Little Deadly Things (19 page)

“The sunshine is a good omen,” Jim said.

Eva gave him a sideways glance. “You sound like Marta. She thinks everything is an omen. Where is she, anyway?”

“There.” Jim pointed across a wide lawn. “She’s walking kind of slow. Her due date is in two weeks.”

“Guess we can cut Plant Lady some slack. She looks like a whale.”

“I’m not quite sure that calling her a whale goes with cutting her some slack. At least, don’t say it to her face. She’s a bit sensitive about her size.”

“How about ‘massively pregnant’?”

“Oh, yeah, that’ll work just fine. Folks, meet Eva Rozen, diplomat.”

“At least you understand me, lover boy,” she said. They watched Marta hobble towards them. She added, “That’ll be your legacy, Jimmy.”

“What, the baby?”

“No. The epitath. I can see it on your gravestone, ‘He, alone, understood Eva Rozen.’”

Jim looked at her. “You’re not getting all sappy on me, now, are you?”

Eva punched him on the shoulder. Hard. “That answer your question?”

Marta reached them. “Well, here we are. How exciting.” That was as far as she got. Her face took on a look of surprise, her lips formed a tight circle as she mouthed the single word, “Oh!” then expanded that to, “Oh, crap.” Wet slacks clung to her legs. A small puddle appeared on the sidewalk.

“What’s going on, Marta?” Jim asked.

Marta looked surprised. She managed, “My water just broke. You may need to start without me.” She sat heavily on the bench, looked at her husband and colleague. She smiled and tried to apologize. Instead, she fainted.

She recovered in seconds, grimacing with the pain of her first contraction. Jim and Eva sat her on the lawn. They looked like three students enjoying the sunshine before classes.

“Well,” said Marta, “the timing is a bit awkward. I guess I should go pack a few things and maybe get to the med center.” Then, ashen-faced, she rolled onto her side in the grips of another contraction, even more intense, by the look on her face. Eva recognized that Marta’s labor had begun in earnest—a precipitous delivery. She touched her datasleeve, jacked into the Science Building’s datapillar and ran through a checklist to determine the immediate care that Marta might require.

Most of the students milling in the courtyard were medical students and it seemed as if each one of them wanted a head start at building a practice—with Marta as their first patient. There was one small impediment to the mob of Samaritan attention: Eva Rozen decided that she would organize Marta’s care. She barked orders to several nearby students.

“Get out of here, you morons!” to the three closest gawkers. They were not in the way, but the command helped Eva warm to her task. To another, “You? You want to make yourself useful? Get an ambulance. We’re going to the Med Center, stat.” Harvard Medical Center was nearby.

She pointed to a third student, a tall onlooker who had made the mistake of stopping to take in the excitement. “Give me your shirt,” she said.

“What?”

“Take off that ugly crimson shirt, you idiot.” Crimson was Harvard’s school color. “This woman needs something under her head. Give me your shirt or I’ll take it off you. Now!” The prospective donor started to laugh until he caught Eva’s glare. Then he stood, slack-jawed, a rodent in thrall to Eva’s unblinking python gaze. Without a word, he stripped and handed his shirt to Eva. The shirt was brand new, its bright white letters unsoiled. A single word, broken into three syllables, “Ve- Ri- Tas”, proclaimed the college’s commitment to truth. Eva tucked the shirt under Marta’s head.

Eva felt the presence of the half-naked donor and looked back up at him. His face twitched. An overpowering impulse welled up from the deep recesses of primal instinct and flooded him with one half of the fight-or-flight impulse. He ran.

The ambulance arrived twelve minutes later. The EMTs were calm and concerned. “Ma’am? Can you tell me what’s wrong,” one asked Marta. Marta didn’t respond. She was in thrall to the powerful contractions. This would be a fast labor.

Eva stepped forward and barked orders in a machine gun cadence that would please a drill sergeant. She kicked at one of the EMTs when he ignored her, concentrating instead on Marta. Her foot missed him but her message did not. She had the attendant’s full attention. She grabbed his elbow and pointed to the ground.

“Look. Blood in the amniotic fluid,” Eva said. She pointed to a dark spot where Marta’s water broke. “There. Now look at her. She’s starting contractions. This is going to be a precipitous delivery. She needs to get to the hospital. Stat. I’m going to ask you nicely, so we don’t upset the mother or the baby.”

Eva lowered her voice. The EMT leaned in to hear her whisper,
“Get your ass in gear.”
She stepped back and mustered up a sweet, schoolgirl-voice. “Please?”

The harried responders placed Marta on a stretcher and loaded her into the ambulance. Eva climbed in too. “You can’t ride in here,” one EMT said. “You can meet us at the hospital.”

The python returned.

“Sit over there and stay out of the way,” he relented.

Jim looked on helplessly. “I’ll meet you at the med center,” he said to the closed doors of the ambulance.

Inside the vehicle, Eva took charge. “Put her on her side.” Eva read the EMT’s ID glowpatch. “Barton Cornell? ID 5877? Listen. She’s having late-stage contractions. She needs to be on her side to avoid tearing.”

“Miss, would you let us do our jobs? I think we’ve handled more precipitous deliveries than you have.”

Marta spoke. “Eva? Can you help me? I need something from my plant kit.” Eva loosened a knot at the top of the leather pouch Marta wore around her neck. “Find a three-petaled flower. It was white when I picked it but it will be dried now and look more yellow.”

Eva moved with care. She held up a plant. Marta nodded and reached for the white trillium flower and began to chew it.

“Hey! You can’t give her anything. You’re not a doctor,” said Barton.

“And you’re not going to be a man if you get in my way. Just do your job and you get to keep all of your dangly bits intact.”

“Eva, you’re too much,” Marta chuckled, “but take it easy on these guys. They’re doing just fine...and so are you.” Then she bit down hard as she was wracked by another contraction. As she chewed the dried flowers, her face softened. “Does Jim know where to go? Eva can you link to Jim? I hope this baby waits for his father.”

Eva touched the small commdisc on her right cheekbone. Eva could be heard when she raised her voice, unusual for her, but she was excited by Marta’s birth in a way that no one would have predicted. The child would have an ally and mentor.

Eva’s voice punctuated the siren’s wail. Snippets of her side of the conversation could be heard in the ambulance. “...you bet your ass” “...no, she’s going to be fine!” “...Harvard Med Center...” “... don’t care how...” “...your child.” She fired her words more than she spoke them.

“He’s on his way. It’ll take him fifteen minutes to get to the hospital,” Eva reported.

Marta and Eva reached the hospital and Jim joined them a few minutes later. Eva commandeered a gurney for Marta and pulled her past registration, pausing long enough to transmit Marta’s data to an admissions pillar. The two EMTs looked at each other and shrugged. Six minutes later, Marta was gowned and heading into a birthing suite. Two hours later, the baby crowned. Eighteen minutes more, and Dana Rafael Ecco wailed his way into the breathing world.

“You’ve got a boy, Ms. Cruz. He sure was in a hurry,” said the obstetrician.

The lusty strength of his first cry impressed the physician—“a very healthy baby”, he pronounced, and it gladdened his mother as she sobbed with relief.

The baby’s sheer volume impressed Eva. “Now that’s a set of pipes,” she said.

The new father was still working through the day’s events and could only manage, “Why is he so...slimy?”

Marta held 8 pounds, 2 ounces of red and wrinkled life, 21 inches of fragile humanity—proof of love between a man learning to temper his anger and a woman learning to thrive despite her disabilities, proof of the cycle of life, proof of all of the hopes for the future.

___________________________________________

RAFAEL

CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
MCALLEN, TEXAS
REYNOSA. TAMAULIPAS. MEXICO
AUGUST. 2030

T
hirty-six hours after Marta Cruz served her father dessert, the Mexican Federal Police arrested Rafael at the border crossing in Reynosa.

Marta’s signature dessert was lemon curd with rosemary and it crowned Rafael’s last homemade meal. She kept a row of herbs by a south-facing kitchen window and used the savory plant in her cooking and as a compress for her rheumatism. She knew better than to try to grow lemons in New England, even in a window box, and used bottled lemon juice in the recipe. Marta fretted that she had no fresh lemons, but Rafael approved.

His arrival in Cambridge was unannounced. “Dad!” was the only word she could manage when she opened the door to her father. The two clung to each other without speaking for two long minutes. Tears polished their faces. Jim attempted to take Rafael’s single small bag, but his father-in-law kept it.
“No te preocupes. No es pesado.”
Don’t worry, it’s not heavy.

“We’re happy to see you, sir,” Jim temporized while Marta regained her composure. “You look like you’ve been hard on the road. What can I get you?”

“Cerveza, por favor, si tienes.”
Beer, if you have.

Jim opened two bottles of Red Stripe and a club soda for Marta. Rafael frowned briefly at the Jamaican ale, declined a glass, then smiled and clapped his son-in-law on the shoulder.
“Gracias, muchacho.”
If Jim took offense at the diminutive, he gave no indication.

“Dónde está Dana?”
Rafael demanded jovially, then switched to English for Jim’s benefit, “I want to meet my grandchild. I have yet to bounce this child on my knee.”

“Dad, I wish you’d linked ahead. The most beautiful baby ever created is sleeping now. Come with me, but your bouncing knee will have to wait. Next time, link ahead,” she chided and kissed his cheek.

They spent several minutes watching the slow rise and fall of Dana’s chest. Rafael leaned over the child, the overnight bag still in hand, and inhaled the baby’s fragrance.

“So what brings you north?” asked Jim.

Rafael turned serious. “I have been back and forth to Saltillo to find justice for my mother and for Elena. I will not rest until the
maquiladoras
are stopped.”

“Maquiladoras, sir?” asked Jim.

“Factories. Assembly plants,” said Rafael. A short wave of his hand dismissed Jim from the conversation.

“But Mom never spent much time in Saltillo. How could the factories affect her?”

“Her DNA, of course.” Marta looked puzzled. “Hija, do you know that Saltillo was once called the ‘Athens of Mexico’? That our textiles and ceramics were the best in the world?”

“Dad, you’ve told me only fifty times.”

“Then I’ll tell you again.”

“I don’t get the connection between the malquiladoras and mom.”

“The government cannot see Saltillo’s beauty. The politicians counts pesos when adobe is replaced by steel. Mexico now depends on auto parts manufacturers and many of those are in Saltillo. The industrial wastes kill our citizens,” he said, momentarily conflating his native and adopted countries. “How else do the people become sick?”

“You’ve travelled to complain, how many times is it now? Five? Six?” asked Marta.

“And I will continue until they stop poisoning the water and the air.”

“I read that the manufacturers are replacing their old plants with clean installations. They even turn the discharge into drinkable water.”

“So they say. Evidently it is not convenient to publish the information that shows the damage that is already done. But it is convenient for U.S. manufacturers to dump their poisons in Mexico where this goes unreported. They must be stopped.”

“Promise me you won’t get into any more trouble. Please?”

“It will be worth it if I can stop the poison. It is killing the land and the people.”

“What happened after your other visits?” asked Jim.