Delta Girls (29 page)

“I don’t know.” He looked down, grinning. “Cindy and me—we didn’t expect to get this far this fast. I mean, we’ve been skating all our lives, so it’s not overnight or anything, but still …”

Nathan strode over pulling his large suitcase, hitting them with a blast of cold, hair-gel-scented air.

“Sorry to break up the play date, kids,” he sneered, “but we have work to do.”

“It was nice to meet you,” Karen said.

“No, no, the pleasure was all mine.” Lance flushed again. Karen found herself wanting to press her cool cheek against his warm one.

Nathan grabbed Karen’s elbow and led her away. “If I hear him mention you and pleasure in the same breath again …,” he hissed under his breath.

Karen turned her head and Lance waved.

THAT NIGHT, NATHAN
straddled Karen on the grand, ornately carved bed, video camera in hand. She was still naked, but he had put his boxers back on; she loved seeing the line of hair that rose from his waistband, went up to his navel. She reached out to pet it.

“So what are we going to do about the Bobbsey Twins?” He leaned his belly toward her fingers. She could feel his pulse there, strong.

She looked right into the lens. “Let’s poison them,” she said, keeping her face as serious as possible before she cracked up, waving the camera away. He set it on the end table and pounced, muffling her laughter with his neck.

T
HE AIR WAS MUGGY IN THE ORCHARD THE NEXT
morning, as if water had been siphoned from the Delta and hung suspended, invisible, in the space between the trees. I imagined the molecules of water glomming together, coalescing, turning back into a river over our heads; it would crash down to the ground under its own weight, drowning all of us in its warm rank depths, a river that would smell more of sweat than river, the flop sweat of the earth tinged with the sweet rot of overripe pears.

The pears had started to ripen on the tree. Our crews couldn’t pick them fast enough. Mr. Vieira had a constant crease in his forehead; I watched it deepen as the skin of the pears lightened, turning from a deep green to a pale green to a pale yellow, the brown freckles coming into sharper relief, liver spots on aging beauty queens. The air filled with their scent.

“It turns my stomach,” said Mr. Vieira. “All that sugar in the air.”

We picked them as fast as we could, one bag after another, one crate, one trailer after another, but by the time the pears
made it to the packinghouse, many of them were too far gone. “Broken,” as they’re called when they turn ripe. Mr. Vieira had to weed those out before the trucks came to take them away to baby food companies and grocery distributors; he began to pile the rejects up outside, a mass grave, flies buzzing around the sweet rot, the pears browning, melting, the pile shifting as it sank its way into the earth.

A BUNCH OF
the workers left for Oregon, their next stop on the picking circuit. It made me surprisingly sad to watch them go; I hoped the farmers in Oregon would treat them well, give them decent places to live, decent wages. I wished I had learned more Spanish; at least Quinn was able to say “Good-bye” and “Thank you for the big pear,” in Spanish, to Jorge, who gave her a huge smile and ruffled her hair before he looked over at me, worried he had crossed a line. I smiled and nodded and he shook Quinn’s hand, both of them beaming.

The Vieiras said I could stick around—there was more work to be done in the distillery and still a few decent pears to pick if you looked carefully. A few of the local pickers and sorters stayed, too, as did Abcde, who had a couple of weeks before she had to be in Squaw Valley.

More spectators showed up at the orchard after news spread of the whales’ dwindling health, their hopeful recovery, their constant island circling. The Vieiras raised the price of admission to twenty-five dollars for just two hours of access, but people were willing to pay anything to catch a glimpse of the whales. I steered away from the new folks as much as possible, but sometimes Abcde dragged me over to meet someone with a particularly interesting story—the guy who had recently started walking across the country and had vowed to not buy food for a year, only eating fallen fruit and foraged plants and food people gave him for free; the woman who flew in from Hawaii to play her pan flute for the whales; the “whale whisperer” who was sure
he could say a few magic words and the whales would find their way back to the sea. When anyone asked about my story, I would say “I’m just a mom,” or “I just work here.”

The fallen-fruit guy, Danny, seemed to take an interest in me, though. He was only nineteen, about to take a leave of absence from UC Berkeley as he went on his quest. He had big bushy hair, a springy beard—he seemed to have willed himself to go feral just a month into living off the land. He certainly smelled feral.

“I appreciate a woman who works with her hands.” He gave me a knowing look as he scooped some pears up and put them in his canvas satchel, already stained from overripe fruit.

I wasn’t attracted to him in the least, but I let him hover around me just to watch Ben sneak glances at us, clearly trying not to look jealous. I even let Danny kiss me once before he left for other pastures, while Quinn was off making an alphabet bead necklace in Abcde’s tent. His lips were chapped and his beard scratched my face and his breath was awful, but Ben was watching, so I pretended I enjoyed it.

“I see you have a new boyfriend,” Ben said later as we boxed up more bottles of eau-de-vie.

“Just a friend with benefits,” I said, and watched Ben’s face fall.

B
Y THE TIME THEY GOT TO PHILADELPHIA FOR
Nationals, Karen’s period was a couple of weeks late. It didn’t concern her too much—she thought maybe she was lucky enough to get amenorrhea, like so many of the other girls. She
was
training extra hard, dialing the new choreography into her muscles. Plus, this was the most important competition of their career so far—their stepping-stone to the Olympics. It was not surprising her body would close up shop under the stress. But then she started throwing up every morning. And noticed how dark her nipples were getting. And the fact that her center of balance was just a little bit off.

The throwing up didn’t concern Deena. “It’s just nerves,” she said, “and it’s helping keep your weight down.” Karen knew it could be more than that, though. Nathan hated condoms but didn’t always pull out in time. The morning before the short program, she told her mom she had to go to the pharmacy down the street.

“I’ll go with you,” said Deena. “I need some Dulcolax.”

“I’ll pick it up,” said Karen. “I need some time to clear my
head.” It was disconcerting to have Deena around after spending most of the year away from her.

After making sure no one with a camera had followed, she ducked into the alley behind the Walgreens and asked a grizzled man with a “Homeless, God Bless” cardboard sign under his arm if he would go in and buy the Dulcolax and a pregnancy test for her. She showed him a fifty and said he could keep the change if he didn’t tell anyone about the transaction.

He was hesitant at first. “They gonna think I knocked someone up,” he said, his breath filling the cold air with white puffs.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Karen.

“I’m a gentleman,” he said. “And I can take a shit without no pills.”

“If you don’t do it, I won’t pay you,” she said, jiggling her legs to keep warm.

“Fine. Don’t let nobody touch my sign.” He propped the cardboard against the wall, plucked the bill from her hand with his gloved fingers, and trudged around the corner.

Snow was starting to flurry again. She tightened the hood of her long down coat and stood with her back to the street, turning when someone came out onto the loading dock behind the store to throw trash in the Dumpster. If she, one of America’s sweethearts, was seen doing back-alley dealings with a bum, it would cause a stir, especially the morning before her big performance, the one bound to seal her Olympic berth. Maybe she should have waited to get the test, she told herself. At least until after the program. But she wanted to know for sure. She didn’t want to be distracted by uncertainty. Even if she was going to freeze her butt off in the process.

The guy shuffled back with a green plastic bag. After she thanked him and started to walk away, she looked inside the bag and saw that there was a pack of chocolate calcium chews along with the two boxes.

“Hey, you forgot these.” She held out the foil-wrapped packet. Her face was so cold, it hurt to talk.

“No, ma’am,” he said, hoisting his sign under his arm. “Little bitty thing like you, baby’ll pull the calcium right out of your bones.”

SHE FOUND A
coffeehouse restroom where she could take the test. It was a one-person bathroom, the only one there, and people pounded on the door or jiggled the knob every minute or so. She got used to saying “Sorry, I’m still in here,” trying to disguise her voice as much as she could. The small room was painted a deep burgundy, with ornate, gold-framed mirrors on every wall and a little vanity stool covered with matted gold velvet near the black pedestal sink. The white plastic wand in her hand looked so flimsy in the middle of the baroque trappings. She sat on the black toilet and stared at the front and back of her head all at once, a never-ending row of Karens stretching out in all directions. Soon her face would be covered in makeup, soon her hair would be yanked into a tight bun, lacquered smooth with hair spray, but for now she was pale and freckled, her bleached hair riddled with split ends. She looked in the mirrors and watched the pink line on the wand get darker and darker, endless pink lines surrounding her like a kaleidoscope.

M
R. VIEIRA CAME INTO THE DISTILLERY THE NEXT
morning, waving the
Sacramento Bee
. “You made the paper!” he said, looking amused. “Miss Keep-me-away-from-the-cameras.”

I snatched the paper from his hands. My profile was in the foreground of the photo, the right corner, as I gazed out at the whales. The wind was blowing my hair against my cheek, but it didn’t obscure my face. Danny’s beard and hair poofed out behind me. The top of Quinn’s head floated in front of me like an island at the bottom of the photo, split ends lifting. The caption read:
A spectator enjoys watching the humpbacks at Vieira Pears on Comice Island
.

“You’re famous!” said Quinn excitedly.

“It’s an AP photo, too,” said Mr. Vieira. “Gonna be picked up by other papers.”

“Oh my God.” I hadn’t signed a release for my photo to be used. At least they hadn’t printed my name.

“I wouldn’t let it get to your head none,” Mr. Vieira joked.

I was stunned. How could this happen? How could I have let
this happen? Why didn’t I just run away when people with cameras showed up?

“It’s yesterday’s paper, too,” said Mr. Vieira. “Didn’t read it till today.”

“You look beautiful,” Ben said softly, and for the moment, all my worries dissolved.

THAT AFTERNOON, BEN
asked if Quinn and I wanted to go for a walk. I was excited until he started talking about smelt, which is probably the most unromantic word in the English language. Mr. Vieira had mentioned smelt before; the governor had decided to cut off much of California’s water supply from the Delta that summer because opening dams would negatively impact the dwindling smelt population.