After Peaches (8 page)

CHAPTER 10
Cherries

Picking cherries was much more fun than picking strawberries—at least, from down below it
looked
like more fun. Papá wouldn't let me climb the trees because he was afraid I'd fall.

I'd probably climbed more trees lately than the adults had. The park halfway between Julie's house and mine was full of climbing trees, and I was about to say that to Papá when Mamá found me a job, running from ladder to ladder, helping the pickers empty their pails.

I hesitated but decided maybe I'd better start with that. We'd be at this farm for a while anyway, and I'd have plenty of chances to climb trees when my parents weren't looking.

Each picker wore a harness with a bucket on the front so that up in the tree, he could drop in cherry after cherry—
ping, ping, pingpingping
—without losing his balance or spilling the fruit. When the bucket got full, the picker called me, and I raced to that ladder with another bucket and waited for the cherries to be dumped inside. Then I poured them into a big container at the base of each tree.

I liked trying to guess where the next call would come from and who was in each tree, because sometimes the pickers went up so high they disappeared entirely. Meanwhile, I kept an eye out for the flash of José's red and white ballcap through the leaves, and I listened for the sound of his voice.

“He's in another part of the orchard,” Mamá said when I got tired of waiting and asked where he was. “The
patrón
wanted him to spray some trees so bugs don't get to the fruit before it's ripe.”

“It's only a one-day job though,” said Marcos's voice from up inside another tree. “He'll probably be back picking with us tomorrow.”

“And you'll see him tonight,” said Papá, “when we set up camp. I bet he can hardly wait to ask what his daughter wrote to you in that top-secret note.”

He laughed, and I laughed too because, at that moment, it seemed as though Analía had nothing to worry about after all.

“
Allá
,” said Marcos. “That's it over there.” It was late evening and we'd finished picking. José still hadn't shown up, and Marcos was taking us on a tour of the farm.

I wasn't paying much attention. I was waiting for my lucky break so I could wander toward the trees, as if I saw something interesting on the ground or something unusual in the bark. My parents would be too busy catching up with Marcos and the others to notice. I'd scramble up the tree, take in every detail of the brown valley below, get a deep sniff of the leafy green tree air and hurry down before anyone noticed that I was gone. Then I'd scribble everything into my notebook, and I'd have at least one story.

Papá whistled—a long, slow whistle like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. I looked up, but all I saw was a run-down green building, about half as big as a classroom. A barn for farming equipment, maybe. Nothing to whistle at.

“All of you live there?” Mamá asked. “
Todos
? All eighteen?”

For a moment, I forgot about the trees. They lived
there
? That barn wasn't even big enough to have separate rooms.

“Sí, señora
,” Marcos said. “We all fit in somehow. Bunk beds. Nine of them.”

No wonder Marcos looked so tired. Even one loud snorer would make it impossible to sleep.

He led my parents to the building, away from the trees. I tried to stay back, but my mother noticed and took my hand. I shook free, and she stood there, arms crossed over her chest, until I followed. When was this tour going to end?

The bathroom was an outhouse around the back, and the kitchen—if you could call it that—was off to one side. It was only a patch of dirt under a sheet of plastic, with two wooden tables and a few old bookshelves full of dishes. I didn't see a sink or a stove anywhere, but a grimy old fridge stood in one corner. Our campsite by the Fraser River had been nicer. This side of the farm didn't even have much of a view because right behind the outhouse was a barbed wire fence, separating this orchard from the neighbors'.

Trees everywhere and not a moment of privacy to climb them!

“
Sí, señora
,” Marcos said, folding his arms across his chest.“This is where we live.”

Mamá shook her head.

“You can pitch your tent anywhere you like,” said Marcos.“Anywhere except at the back, that is. That's where the showers are. I'd show you now, but someone is probably using them, and one of the doors fell off last week.”

Papá frowned.“It can't be fixed?”

“We've tried,” Marcos said.“I mean, we tried to ask the
patrón
for something to fix it with, but none of us knew the right English words. He got frustrated and shouted something and stomped off. We kind of gave up after that.”

So much for the
patrón
reminding me of Santa Claus, I thought.

“I bet Rosario could help with her English,” Papá said.

I pretended to be fascinated by a stone at my feet, but Papá didn't seem to notice. “You should see this kid's marks! She could make her fortune translating for the rest of us.”

My face was fiery hot, and I prayed no one would ask me to practice my English.

“I would steer clear of the
patrón
, if I were you,” Marcos warned, “no matter how good your English. He flies into a rage at the littlest thing. You should have seen him yelling at Oscar last week. He's got a temper, that man.”

No one said anything for a second, and I turned back to look at the trees. That's when I saw José. He wasn't wearing his precious ballcap, and he was walking funny. I called to him and waved, but he didn't wave back; he just sort of staggered in our direction.

I grabbed Mamá's hand, and we ran.

“Sick,” he wheezed when we arrived at his side. “Can't breathe.” The black parts of his eyes were tiny dots. I looked wide-eyed at Mamá, and she pulled me close, as though it were me, not José, who needed help.

Then Papá and Marcos were there, pulling José's arms around their shoulders to help him walk. They'd hardly taken three steps when José threw up, fell to his knees and threw up again.

Papá beckoned Mamá and me closer. “Guadalupe, you help José,” he told her. “Rosario, you come with me. We'll get the car and tell the
patrón
we're going to the hospital.”

Cold fear twisted in my stomach. I couldn't argue now, not with José lying on the ground, shaking, while Mamá and Marcos tried to hoist him up. But how could I talk to the
patrón
? A man who yelled at his workers about any little thing would never listen to a kid, especially a kid whose English was sure to come out all wrong. It always did when I was nervous or upset. And yelling the names of vegetables in Spanish wasn't going to help me one bit this time.

José moaned and put his hands to his head, and I knew I didn't have a choice. I put my hand in Papá's, and we flew.

CHAPTER 11
Speak

José didn't want to get into the car.

“The
patrón
will fire me for sure,” he said. “And I can't go back to Mexico now, not without my summer's wages. How will my family eat?”

“How will they eat if you return to Mexico dead in a wooden box?” Mamá snapped. “We're not going to sit by and let you die.”

My stomach flipped over, and instantly I was back in Mexico, huddled in a corner, trying to understand what had happened to my brother. The people who killed Ricardo hurt him so badly that I wasn't allowed to see the body. Everything changed after that day. Everything.

We had to help José. We couldn't let him die.

José was shaking too much to speak. Marcos and Papá and a few of the other men heaved him into the back of the station wagon. I scrambled in, crouched behind one seat and held José's hand.
We won't let him
die, Analía
, I promised. Not that promising would help anything, but it made me feel like there was hope.

And that gave me an idea.

“Analía wrote to me,” I whispered to José. “I mean, she wrote to me about this farm. She was worried about you. She heard what you told her mother, and she wanted to make sure you were okay.”

He opened his eyes and looked at me with brown eyes whose black dots were now impossibly small. I didn't even know if he could see me out of eyes like that.

“She needs you to be okay,” I said, willing myself not to cry. His eyes were closing again.“
Por favor
, José. Be okay.”

“Ees José Lopez,” Papá said in his terrible English. “Ees berry seek.”

I knew Papá was trying his best, but the nurse at the front desk of the emergency ward looked totally confused. We must have looked weird: Mamá and Papá, still in their work clothes, lowering José into a chair, and me standing off to the side, clutching my notebook to my chest, as if it could make me feel strong.

“Ees seek working,” Papá said, still trying to explain to the confused nurse. José was shaking again and starting to sway, even though he was sitting down. Mamá bent over him, stroking his cheek and whispering. Papá placed one hand on his shoulder, and the other on my head. “
Cuéntale
, Rosario,” Papá said, his face red, and his forehead tight with worry.“
Cuéntale,
por favor
.”
Tell her
.
Please
. But what was I supposed to say? All the way to the hospital, they'd been rapid-firing questions at José. Had he ever been sick like this before? What did he think caused it? What was he wearing when he was spraying the plants? What was he spraying with? Had he been wearing a mask?

None of it made any sense to me, but somehow my parents got it in their heads that José was sick from spraying the cherry trees, even though he'd sprayed plants lots of times before. Back in Victoria, he helped spray the flower fields all the time, and he'd never got sick like this. As far as I could tell, my parents were desperate for an explanation and ready to believe anything.

There didn't seem to be any point telling the nurse about my parents' crazy ideas. If I made it sound like José couldn't handle his work, he might lose his job. Both Analía and José said the
patrón
could kick him out of Canada if he wanted, and then what would José's family do? Starve like other people in Mexico who didn't have jobs?

It was as if my parents hadn't even heard what the
patrón
shouted as we left the farm. After Papá told him we were taking José to the hospital, he wouldn't even open the gate for us, and once Papá had forced it open and we took off, the
patrón
yelled that if we said anything to make him look bad, he'd make sure we never worked in this area again.

“
Por favor
, Rosario,” Papá repeated. “
Cuéntale
.”

My heart squeezed painfully tight. I wanted to help, but what could I say that wouldn't make things worse? What if José's sickness had nothing to do with the farm at all, and I said something that got back to the
patrón
? Or what if I opened my mouth to speak and the nurse couldn't understand me, and they gave José the wrong medication, and he died? What if he died all because of me and my not-yet-perfect English?