After Peaches (6 page)

The girl in purple was the only worker who talked to us all day. Most of the others were older women and men, many of them dressed in long pieces of brightly colored fabric. We didn't hear anyone speaking Spanish, but many spoke another language that Mamá thought might be from India.

At the end of the day, the teenagers weighed our buckets, gave Papá a pile of bills and coins, and said the farm opened again at seven o'clock the next morning.

“I'm tired,” I said as we crunched across the gravel parking lot.“How much did we make?”

Papá laughed and hugged my shoulders. “Don't you worry about that,
mi amor
,” he said. “
Hicimos
suficiente.
We made enough, and that's all that matters.”

“This summer is about adventure,” Mamá agreed, “not money.” They seemed so eager to convince me that I wondered if we hadn't made much at all. The next day, I would spend less time looking at the other people in the field and concentrate harder on picking. After all, it was because of me that we were here, and we had to think about finding a better apartment in September.

We piled into the car, which was still crammed with all our camping things, and even though it was only six in the evening, I fell asleep.

“I found it!” Papá called out from the station wagon.

Mamá and I were setting up the tent, its back to the wide, slow Fraser River. Papá was supposed to be getting the sleeping bags out of the car, but instead he was marching toward us, proudly waving a tiny folded rectangle of paper.

“It's about time,” said Mamá, and I assumed she was talking about him helping us until she added, “Where was it?”

“What is it?” I asked. I was crouched at one corner of the tent with a peg in my hand. The hard-packed ground was nothing like the soft earth of Julie's lawn, and no amount of banging would get the peg in.

“It slid under the seat,” Papá said. “
Para tí
, Rosario, from Analía.”

That's weird, I thought, but I was happy for the excuse to stop pounding the tent peg. “Why would José's daughter write to me?”

“I don't know,” Papá said. “She told José she wanted to e-mail you. Apparently there's an Internet café close to her school. But José doesn't know anything about the Internet, and he didn't have your e-mail address, so Analía wrote to you the old-fashioned way. This came with one of her family's letters to José.” He handed me the note. It was covered with Spanish words, front and back:
For Rosario's eyes
only,
Analía wrote.
Do not open unless you are Rosario
Ramirez, age 10.

“José gave it to us the day before he left for the cherry farm,” Papá says, looking embarrassed. “We didn't tell you because I lost it almost as soon as he gave it to me. I only found it now when I was looking for the sleeping bags.”

“But why would she write to me?” I asked again. I loved hearing stories about Analía, but even my own cousins didn't write to me. It's true that our town in Mexico didn't have Internet like most places in Canada did, and regular mail often got lost on the way to and from the town, but still I always hoped someone would write.

“She wanted a pen pal, I guess,” said Mamá.“Pound in the tent peg in your corner, Rosario,
por favor
. The wind's picking up.” As soon as she said it, the wind flipped up the far end of the tent, and it bopped Mamá on the head.

She looked so shocked that I couldn't help laughing. Papá and I raced to stop our summer home from flying away.

It wasn't until hours later, when we'd had our supper, the last dish was dried and stacked, and my parents were playing cards at the picnic table, that I pulled the letter from my pocket. With just enough light left in the sky to read by, I sank into the folding chair by the fire pit and smoothed open the paper. Analía's printing was tiny and careful. I felt a flutter of excitement about reading a letter in Spanish. A letter I wouldn't need a dictionary for.

Dear Rosario,

I hope you are as nice as my father says you are. I hope you are happy to get my letter and that you don't
think I'm weird for writing to someone I've never met. I feel as if I know you because Papá talks about you
every week.

Wow! While I was listening to Analía stories and telling them to Julie, Analía was listening to Rosario stories and maybe telling them to
her
friends. A silly grin spread over my face.

The next line of the letter was mostly scribbled out, but I could still read some of the words.

Sometimes…my father knows…than he does about
his own kids!…silly to talk…doesn't choose to work so
far away…to send five kids to school.

No wonder she scribbled most of that one out. I tried to ignore it, telling myself it wasn't my fault that I saw more of José than his own daughter did, but it bothered me.

After the scribbling out, Analía wrote,
Oops. Sorry
. That made me smile. I did the same thing when I made a mess of my writing.

Anyway, I wrote to ask you a favor, but please don't tell
my father. I'm not supposed to know anything about this,
but I overheard my mother tell my aunt, and I figured
that if anyone could help him, you could.

I know Papá doesn't want to leave the flower fields
to work on the cherry farm. He's heard that the cherry
farmer expects people to work too many hours, and he
puts a big dog next to the front gate so no one can leave
in the evenings. Sometimes people have to sneak out and
walk an hour into town if they want to call their families
during the week. The workers are only allowed to
leave the farm on Sunday afternoons to buy groceries.
That's what Papá's heard, anyway. My aunt told Mamá
that you can't believe everything you hear, but she's still
worried, and so am I.

I put down the letter. This couldn't be right. On the flower farm, José and his friends were allowed to go wherever they wanted after work, just like anyone else. Mostly, they were too tired to do much of anything, but sometimes they went into Victoria to shop or to walk along the waterfront.

Maybe Analía was getting Jose's situation mixed up with something else. I'd heard that farm workers in the United States often had problems with farmers. Papá said many farm workers there weren't really supposed to be in the United States though, and they were so afraid of getting caught by the police that they didn't complain when the farmers treated them badly. I knew it was different in Canada. The Canadian government had
invited
José and the others to help with the Canadian harvest. The farmers gave them a nice place to live and enough work, but not too much, and of course, the farm workers had the same rights as anyone else.

The worst part is that Papá can't change jobs. That's
what Mamá told my aunt. She said that those are the
rules for Mexican farm workers in Canada: they have
to work where they're sent, and if they don't like it, they
either put up with it, or they go home. We know Papá
would never come home early because our family needs
money for food.

We don't know if he'll be able to call us from where
he's going. I don't know how far the cherry farm is from
the flower fields, but maybe you or someone you know
could go there and make sure he's really okay? I know he
would tell us on the phone that he's fine, but I want to
know for sure. He'd hate to know that I'm asking this, so
please don't tell anyone. We only want to know he's all
right. Please say you'll help.

Your friend,

Analía.

At the picnic table, my parents were still playing cards. The sun was setting behind the trees, and somewhere a gull cried. I wondered how much my parents knew about the farm where José was now. They had the address, but what else had they heard? I frowned down at the letter. Analía must be confused.

I got up from my folding chair and went to the picnic table. Papá smiled at me, but Mamá was concentrating on her cards. Finally, she slammed down one of them, grinned at my father and stretched.“Another game for me,” she said.

Papá rolled his eyes. “Oh well. It's been a good day otherwise.” He winked at me.

“Do you like Green's Farm?” I asked, though I hadn't planned to.

“It's okay, I suppose,” Papá said.“Plenty of work.”

“And I like the smell of strawberries,” said Mamá. “How come?”

“It's different from what I expected,” I said. “I thought we'd meet more Mexicans.” I hoped that didn't sound whiny. Above all, my parents hated complaining. “I mean, I remember you saying that most Canadians don't want to work on farms. I thought there'd be lots of Mexicans.”

Mamá put an arm around my shoulders. “It must be tough to spend all day working with no one to talk to but us.”

“Kind of,” I said.

“I wish I could talk to the other workers too,” Papá said. “They'd probably have interesting stories to tell.”

“About what?” I asked.

“I wonder if anyone on the farm today knew people in the crash,” Mamá said. “It happened near here, didn't it?”

“What crash?” I asked.

“It happened a few months ago,” Papá said. “A van full of farm workers crashed near here, and it was all over the news. At work, it was all we talked about for a few weeks because some of the men understood the news reports and said people were starting to worry about how farm workers were treated here.”

The words were like an ice cube down my back. We were supposed to be safe here in Canada. No one was supposed to get killed for what they said. Not like Ricardo. “Did someone crash the van on purpose?” I whispered.

Papá shook his head. “No, no. Nothing like that, but the driver wasn't being careful, and she had taken all but two of the seats out of the van so that she could cram more farm workers in. The van only had two seatbelts, and because of that, three people died.”

“Oh,” I said.

“And then some farm workers started talking about other bad things that happened where they worked,” Mamá said. “Lots of dangerous things can happen on a farm, and if workers are new to Canada and don't speak English well, they don't know how to complain. Or who to complain to.”

I felt sick. After reading Analía's letter, this was the last thing I wanted to hear.

Papá sighed. “We've been lucky, Rosario, but not everyone is. And many farm workers don't know about the laws that protect us.”

“Or if they do know,” Mamá added, “they're afraid to complain because they think they might lose their jobs, and they need the money to survive.”

“But these things aren't supposed to happen in Canada!” I spluttered. “If there are laws—”

Papá reached across the table to put his hand on mine. “I know,
mi amor
, but people don't always pay attention to the laws. We know that.” He got a sad look in his eyes, and I knew he was thinking of my brother. If people obeyed laws, Ricardo would be alive. My family would never have been in danger, and we never would have had to leave Mexico.

“Don't worry about Green's Farm, Rosario,” Mamá said.“I think we'll be okay there. I didn't see anything dangerous, and we've got our own car. Besides, the good thing about working from day to day is that we can always leave if we don't like a place.”

I nodded but felt my eyes prick with tears. I blinked them back and told my parents I was going to bed.

It took me forever to get to sleep. Mamá and Papá snored quietly beside me, and I could hear the river lapping against the shore. The wind played between the branches of the trees, and every now and then, on the other side of the campground, the door of the outhouse banged.