Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The next morning I went into a deep funk.
Even Abuelita couldn’t cheer me up with freshly baked cocadas and an extremely detailed accounting of the Colombian telenovela I’d missed yesterday.
It was pretty salacious—apparently Lolita and Esteban could never be together, because Esteban was her hair stylist and her new boss, but also maybe her estranged half brother.
But I wasn’t invested. I was in ideological crisis.
How to reconcile the fact that Cooperative Heaven was essentially the same as Corporate Hell?
In Café Bavaria, an impersonal, large plantation owned by a German exploited Nicaraguan immigrants for low pay and no benefits.
In Café Alegre, a cooperative owned by Costa Ricans exploited Costa Rican children and Nicaraguan immigrants for low pay and no benefits.
They both used pesticides. Which was worse?
This disillusion shook me to the foundation of my being because for me, people are their beliefs.
If cooperation was just a beautiful impractical dream, then who was I now?
And what was I doing here in Costa Rica?
I might as well go home and be that divorce lawyer my family wanted me to be.
Before I could fully fall into a pit of despair, my phone buzzed.
So I took leave of Abuelita and promised to buy her some lotto tickets.
I ran across the street and sat at the bus stop outside the Chinese-owned market. There was a young man painting over some fresh graffiti. A lot of it was already gone, but it appeared to be a xenophobic message. The universality of racism was a shocking lesson.
My phone buzzed again. I opened my email.
TO: Dee Blum
FROM: Matías Khalil
SUBJECT: Making fans
I got a call from Eugenio and he loves you. You know, he isn’t an easy nut to crack. He was very impressed by your optimism and passion. He even said you’ll be sharing research. What a vote of confidence!
By the way, I went back to your website—looking for clues about your identity—and I stumbled across your essay about cooperation and the fundamental goodness of humanity. You’re quite an idealist. So if humans are fundamentally good, how do you explain greed? Violence? Deception?
Speaking of deception, faceless “Dee.” Come on, give me one clue!
* * *
TO: Matías Khalil
FROM: Dee Blum
SUBJECT: Re: Making fans
That’s great to hear about Professor Ramírez, I’m so excited to be working with him.
So, normally, I view violence and greed as a default from the norm.
It’s what happens when things break down.
Evil is not part of our *essential* nature.
But sometimes I have my doubts. Like right now.
I went to a supposedly ethical farm yesterday and saw some very shady practices.
That really rocked me. What am I supposed to think when the good guys are as bad as the bad guys?
How do you reconcile that? Because I’m having a really hard time.
As per my identity, okay, fine, one hint: blue.
It was unusual to discuss something as profound as human nature with someone I’d never met, but somehow, it felt natural with Matías. So many conversations did. I couldn’t pinpoint why.
An alarm started going off on my phone. Time to call Suzanne. I dreaded telling her about my site visit. My first real assignment was a fail, and that was before I committed a felony. Maybe I wouldn’t tell her that part.
“I’m afraid Café Alegre is a bust,” I told her. “They’re not actually organic.”
“What do you mean? They’re Ethical Coffee International certified.”
“I saw the pesticides myself.”
“Wow,” she said, surprise and concern seeping into her voice. I could almost see her at her desk, sitting up straighter. “That’s so strange.” She paused, evidently needing a moment to process it. Just like I had. “Did you see them use it?”
“No.”
“Hmm.” I heard a clicking sound, like a pen against teeth.
“Is it possible you misinterpreted something? It’s just that this is so unusual.
We’ve never had a reason to doubt the credibility of certified farms. Ethical Coffee International does very thorough evaluations.
It would be shocking if anything got past them. ”
“I got a soil sample.”
“Oh!” She sounded impressed. I puffed up. I had impressed Suzanne Lyon. “How? What did you put it in?”
“A Ziploc.”
She laughed. She was no longer impressed. “We can’t use that. Certainly you must realize that.” Now that she said it, I did. “The bag could be contaminated.”
A preteen boy sat next to me on the bench and said in Spanish, “I’ve had sex before.”
“What was that?” asked Suzanne.
“Nothing.” I scooted to the very end of the bench.
“Look, I’m impressed with your initiative, but if you’ll permit me to mentor you for a moment, I think you need a reality check. You’re new to this industry and don’t have the lay of the land. It’s likely that what you saw was a fungicide. Some are permitted.”
“I guess that’s possible.”
“No, it’s probable . Dee, it’s easy for us to level accusations from our position, but how would you feel if you were struggling to make ends meet in a middle-income country and some inexperienced American came and slandered your farm without really understanding it?”
Oh god. Was I just a privileged and naive do-gooder who was making things worse by not understanding the complexity?
And how could I tell her about the child labor now?
She already thought I was naive and overzealous.
And what if she was right? What if those chemicals were approved?
And what if Tomás was just a disaffected teenager, mad at his parents and making up stories?
Kids help their families with work all around the world.
I had spent countless hours of my childhood separating yarn knots for my mother’s Etsy tea cozies.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I said.
“Look, Dee, I don’t want to completely dismiss it, either. If you have serious doubts, you should go back. Take a more extensive tour and see if they allay your concerns.”
“I mean, I could.” No way. I was not going back there. I had kidnapped Manuel’s stepson. “But there are so many other farms to visit. Maybe we just take them off the list and focus on some other farms?”
“Café Alegre just got written up in Condé Nast Traveler . That translates into a lot of interest from our potential clients. So let’s keep them in the mix.
Anyhow, I’ve got to get to a meeting, so we need to wrap this up.
” I heard her chair creak and then the click of heels against the ground.
“Visit some more farms so we have choices. But don’t forget we need to get this trip up and running by June.
Which means your work needs to be done by February. ”
Uh-oh. February did not seem like a realistic due date given my complete lack of forward progress.
“Once I had sex with an American,” the preteen said. “A blond.”
“ No hablo espanol ,” I said.
“What? Will this be a problem?” Suzanne asked.
“Nope,” I said. “I’m on it.” I hung up, more anxious than before the call. So far, I had failed at finding a farm for the trip, I’d failed at reporting Café Alegre, and I’d made myself look bad to my boss. Not a brilliant start to my career.
“I’m very advanced for my age,” said the preteen.
I got up and walked to the mercado entrance. I did not need to add statutory rape to my list of crimes. I called my dad under the awning.
“Dee?” His voice was hopeful.
“I miss you, Dad.” There was an echo. I miss you, Dad.
“We miss you, too, honey.” I could hear him turning down the music in his office. “Do you need anything? Are you safe?”
“I’m fine.” I struggled to make my voice normal. “I’m great.”
“Thanks for that email. It’s good to hear from you now and then. Even if the content is you reprimanding me.” I pinched my fingers together, hard. He was quiet for a moment and I could hear the low buzz of his computer. “I’m sorry for impersonating you and making your website.”
This was the first time my dad had ever apologized to me. I think my brain short-circuited. “I’m sorry I got so mad,” I said. “The stuff you put on there was actually kind of useful. Also, I’m impressed you figured out how to hack my external hard drive.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I had help with that.”
“Nicole?”
“Yup.”
“She’s such a traitor.”
“But a tech-savvy one, you must admit.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Anything new?”
“Well, your mom’s Etsy store has seen a big drop in orders. I guess the tea cozy market is saturated. She’s also been getting into an unusual number of fights on Nextdoor. Causation or correlation?”
“Causation, definitely.”
“Agree. And the Dodgers got a new pitching coach. I’ll forward you the article.”
“Yeah, do that.”
I heard my mom calling my dad in the background. “Jacob, Coldwell’s calling on the house line. Said you won’t pick up your cell!”
“Look, honey, I gotta go. But please call again soon.”
I hung up, my chest heavy with an unidentifiable emotion.
Baby steps , I whispered to myself. You don’t fix a broken relationship with one apology.
I felt the cool gold snakes against my skin.
I saw my grandfather picking me up from the Jewish Community Center the day I got into a fight with my cousin Nicole.
Always say you’re sorry first , he told me.
Love is a lot more important than pride.
Well, Dad said sorry first this time. Next time it would be me.
I headed into the market and perused the lotto selection—would Abuelita want to play La Lotería Nacional , La Lotería Instantánea , Lotto , Pitazo , Nuevos Tiempos , or Los Chances ? I decided to get one of each to be safe. As I handed the clerk some money, my phone buzzed. Adrián.
“ Hola, Preciosa . How’s your existential dread today?”
“Somewhere between not great and tossing myself into a river. Like, not all the way to The Sorrows of Young Werther , but getting there.”