The Salt God's Daughter (6 page)

He looked at Dolly.

“You, little girl, look like you know all about this. Want to scare away the birds today?” Dolly shook her head no. She'd rather pick berries, she told him. He stared at her, hesitating.

“She doesn't mean no,” my mother said, quickly. “Dolly's my obstinate child. Don't know where she gets it from. Don't worry, she's a team player. She'll do whatever you want her to do. Won't you, Dolly?” Dolly nodded. My mother smiled. I noticed how Lou shifted his weight onto his right leg, just as Dolly did.

He turned his gaze to me. “Look at you. A big, healthy girl. You grow pretty girls, Diana. I always knew you would.”

“Well, it's genetic,” my mother said, putting her arm around Dolly's shoulders protectively.

“The girls know about the berries? No berries with white or green tips.” We nodded. We were picking for market today, and people cared about the color and shape of the berry. Satisfied, Lou gave my mother a squeeze around her waist, in a way that made me uncomfortable.

The good thing about farm work, I was coming to see, was that people didn't ask questions. It wasn't just single mothers who wanted a job. Men in button-down shirts and cowboy hats gathered near the truck, waiting for picking cards. There were families living alongside the farms in shanties, or sleeping in their cars, like us, ready to work on a second's notice. Their children ran wild in rumpled, torn clothing, just as we did, and they worked alongside their parents, too. Finally, we were with people like us. Finally, we could stop pretending.

“That's what it feels like when you are home. You can stop pretending,” my mother said once.

A young boy in a ripped green shirt rolled a ball at my foot. He looked about my age. I caught a flicker of fear in his eyes. But I could be trusted.

“I'm Ruthie,” I said, handing him his ball. I noticed that it had a decal with a picture of
Jaws
, the shark movie I had wanted to see. My mother had said I was too young for such horror. My sister and I usually ran around with our backpacks, pretending we had been at school all day, and nobody questioned us. It wasn't the case with Felix. My mother later told me he and his parents were
sin papeles
, “without papers.”

“I belong to them,” he said, nodding toward his family, now gathered against a small blue car with missing taillights. A large German shepherd came bounding up to him. Felix smiled, seemingly eager for a playmate. “He's friendly.
Mira
—you can pet him.”

“She's afraid,” my mother said quickly, putting her arm around me. “That's okay, honey. You just wait for me here. You've had enough problems with animals lately.”

While my mother followed Mr. Takahashi to the truck for our picking cards, we talked. “Do you even like strawberries?” Felix asked, holding his hand out. He had a large, bright strawberry in his palm. “Go ahead, you should know what you're picking, how to tell the good ones from the bad.”

Dolly nudged me. “Take it. Don't be rude.”

I picked up the strawberry and bit into it. My tongue curved around the sweet meat, its juice escaping down my chin. Felix and I both laughed.

“Other strawberries are picked for canneries. They're watery, or like straw. These are good ones,” he said. I pictured myself dipping strawberries in chocolate, which I'd seen on television once. A man was feeding them to a woman, while picnicking along a river.

“Your hair, it's called strawberry blond?” He had a wide face. His black hair was wavy, if not a little long. I imagined us friends. We were so very much alike, I could tell already. I would not have to explain anything to him. Something about him made me relax, even if I did tower over him by a few inches. And he seemed much more interested in being friends with me than with Dolly, which made me a little happy and Dolly a little irritated.

“She's only nine, okay?” Dolly whispered loudly to him.

“I'm nine, too,” said Felix. Dolly put her hands on her hips. He walked away, leaving Dolly and me to gather our picking carts.

“What did you do that for?” I asked.

“His parents, I think, are worried about getting caught,” Dolly whispered, as she turned me around. “Lets just hope they have a good day.” Felix had said that the farmer was paying at a piece rate today, which meant that fast, careful workers could make more money by filling as many boxes as possible with the best berries, rather than just getting paid for the number of hours spent picking. “Be careful and you'll make money,” Felix had said.

The first thing I thought of was Dolly. We were at that competitive age, both on the brink of adolescence. An air of anxiety hung over the field, as if the morning dew were heavier here than anywhere else on Earth. The workers were anxious to get started, shifting their weight as they eyed the plants like cats stalking their prey. Would there be enough of the best berries to make money? Would Dolly and I each have enough? Enough strawberries, enough kindness, enough of my mother's favor? How long would the picking last before the skies turned dark and the rain came, turning the field to mud? A storm was coming; I could feel it in my bones.

I could see Felix on the other side of the field. More children straggled behind his mother, grasping at the hem of her
brightly colored skirt. My mother didn't like the word “illegals,” which she announced when Mr. Takahashi called them that. “Well, my grandparents were Russian Jews. My grandmother hid under the deck of a boat to get here,” she lied. “She arrived in this great country of ours upside down. Home is where you live, not only where you're from.”

I reached up and took her hand, trying to quiet her.

Mr. Takahashi looked annoyed. He stopped shuffling his pile of picking cards. He could hire and fire workers without explanation. He handed us each a picking card and walked away.

“Well, shall we, girls?” We joined the rest of the in-betweeners, those for whom this strawberry field was both a haven and a purgatory, the place between homes where some could never leave.

My palms were sweating. My neck itched underneath the collar of my red sweatshirt. I looked down at the mud. Something jumped up from a leaf, and a perfect ripe strawberry fell out. I decided it had been a frog. If my mother had the moon to conspire with, then I would have the help of my imaginary friends, too. I gazed at the long furrows, at the lines of workers in dark blue shirts and pants, bent over their picking carts, so low that their blue caps almost touched the ground. They looked like gnomes, moving up and down, pulling shoots and runners, tossing rotting strawberries to the side. There were people everywhere. This was good, because I so often felt alone.

“Hurry,” Dolly announced, standing in the furrow next to mine. She adjusted the green basket.

“Work carefully,” my mother said, before she turned away. I saw her reach up toward the sun and then flip her hair back. She checked the drip-irrigation system, and I lost sight of her. I looked at the number on my yellow card. It would soon be covered with punched holes, one for each basket of berries that I delivered to the truck. Soon, the paper, like my hands, would
be stained with red juice. Within hours I wouldn't be able to read the number.

I put my card in my pocket. I scoped out the plants in my row. My eyes searched for the green, well-attached stems that would lead me to the best fruit, just as Felix had told me.

I moved quickly, focused on the berries, careful to avoid the white or green skins, picking the best berries that were unmarred. I tried to be gentle so I wouldn't tear their skin, but all I could think about was my new friend and the fact that my mother's back was probably aching from the cold damp morning.

Within an hour my pants were wet, my hands freezing, and I was imagining a warm beach bonfire and the smell of whiskey.

My eyes blurred as I moved quickly down the furrows, pushing my cart. I pushed, scanned the plants, and then bent over, brushing away leaves to my left and right, picked the berries, placed them in baskets, checked the plants, and moved on, all in one fluid motion. I took care not to pull but to twist the berry off the stem, leaving the green leaves on the fruit. I selected only berries of the proper size, firmness, shape, and color, arranging them neatly in baskets to catch the shopper's eye. Once my baskets were filled, I rushed to have them tallied. Then I rushed back and began the process again.

Dolly was ahead. She had more holes punched.

I picked up speed, not straightening up once, thinking of the money we would make today.

“Be careful or he won't pay you.” It was Felix. He had made his way over to me. He plucked a white berry from my basket and held it in his dirt-creased palm. He tossed it away.

Dolly whistled from the furrow a few feet over. “Hurry up.”

“Don't look up. Don't watch her,” Felix said. Then he was gone.

I may have picked a few white berries, but I counted on the fact that Dolly would probably go for the largest, overripe ones.

I tried not to watch her. Each time I looked up at her, she seemed busy, flicking bits of leaves. Then, when I kept my eyes focused on my own plants, I could feel her eyes on me. I forgot to be careful. Strawberries fell; some stems broke. I crushed a few berries under my feet and kicked them aside with my sneaker. Something darted in and out, bending the stems, showing me where the ripest, reddest berries were. Perhaps it was the wind. I kept reaching for more berries.

Suddenly, there was a scuffle. I looked up. About twenty feet across the field, Felix was shouting, “
La migra
.” You could see hands trembling in the fields now that the border police had arrived. You could see the strawberries falling from the workers' hands, all through the field, little red triangles falling onto brown mud.

Two uniformed men took Felix's father away, leading him through the field. I watched Felix and his mother run, hugging him. I saw them talking with Mr. Takahashi and counting money. Then the police car drove away with the father in the back. Felix stood in the middle of the road, watching. He had been left, too.

Then he disappeared.

“Keep working,” said Dolly. I tried to tear my eyes away from Felix's car, now just a pile of dust.

“How can they do that? How can they let that happen?” I asked.

Mr. Takahashi walked over to me. He plucked a berry covered in brown streaks from my basket. He held it up to my face, so close that I could smell his sweat and the coffee on his breath. I could see every tiny rip in his skin. He turned to my mother. “Diana, you don't like the way I run this ranch, I think? Not good enough for you?”

I dropped my basket. Bruised strawberries spilled out across the ground. He glared at Dolly and shook his head. “I keep saying no to you, but you don't give up, Diana. You
want to be free, so now you're free, eh?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pile of cash.

“Walk, girls—don't look back,” my mother said. “Just act normally. No, not that way. Faster.” I climbed into the car. “He's still in love with me,” my mother whispered, her knuckles going white on the steering wheel. “So, that's that.”

I pulled my hood down over my face.

I still thought about the sea lion, the one I'd left to die in the hot sun. And about Dr. Brownstein, who had protected us when she could have walked away. I fantasized about a different ending to the day, about sitting around with the workers and their children, about making real friends. This was the first place I'd ever felt at home, and now I was forbidden to ever come back. In my fantasy, my mother took out her guitar to play, and everyone thought her extremely beautiful and talented, begging her to sing the Hebrew prayer Shalom Rav and the Spanish “Malagueña.” Because of her, they would think I was special, too, not just a big-boned girl with pink Coke-bottle glasses, with a sister who was mad at everyone. They'd see that I, like my mother, was someone worth knowing, too.

“What are we going to do now?” Dolly asked.

My mother started the car, her eyes welling up. “Don't know. I'm not sure I can keep going like this. We're down on our luck.”

It was time to head back to the civilized world, she said, where the real people lived, away from the in-betweeners. It was time we had a stable life. “We're never coming back here. I won't humiliate myself again with that
farkakte
man.” I started to cry.

“What's wrong, Ruthie? What is it?”

“Can I come back to see Felix? He was my friend.”

“You didn't even know him,” said Dolly.

“Ruthie,” my mother said. “Don't make me do this. We're both too old, and soon you won't want me to come back for you.”

She explained that we would do something fun now. We could become pirates.

Dolly cheered.

I suddenly thought about the child I would have, my Naida. I asked my mother how long I'd have to wait for her.

“She'll be ready when it's time, don't worry. Children always are.”

I noticed that she didn't say, “Mothers always are.”

I
T WAS EASY to become night pirates, casing the streets in the rich section of town. The waning moon, which rose like a great orange ball in the sky, would bring us a productive and protected night of trash picking. The moon's position in the sky made it appear larger, looming, as if it would be traveling right along with us.

Grateful to have left the fields, we drove into the city, passing the streetlights and the dank smells that filled the alleys between the crowded apartment buildings. My mother, undaunted, kept driving. Within a few minutes, we hit the part of town where people left their undesired belongings in bags at the end of their driveways. So began a night of plundering trash for treasures. This, we knew how to do. We had done it before so many times.