The Lemon Orchard (7 page)

Julia knew, from previous visits, that the entire kitchen library concerned lemons. There were texts on the design and maintenance of lemon orchards. She found art books with drawings and paintings of lemons by Matisse, Picasso, Cézanne, Cassatt, Sargent, Velásquez, and Goya.

There was a whole shelf devoted to women surrealist painters, mostly Mexican, who had painted lemons: Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois, Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning, and Remedios Varo. There were histories, novels, and, especially, cookbooks with “lemon” in assorted languages in the title:
limón, citron, limão, citrom, λεμοvı, limone, cytryna,
and more.

Julia first gravitated to technical books regarding structure and design of citrus groves, and Chumash Indian sites uncovered during construction—abalone shells covered with red ochre ceremonial paint, petroglyphs carved into a rock ledge, a steatite boiling stone.

She reached for a well-worn cookbook. Its cloth cover had been green with gold leaf lettering, but age had turned it all brown. She turned the pages, saw her grandmother’s fine handwriting on the flyleaf and in the margins.

Standing there, she felt the desire to make something simple that would taste delicious—Jenny had loved baking. Julia’s skin tingled, as if Jenny were right there with her, helping her come up with a plan to help Roberto and Rosa. She glanced outside, looking for him, but the fog was still too thick to see.

“Come on, Bon,” she said. “Let’s go out.”

Bonnie seemed to smile—she always looked that way, happy, her tongue hanging out. Julia clipped on the leash, slipped a canvas bag over her shoulder. The air was damp, but not cold like New England fog: beneath the slight chill, she felt the land’s warmth pulling the water droplets straight off the ocean. The sun hadn’t risen over the mountains, but the day’s light permeated the marine layer and turned it silver.

She and Bonnie walked through the orchard, circling toward the barn and Roberto’s cabin along the old rutted, unpaved service road. Walking in the ghostly mist, she felt Jenny’s presence. A rabbit scampered across their path, and Bonnie let out a sharp bark.

The ranch trucks were parked in the turnaround, but she didn’t see Roberto’s old black Toyota Tundra. For a moment her heart sank, but then she heard the barn door creak open. She turned, smiling, expecting to see him.

“Hola, miss,” Serapio said.

“Good morning,” Julia said. “How are you?”

“I am fine,” he said.

“Is Roberto here?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “He worked many days in a row. With the fog and no wind, he take today to go home.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, disappointed.

“Is there something I can help with?”

“No thanks,” she said. Starting to walk away, she paused. Baking muffins would prolong the sense of Jenny being with her, and she’d do anything to hold on to that.

“I’d like to borrow one of the lemon pickers,” she said.

Serapio disappeared into the barn, returned a moment later with a long extendable pole that had a clipper and small basket at the top end. “When the rest of the crew comes, we can pick as many lemons as you want,” he said.

“That’s all right,” Julia said. “I used to be pretty good at it when I was young. Let’s see how I do now.”

Serapio laughed, as if he could see no point in a grown woman wanting to pick lemons when she had an entire crew at her disposal. She walked through sheets of gray cloud, the gnarled and twisted trees lining the path, their bitter fruit hanging low on the boughs. She dropped the leash to pluck the first lemon.

Another rabbit darted into the brush, but Bonnie pretended not to see. Her arthritis was too bad, and even without the excuse of the leash tugging at her throat, she didn’t want to bother giving chase to an animal she had no hope of catching.

Roberto

Roberto Rodriguez lived in the back apartment of his father’s house, on North Boyle Avenue. He didn’t have a particular day off, but when the winds weren’t blowing he put Serapio in charge and returned home to see his family. Family was everything to Roberto, the reason he had come to the United States in the first place. It seemed confusing, considering how much he missed the grandmother who had raised him—and Rosa—and all his
tíos
and
primos
in the village where he’d grown up, but he was here for them. The money he sent home helped them to survive. His grandma had cancer, and his
tía
took her to the hospital for treatment every week.

He stripped off his dusty clothes, took a shower. The walls were thin, and even with the water running he could hear the
La Reina del Sur
on television in his father’s house. He dried off, pulled on fresh jeans and a white T-shirt. By habit he splashed on Polo cologne and walked outside to enter through the front door.

“Hola, Esperanza,” he said to his father’s wife, and leaned down to give her a kiss.

“Su papá está durmiendo,” she said, giving him a hug, then returning to her knitting and the TV show.

Roberto nodded. He sat on the couch opposite Esperanza and settled down to wait. Even now, at thirty-five years old, the idea of seeing his father warmed him. Roberto was his own man, no question, and there was only one opinion he cared about in this world. His father had left Mexico when Roberto was five, to come to the States in search of a better life.

His father’s snores, coming from the bedroom—the only other room in the apartment besides the kitchen—comforted him. The room was dark; the day was getting hot, and Esperanza had closed the curtains to keep out the sun. The yellow walls were hung with old photos—of Roberto’s father as a young man, of Esperanza and her mother, of Roberto’s grandmother, of Roberto himself, and of Rosa. A statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe stood in the corner surrounded by candles, but Esperanza lit them only on Sundays and holidays.

The darkness and the sounds of his father’s snoring, Esperanza’s knitting needles clicking, and the voices on TV lulled Roberto. He felt tired from too many days without a break, and he stared at Rosa’s photo. It had been taken at school, first grade, just before they’d begun their journey north. His grandmother had saved it and sent it to Roberto once he’d reached L.A.

The airless room and the droning noise made his eyes heavy. He remembered the first time his father left. He felt as if the world had ended. Without his father there to help him and kiss him good night, he thought he had disappeared—not just his father, but Roberto himself. He would walk to school, but he couldn’t learn, or more that he didn’t want to, and anything that seeped into his mind happened accidentally. All he could think of was the empty hole where he and his father used to be.

He worked hard in the fields, before and after school. His hands were covered with calluses, and his feet hurt because his boots were too small and they couldn’t afford bigger ones. In spite of the money his father sent home, the family never had quite enough to eat. Roberto grew tall, and he was very thin. At eleven he was ashamed of his height. The fact the kids called him Flaco—skinny—didn’t help.

Every other year his father would return. On those occasions Roberto came back to life. He could feel the excitement in the house building. His grandmother would have gotten word somehow, and the smells of good food cooking would fill the house. She didn’t even have to tell Roberto; he knew by the way the worry lines around her eyes and mouth softened. His
tías
—sisters of his father—would show up with food, and everyone would wait.

No one waited better than Roberto. He would go to the edge of town, where the only road from Puebla came in, and he would sit on a rock and watch for dust in the distance, a sign that a car or bus was approaching. His heart would skip beats, more and more, till he could barely breathe. Then he would see his father’s face in the window of his uncle’s car or the big blue bus, and he’d jump up and follow it all the way to his grandma’s house, dying to be the first one to greet his father as he stepped onto the yard.

“Papá,” he called his father. It was confusing, because when his father was away, he also called his grandfather “Papá.” It was almost like having two fathers—one who was there, and the real one who was only there sometimes. The real one was Roberto’s king. His father would hug and kiss everyone, give small presents he had brought back from L.A., maybe something extra special like a dress for his grandmother, and then they would all have dinner.

There would be candles and music, best of all some kind of meat, not just beans and rice. His grandfather liked to drink, so there would be
cerveza,
and after many beers his grandfather would get mean and start saying things like “Why don’t you send more money? Are you spending it on women? You leave your son here and we have to raise him, the least you can do is send us enough money.”

His grandmother would try to soothe him but nothing worked. The
cerveza
had power over him and eventually the old man would nod off at the table and the family would carry him off to bed. After everyone cleaned up, the aunts would go home. His grandmother would say good night and go to her room, and Roberto and his father would sit on the couch.

Always, there was his father’s strong arm around him, and his voice telling Roberto about the better life, and asking him about school, and work in the orchard and cornfields, and what was happening in the family. And he would tell Roberto other things, too.

“You have strength inside,” his father would say. “No one can make you do anything.”

“No one?” Roberto asked one time. There were many things people tried to make him do. His oldest cousin, Hernandez, was lazy, and when they were in the fields he told Roberto to do extra work while he lay in the sun or went climbing in the hills to look for hidden gold. Carlos, a boy at school, had weed and agave and was always saying he’d tell everyone Roberto was a
flaco
pussy if he didn’t smoke and drink with him. These pressures were hard to resist.

“Not one person in this world,” his father said. He seemed to sense the stresses Roberto was under but didn’t ask for names or stories. “You have power, son. And you are the only one. Even I cannot tell you what to do.”

Roberto wanted to say that wasn’t true. His father could tell him anything and he would do it. His father was darker than Roberto, and stocky. He had thick black hair and a moustache, and sometimes a beard. His eyes were black, while Roberto’s were brown, but there was no mistaking the fact they were father and son.

When his father was home, he worked in the field and orchard like before. Roberto wanted to skip school to be with him, but his father made him go. He never told his father about Señor Tedoro, the teacher who would rip up his papers and make fun of him in front of the class because he never got his homework right. Roberto knew it was because he worked so many hours it didn’t leave enough time for study—and besides, he had no one to help him with schoolwork.

Other kids had mothers. Even if their fathers had gone to the United States, their mothers stayed home and cared for them. Roberto couldn’t even remember his mother’s smile, or the touch of her hand, or the sound of her voice—she had died when he was born. His grandmother had never finished sixth grade; his grandfather couldn’t even write his own name, but made an “X” to sign papers.

So they would sit there on the couch, his father telling Roberto lessons about life, with one arm around his shoulder. Then, as Roberto grew sleepy, his father would pat his chest the way he had when he was a baby, and made the sound
ssh, ssh, ssh.
Over and over again:
ssh, ssh, ssh,
until Roberto couldn’t tell the difference between his father’s voice and the sound of blood coursing through his own veins, and he would fall asleep.

When he was twelve, and Geraldo, an older boy at school, started shoving him around, his father told him he needed to learn to fight. On that trip home, his father taught him to do push-ups, a hundred at a time, to run fast, and to climb trees. He told him the most important thing was to keep his eyes on his opponent, never look away. Move in fast, strike hard, use his speed. Never fake, never think it’s a game—if you fight, you fight to win. After a few matches, Geraldo and his friends left Roberto alone.

Roberto didn’t like to fight, but he would if he had to. His father had taught him there were many things in life a person would rather not do. But you had to survive, and one of the ways to do that was to maintain your honor.

Now, in the living room with
La Reina del Sur
filling the TV screen, Roberto looked up at Rosa’s picture and wondered, as he did every time he looked at it, why he hadn’t taken the biggest lesson from his father: leave his child in Mexico and go to America to work. Send home money, and visit when he could. Crossing the border had become much more dangerous during the years since his father had first left, and getting a green card, as his father had, was now almost impossible.

But Roberto hadn’t been able to bear the idea of being apart from Rosa. And as beautiful as the reunions with his father had been, the long stretches of months and years in between had been unbearable. Each year his father had come home to the village wearing Polo cologne, and one time when he’d left to go back to L.A., he’d forgotten the bottle in the bathroom. Every night Roberto would open the bottle and stand there with his nose in it, just to bring back the sense of his father.

He had wanted Rosa to have more than just a few visits, a remembered scent to help her hold on to her father. He wanted her to have
him,
for them to be together. In his family, for some cursed reason, all the women in his family, except for his grandmother, left.

Adriana had run off to Mexico City, too young and wild to give up her life to be a mother to Rosa and a wife to Roberto. And Roberto’s mother had died. When his grandmother was most angry at Rosa’s mother for leaving, she blamed it on a curse put on the family by a bruja who lived in the hills high above the village.

Nearly every day, Roberto thought he should give up life here in the States and go home. When they were kids, he and his cousins went to school and worked hard in the fields, but when they had a moment of spare time they would run into the hills and look for more gold. Sitting in his father’s dark living room, Roberto dreamed of being there now, with Rosa, finding the gold and building a good house and taking care of everyone.