Delta Girls Page 8

  KAREN LAY ON a bench in the dressing room; Nathan draped a wet paper towel over her forehead. None of the women seemed to mind the fact that he was in there with her. Many of them were in various states of undress, their competition dresses hanging down from their waists, breasts bare except for their taped-up nipples, but, to her relief, Nathan wasn’t looking at any of them. He was just looking at her, stroking her hair, her arm.

  “You sure know how to make an event memorable,” he said. “Falling. Puking. What’s next?”

  “Shitting her pants,” said Miss Rhode Island. “If she hasn’t done that already.”

  “That’s uncalled for,” said Nathan; he looked down at Karen and said, “You want me to kill her for you?”

  Even though Karen’s head felt like it was going to split open and her stomach gave another lurch, she felt warmth spread through her whole body.

  “Nah, just torture her a little.” Karen eked out a smile.

  Miss Rhode Island turned away in a huff as the other skaters laughed.

  Deena breezed into the room, trailing cold air from the rink behind her like a veil.

  “Your scores weren’t bad,” she said, moving someone’s skates away to sit on a bench across from Karen’s. “Better technical than artistic, no surprise. You’re holding on to second for now, but there are still five more teams to go. Including the top ones.”

  “I think I need to go home.” Karen was shivering now with fever.

  “If you’re lucky enough to medal, you need to get on that podium, sweetheart,” said Deena. “You want people to remember your face.”

  “I really think …” Before Karen could finish her sentence, she threw up all over someone’s bag.

  “Oh, sweetie,” she sighed. “Hang in there. I’m going to keep my eye on the competition.” She left and Nathan started to clean up the mess. He was the only person Karen knew who could have women fawning all over him even as he cleaned a pukey skating bag. Karen wanted to help, but could barely raise her head. Every few minutes, after each pair’s program, Deena poked her face into the locker room with an update:

  “She fell on her triple toe.”

  “He botched the throw.”

  “You’re holding on to second.”

  “You’re holding on to second.”

  “They weren’t together on their footwork.”

  “You’re still holding on to second.”

  “The seventh-place team was flawless.” Her voice was tense. “You’re in third. And the team in first is next. Time to say your prayers.”

  This from the woman who never taught her daughter to pray, who only took her to temple for High Holy Days—their dose of Jewishness for the year. Nathan came over and squeezed her hand. That felt like a prayer in itself—their hands creating the church, the steeple, the whole congregation between their palms.

  THE FIRST-PLACE TEAM fell three times and dropped out of the running. The fourth-place team, Miss Rhode Island’s team, fell twice, and didn’t advance. Karen and Nathan held on to third, by two-tenths of a point.

  Nathan kissed Karen’s sweaty forehead when Deena broke the news.

  “You were lucky this time,” she warned. “You can’t count on luck when you get to Sectionals.”

  Karen knew how much hung on Sectionals. If they didn’t place in the top three there, they wouldn’t get to Nationals. And if they didn’t get to Nationals, they wouldn’t be on the judges’ radar, and they’d be much less likely to get to the Olympics the following year. But none of that mattered at the moment. At the moment, all she wanted was a pillow, a soft, cool pillow, beneath her heavy head.

  “God, Karen, your breath smells awful,” her mother said as she replenished Karen’s lipstick before the medal ceremony. She fished a piece of gum out of her bag and stuck it in Karen’s mouth, then gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.

  Karen couldn’t walk without feeling dizzy, so Nathan carried her out to the podium, like a baby. The cold air was a shock on her skin, and her limbs trembled with fever, but she felt cozy in Nathan’s arms, safe. She managed a small wave to the audience after he stepped up, with a huge grunt, onto the third-place platform. The cheers surrounded her like hundreds of arms.

  IN THE MORNING, I DECIDED MAYBE I WOULD TELL BEN, after all. He would love knowing a whale was in his backyard.

  I looked for him as Quinn and I drove to the distillery, as we walked past the chicken coop and Quinn held her breath, trying to be brave, as I settled into my bottle-cleaning routine. No sign of his dark hair anywhere. Aside from the clacking of the tripod ladders out in the orchard, the occasional crowing of a rooster—tinged, it seemed to me, with grief—it was a quiet day.

  Finally I couldn’t help myself. “Where’s Ben?” I asked Mr. Vieira, trying to sound casual.

  “Had to go back to Oregon,” he said. “Some problem with the slugs.”

  I winced, even though I knew the slugs weren’t slugs at all.

  “At least that’s his excuse.” Mr. Vieira handed me a bottle to clean. “I think he wanted to get back to that girl of his.”

  “Girl?” He hadn’t mentioned a daughter. Maybe he had one Quinn’s age, someone she could be friends with …

  “His research partner,” he said. “Said they talked about getting married—don’t know if they set the date.”

  The bottle slipped out of my hands and crashed against the floor; the pear bounced and landed on my sneaker. Broken glass glittered everywhere.

  “Hey,” he said. “You owe me eighty bucks.”

  When tears sprang to my eyes, he handed me a broom and said, “Jesus Christ, I’m only kidding. We always lose a few.”

  Quinn came over to help me clean up, but I told her to step back. She was wearing sandals.

  I didn’t want her to get hurt, too.

  THAT AFTERNOON, I took Quinn into the town of Comice to distract myself. We were thrilled to find a small branch library on a side street we hadn’t visited before—just a single storefront room, with a few battered tables and chairs, a corner by the children’s books with puzzles and toys, a couple of computers. And, of course, books. Not a lot of books, but more than we had seen in a while. Quinn took a deep breath, as if smelling a fine wine. More than anything, the scent of a library was home.

  “We should look up whales, Eema,” Quinn whispered.

  “Brilliant idea,” I whispered back.

  We combed through the stacks; there weren’t any books exclusively about whales, but we found a couple of encyclopedia entries, a couple of chapters in books about marine life. After looking at various charts and illustrations, we came to the conclusion that our whale was a humpback. We recognized the long flippers, the grooves beneath the jaw, the bumps all over the flat head that made it look kind of like a giant pickle. Humpback adults were forty to fifty feet long, and around seventy-nine thousand pounds. They were baleen whales—instead of teeth, they had rows of fringed baleen plates hanging from their front jaw like strips of curtain at a car wash, to filter their food. They caught fish using the bubble net method—they’d swim around their prey in circles, blowing bubbles to create a sort of holding pen for the fish, then they’d swoop in, mouths open, and scoop up thousands of fish at once.

  “I hope there are enough fish for it in the river,” whispered Quinn.

  “Me too,” I whispered back.

  We found a quote from Melville; he called humpbacks “the most gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales … making more white water and gay foam than any other.”

  “See,” I said to Quinn. “I told you it was there to play.”

  I wondered if I had touched the whale with my foot when we had gone swimming, if it’s what had made the water rise. The thought of sharing the slough with such an immense creature gave me a dizzy, giddy sense of vertigo, as if the floor were dropping underneath me. I tried to imagine what it would be like to actually swim with it on purpose. I imagined its skin would smell like rubber and oil, that it would squeak like a balloon if you
ran your finger across it, that lying on it would feel like lying on a giant inflated inner tube, the kind you use to laze down a river, but with muscle inside.

  It made sense to me that humpbacks belonged to a suborder of Cetacea called Mysticeti—from the Greek for “unknowable.” They remained a mystery, vast and deep, no matter how much we could ever learn about them.

  ON THE WAY home, we stopped at a little market to pick up a few groceries.

  “Should we blow some bubbles around the peanut butter?” I asked Quinn. She laughed and made a raspberry sound with her lips.

  “I think we’re almost out of jelly, too, Eema,” Quinn said.

  “We can get that back at home,” I reminded her. We had access to the Vieiras’ pear pantries, adjacent to the icehouse. Pear jellies. Whole peeled pears floating in syrup spiced with peppercorn and basil. Thick sweet pear nectar. Chewy dried pears, slices that curled at the edges and looked so much like women’s genitalia, I felt a bit funny biting into them. Pear vinaigrette spiked with Gorgonzola. I hadn’t eaten a fresh pear yet, but I had the taste of pear in my mouth just about every day.

  Sometimes Mrs. Vieira would bring out one of her creations to share with the workers—a pear tart, a little cup of pear sorbet, sausage studded with chunks of pear. I was starting to feel a bit peared out, but it was nice to see what all could be done with a simple piece of fruit. I was glad Mrs. Vieira could show Quinn that flavor meant something more than powdered nacho cheese.

  “Are you tired of pears yet?” I asked as we made our way down the narrow aisle, grabbing bags of corn chips, cans of bean dip.

  “I’ll never be tired of pears. I’m obsessed with pears.” She pulled a jar of pear preserves from a shelf, the jelly gleaming like amber as she held it to the light, scraps of pear suspended inside.

  I TRIED NOT to obsess over Ben. It’s not like we had kissed. He hadn’t promised his undying love. He had just brushed up against me in the night. He had just shown me some kindness. No need to feel like my heart was ripped from my chest. At least that’s what I told myself all night. Anyway, I had a whale to think about. And pears. And, at work in the morning, the distraction of a new face, even if it was a sour one.

  “Hey, Vieira.” A tall sandy-haired guy in a yellow golf shirt and ironed blue jeans appeared in the driveway as Quinn and I were getting out of the car. “I hear you’re having trouble with labor this year.”

  “We all are, Roberts.” Mr. Vieira didn’t glance up from the tractor engine.

  “Not me,” the man said. “I got myself a robot.”

  Quinn looked at me, her eyebrows raised. I wondered, again, if the whale was some sort of animatronic creature, if the neighbor had sent it to us to freak us out. Maybe it was possible to create a soulful-eyed robot now.

  “You gotta come take a look,” the man said. “It’s the future of farming. I’m telling you, Vieira, you won’t have to worry about beaners never again.” I thought about the pistachio farms on the I-5, how they used mechanical shakers. What would happen to all the workers, what would happen to us, if farmers no longer needed our hands?

  “I got stuff to do.” Mr. Vieira busied himself with his wrench, and the man eventually walked away, shaking his head.

  “Can I see the robot?” Quinn asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. Mr. Vieira was obviously fuming; I didn’t want to upset him more.

  “What’s a beaner?” she asked. The word made me cringe. I didn’t want to hear it coming out of her mouth.

  “Someone from Mexico,” I said. “Someone who eats a lot of beans.”

  “I like beans,” she said.

  “I do, too,” I told her. “But it’s not a good word to use.”

  “Uptight asshole,” Mr. Vieira grumbled. “Thinks he can pick pears with a robot.”

  “Why can’t he?” asked Quinn.

  “Pears are delicate. Bruise easy. Wind knocks a leaf into a pear, you get a bruise. Wind bumps the pear into a branch, you get a bigger bruise.”

  He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “You need human hands to pick pears. Robot hands will go right through the skin.”

  “Maybe his robot will attack him.” Quinn sounded gleeful.

  “Quinn!”

  “I hope so,” said Mr. Vieira. “I hope the robot kills that sonofabitch.”

  “That’s not something to joke about,” I said.

  “Who’s joking?” Mr. Vieira went back to his wrench.

  ———

  I SWIPED A pear bag, strapped it over my shoulders, cinched it around my waist, and practiced picking during lunch, taking Quinn to a quiet part of the orchard where no one could see us. I didn’t have a ladder, so I worked on the low-hanging fruit, moving from one tree to another, lifting pears. They had grown considerably softer since the last time I had picked; not ripe, but there was a noticeable difference in how they felt against my hand. They had a more mature heft to them, a sensual gravity, as if they had grown more at home inside their skin. They were starting to smell like their true selves, too—their perfume hung over the orchard, creating its own sort of humidity.

  The Vieiras had lost a few more pickers; the workers would get calls on their cellphones while they were up on the ladders, calls from friends saying they could make a few more bucks a box at another orchard down the road. Pickers would hear this and be gone before lunch. I didn’t blame them—they had families to support—but the Vieiras were getting desperate. They couldn’t afford a robot, not that they would want one. The pears were getting closer and closer to ripeness, closer and closer to rot. I needed to learn to pick faster so I could help them get the fruit to market in time.

  I bent my knees softly and focused on moving from my center of gravity, which kept shifting as I added more pears to the bag. Your belly supports your arms, I told myself. Your movement comes from your belly, not your shoulders. I tried to keep my breathing deep and regular as my arms gained speed. Nowhere near the speed of the other pickers, but it took me a lot less time to fill the fifty-pound bag than it had before.

  I lugged the pears over to the tractor trailer, waddling like a pregnant woman, one hand on my lower back. I opened the bag at the bottom, dumping the fruit into one of the plastic bins.

  “Hey!” Mr. Vieira saw me. I had been hoping he wouldn’t. He strode over, looking pissed off. “That’s not your job.”

  “You don’t have to pay me for this,” I told him. “I’m practicing. I just want to be able to help out.”

  He looked embarrassed, as if I had offered to bathe him. “Just don’t let the other pickers see you,” he said.

  “At least I don’t have metal hands,” I said.

  “At least.” He rubbed the scruff on his chin.

  “Who was that guy, anyway?” I stretched one arm across my chest, pulling it closer to me with my other hand. In the short period of picking, I could already feel the strain in my back. The empty bag hung from my torso like a slack kangaroo’s pouch.

  “Roberts?” he said. “He owns the orchard across the slough.”

  “The one with all the dead trees?” I asked, stretching my other arm across my body. He looked at me funny, so I dropped both arms to my sides.

  “That’s the one,” he said. “He has plenty of live trees, too. More acres than me.”

  “He’s not organic though, right?”

  “Nah,” said Mr. Vieira. “We’re the first in the Delta for that. But he’ll follow, mark my word. He’ll do whatever he can to show me up.”

  “Like the robot?” I asked.

  “Like the stupid bastard robot,” he said.

  Quinn laughed. “I still want to see it,” she said.

  “He loves it when I have a bad year,” he said. “He don’t want to be shown up by no Portagee.”

  “And you?” I asked.

  “Kind of sad what a farm does to you.” He shook his head. “Makes you want your neighbor to die.”

  A BARGE GLIDED across the alfalfa fields before us as we drove toward th
e levee. I knew it was actually in the slough behind the farm, but its rusty bulk appeared to be charging over the land. After the whale, I wasn’t sure I could trust my own eyes anymore.

  Quinn grabbed her math book and I grabbed an iced tea and we sat on the deck of the houseboat to feel the Delta breezes begin to pick up. The water still churned a bit from the passage of the barge, now long out of our sight, making the houseboat pitch. I stared at Roberts’s levee across the slough to keep myself oriented; it resembled a heap of crumbled gravestones. Every once in a while, I could hear rocks plink down the side of it, plop into the water. No trees were planted along its edge, making it look barren, forsaken. A place where a robot would feel at home.

  The levee on our side had trees and tule grass and wildflowers mixed in with the stone. Mr. Vieira had been able to get a thirty-year waiver; the state couldn’t touch the land, even though they yearned to strip it bare. The state is stupid, Mr. Vieira had told me. The levees become more vulnerable when you cut down the plants, not less. The roots hold the stones in place, keep the two-story mound together. They make it an ecosystem, a tightly woven web, less of a potential rockslide.

  I had asked Mr. Vieira if all the dead wood on Roberts’s land was cut from the levee, but he said no, Roberts had lost a portion of his orchard to fire blight the year before. “Didn’t jump the water,” Mr. Vieira told me, eyes twinkling. “My pears were fine.”

  The birds definitely preferred our side of the slough—more places to perch, more bugs to munch. Egrets, barn swallows, the occasional duck, a constant teeming. Real life everywhere you turned. Even the posts that stuck out of the water next to our pier were sprouting green shoots at the top, like Chia Heads.