Delta Girls (14 page)

Roberts pushed a couple of keys on the computer mounted on the platform; the machine whirred as it rose and lowered from its hinges, the white cone swiveling like a head.

“The robot’s reading the tree now,” he said.

“Like a book?” Quinn was excited again.

“More like the sight on a gun,” he said.

I flashed on an image of Roberts and Mr. Vieira, pointing rifles at each other.

“How does the robot know where the fruit is?” Quinn asked.

“Difference in temperature.” He turned the monitor so we could see it. The pears glowed like red upside-down lightbulbs. “It can pick a fruit every eight seconds.”

“People are much faster than that,” I said. Even
I
was faster than that.

He pushed another few keys, and the top of the machine sucked a pear into it like a vacuum, filling the monitor with red. The camera must have been inside the cone. It turned its head down and dumped the fruit into a plastic crate. I could see bruises all over its skin.

“Robots will revolutionize the fruit industry,” said Roberts.

“If you want a bunch of banged-up pears,” I said.

“Hasta la vista
, illegals!” Roberts said, as if he didn’t hear me. “Too bad Vieira can’t afford one.”

“Speaking of whom,” I said. “We should get going. I need to get back to work.”

He rubbed his hands on his ironed jeans. “Vieira pay you enough over there?”

“I do all right.” I found myself wondering if Roberts would offer me more money, wondering if I would consider taking it.

“’Cause I could use some help around here,” he said, rocking on his heels. “The house could use a lady’s touch. Hell,
I
could use a lady’s touch.”

The way he tilted his hips forward made the hair on my arms squirm.

“I hear they have robots for that.” I grabbed Quinn’s hand and
we headed for the bridge, headed back to the low-tech peace of Comice Island.

WE SAT ON
the porch of the distillery that afternoon, putting the finished bottles into their individual cardstock boxes, slapping on the pale green labels. I felt self-conscious looking out at the picking crew, a white woman sitting in the shade, doing easy work, while the brown men climbed ladders, strained backs, dug arms through punishing branches. Felt dirty, disloyal, for having gone over to Roberts’s place, for having entertained a job offer from him, even for a fraction of a second. I thought of all we could lose: the houseboat, Mrs. Vieira’s pear jelly, the place where Quinn had felt more at home than anyplace else I could remember. Not to mention Ben. Not that he was around. Not that I had ever had him to begin with.

Quinn smoothed a label, a bit cockeyed, onto a box. What would a yuppie who paid eighty a bottle think if he knew a nine-year-old girl with dirt under her fingernails had packaged his eau-de-vie?

“I’m going to go pick,” I told Mrs. Vieira. “You need me there more than here.”

She nodded and peeled the back off a label. A mosquito flew onto it and got snagged, like flypaper.

“I’ll stay here, Eema,” said Quinn, “if that’s all right.”

I looked at Mrs. Vieira. She nodded as she picked the mosquito off; it left a speck of blood—maybe her own—on the sticky backing. She pressed the label, blood and all, onto the waiting box.

THE PICKERS DIDN’T
look thrilled when I joined their crew, strapping a bag over my chest, cracking open a ladder, but they didn’t complain, either. I even noticed a few looks of surprise, a few grudging nods of respect, when they saw how fast I could
move my hands through the trees. We fell into a silent but companionable rhythm—climbing, picking, dumping fruit into bins, the foreman occasionally calling out to speed us along.

When the workday was over, one man came up to me, shook my hand with his rough palm, and said, “Not bad,
guera.”
It sounded like
wayda
. The two syllables gave me a start at first, but I was grateful for the compliment.

Mr. Vieira walked toward us, looking very serious, Quinn tagging behind him.

“The ice people are coming.” Mr. Vieira pointed his finger, seemingly at me, and my heart froze in my chest.

“Like the ice giants?” Terror flashed over Quinn’s face.

“I-C-E,” he said. “Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

I saw the relief in Quinn’s eyes; momentary relief flooded my own body, but the workers around me started to bristle.

“We need your paperwork,” Mr. Vieira said. “ID and social at the very least. Birth certificate, passport, whatever you have.”

“We already showed our paperwork,” said Carlos, an older, sharp-featured man from Jalisco, who translated Mr. Vieira’s words for the rest of the group. “You have our paperwork on file. From the broker.”

“ICE needs to see it again,” said Mr. Vieira. “Make sure everything matches up.”

Tension rippled through the group; I could feel it creep back into my own limbs.

“Why you lookin’ so worried,
guera?”
said Carlos. I guess that had become my new nickname. White girl. “You’re homegrown. You’re golden.”

I couldn’t bring myself to speak.

“It don’t just hurt you,” Mr. Vieira told us. “You have fake papers, I get fined. Your ID don’t match your social, I get fined.”

“And we get deported,” said Carlos before speaking in Spanish to the rest of the group. A few of the men started to complain loudly. One threw his hat at a tree, knocking a couple of pears down.

Quinn looked up at me, full of confusion. I rubbed her dark hair to try to reassure her.

“I don’t want to lose none of you,” said Mr. Vieira. “I can’t afford to lose none of you. But if your papers don’t add up, you should do us both a favor and vamoose.”

Carlos looked at him, uncertain how to translate.

“Leave,” said Mr. Vieira. “Get out of here. Find another job.”

“Do we have to go?” Quinn whispered, leaning against my side, as Spanish ricocheted around us.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “At least I hope not.”

“The ice giants were banished by Odin, remember?” whispered Quinn. “They had to go somewhere like Antarctica. Someplace even the gods couldn’t go.”

THAT NIGHT, I
pulled my paperwork out from the envelope in my glove compartment. Everything looked good. Nice official Social Security card. Stamped, notarized birth certificate. No one should want to dig any deeper. No one should be able to tell I was born hundreds of miles from the town neatly typed on the page.

T
HE POOL WATER TURNED HER HAIR A PALE GREEN
. Karen kind of liked it—it made her feel like some sort of mythological creature—but Deena freaked out. “It will clash with your red dress,” she said. “Thank goodness I brought an extra bottle of bleach.”

The scent made her eyes sting, but Karen enjoyed her mother dyeing her hair, fingers raking expertly across her scalp. It reminded her of when she was younger, and Deena did her makeup for her before a competition or skating show; it always felt like a sacred anointment, a blessing. As difficult as she could be as a coach, Deena’s hands were so tender when they smoothed the foundation over Karen’s forehead, when she kissed Karen’s lips with a Revlon tube. Karen loved the concentration on her mother’s face as she defined her cheekbones; it wasn’t the same tense concentration as when she stared at Karen from the stands or the penalty box. Karen could barely stand to look at her mother’s face then. But when she applied makeup, her face was soft, open. Karen could tell her mom liked the feel of her skin
beneath her fingertips. And Karen loved the smell of makeup, even the taste of it when she bit down on her greasy red lips. It was a little whiff of being a woman.

Karen taught herself to do her own makeup when she was fourteen—Deena didn’t trust her at first, especially with the eyeliner, but Karen had a steady hand, and Deena eventually relinquished her job. Karen wasn’t prepared for how much she missed her mother’s fingertips, but she was too stubborn to let her know, and she knew Deena was too proud to say anything first.

BY THE TIME
they had to leave for their practice session, Karen was back to her usual platinum brass. She wished Nathan had been able to get a good look at her green hair, but he was holed up in his own room, getting ready. Maybe, hopefully, thinking of her.

She wanted to hug him, to feel the same wet closeness, when they met again on the landing outside their rooms, but his tracksuit—blue with white stripes down the side, matching her own—somehow felt like a barrier. He might as well have been wearing armor.

Karen tried not to worry about how distant he felt as she sat in the back seat on their way to the rink, Nathan in the front with her mom. She tried to remind herself how she loved competitions away from home. She loved being able to look out the window of the rental car of the moment and see new trees, new storefronts, new faces. She usually didn’t get to explore the new place much, but it was enough to know it existed, that people lived lives there that didn’t have anything to do with skating, didn’t have anything to do with her.

She wondered what she would do with her day if she didn’t have to skate. She had looked longingly at all the glossy tourist brochures in the tiny hotel lobby—places where you could pet alligators, places where you could see wax movie stars, pick real
oranges. She had brought a handful up to her room and unfolded them like treasure maps on her bed after her mom had passed out. But maybe if she had a whole day, she’d just want to go to the ocean and watch the waves; better yet, she’d bring a book with her and disappear into its pages. She couldn’t imagine anything better. Unless Nathan was lying on a towel beside her.

Nathan’s dark hair flared through the hole in the headrest before her, as if straining toward her hands. When she brushed it with her fingertips, though, he flinched and leaned forward.
He didn’t know it was me
, she told herself.
He must have thought it was the wind sending chills down his neck
.

AS MUCH AS
she loved new towns, new rinks made Karen nervous. What was the consistency of the ice? Would there be any rough patches, any divots? Would her blades feel happy on the surface? Would the dimensions of the rink be the same so they wouldn’t crash into the boards or get swallowed up by too much open space? Would they be able to hear their music over the sound system?

Every ice rink smelled different and the same at the same time. There was the comforting scent of the cold, sweet, and almost chemical, like chlorine; there was the rubber flooring that gave off a whiff of gymnasium, or maybe preschool; there were the varying scents from the snack bar—coffee and frozen pretzels, sometimes popcorn, sometimes hot dogs. This particular rink smelled like Gatorade or Mountain Dew, as if someone had painted the walls with a vaguely medicinal, fluorescent yellow drink.

Skaters in workout clothes milled through the lobby while coaches signed registration forms. Karen stood to the side as Nathan wove through the crowd, giving too-long hugs and kisses everywhere he turned.

“Hey.” A short freckled girl around her age, wearing a bright red tracksuit, walked up to Karen. “I saw you barf on TV.”

“Oh my God, that was on TV?” Karen felt her face grow hot.

“It was awesome,” the girl said, twisting her long black hair into a knot. “You’re my hero.”

Karen blushed more deeply.

“Isabelle.” The girl extended her hand. Karen could feel Isabelle’s bones shift inside when she shook it. “I’m from New Hampshire, skating with my cousin. First year in Seniors. We’re not going to win, but it’s just fun to be here, yadda yadda yadda. And we get to go to Disney World tomorrow. Wanna come?” Isabelle asked, snapping her gum.

“I don’t think my mom would let me,” Karen said, heart racing. It had been a long time since another skater had wanted to spend time with her, had wanted to talk to her about anything other than Nathan.

“You’re in Florida!” Isabelle flung her arms out and Karen could see her Pilates training; the spontaneous, reckless gesture came from the very center of the girl’s body. “That’s what you do when you’re in Florida! You go on the teacup ride. You go to Never Never Land.”

You go from rink to hotel room and back again. You train every single possible second
.

“Then I’ll kidnap you,” the girl said, unfazed. “No one should miss the Happiest Place on Earth.”

Karen looked over at Nathan and caught him looking back at her. If she didn’t know better, she thought she could almost see some jealousy in his eyes.
I’m allowed to have friends, too
, she told herself, and turned back to Isabelle. She could still feel his eyes on the back of her head; she shook her hair to show him how much fun she was having without him.

“SO WHO’S YOUR
little girlfriend?” Nathan asked as they stroked around the rink. His grip seemed especially tight.

“Just a skater,” she said. “Just Isabelle.”

“You like her better than you like me?”

Karen thought he was joking at first, but his jaw was clenched.

“It’s different,” she said. Isabelle and her cousin were laughing across the rink, doing some sort of goofy footwork that probably wasn’t even in their program. Karen did a three turn and inhaled sharply, waiting for Nathan’s palm to jam itself into her solar plexus, push her toward the roof.