The next morning Gabriella sat outside, swaying in the peeling, waterlogged porch swing—the same one her mother sat in so many years ago. She took a sip of the warm tea she’d brewed earlier and tried to relax. The smell of ripening oranges hung heavily in the air. She thought it ironic that the sweet, fragrant scent constantly surrounded her, invaded her senses, while her life consisted of nothing but bitterness.
The memories wouldn’t leave her be.
“Gabby!” She heard her mother call out to her as if it were yesterday. “Stay where I can see you!”
She remembered looking over her shoulder at her mother and feeling the satisfaction that comes from knowing you’re loved and safe in the world. She had wanted to push those boundaries, to see how far she could step out of bounds before her mother would rein her back in. Of course, the security she felt stemmed from knowing her mother would never let her go too far, and that’s what gave her the confidence to venture out in the first place.
On some level, Gabriella had realized this on that day as she ran up to the porch swing where her mother sat. She wrapped her arms around her neck. “Te amo, mamã.”
“I love you too, Gabby,” she’d told her, laughing her tinkling laugh.
Gabriella, in a moment of absolute seriousness had put her tiny hands on both sides of her mother’s face and turned it toward her until they were looking right at each other. “I never want to be without you,” she said in her most serious tone.
Her mother smiled easily and shook her head. “Gabby, I will always be your mother. Wild burros couldn’t drag me away from you.”
But something had. And for most of her life, Gabriella had been left to wonder why she and her father drove away in the night, never to return.
She sighed deeply, turning her thoughts toward Nicolas and then Sammy. She always considered herself lucky that her aunt immigrated to Texas because it’s where she eventually met Nicolas. And when they fell in love and married, she felt as if she were being given a second chance at a family. She had allowed herself to believe this one wouldn’t disappear. And for a while, it looked as if her luck had turned, that she could finally relax and stop worrying that the people she loved would disappear from her life. But the relief hadn’t lasted. While it was true that Nicolas hadn’t disappeared into the night like her parents, he had left all the same.
God, or fate, or whatever it was that controlled things in this world had reached down from the heavens and snatched him away. She felt the disgust gnawing in the pit of her stomach. Again. And now Sammy was showing an interest in knowing this God and she didn’t intend to allow it to go too far. There was just too much uncertainty, too many ways to get hurt. For instance, she reasoned with herself, if there were truly a God, the kind Nicolas spoke of, He must be a cruel one, and she wanted nothing to do with Him. She wouldn’t allow her son to get sucked into the fairy tale either. He’d already been through enough.
Gabriella saw a swirl of dust in the distance which meant Mona, Raul’s wife, would drive up at any moment. She put down her tea. It was time to get to work.
Mona pulled up in front of the house, throwing the dust up in a cloud. Gabriella watched as the door creaked open and Mona stepped out. Dressed in a plaid skirt and striped blouse—the dress of the old ones—she stood exactly 4 feet, 9 inches tall, although she told anyone who would listen she was 5 feet tall. Mona’s face was broad, and she had a habit of scrunching up her features, which left the impression she was always contemplating something. Which she was. The thick black stockings she wore with everything bunched up and puffed out around her knees. She wore her husband’s work boots. She was 71 years-old.
“Are you ready?” Mona asked in Spanish as she walked around to the trunk of her car and popped it open.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Gabriella said, walking down the steps to meet her. She looked into the jam-packed trunk, which contained an assortment of wood, tools and paint. A few days ago, Gabby and Mona had been drinking tea on the front porch when Mona made a comment about its condition. The salt water had all but eaten away the railing that bordered the wraparound porch, and she said it needed repair.
Gabriella agreed, but told her that until they harvested the grove, there wasn’t any money to hire someone to fix it. When she and Sammy arrived three years ago, she had been speechless the first time she saw the house. Although she knew it hadn’t been maintained since she left as a child, the condition of the house had shocked her because it was so different from the beautiful house she’d grown up in. She hadn’t realized just how much money she’d have to put into it just to make it livable. Gabriella had invested much of her life insurance payout to get the house into shape, and had been living off of the rest since then. But most of the money was gone now, so she had to be frugal with what was left. She wished now she had redone the porch when she had the money.
She was thankful Raul had cared for the orange grove while she’d been gone. He told her he did it out of loyalty to her parents, but also because he loved the grove and didn’t want to see it die. But he only kept it alive at a minimum, so when she came back they worked hard at fully restoring the trees health so they would once again produce the 300 oranges per tree she needed to make a living. This would be the first year the grove would produce an income large enough for her and Sammy to live on.
“You don’t need to hire someone to fix the porch,” Mona said. “We can do it ourselves.”
“Us? But I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
Mona waved her hand as if dismissing the thought. “Don’t worry, I’ll teach you.”
And now here she was with a trunk load of unfamiliar looking things, and Gabby had absolutely no idea what to do with any of it. After they unloaded the supplies and put them on the porch, Mona handed Gabriella a paint scraper, took one for herself and they set their sights on neighboring poles on the far right side of the porch. After they’d worked in silence for a while, Mona spoke. “Gabriella?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Raul. He asked if Samuèl will help him in the grove tomorrow. He’s still not feeling well.”
“Of course, he can. Sammy loves to work with Raul in the grove.” She scrapped more paint and then stopped. “Raul’s going to be all right, isn’t he?”
Mona shrugged. “The doctor thinks it is his heart. But he doesn’t know my Raul. His heart is strong. He just needs to rest some.”
“Of course,” agreed Gabriella.
Mona was right, she thought. Raul was strong, but he was also getting older and beginning to show his age. He’d always been a physical man, working with wood and then doing the hard labor the grove required. Now that his body was imposing new limitations on him, it must be for him. She wished she’d had the foresight to bring on another man to help him with the harvest this year.
They worked in the silence for a bit more, and then the memories got the best of her. “Mona?”
“Yes?”
“I… I don’t know... I guess…”
“You want that we should take a break?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just…” Gabby sighed, frustrated with herself. Why did she find it so difficult to talk about the things most important to her? Especially to Mona, who she considered to be her best friend.
She’d been pleasantly surprised when she returned to Rendiciòn to find that Raul and Mona were still around. Gabriella had quickly hired Raul to increase production in the grove to a level where it would support them, and he’d done an amazing job. She had vague memories of them from her childhood, and remembered they had not only worked for her parents, but were also their friends. And since she’d returned, she came to understand why.
The fact that Raul had made her parent’s orange grove a labor of love for the past few decades had only deepened her affection for the couple. Over the past three years, she had grown close to them and considered them more than just employees—they were also her friends. In a way, Raul and Mona had become the family she’d always wanted.
r /> But what she gleamed mostly from them were their stories—the pieces of her past she’d always longed to understand, but had no one to talk to about. She didn’t know why she needed to hear the story again from Mona as if hearing it one more time could change things. But she always felt there was something she was missing, something she felt certain was there, in the telling, and it just hadn’t yet come into focus. Still, she always held out hope that it would.
“You want I should tell you again?”
Gabby lowered her eyes and nodded.
Mona looked across the yard towards the grove and started speaking slowly. “Raul and I had been married for a few years when the woodworking shop he worked for went out of business. There weren’t a lot of jobs here in Rendición, but we talked with a man at El Mercado who said the Juarez family, your parents, were hiring harvesters for a small orange grove. Now, Raul had no experience with oranges—he was a wood man—but you have to eat, no? So, he took the job. At first, the work was very difficult for him, but eventually Raul began to love the orange grove and developed a desire to learn as much about it as he could.
“Your parents were very kind to us and your father immediately took a liking to my Raul. He must have noticed Raul’s interest in the work because he began to train him in the ways of the grove. By the end of two years, Raul had worked himself into the position of field boss, which was perfect timing because your mother became pregnant with you.”
Mona stopped and looked closely at Gabriella. “You are okay?”
She nodded.
“Well, during this time I grew close to your mother. There were a lot of chores she couldn’t do so we spent a lot of time together as she instructed me in how to do them. And your father? What a man for those times! He pampered her like a queen. He didn’t want her to lift a finger the entire nine months. Anyway, as I said, I spent a lot of time with her, and I came to know her heart.”
“And she was happy? About the pregnancy, I mean?”
“Oh, yes. She was so excited there were times she couldn’t sit still for more than a minute. She planned every detail of your lives and spent many hours sewing clothes and blankets for you. When the time finally came, she was as big as a casa, and thrilled with the fact that she was about to have a child. I think she was a little afraid, too. She feared she wouldn’t be a good enough mother, and then of course, the old women from the village had to tell her their own horror stories about the births of their children. Anyway, I tried to keep her away from them in the weeks before your birth.”
Mona stopped for a minute and smiled as she remembered. “When the day came, she was so brave. Your mother began to get the pains early in the morning and I called Delores, the midwife. Now Delores was a very good midwife, but she could tell some horror stories about the birth like there’s no mañana. So, after I called her, I watched out the window and when I saw her coming, I waited for her on the porch.”
“You never told me this part of the story,” Gabriella said. “Why did you wait for her? Were you worried about my mother?”
“Your mother? Oh no, she was doing fine, but I wanted to make sure I kept it that way. I didn’t want Delores telling her any of the frightening stories right before the birth.”
“So you waited to talk to her?”
“Talk to her? Delores? No, she was much too thick-headed for that. She’s gone now, so you wouldn’t know, but Delores never listened to anyone.”
“So what did you do?”
“I threatened her.”
“You what?”
“Yes. I realized the only way to protect your mother from the stress of those stories was to get through to Delores in the only way she would listen. Stress is bad for the babies, you know.”
Gabby sat with her mouth open, shocked at what she’d heard. “But Mona… I guess I’ve never thought of you as a violent person.”
“Me? Violent? Oh, no.” She waved the thought away. “There were better ways to get through to Delores than with violence. You see, she had a horrible daughter who she wanted to find a husband for, and she finally found an older man who was willing to take her in. She had been trying to marry off the girl for years and was relieved she finally found someone who would put up with her. But I happened to know that every night the girl secretly met with Umberto, a fisherman’s son who was pledged to someone else. If the truth came out, the older man wouldn’t have married the girl and Delores would have been stuck with her forever.”
“So you threatened to tell?”
“Yes. I warned her that if she told even one scary birth story, the entire town would hear about her daughter’s indiscretion by sunset.”
Gabby laughed. “Now that sounds like the Mona I know. What happened to the girl? Did she marry the older man?”
Mona nodded. “Yes, and then he took her to another village about four hours from here. Umberto never fully recovered.”
“This isn’t the same Umberto who works at the fish market, is it?”
Mona nodded.
“Oh gosh,” Gabriella said laughing. “I’ll never be able to look at him the same.”
“Well, your mother, she didn’t hear one bad story on the day of your birth.”
Gabriella looked wistfully at the grove, the smile still playing on her face. “How I long for those times. Crazy, fun days where family is all that matters. Days when the losses don’t wear you down before you even have a chance to get out of bed.”
“But things weren’t always so perfect, even though we were all happy. This is also when a dark wind began to blow across our land.”
Gabriella recognized the familiar sense of foreboding that always surfaced during this part of the story. She put down her paint scraper and listened intently.
“Rendición has always been a proud town,” Mona continued. “Proud of its hardworking people, its sense of family, and most of all, of its natural beauty. You can go for miles out to sea and still see the fish swimming near the bottom. As you’ve heard, many people believe our waters have healing powers because of its clarity. So when the owners of the oil tankers wanted to build a port in our village, many people were naturally against it because they thought the magic of the waters would be destroyed by the tankers. Your father was perhaps the most outspoken.
“At first, most people didn’t want to get involved. I don’t think they believed the tankers really wanted to dock in our small village. But when workers were brought in to begin constructing the docks, things changed very quickly.
“At first, the old men tried to sabotage the efforts by dumping the wood and tools into the sea at night. But the oil people would only bring in more. Some people called village meetings to discuss the problem, but the mayor continued to insist that progress was in everyone’s best interest. We assumed he was only seeing the peso signs in front of his eyes.
“But then there was your father. He began to organize rallies and protests and more and more people joined the cause. Your mother supported him fully. In fact, there were plenty of times she stood next to him with you on her hip as he gave his rally speeches on an upturned crate.
“But don’t think those days were only full of turmoil,” she said. “Not at all. Your family was one of the happiest I knew, full of warmth, love and laughter. You were your father’s little princess and your mothers best amiga. Oh, how the two of you could toil away the day in the garden, or spend all afternoon making an orange spice cake.
“But intertwined in those happy times were the threats and innuendoes that if your father didn’t leave the tanker situation alone, it would get ugly.”
“Do you think that’s why they left? Did something happen to them out of their control?”
Mona shrugged. “All I know is this: they never would have left you willingly.”
“But I saw them drive away,” she said quietly.
“Ah, yes, Gabriella. This is the mystery, no?”
Just then, the front door swung open and Sammy walked out holding his backpack, which was stu
ffed full. “Uh… hi,” he said, mid-step.
“Hello Samuèl. You are good?”
“Yes. And you?”
“Mona was telling me some stories,” Gabby said. “Would you like to join us and help scrape the paint off these posts?”
“Uh… later, okay mom? I’m kind of doing something.”
“Like what?”
“You know, stuff. But I’ll see you later, okay?” And before she could answer, he disappeared back inside, slamming the door behind him.
“I don’t like it,” Mona said, “That boy—he is up to something.”
“Oh, he’s just being a kid,” said Gabriella. “I’m sure he and Juan Jose are busy making plans for the summer.”
Inside the house, Sammy closed the door and leaned against it. “That was too close,” he whispered under his breath. His plan had been to get his bag outside and hidden underneath the porch, so that in the early morning hours when he planned to leave for Principios it would be one less thing he’d have to worry about.
He’d thought long and hard about what to do about the conflict between the revival and Maria and had finally come to the conclusion that if Maria were a reasonable girl—and he hoped she was because he planned to marry her one day—she would come to understand that sometimes there are things a man has to do. Be the man of the house. And this was one of those times.
Sammy had gone to Juan Jose’s house earlier that day and asked him to give the message to Maria, along with a request for a new date. He tried to not think about her possible response. He had important things to do and he couldn’t get distracted. Not even for Maria.
Earlier, he’d managed to sneak a box of crackers, a can of tuna and some jalapeno candy from the kitchen and it was neatly tucked away in his backpack. He didn’t consider it stealing because it came from his own kitchen and he probably would have eaten it anyway. Especially the candy.
He also filled up two lidded glass jars with water from the sink and had even remembered to stuff toilet paper in the backpack just in case.
Finally, he placed a pen and a pad of paper in the bag because he’d promised Juan Jose he would tell him everything he heard. He wanted to write it down so he wouldn’t forget it.
Now all he had to do was hide the backpack underneath the porch, decide which color Keds would be right for a revival—he had it narrowed down to red or orange—and figure out how to set the blasted alarm clock. He’d never done it before and couldn’t find an instruction book anywhere. But he was no dummy, he’d figure it out.
Later that night, as Gabriella quietly opened Sammy’s door to make sure he was sleeping soundly, she was surprised to find him sitting up by the window. “Sammy? Are you all right?”
She watched his shoulders shrug in the shadows of the room. “I guess so.”
“Can’t you sleep?” she asked as she padded across the room in her bare feet. She instinctively put her wrist to his forehead. “You don’t have a fever. What is it?”
“Mom? Do you miss dad?”
Gabriella blew out her breath and sat down next to him on the window sill. “Sometimes I miss him so much I think my heart will break in two.”
“Me, too. Mom?”
“Hmm?”
“Why did he have to die?”
She closed her eyes and steadied herself against the question she’d been dreading for a thousand years. “I don’t know, Sammy. I wish I did.”
“Do you think we’ll ever get to see him again? Dad said if we found Jesus, we would go to Heaven, too. And then we could all be together. That’s right, isn’t it?”
Gabriella struggled within herself. She knew the answer she should give him, the one that would fill him with hope. If she were a different kind of mother, she would tell him that they would all be reunited one day in Heaven. But that would be a lie. One based on the imaginations of desperate men. On the other hand, it seemed just as cruel to tell him what she did believe. That his dad’s life was over. That once a person died, there was a blank nothingness. But a small part of her wondered if someone as wonderful as Nicolas could simply cease to exist. If so, how could she ever explain this harsh truth to her son?
“Mom? Did you hear me?”
Gabriella looked at Sammy’s soft features, which were just beginning to take on the defined characteristics of an older boy, and took the easy way out. “I don’t know, Sammy. I wish I did.”
An hour later, Gabriella stood on the edge of the cliff, shaking her fists violently at the sea. “Leave him alone,” she shouted toward the sky. “You can’t have him, too!”
Chapter 5