After Peaches Read online

  “Your only daughter is just fine,” I said, and he tweaked my nose.

  I laughed and ran around to the other side of the car to help Mamá with the bags. It was good to hear my father joke again. He used to make that favorite daughter joke all the time, and he had called my only brother, Ricardo, his favorite son. Ricardo was seventeen when he was killed in Mexico three years ago, and for a long time after that, Papá stopped joking altogether.

  Soon after Ricardo died, when I was seven, my parents started whispering to each other in the kitchen of our little house in Mexico. From my bed in the corner, I heard words like “persecution,” “escape,” “safe place,” and “Guatemala.” The first words made sense after Ricardo was killed. No one knew exactly who had killed him, but people talked. They said my brother had been speaking out against the Mexican government, and someone got angry and shot him. They said people might suspect my family of disagreeing with the government too, and we’d better be careful. My parents didn’t want me to know any of that, so I pretended not to know…and not to be scared.

  But I didn’t understand why my parents were talking about Guatemala. The country next to ours was even more dangerous than our part of Mexico. Why would anyone want to escape to there?

  I stayed awake trying to hear every last word of my parents’ whispers, but they still didn’t make sense. One day, Papá left the house right after supper, and I followed him to the end of our street. When he stopped in front of el viejo Claudio’s house, I hid around the corner where I could still hear them. Old Claudio looked a million years old and always sat outside on a stool, talking to passers-by. I had no idea why Papá would want to talk to him, but my father must have whispered a question because el viejo looked thoughtful; then he answered in his raspy voice. “It’s a tough journey,” he said, “and once you arrive, there’s no guarantee they’ll accept you. You might have to wait for years, and in Guatemala, you’ll be worse off than here, m’hijo.”

  My father had his back to me, so I couldn’t see the look on his face, but I was smiling. I had been right all along. No matter how scary things were here, my parents couldn’t be crazy enough to move to Guatemala.

  “But if Canada does accept us,” my father said, “they’ll pay for our flight there?”

  I almost fell out of my hiding place when he asked that. Had he said Canada? That was so far north, it was almost at the end of the map on the wall of our classroom. What did Canada have to do with us? And what was this about flying? Weren’t they talking about Guatemala only a second ago? If I hadn’t been so worried that my father would discover me eavesdropping, I would have run the three blocks to Abuela’s house to tell my grandmother that Papá had gone crazy.

  Later, I sometimes wished that he had gone crazy. At least there are medicines for craziness. There’s no cure for leaving your country, your home and everyone you’ve ever known. Of course, I never said any of that to my parents. When Papá explained that he wanted to take us to that big country at the end of the map, I didn’t say anything at all. He explained that the best way to get to Canada was to go to Guatemala first because the Canadian government had an office there. We would tell the Canadians what had happened to Ricardo and that we were in danger too. “If the Canadians understand why we had to leave Mexico,” Papá said, “they’ll invite us to their country. Canada sometimes pays for people in danger to go to Canada so they can be safe.”

  If that was true, then why didn’t everyone go to Canada? “What if they don’t believe us?” I asked. “Or what if too many people want to go to Canada? What then?”

  Papá looked at me, and I saw the fear in his eyes before he could hide it. “I don’t know, m’hija,” he said. “I don’t know, but one thing is certain. We can’t stay here.”

  The trip from Mexico to Guatemala was awful. We couldn’t carry much food, and we passed through lots of places that were far more dangerous than our town. Thieves attacked us, and Papá got beaten pretty badly. When we finally made it to noisy, crowded Guatemala City, we were tired, hungry and sick, and still we had to wait for almost a year before we got to talk to the Canadian Embassy. All that time, my parents said again and again that they were doing this for my future. So that I would have a future.

  Everyone knows there’s no point arguing when adults are talking like that.

  “Qué día,” Mamá said now, getting out of the station wagon. With the fingers of one hand, she ruffled the dirt out of her short black hair. “It’s been a long day. Cómo estás, Rosario?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, taking a few of the bags from her hands. She smiled at me, waiting to hear about my day, and I scrambled to find something to tell her. But the only things that came to mind were things I couldn’t say—about Robbie or about not talking at school. My parents had no idea I didn’t speak to anyone but Julie. They only saw what Ms. Bower wrote on the top of my assignments, and they thought they had a genius daughter. When they had to sign my report cards, I translated for them and left out the parts that urged me to try harder when it came to my speaking skills.

  I told myself it didn’t matter. By September, I would talk like everyone else, and when I brought home my first report card in grade five, I’d be proud to translate the whole thing. Meanwhile, no way was I going to tell my parents the truth about my life in Canada. I would never admit wishing I were back in Mexico, where people liked me and thought I was smart and funny.

  “You’re not going to tell us a single thing about your day?” Papá asked. We were inside our little basement suite now. Home, if you wanted to call it that. It was nothing like the warm, colorful house we had in Mexico, or the big bright house we lived in when we first came to Victoria and the government was still paying our bills. Mamá and Papá didn’t seem to care. They said this ugly little basement was the best kind of home for us because we were safe, and we paid the rent ourselves.

  It was bigger than our house in Mexico, or the shack where we lived in Guatemala. Here we had a full living room, a bedroom for my parents, a separate kitchen and an indoor bathroom with a shower. With a little effort, I could ignore the musty smell, the stained carpet, the naked lightbulbs and the big chunks of floor covering missing in the kitchen. At least we were safe here.

  I slept on the couch in the living room. Mamá had hung some sheets from the ceiling so I could have some privacy. My favorite part of the room was the window. If I stood on the back of the couch and leaned up against the wall, I could see out onto the sidewalk and watch people’s feet going by. Little feet in shiny black shoes that skipped next to bigger feet in pink sneakers. Or high heels that clicked past as though there was no time to lose. I could imagine whole lives based on shoes and how they moved. And the best part was that no one knew I was watching them, my nose at ground level. Too bad I couldn’t write a book about all the things I could imagine about feet, I thought.

  And suddenly I had it! The perfect thing to tell my parents about my day! “You’ll never guess what Julie and I are going to do this summer. We’re going to write books!” I collapsed in a heap on one of the lawn chairs in the corner of the kitchen, relieved to have something positive to tell them.

  Mamá deposited her bags on the cracked and yellowed kitchen counter and was about to respond when Papá called out that he was going to take a shower. She called back to him about getting supper ready and then stood in the middle of the kitchen floor as proud as if I’d brought peace to Mexico. “A whole book, mi amor? All in English?”

  I shrugged, suddenly wishing I’d mentioned something else. I didn’t want to get her hopes up. “It was Julie’s idea. She’ll have lots of things to write about this summer, and in September, we’ll turn it into a book, so she suggested I write about my summer too. I think I’ll write a very short book.” I smiled at her.

  Mamá laughed, opened the fridge and pulled out a pot of spicy beans, a few tortillas and a tomato. “Oh, Rosario. I’m sure you’ll find lots to write about too, and it’ll be good to keep working on your English
, especially if you’re speaking Spanish with us in the fields all day.”

  “I guess so,” I said, “but tell me about your day. Did you see José? Has he talked to Analía this week yet?”

  Mamá laughed again and handed me a tomato to chop.“You’ve made a good friend in him, haven’t you?” she asked. “I don’t think he’ll be talking to his family until Friday night, so I don’t have any new Analía stories for you.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll get to hear them all on Saturday when we go to the fields with Julie and her mother. I can’t believe Julie hasn’t met José yet. Isn’t that funny? I can’t imagine Canada without either one of them, and they don’t even know each other!”

  Mamá told me about her day on the farm, mostly weeding between hundreds of cabbages. When Papá came in, she asked me to watch the tortillas sizzling in the pan while she showered.

  Papá patted his wet hair into place and smoothed his at-home jeans, the clean pair that he never wore to the fields. “What did you dream about today?” he asked, as he often did. Where Mamá was practical and always wanted to know what had happened, Papá wanted to know what I wished would happen. Sometimes that made him a lot easier to talk to.

  But not today. How could I tell him I dreamed we were back in Mexico, or that my brother was still alive and would come to school and tell Robbie to watch out? (I often wondered what Ricardo would think of Canada, but if he were still alive, we probably wouldn’t be here.) How could I say I wished we had enough money for me to go to summer camp, or that I wished Julie didn’t have to go away?

  “I dreamed that we didn’t have a math test tomorrow,” I said finally, “and a spelling test the day after. What about you?”

  Papá grabbed a flipper and turned over the blackened tortilla I had totally forgotten about. “I dreamed that we could travel across the whole province,” he said. “Just pack up the station wagon and go. A few of the men at work have been all the way across, and they said there’s plenty to see. Did you know there’s even a desert, with cactuses and everything?”

  “Really?” I asked.“Like in Mexico?”

  “Sí, señorita! And there are huge lakes, two sets of gigantic mountains, little towns, moose and deer and even bears, all the way along. Now that would be an amazing summer. One day, when we have the money…”

  One day, I thought. Always one day. It was going to be a long time before I ever had a Normal Canadian Kid story to write.

  CHAPTER 4

  Field Trip

  Julie spent Saturdays watching cartoons, going to the library and playing games on her computer. Other kids talked about soccer games, movies or going to the mall. I never did those things on Saturdays, but I wouldn’t have traded my Saturdays for anything.

  This particular Saturday in May was going to be the best one yet because Julie and her mother, Ms. Norton, were coming with us to the tulip farm.

  “What an experience this will be!” Ms. Norton stood in the early morning light beside our station wagon, rubbing her arms and stamping her feet in the cold. Julie’s eyes were still half-closed behind her glasses, and her thin blond hair was tied in a stick-out-everywhere ponytail. She didn’t look happy about being there, and for a moment, I wondered if it was a mistake to take them along.

  Our friendship so far had taken place at school and at her house, speaking English, talking about Canadian things and eating Canadian food (with a few Mexican things sent along from Mamá). Sure, I’d told her about our lives in Mexico and how we escaped to Guatemala, and she’d always seemed interested. Now, though, as I saw her frowning, squinting face, a little knot formed in my stomach. What if she didn’t like the tulip fields? What if the rows and rows of yellow, red, white, purple and orange didn’t make her happy like they made me, and what if she didn’t like the rich, damp smell of fresh-turned soil?

  “We’ll finally see how flowers get from the field to our dining-room table,” said Ms. Norton, putting enough music into her voice to make up for Julie’s grumpy silence.“I bet we’ll have a whole new appreciation for farmers and farming after today, right, honey?”

  Julie rubbed her eyes and stifled a yawn. “Mum loves learning experiences,” she said to me, “even at five thirty on a Saturday morning.” The corners of her lips turned up, and the knot in my stomach loosened a little.

  Ms. Norton laughed, and Mamá smiled. It was funny to see the two mothers together: tall and short, well-dressed and shabby, light-skinned and dark, excited and nervous. They’d never have met if Julie and I weren’t friends. And we became friends only because we were the last ones to find partners for the spring social-studies project.

  Mamá’s eyes darted to meet mine, and I could tell she didn’t understand why Ms. Norton was laughing or whether she should join in. I translated into Spanish what Ms. Norton and Julie had said, and Mamá laughed for real. Sometimes I wished I could take all the English I’d learned and drop it into my parents’ heads. They spoke a bit but didn’t understand much, and they didn’t have time to go to any more English classes. I’d tried to teach them, but they never got better, always saying it was easier for kids to learn new languages. As if it was easy for me.

  Papá threw an extra bottle of water into the trunk and banged it shut.“Are ready to go,” he said carefully, not meeting Ms. Norton’s eyes. I felt my face flushing with embarrassment at his bad English, and at the same time, I was ready to tell off anyone who corrected him. Usually, if they had to communicate in English, my parents used their hands a lot. With Julie’s mother though, they made a special effort. And Ms. Norton seemed to understand how hard they were trying, even if the English words didn’t come out very well. Ms. Norton and Julie even tried out their few words of Spanish sometimes. They’d got language CDs out of the library and liked to talk to us about the weather.

  “You see here.” Mamá offered Ms. Norton the seat next to Papá. Julie’s mother nodded thank-you and slipped into the front seat. Julie, Mamá and I piled into the back.

  And we were off, windows down, racing along the still-empty streets toward the highway, past the subdivisions and the billboards with huge pictures of hotels, happy people and restaurant dinners.

  “Fantastic!” Julie shouted into the wind when the tulip fields burst into view. “I’ve never seen so much color.”

  I grinned. It looked like today was going to be a great day after all.

  “Maybe you no like it so much after,” Papá said. “Maybe too tired.”

  Ms. Norton talked about what hard work farming was. I don’t know if my parents understood much of what she said, but I was grateful for the talk. It made us seem like a normal group of friends, going on a field trip. Julie caught my eye and made a fish face, and we both laughed.

  I hoped Papá was wrong. I hoped Julie and her mother would love the fields so much they’d want to come back every Saturday. For a wild moment, I even imagined Julie canceling her summer in Vancouver… but of course that was impossible. Why would she give up a summer with her father in a skyscraper, going to summer camp and playing at the beach to work in a field? If I were her, I would never give those things up. Not that I would ever have the chance.

  CHAPTER 5

  Tulips

  “Hola, m’hija!” José called when the five of us made our way into the field. He was trailing behind the pickers, collecting their bundles of flowers into a plastic tray. He set down his tray at the end of a row and waved.

  I waved back, grabbed Julie’s hand and ran toward him—thlop, thlop, thlop—in my too-big rubber boots.

  Julie’s boots made strange noises as she ran too, and she laughed as she tried to keep up. “Where are we going?” she asked.“Is that José? The one who lives in a hotel and whose family is in Mexico?”

  “Yes! He is the one I toll you about.” I was talking too fast to correct my mistake. Told, I reminded myself, with a d.

  We hurried along to where José stood. I thought it was funny that Julie remembered about the hotel and his family in Mexi
co because those details described almost all of the workers on the farm. José and the other workers weren’t political refugees like us, so they weren’t allowed to stay in Canada forever. They could only stay here during farming season. The farmer here put them up in a hotel while they were in Canada, and they were only allowed to come to Canada because they had family in Mexico and would want to go back.

  “Tu amiga?” José asked when we reached him.

  “Yes,” I answered in Spanish. “This is my friend Julie. Remember I told you about her?”

  José bowed like Julie was a queen, and he let his grin do the talking for him.

  “He doesn’t speak much English,” I told Julie.

  She frowned. “But hasn’t he been here for a long time already?”

  “Eight months last year, and three months this year. On the farm, though, he speaks only Spanish with the other workers,” I said. “They all work as many days as they can, so they can take back as much money as possible to their families in Mexico. There’s no time to learn English.”

  “Oh,” Julie said, pushing her glasses back up her nose. She gave José a shy smile but said nothing, which surprised me. I’d told her a million times that José was one of those grown-ups who think kids have interesting things to say and plenty of good ideas, and Julie always wanted to know more about Mexico.

  “You can talk to him, you know,” I said. “I can translate.”

  She nodded and her eyebrows pulled together, as though she was trying to think of the perfect question.