Chapter 21
It was Friday, one of the many local holidays when the children didn’t have school.
Louise had summoned me by email. She was excited to show me something.
“Trust me” was all she said as she got into the car beside me.
With Ida and Henry tussling in the “wayback” and Louise cagily giving directions, we drove west of town to a nondescript neighborhood with squat gray buildings and littered streets.
“Park here,” she instructed, indicating a spot beneath a gnarled jacaranda tree.
When I opened the trunk door, the children bounded out like freed dogs.
Henry found a stick on the ground, dragging it behind him as he chased after Ida, who was laughing.
“When will I finally get to see this story of yours?” Louise asked.
“It’s not ready.”
“You’re too concerned with perfection.” Henry had begun to make low howling noises, still dragging his stick, and she called sharply, “Stop making that horrible noise,” adding to me in a patronizing tone, “They have to learn to fit into the adult world, the way Mexican children do.”
I stared at her, furious. How dare you talk to my son that way.
I felt the words in my throat. How dare you tell me how to parent.
But as I was about to speak, I saw in amazement that Henry wasn’t upset.
He was going along in happy silence, dragging his stick against the ground, allowing Ida to drift far ahead of him in a reversal of their usual roles.
And so, I calmed myself. My emotions changed; I was only a little nervous for Ida, now several blocks ahead of us.
That, too, I quelled, worried about seeming out of place if I raised my voice to call her back, or racist for worrying about her safety.
Instead, I glanced to Louise, as if she alone could decide to call Ida back. Louise said approvingly:
“Look at Ida, so far ahead of us! It’s like she knows the way.”
It was several more minutes before we arrived at a tiny concrete square—in reality not a square but an empty triangle, its boundaries three crumbling walls. At one corner, several stray dogs nosed lazily at an old Styrofoam container beneath a makeshift shrine.
Settling onto a dusty segment of wall, I said, “I see why you took us here, it’s charming.”
“Just wait,” she said, tilting up her chin haughtily.
I laughed, stretched my legs ahead of me.
The children made a game of searching for things on the ground.
“Artifacts,” Ida called them. A twenty-centavo piece, a shard of blue-and-white pottery, a plastic fork.
Louise sat in apparent distaste, erect in the fierce midday heat, holding her huge black leather handbag over her head as a parasol.
“Disgusting,” she sniffed when Ida showed her the white fork. Again I watched anxiously for Ida to become upset by Louise’s harshness, and was surprised when she took it in stride. She was creating an altar to dead fairies, she told Louise.
“Well, all right then,” Louise allowed, pursing her lips.
Some more minutes passed before a battered van pulled up.
Almost immediately, women appeared in doorways along the sidewalk.
Three men had come out of the van and were wielding metal poles, a tall frayed broom.
“Buenos días, buenos días,” they called cheerily, turning all around like masters of ceremony.
Pointing to them, Louise said in a whisper:
“Watch carefully, Mia.”
It was like fast-forwarding through a well-edited film.
In seamless movements, the men erected a tent, tying a blue tarp to the ends of the poles, around the broom handle, pushing the broom against the base of a streetlamp.
A sound began, like a shovel rhythmically scraping against ice, as a boy who couldn’t have been more than twelve expertly threw plastic crates from the back of the truck, each coming to rest in the exact center of the tent.
As quickly as they came to rest, they were overturned, arranged into steps, tables spread with white cloths.
An old-fashioned scale was carried out, a roll of clear plastic bags.
Last the goods were brought out, with the same efficiency and understated ceremony.
Produce of every imaginable type and color, nuts and dried fruits and beans, gleaming jars of honey.
A smell of earth rose, overtaking the pavement smells of dust and dog waste.
The last to appear were gaping heads of lettuce.
The boy who had thrown the crates stood in a far corner stripping them of their outer leaves, a mound of gargantuan red-veined petals at his feet.
Taking in the completed composition, I noticed the vibrant yellow of the building that formed the backdrop to the red fountains of mounded ripe strawberries, the various hues and textures of green.
I saw the swath of blue of the tent, punctuating the yellow.
Above everything, the cloudless sky. It was like sitting before a magnificent abstract painting.
But in the next moment, the oldest of the men raised a roll of plastic bags, then set them prominently onto a central pedestal, and on cue, dozens of women rushed forward from where they’d stood waiting in doorways, in small groups at the periphery of the square, from nowhere, it seemed.
“Go,” Louise said, pushing my back.
I drifted ahead, engulfed in a current of bodies.
Almost without thought, I took bags and filled them.
Small green squashes, their skins slightly prickly, their orange blossoms not yet wilted; tiny white potatoes, some no bigger than marbles.
I plunged my fingers into a bin of beans, cool and hard as pebbles.
My hands could scarcely keep pace with my eyes.
A woman’s huge forearm brushed my breast, her musky odor meeting me when she reached to retrieve a handful of velvet gray mushrooms that had suddenly appeared.
Henry ran up, asking for strawberries, the English words jarring.
“Senora, senora, mire,” one of the men was calling.
“Muy rica, muy sabrosa.” Smiling with pride, he held up a huge papaya, turning it slowly for me to inspect.
Several women edged closer, awaiting my decision.
I didn’t even like papaya, but I took it.
The man nodded his approval, “Sí, llévela. Está muy buena,” and the women rushed forward, sighing ruefully as they searched the wooden crate in vain for a papaya as wonderful as mine.
“?Qué más, senora?” the man behind the scale was calling to me.
Dazedly shaking my head, I began to hand the bags to him one by one to be weighed and tallied.
I anxiously counted the bills in my wallet, cowering at the thought of coming up short.
It suddenly seemed impossible I had enough to pay for all of this.
He was calling out the sum to me, noventa y cinco.
Not even ten dollars. I handed him the single pink bill, waving off the change.
Bags at my wrists, dangling from my fingers, I stumbled away toward Louise and the children, flushed hotly, my face dewy with sweat.
The whole ride back to Louise’s, my mood persisted, like the residue of salt and sun on your skin after a day at the beach.
A pleasant spaciness. In the back, the children lay curled against one another.
Maybe they’d fallen asleep, I thought. As we pulled onto the verge beside Louise’s house, I called quietly, “Ida? Henry?”
Whispers. An eruption of laugher.
“It’s like they’re stoned,” Louise said.
“I think I’m stoned! That was wild. But, God, my Spanish—”
“It will come. Once you’ve been here a few years—”
“If only! I wish we never had to leave.”
“Then don’t. You and the children belong here.”
We had arrived at Louise’s house, and as the car idled, I gazed out over the street, lost to the dream, jarred back by the chiming of Louise’s opened door.
“See you tomorrow,” she said. I must have shown my confusion. “Didn’t you remember? I’m coming to your house for comida. I’m finally meeting Tom.”
The thought sent a spasm of panic through me. “Oh, of course,” I said quickly, “I’ve been looking forward to it.”
I offered a few more platitudes—it would be fun, Tom would enjoy meeting her—smiling to hide my unease, the fact I had forgotten.