathan was solidly in the world, every muscle. She felt her own muscle fiber pack into something more dense, grounded, as they skated together. She felt a current of power run through them, a bright circuit through their arms and chests. Maybe this could work, after all.

  “Show me what you got,” shouted Deena.

  Karen looked at Nathan with her eyebrows raised.

  He winked and said, “Let’s blow her little mind.”

  THEY TRIED A few twist lifts. Armpit holds, waist holds, hand-to-hip lifts, lasso lifts, press lifts. Side-by-side camels, then flying camels. Side-by-side jumps, then throws—first doubles, then triples. She loved the air he gave her when he threw her into a triple loop, loved how he held her lower back when they did a pairs sit spin, how her leg pressed against his when they tried a spiral sequence. This is how it’s supposed to feel, she thought with wonder as she leaned back into his chest during a spread eagle. With Brian, she always felt as if she were skating with herself, as if she were holding her own hand—comfortable, familiar. Nathan was another creature, maybe even another species. The contrast was invigorating.

  “One more lift,” her mother called from the penalty box, “and let’s call it a day.”

  This time, Nathan did something with his thumb when she was over his head. A little wiggle between her legs. It caused a zing to go through her body, all the way to the top of her skull. A sudden flood she hoped wouldn’t drip down his arm. She almost tumbled off his palm, but somehow stayed upright, her one hand clutching his wrist so hard, it left marks.

  “What was that?” she asked, still catching her breath. She could barely look at him as they slipped on their skate guards and stepped off the ice.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He shook his wrist. She couldn’t tell if he was smiling or smirking.

  “Don’t do it again,” she said, as firmly as she could.

  He held her gaze until she flushed and looked away. She could hear him chuckle under his breath as he walked toward the lobby.

  “THAT WAS BRILLIANT.” Her mom strode up to her. Somehow even in her puffy down jacket, she looked sleeker than Karen could ever hope to be. “Utterly brilliant.”

  “I don’t want to skate with him.” Karen unzipped her sweater. Sweat ran down her sides in sheets.

  “Nathan brought something out in you, Karen,” she said. “I’ve never seen you skate like that before.”

  Karen brushed past her and ran to the bathroom, her skate guards clapping against her blades. She peeled her skating dress and tights down her body and sat in the stall, head in her hands. The cool air felt wonderful against her flushed skin. She wished she had worn underwear so she’d have something to throw away. She dabbed at the damp crotch of her tights with toilet paper before she pulled everything back up, the fabric cold and clammy between her legs.

  Nathan and her mother were sitting with cups of coffee by the snack bar. The morning figure skating session was about to begin—the lobby was now filled with sleepy-eyed skaters, the diehards who were already skating both before school and after. Some of their mothers kneeled before them, tightening their laces; others stood behind them, tightening their buns. Karen forced herself to smile at the girls who waved excitedly in her direction. She wondered if any of them missed the days when skating was just for fun, when it wasn’t about competition, the endless, impossible quest for perfection.

  Before she started on the competitive track, rising up the rungs of the United States Figure Skating Association testing system, Karen took classes at a rink tha
t followed the more recreational Ice Skating Institute program. She started at the most basic Alpha level, then moved on to Beta, then Gamma. She loved learning how to fall, how to swizzle, how to glide on one foot, wiggle backwards. Just being on the ice filled her with joy. But then she couldn’t pass her Delta test. She could do the three turns, the outside edges, and the bunny hop just fine, but she couldn’t seem to get the hang of the Shoot the Duck. Every time she crouched down and tried to lift one leg in front of her like a rifle, she toppled onto her bottom. Her mother got more and more exasperated, especially after Karen failed the test the second time.

  “What is wrong with you?” Deena had demanded, her face more fierce than Karen had ever seen it. “If you can’t pass this test, you can’t move up to freestyle. Do you want to be stuck doing bunny hops the rest of your life? Do you want to be a Delta girl forever?”

  At the time, Deena made this sound like a fate worse than death, but looking back, it didn’t seem so bad to Karen. What would life be like if she had stayed a Delta girl forever—someone just starting to learn, just moving for the pure joy of it? Someone who skated only for herself, who didn’t have to worry about other people’s judgment, other people’s hands?

  She slipped onto a green fiberglass bench next to her mother.

  “So,” Deena said, not looking up from her clipboard. “We can rent the rink early on Mondays and Wednesdays. Other days, you’ll have to skate during club time. Three hours a day, minimum. Even more in the beginning. And we’ll have to figure out the dance and Pilates sessions.”

  “I look forward to it.” Nathan smiled at Karen and the anger inside her chest unknotted and dissolved. A sudden weakness filled her limbs.

  And, as if she had never said or felt anything to the contrary, she took a deep breath and said, “Me too.”

  MR. VIEIRA RETURNED, HAPPY TO SEE ME WITH A FULL bag. Now I really looked like a pregnant woman, the pears bulging in front of me bigger than I had ever been with Quinn. He showed me how to untie the bottom of the bag, let the pears tumble into a box. All those green puppies—a prolific litter.

  “Might as well give you the grand tour,” he said. I slipped the bag off, grateful for the breeze against my sweaty shirt.

  It turned out Vieira Pears was actually on its own small island, Comice Island, a three-hundred-acre land mass ringed by wide waterways. Highway 160 crossed bridges to run across its rural edge, leading to the town of Comice on one end, Pecan Grove on the other. Comice was actually pronounced Co-meese; it was named for a type of pear, a variety originally from France. Bartlett was king here, though, and just coming into season.

  “The water seeps up right through the ground,” Mr. Vieira told me as he walked us around the farm. “We don’t have to irrigate none.”

  He showed me trenches they’d dug to keep the island from getting flooded; Vieira Pears was ten feet below sea level, so water easily saturated the soil and rose into the ditches before it found its way back to the river. The island sank a couple of inches a year as the peat soil settled, so the Vieiras had to keep building up the levees that ringed the island to protect their property. The levees had started out as five-foot mounds of dirt and rocks in the late 1800s, but were over thirty feet tall now, towering over the trees.

  “If you don’t have to water, what’s this?” Quinn moved toward a sprayer.

  “That’s poison!” I yelled. “Don’t get too close!”

  Quinn ran past it, covering her mouth.

  “It’s lime and sulfur,” said Mr. Vieira. “We’re not using poison no more. But she should still keep her distance. Not so good for the skin or eyes. Or any other part, unless you’re a tree.”

  “You’re organic?” I had worked on a couple of organic farms. Less burning on the hands. Less sharpness in the lungs. I should have guessed the Vieiras were organic; when I looked around, clues were everywhere—the shagginess of the grass between the rows of trees, good for harboring pest-eating insects; the skinny red pheromone dispensers hanging from the top branches like broken kabbalah bracelets; the tanglefoot wrapped around some trunks like Ace bandages to keep ants from climbing to the fruit.

  “Not certified yet,” he said. “Next year. You need three years without the poison before they’ll certify you. We’re what they call transitional.”

  So are we, I thought. I watched Quinn twirl between two rows of trees, thankfully away from the spray. I wondered how long she’d be so full of whimsy—even at nine, I could see a subtle swell in her hips. Her belly still looked young, though—wonderfully mushy—and she still had those yummy toddler dimples on the tops of her hands.

  “My son’s the one talked me into it, wanted to go back to my grandfather’s ways. He’s in Ag over at Davis, but right now he’s up in Oregon doing research. Pear slugs.”

  I winced, hoping not to see anything slimy on the gnarled branches.

  “How long has your family been here?” I asked.

  “Since the gold rush—1884,” he said. “Straight from the Azores.”

  Quinn and I hadn’t stayed in the same place for more than a few months since she was born. “Your family find gold?”

  “Golden pears,” Mr. Vieira said, chuckling.

  The golden apples in our Norse mythology book granted immortality to the gods. These pears offered a different kind of immortality, it seemed, something to pass from one generation to the next. Hundred-year-old trees that still grew fresh green fruit. Amazing as any legend.

  A TRACTOR TRAILER pulled up, driven by a woman, her body bulky and formless beneath her housedress, the iris of her left eye lolling to the side as if the string that usually held it in the center had snapped. Twelve men and seven women, all brown skinned, sat on the trailer around large white bins filled with pears. Many of them held coolers on their laps. They stared at me warily.

  Mr. Vieira said something in Spanish; a couple of them laughed, a few more glared in my direction.

  “I pay pickers by the bin,” he said. “They don’t like when anyone slows them down.”

  “I won’t slow them down,” I promised, but I could still feel their eyes on my skin after Mr. Vieira kissed the driver on the forehead and she drove them past us toward the barns.

  I practiced picking pears without pay the rest of the afternoon, Quinn sitting on the ground beneath the trees as my arms and hands got used to the work, as my shoulders got used to the weight of the pear bag. I worked on increasing my picking speed as the strain settled its steady burn into my muscles. I was starving and exhausted by the time we pulled some granola bars and string cheese from the car for our dinner.

  When I asked Mr. Vieira if we could park for the night on his property, he told me we should stay in the bunkhouse. The Vieiras had converted their old horse barn, turning each stall into an individual sleeping area with a swinging half-door. I was hesitant, but Quinn was excited about the idea of sleeping in a barn. Sleeping in the car had gotten old. It had been especially brutal in Niland, where we had camped at Slab City, an abandoned army base that had been taken over by RVers and squatters. There was no charge to stay, but there was also no running water or electricity, and even at night, the temperature often reached over 100 degrees. The one cool thing about the place was Salvation Mountain, a hill that an old smiley guy had covered entirely with paint and adobe as his own quirky tribute to God and love. I’d like to say we found salvation there, but we mostly found sweaty sleepless nights, especially when hipsters from LA came to check out the place and kept us awake with their guitars and bonfires, their smirking sense of entitlement.

  The bunkhouse looked clean, but I could still smell the gamy ghost of horses in the air, along with the body odor of workers who must have worn the same clothes several days in a row. Mr. Vieira had offered me and Quinn separate stalls, but I didn’t want her out of my sight, not in a building full of men. None of the sorting women lived there, but about half the men on the crew did—most of the rest shared small apartments as far away as Stockton, places where they
slept three, four to a room but had a full kitchen. The bunkhouse just had a sink, a mini fridge, a microwave, one small bathroom for everyone. I was uneasy—no locks on the doors; no real doors, for that matter.

  We brushed our teeth and changed into shorts and T-shirts for the night; when we got to our cot, I noticed something on Quinn’s back. A round green sticker that said “Ripe and Ready.” I ripped it off her shirt, my whole body furious.

  “Who the hell put this here?” I marched into the aisle between the stalls and held it up high. A man with a deeply creased face smiled and nodded from behind his half-door. “You put this on my daughter?”

  He smiled and nodded again.

  “You sick fuck!” I threw the sticker at his face, but it fluttered to the ground before it could reach him. “What kind of pervert puts a sticker like that on a nine-year-old girl?”

  His smile dropped. Even if he couldn’t understand English, I knew he could understand me.

  “Don’t you dare—don’t any of you dare—lay a finger on her again. No finger, no sticker, no nothing!”

  “Shit, lady,” I heard someone say under his breath.

  “Quinn, pack your bags,” I yelled. I picked the sticker up off the floor, the back of it encrusted with dirt and dust. Evidence.

  WE PILED EVERYTHING into the car and were bumping along the dirt road when Mr. Vieira appeared in the headlights in his striped pajamas, dragging a hose.

  “Where are you two headed?” he asked.

  “We’re leaving.” I showed him the crumpled-up sticker. “I found this on my daughter’s shirt.”

  He took the sticker and smoothed it in his palm. “That’s for the ripe pears we bring to market,” he said.