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  After Peaches

  MICHELLE MULDER

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2009 Michelle Mulder

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Mulder, Michelle

  After peaches / written by Michelle Mulder.

  (Orca young readers)

  ISBN 978-1-55469-176-0

  I. Title.

  PS8626.U435A64 2009 jC813’.6 C2009-902807-7

  First published in the United States, 2009

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2009928213

  Summary: Rosario and her parents come to Canada as political refugees from Mexico. Rosario hates her heavily accented English, but she breaks the language barrier to save a migrant farm worker’s life.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Typesetting by Bruce Collins

  Cover artwork by Simon Ng

  Author photo by Gastón Castaño

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, STN. B

  VICTORIA, BC CANADA

  V8R 6S4

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 468

  CUSTER, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  Printed on 100% PCW recycled paper.

  12 11 10 09 • 4 3 2 1

  For those with the courage to speak

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1 The Plan

  CHAPTER 2 Build Your Own Adventure

  CHAPTER 3 What’s Normal?

  CHAPTER 4 Field Trip

  CHAPTER 5 Tulips

  CHAPTER 6 My Wonderful, Impossible Plan

  CHAPTER 7 Strawberries

  CHAPTER 8 Analía’s Letter

  CHAPTER 9 True or False?

  CHAPTER 10 Cherries

  CHAPTER 11 Speak

  CHAPTER 12 The Story

  CHAPTER 13 After Peaches

  Author’s Note

  Glossary

  CHAPTER 1

  The Plan

  “Hey, stupid!” The voice came from behind me.

  I didn’t need to turn around to know it was Robbie Zec, standing at the edge of the schoolyard with his buddies. They always yelled at me at the end of the day, when teachers couldn’t hear and probably didn’t care.

  I didn’t yell back anymore, just pulled myself taller and smiled at Julie as we crossed the street toward her place.

  “Julie’s mum’s hired you to clean their house, eh?” Robbie called. “It’s about time you got a job. You can’t mooch off the government forever.”

  I flinched, and Julie linked her arm with mine before I could bolt back to the school and knock him over. The astonished look on his face would have been worth getting in trouble for, I thought. He would never expect a girl to attack him. And I think Julie would have been secretly proud of me. She had been Robbie’s victim before I arrived, because she was way smarter than anyone else in grade four. Now he picked on me because he thought I was way dumber.

  “Ignore them,” Julie whispered, locking her elbow tighter with mine.

  “I’m trying,” I hissed back.

  Julie was the only kid I ever spoke English to. With all the other kids, I was silent, and everyone thought it was because I still spoke English like a two-year-old. That’s what Robbie said when I first came to school in January, and I yelled at him in Spanish then. I used every bad word I knew, and when I ran out, I shouted the Spanish names of vegetables because he wouldn’t know the difference anyway. I liked the scared look on his face, and the next day half of Georgison Elementary was whispering that I’d put a Mexican curse on Robbie’s family. They never found out the truth, and only Julie knew what I’d really said. After that day in February, I decided not to talk at school anymore.

  On my first day of silence, our teacher, Ms. Bower, made me stay after class to tell her why I’d stopped talking. I broke my vow just that once and told her the truth—that I didn’t want the other kids to make fun of my English. She said I shouldn’t let it bother me and that practicing was the only way to improve, but she wasn’t going to push me. I knew she was one of those teachers who wanted everyone to like her, and I think she was a little afraid of Robbie and his buddies too.

  The next day she told the class what a brave person I was to come to Canada and learn a new language, and that everyone should help me with my English. Robbie and his friends laughed at that idea, but she ignored them and went on with our math lesson. From then on, she only ever asked me questions I could answer with “yes” or “no.”

  Now it was early May, and only Julie knew that my English was getting better each day. By September, I was going to speak completely fluent Canadian English. Everyone would be amazed, and Robbie would be the one who was speechless.

  “She’s so dumb, she probably can’t understand what we’re saying,” Robbie shouted, practically in my ear. They were following close enough to step on our heels.

  Julie and I kept walking arm in arm, and she talked as though nothing unusual was happening. That was the very best thing about Julie: no matter how crazy she thought I was for not speaking English at school, she always stuck by me…even when people were yelling insults in our ears.

  “Wait till I tell you about my plan for this summer,” Julie said. I looked at her, surprised. Neither of us liked talking about the summer. Julie was going to be with her father in a big-city skyscraper for two months, and I’d be here, working at the farm with my parents. Neither of us would have any friends close by, and once Julie left for Vancouver, I probably wouldn’t speak to her until September. Even if we could have afforded the long-distance calls, I hated speaking English on the phone. It was harder to understand people if I couldn’t see their faces. I couldn’t tell if they were happy or sad, joking or serious. What if I misunderstood something and didn’t realize until too late? I knew Julie would never laugh at me, but I hated feeling stupid.

  This was the first time Julie had said the word “summer” without rolling her eyes or groaning. I was about to raise my eyebrows in a silent question when I felt a poke in my back.

  I closed my eyes, breathed deeply and kept walking. Robbie and his friends made weird noises that I guess were supposed to sound like another language, but came out more like barnyard-animal noises instead.

  “We can get to work on the plan as soon as we get to my place,” Julie said. “Our summers are going to be better than we thought.”

  Her eyes sparkled, and she looked so excited I could hardly wait to hear what she had in mind.

  When Robbie started yelling, “Hey, Rosie, where’s your sombrero?” in my ear, I finally lost my patience. I whipped around, which made him run right into me. He stumbled, and I pulled myself up tall (almost exactly his height), crossed my arms over my chest and stared at him.

  “Government leech,” he shouted. I put my nose right in close against his and stared some more. He twisted up his face and accused me of trying to kiss him, but he also took a step back.

  And I took one forward. Uncertainty flashed in his eyes.

  “Come on, guys,” he said finally. “What’s the word for ‘crazy’ in Spanish? Loco? Rosario’s loco. Let’s ge
t outta here.”

  They went back the way they came, walking with a swagger, and every now and then shouting words like “freak” and “idiot.” My English wasn’t perfect, but I knew what those words meant.

  “At least we’re rid of them for now,” I said when they turned a corner and couldn’t hear me speak.

  Julie was laughing. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you are a bit loco. Nobody stands up to Robbie like that.”

  “Loca,” I muttered. “He said it wrong. Loco is for boys and men, not girls. Robbie and his friends don’t even say insults properly.”

  “Intelligence isn’t their strong point,” Julie said, linking her arm with mine again. We turned toward her house, the blue one halfway down the block with the big green lawn and the cedar fence.

  “Strong point?” I asked as we climbed the front steps.

  “Something someone’s good at,” she explained.

  Julie knew more words than any other kid I’d ever met. She seemed happy when I asked her about them, and our teacher was always impressed when I used them in my writing. I think my good writing was another reason Ms. Bower let me be silent in class. She could tell I was learning, no matter how quiet I was.

  “Being a good friend is Julie’s strong point,” I said. “I use it like that?”

  Her cheeks turned a bit pink. “Yes,” she said, “and thank you.”

  She opened the door, and the smell of chocolate-chip cookies wafted out to meet us. Julie and her mother, Ms. Norton, had introduced me to cookies a few months earlier. In Mexico we had something similar called galletitas, but they were bigger and puffier and usually had coconut or nuts in them.

  Now that I was coming over most days after school, Julie’s mother made cookies once a week, and sometimes she even packed up some for my parents. That’s how the food exchange started between our two families. Our parents couldn’t speak each others’ languages, but they communicated with cookies, estofado, pizza, lasagna and quesadillas. I wouldn’t have known half as much about Canada if it hadn’t been for Julie and her mother. I don’t think they would know as much about Mexico either. Now they are even trying to learn a few words of Spanish.

  I took off my shoes at the front door, like Canadians do, and shrugged off my backpack.

  “Now let’s get to work on the plan,” said Julie as she led me down the hall.

  CHAPTER 2

  Build Your Own Adventure

  “You’re going to love it!” Julie sat on her bedroom floor, munching on a cookie and sticking one hand deep into her backpack. I leaned back against one wall, nibbling my cookie. Her room had green walls, a green bedspread and a bumpy beige carpet. In the middle of her spotless black desk sat a computer with a big screen, and all around were shelves with enough books for a small library.

  She pulled a thin colorful library book from her backpack and slid it across the floor toward me.How to Make Your Own Book it said on the cover. I placed my cookie on one leg, brushed the crumbs off my fingers and flipped through the pages. I liked making things myself, and I loved the idea of making books instead of always having to buy them in the store, but I didn’t see how this would make our summers any less lonely. Besides, where would I get the pretty paper and thick thread that we’d need? I hated asking my parents for things they couldn’t afford.

  “Isn’t it fantastic?” Julie wanted to know.

  I nodded. “The books are pretty. Will you make one this summer?”

  “We could each make one,” she said. “That’s my plan.”

  She looked like she was waiting for me to stand up and cheer or something, but when I didn’t, Julie let out an impatient sigh. “This summer, we could each write a whole book!” she said. “We can make notes on everything that happens to us while we’re apart, and then in September, we can write a good copy and add photos and drawings and stuff, and then we can make books and give them to each other so we’ll each know exactly what the other person did over the summer.” Her face lit up like a firecracker on a Mexican Christmas Eve.

  I tried to share her excitement, but I was never any good at lying. “I don’t know enough English to write a book,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t worry about the English,” she said, passing me the plate of cookies. “I can help you make it perfect at the end, if you want.” She wrinkled her forehead, like she was working hard to stay excited. “Don’t you want to make your own book?”

  “I do,” I said quickly. She knew how much I loved writing stories and making things with my hands. She knew that I dreamed of growing up and writing books in English and in Spanish, stories like those that filled the library shelves. I knew I wasn’t ready to write a book now though. Even if my English was perfect, what was I going to write about? As soon as I said I did want to write a book, Julie leaped up to pull a new notebook from a stack in her closet. Then she poked around in a desk drawer for a pen, and I was pretty sure she was about to design a plan of action. Julie made plans of action for every project she started, from building a kite to helping her mother make banana bread.

  Instead of opening the notebook, Julie handed the book and pen to me.“You’re going to need these,” she said.“We have to keep notes on all the exciting stuff we do this summer.” I held her gift gingerly on my knees and felt embarrassed heat creeping into my cheeks. I thought of giving the book back and telling Julie I had plenty at home. But of course she’d know I was lying. She knew my parents always bought what I needed for school, but there was no money for extra supplies.

  And I knew my parents wouldn’t approve of this gift. They didn’t believe in charity. Even when the government invited us to come to Canada, paid for our flight and offered to pay all our expenses for a year to help us get settled in our new country, my parents worked as hard as they could to learn English and find jobs so they could start paying for everything themselves before the year was over. They were always talking about honor and how important it is to stand tall and know you can look after yourself.

  I didn’t want to give the notebook back. With its shiny blue plastic cover and a long wire spiral down one side, it was fancier than anything my parents bought me. Writing in a book like that would make me feel like I could write a whole book. Hadn’t Ms. Bower said that my writing was “exceptionally insightful” for my age? (I had to look up both words in the dictionary, and then I had to look up the words in the definitions. In the end, I decided it meant I wrote things that most kids didn’t think to write about.)

  Julie pulled another notebook and pen from her backpack, stretched out on her tummy and held her pen over an empty page. “If we try hard, we’ll have lots of stories for our books by the end of the summer. We might even have to make two books each!”

  I laughed so much that I sprayed cookie crumbs. Julie frowned, and I apologized. “It will be easy for you,” I said, opening my book to my own first smooth page. “You’ll have an exciting summer in Vancouver. I don’t know what I will write about.”

  She looked up at me, surprised. “But your life is way more interesting than mine,” she said. “I’m just hanging out with my dad all summer. You get to go to work with your parents, and pick flowers, and grow vegetables, and do stuff that kids around here never do.”

  “They don’t do it, because they don’t have to,” I said. Sometimes kids went to the fields to pick flowers or vegetables, but they only went once. I didn’t know any other kids who had to work the whole summer with their parents. “What will I write? A story called How to Grow a Kiwi or How to Pull”—I searched for the word and couldn’t find it—“How to Pull Bad Little Plants from a Garden.”

  “Weeds?” Julie asked.

  “The little plants that the farm doesn’t want,” I said. “Is that weeds?”

  She nodded. I took an almost-full notebook from my backpack, flipped it open near the end and asked her to spell the word. Then I wrote it down with its translation in Spanish, hierbas malas. I’d remember it that way.

  I was going to miss Jul
ie. I didn’t have any other friends my age, and since the only person I spoke English with was leaving, I had decided not to speak English at all that summer. I would speak only Spanish with my parents and the other farm workers who had come from Mexico to work on the farm. When I was alone, I would practice my English words to myself, saying them over and over until I said each one like a Canadian. I didn’t want to write any of that into my book. I wanted to be a Normal Canadian Kid, with Normal Canadian Kid stories.

  “You’ll find something good to write about,” Julie said. “You’ll see. And if you don’t find any adventures, you’ll just have to make them up.” She got a Eureka! look on her face and scribbled something in her notebook.

  I looked around her room and thought about her summer in the city—going to the park, the pool and maybe even a summer camp. Her summer would be full of Normal Canadian Kid adventures.

  Stories about my summer would only make me feel weirder than ever. A normal Canadian kid would never write about working in flower fields, or eating beans and rice, or speaking Spanish. What was the point of speaking English perfectly if everything I wrote about was weird anyway? Even with perfect grammar, I couldn’t imagine what I could write that anyone— even my best friend—would want to read.

  CHAPTER 3

  What’s Normal?

  I got home just as my parents pulled up in their ancient green station wagon. It was secondhand, rusty and twice as old as me. Even here, in the cheapest part of Victoria, no one had a car this old, but my parents were proud of it. We had never been rich enough to own a car in Mexico.

  “Hola, mi amor,” Papá called, climbing out of the front seat. Beside him, Mamá rummaged around on the floor, collecting the bags full of plastic lunch containers.

  I ran to Papá and almost knocked him over with my hug. He kissed the top of my head, and I breathed in his smell: plants, sweat and sunshine. To me, that was the smell of happiness, no matter where we were living. When my parents first started working in Canada, it was winter and so they got indoor jobs. For a while, instead of smelling like fresh earth, they smelled like the bleach they used to clean floors and toilets in office buildings. They were grumpy and pale and didn’t smile much, and I was relieved when they found work in the fields in the spring. My parents were happier with suntanned faces and dirt in their hair. “How is my favorite daughter today?” Papá asked in Spanish, pushing me away from him so he could see my face.