After Peaches (7 page)

Somewhere, across the province, José was trying to sleep too. Was he hungry? Sad? Sick? He'd always been the happiest person in the flower fields, cracking jokes and telling stories. Now I pictured him behind a big chain-link fence, miserable and wishing he were anywhere else.

Analía thought I was smart enough to help him. But how was I supposed to get to the cherry farm without telling anyone why I wanted to go? Papá and Mamá would think I was crazy if I hurried them toward cherries when I had been so excited about strawberries and raspberries. And if José
wasn't
okay, what could I do to change anything?

By the time my eyes finally drifted shut, I still didn't know how to get to the cherry farm, or what I could do once I was there.

That night I dreamed of leaving our town in Mexico. I dreamed of the thieves who stole all our stuff and hit Papá so hard that he fell down, and Mamá and I thought he was dead. And I dreamed of the woman who came running from her house, cleaned his cuts, let us sleep inside and gave us a bag of
tortillas
to take along for our journey the next day. Her kindness didn't bring our stuff back, or heal Papá's black eye and cuts, but we felt less alone because she was there, and that kept us going.

When I woke up, I knew I had to convince my parents that we needed to get to the cherry farm. We had no time to spare.

CHAPTER 9
True or False?

It seemed like we spent a million years picking strawberries. The girl in purple never came back, and no one else talked to us all week. I tried to distract myself by working out something interesting to write about, but so far nothing had happened that I felt like writing down.

I practiced English words to myself as I dropped strawberries into my white bucket, repeating all the words I could think of that had vowels we didn't have in Spanish. When I first started learning English,
bear
and
bird
,
hip
and
heap
, or
collar
and
color
all sounded the same. Between the rows of the strawberry fields, I practiced all of them until each word sounded different, and I thought I sounded Canadian.

Then I tried to imagine what Julie was doing at her father's place—swimming in a pool on top of his skyscraper, or picnicking with him in a park (or, more likely, playing games on her computer or hanging out at the library). I wondered if she and her father would go to the museum she had told me about with the huge movie screen that wrapped around the audience like a giant bubble. Or maybe today they were at the kite store she had mentioned, or walking around the seawall. I invented all sorts of exciting things that Julie might be doing, but no matter what, José and his family kept sneaking into my thoughts.

I'd tried six times to write a letter to Analía, but each letter looked like a list of excuses or a bunch of promises I couldn't keep. In the end, I decided to wait until I could tell her that José was okay. Once we got to the cherry farm, I'd ask José for Analía's e-mail address, find a library or café with Internet access and write to her myself to tell her how things were.

Even after a week of thinking, though, I still didn't know how to make my parents quit strawberry picking and drive east without telling them Analía's suspicions.

One Saturday morning, we woke up to rain pelting the tent and the Fraser River rushing past our campsite. I could hardly believe my luck.

“It's too rainy to pick today,” I told my sleeping parents, whispering as loud as I could over the water noise. They hated it when I made too much noise in the morning, but I didn't see how they could sleep with the racket of the rain anyway. If I were convincing enough, maybe they'd decide to travel east right away. Traveling would be better than sitting around doing nothing, and at least we'd be a few kilometers closer to José.

Papá groaned and sat up in his sleeping bag.“Maybe it'll clear up,” he mumbled. “
Ojalá
. I hope so.”

It didn't clear though. It got worse and worse, and after a few hours of waiting for dryness—first huddled in the tent, and then sitting in the car—we packed up, looked at the map and planned the route east.

“Maybe we can beat the rain clouds and still do some picking today,” Papá said, following the road on the map with his finger.

I hoped there weren't many farms in the next few hundred kilometers. Right now, a single farm looking for fruit pickers would be enough to hold us back for days.

In the backseat, as we drove, I tried to write in my notebook. Even if I'd had a decent story, the road was too curvy for writing, and I couldn't concentrate anyway. All the way across the green, misty Fraser Valley, into the craggy Coastal Mountains, and over the twisty Coquihalla Pass, I prayed for more rain. At least until we got to José's cherry farm.

In the early afternoon, the rain stopped, and so did we. We ate lunch at a picnic table by the highway up in the mountains, halfway between the berries of the Fraser Valley and the fruit trees of the Okanagan. I imagined José's face behind the chain-link fence, and Analía in Mexico City, running toward the mailman, hoping for a letter from me that wouldn't come. I crossed my fingers so tight they hurt.

“At least it's drying out,” Papá said when we were on the road again.

Mamá twisted around in the seat to face me. “Sorry we didn't get to your raspberries,
mi amor
. I hope you're not too disappointed.” She looked so worried that I almost laughed. Obviously, I was doing a good job of keeping Analía's secret if my own mother couldn't figure out what was going on.

It took a long time for the road to stop climbing and level off. Bit by bit, the mountains looked less craggy. More trees poked up from the hillsides, and after hours and hours of driving, the road sloped down into a valley full of green fields with the sprinklers going. The hills beyond were brown.

I was the first one to see the sign, a fluorescent pink piece of plastic stapled to a telephone pole. Big sloppy black capitals said
CHERRY PICKERS WANTED. CASH
.

“
Llegamos!
We're here!” I shouted, and Papá jumped, jerking the car to the right for a scary moment before he got control again. I didn't know exactly where José's farm was, but if people were advertising for cherry pickers, we had to be close.

“
Tranquila, m'hija
!” His wide eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.“Calm down! Why are you so excited about cherries all of a sudden? I thought strawberries and raspberries were your favorites.”

Mamá looked back at me again, suspicious this time. “You've been missing José, haven't you?”

I nodded vigorously. “Maybe we could work at his farm next? I mean, if we're going to pick cherries, we might as well pick them where we already know people, right?”

Mamá gave me a funny look, as though she'd finally realized I was up to something. But by then, it didn't matter what she thought, because we were halfway across the province. Any moment, we'd be at José's farm.“Well, okay,” said Mamá.“It does get pretty lonely when everyone is speaking a language you can't understand. And it'll be good to see the others again.”

My parents talked about that for a while, and I peered out the window, looking for clues. José's farm could be around any corner. In fact, he could appear on the side of the road at any moment…if he could get out, that is. I pictured the dripping fangs of a huge guard dog at the front gate and shivered.

The road wound up a steep hill, and at the end, a chain-link fence marked the edge of the cherry farm. I scanned the entrance for any sign of José or the other workers but saw only a small dirt parking lot packed full of dusty cars. A little red building stood in one corner with a sign saying
Office,
and behind that stood rows and rows of cherry trees, as far as I could see.

In that second before I stepped out of the car, nothing moved, only a few leaves in the trees. No vicious guard dog. No chained-up farm workers. I felt my face go hot. What if we'd hurried here for nothing?

I stepped out of the car. Nothing happened. I could hear the breeze and feel it against my neck, but that was all.

The longer I'd thought about Analía's letter, the more I'd convinced myself it must be true. But now I was relieved Analía told me not to tell anyone because I'd probably have felt really dumb telling my parents and José what I'd imagined.

“
Hola
!” called a familiar voice. It was Marcos, one of the other men who had worked with my parents in the flower fields. I'd never paid much attention to him and he never seemed interested in anything I had to say. Now I noticed that he looked exhausted. His hair was all straggly, like it needed washing, and he had dark shadows under his eyes. His lips smiled at us, but the wrinkles in his forehead made him look worried.

“Marcos,
cómo estás
?” Papá asked, as if he couldn't see for himself how tired Marcos looked. Adults do that sometimes, ignoring the obvious and asking the question anyway. Papá hugged him, and Mamá kissed Marcos's cheek, as friends do in Mexico.

“
Bien
,” Marcos said. “Fine.” He reached down a hand and ruffled my hair. I hated it when people did that, and I flinched and almost jumped away when I saw Mamá give me a warning glance.

I ignored her and kept looking around. Where was José (who never ruffled my hair)? He would have asked how my summer was going, what we'd seen so far, and what I thought I'd like about the cherry farm. So far, I definitely thought climbing the trees would be best. From the top, you could probably see clear across the valley. I felt a flutter of excitement. Now
that
would be something interesting to write about. These big bushy trees would be good for hiding in, and I bet I could learn many interesting things from way up in a cherry tree. It would be fun to know what adults talked about when they didn't think I was around.

The adults kept chatting about this and that, until Papá excused himself and stepped into the farm office. A few minutes later, he poked his head out and motioned us in.

“I'll see you later,” Marcos said, returning to the cherry trees.

Inside, the office was smaller than it had seemed from the parking lot. The walls were made of fake-looking dark brown wood, like the kitchen cupboards in our basement suite. The desk was covered with stacks of paper, and the man behind the desk—the
patrón,
the farmer—looked small too until he stood up and towered over Papá. The
patrón
had a long white beard and a big belly, like Santa Claus. He said we could head to the far end of the orchard and start picking right away. “Later, you can pitch your tent next to the building where the rest of the Mexicans are staying. Plenty of work here,” he added, rubbing the top of his belly. “Some trees on the sunny side are already ripening, and the others only have a few more days to go. You got here just in time.”

He was right, in more ways than one.