by M. Garzon
Dec sometimes acted as though paying us a compliment might cause our heads to swell alarmingly, to the point that we’d overbalance. In all likelihood, I was inordinately happy with his words of praise, but I bounded upstairs with renewed energy to start on my homework.
Thirteen
Halfway through the second week of school Dec found Seth and me in the barn. He looked grim.
“Bad news. Alan broke his ankle.”
“Oh no! Is he going to be okay?” I exclaimed.
Dec often said we’d be lost without Alan because Alan’s reliability allowed Dec to do all his extra contract work. But beyond that, Alan was a kindly man and we all genuinely liked him.
Dec nodded. “He’ll be fine, but he’s out of commission for six weeks.”
Seth and I both groaned; we were the ones who usually replaced Alan when he needed a few days off, and the work was hard and dirty. During the summer we sometimes found a student to take Alan’s place, but during the school year, it was tough. The timing was doubly bad because we had also just lost our weekend stall-mucker.
“I’ve already started looking for a replacement,” Dec assured us, but there was a frown above the pale blue eyes. “For now, we’ll all have to pitch in. I wish I hadn’t just taken this contract because I’ll need to be at the plant most days. But then, we need the money.”
He sighed. He looked tired, and I noticed the growing streaks of grey at his temples, showing clearly against the dark brown hair. Almost the same shade as mine, and about the only feature we shared.
The next morning Seth and I staggered into the barn at five a.m., shivering in the pre-dawn darkness. The horses blinked sleepily at us when we turned on the lights; they weren’t used to waking up this early, either. We got one big wheelbarrow and worked on opposite sides of the aisle so we could share it. The smell of ammonia stung my nose and made my eyes water as we started working. By the time I was on my second stall I was sweating and took off my jacket. One more stall and I was down to a T-shirt. The wheelbarrow was too much for me to manage, so Seth had to do all the dumping. By working as fast as we could, two hours later we’d done one aisle. Dec came in and started feeding so that Seth and I could shower before school, and we needed it because the smell clung tenaciously to our skin and hair.
Alan’s job included feeding the horses three times a day, turning them out, and cleaning the stalls. It was a full-time position, although during the summer Seth and I did the feeding, shortening Alan’s workday by two hours so he’d have more time with his three kids. Now that job was being divided between three people who already had very full schedules, and the strain began to tell on us almost at once.
“You can’t keep this up, Téa.” Jaden’s voice was worried on the phone. “The work’s too heavy for you, and you’re already stretched too thin. I’ll drive down for the next few days and help out.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jaden, you can’t drive two hours a day to do stable duty. You’re swamped as it is.” He was in law school, after all. “Not that I wouldn’t love to see you... I miss you,” I murmured. We hadn’t seen each other in over a week.
Thankfully, the next day Dec hired a man from a nearby dairy farm. I headed to school, almost tearful with gratitude that my day hadn’t started with two hours of shoveling manure. When I rushed in after school to teach, though, I found Seth cleaning a stall, red-faced and puffing.
“What happened?” I asked, my heart sinking.
He shrugged. “Guess the guy lied about working with horses before.”
I trudged off to teach, my shoulders slumped. Cows are very different creatures from horses. With horses, you had to know what you were doing or someone — equine or human — would get hurt.
That evening I fell asleep on my homework. Dec woke me to go to bed, looking exhausted himself. Seth shook me awake at five the next morning.
“Go away,” I grumbled. I pulled the covers over my head.
“Good morning to you too, sunshine,” he said cheerily.
“Shut up,” I mumbled as I rolled out of bed. “It’s abnormal to be happy at this ungodly hour.”
When Jaden showed up at six it felt like the sun breaking through the clouds. I was sweaty and smelly, but I allowed him to pull me against him and I rested there a moment, feeling suddenly a lot more cheerful.
“Reinforcements!” Seth exclaimed when he came in with the wheelbarrow. “It’s about time, dude. Téa spends her time bossing me while I do all the work.”
I threw my sweatshirt at him on my way to get another pitchfork, smiling for the first time in days. It turned out Jaden had taken Friday off, and he stayed all weekend, doing most of the mucking out while leaving Seth and me with the easier feeding and turnout. We all cheered when Dec announced at dinner Sunday that he’d found help.
“She’s a girl?” Seth said doubtfully. “She’s not going to last unless she’s built like a wrestler.”
“Well, we only need someone for three weeks or so. Hopefully she can make it that long.”
It was almost mid-October now, with Thanksgiving the following Monday. We normally held a family gathering at our house, but we were so swamped this year that I didn’t see how we could manage it. Gran surprised us, though. On Sunday afternoon she marched down the aisle of the barn with my cousin Stacey in tow.
I stepped out of the stall I was cleaning and wiped sweat off my face with my arm. “Hey Stace,” I said. “Visiting?”
“Helping,” Gran corrected, suppressing a smile.
Stacey’s turquoise eyes were bright with mischief, and I was still wearing an expression of puzzled disbelief when Uncle Robert and Aunt Penny came in.
“Well, we’ve got our work clothes on,” Uncle Robert said, rubbing his hands together. “Put us to work!”
I looked them over. Their ‘work clothes’ were still nicer than anything I’d wear in the barn, but I grinned at them.
“Okay, you asked for it.”
I got extra tools and was explaining the basics of cleaning a stall when Seth came in with the wheelbarrow.
“I remember how to do this,” Aunt Penny assured me, taking a manure fork from me and heading into a stall. It was very strange to see her makeup and fancy hair in there.
“Stace, d’you want to work with me?” I asked her. “We won’t have enough wheelbarrows otherwise.”
She followed me into the stall I’d been cleaning, wrinkling her petite nose. “So do you do this, like, every day?”
“Not usually.” I explained the situation as we shoveled.
“Well that’s good because this is gross,” she said as she gingerly lifted a load of urine-soaked shavings.
I laughed, because I’d never really thought about it. This was just part of life for me. And I knew that Dec thought we had it easy because he and his siblings had mucked out every day when they were growing up.
Stacey and her parents spent the night. They woke up the next morning groaning about how sore they were, but Stacey and Uncle Robert gamely followed Seth and I out to the barn while Aunt Penny and Gran started on our Thanksgiving meal.
Right after lunch, we got another surprise when Jaden arrived with Aunt Paloma and Uncle Peter. I’d been expecting Jaden, of course, but not his parents.
“I thought I’d left this crap behind forever,” Uncle Peter muttered. But he rolled up his sleeves and got right to work, even taking over the wheelbarrow-dumping from Seth.
I sidled out of the stall, clutching the manure fork tightly in front of me. “Hi, Aunt Paloma. How are you?” I was nervous even saying hello, considering how disastrous our last few encounters had been.
“Much better, thank you, my dear.” She hesitated. Concern was warring with reserve on her face. “You look tired. Dec shouldn’t let you work so hard.” She smiled at me before turning to go, and I gave her a tentative smile back.
As soon as she left Jaden came over. “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.
I gave him a smile too, and it came more ea
sily this time. “Yes.”
With so many helping hands we finished mucking out in record time, and still had plenty of time to all shower and change. Feeding the horses that evening was also fast — and fun. Seth, Jaden and I teased the rest of our family about their ineptness, but they had really come through for us.
When we finally sat down to eat we were all ravenous, and we ate amidst laughter over Stacey’s distaste for manure and Uncle Peter’s mishaps with the wheelbarrow. Jaden sat at the opposite end of the table from me. We kept our eyes away from each other during the meal so as not to make anyone uncomfortable, but even so, it was the best Thanksgiving I could remember. I leaned back and looked around the table with a deep sense of contentment. My life was messy, and I’d had my struggles with this family, but it was mine. That was something to be thankful for.
* * *
Sadly, the girl Dec had hired only lasted a week, and then Seth, Dec and I were back at it. Gran took over most of the turnout and fed the grain, but the hay and sweeping were a bit much for her and we were careful to do it ourselves because if she saw a job going undone she would do it herself, strain or no.
“Sweetie, I already told you, I can’t,” Seth said on the phone that night. He rolled his eyes at me, gave a couple more ‘uh-huh’s’, and hung up with a sigh.
“Julia?” I guessed.
“Yeah,” he said morosely. “She’s pissed because the only time she gets to see me, I’m in a stall. We haven’t done anything together in weeks.”
We went through one more helper, a taciturn man who nevertheless lasted two weeks, before Alan came back. I hugged him when he came in. I had blisters on my blisters, and my shoulders, arms and back ached constantly. Jaden had driven down every weekend and was almost as tired as the rest of us.
The timing was excellent because my birthday was that week. Of course, it was Seth’s birthday too, and we made plans to go out together to celebrate.
“I wish Kabir could come,” Seth moaned. He’d really been missing his best friend.
I nodded. It was the first time in years we’d celebrate without him, but I had another shock coming when Teri backed out.
“Think about it, Téa. I’d be a fifth wheel.”
I wanted to argue with her but decided it would be selfish to make Teri uncomfortable on my account. We resolved to do something together instead, just the two of us.
For my nineteenth birthday, Jaden gave me a laptop.
I nearly dropped it, I was so shocked. I stared up at him with huge eyes. We were at the restaurant we’d gone to for dinner.
“Jaden, I can’t take this... it’s too much. Dec’s going to flip out.” I stroked the top of the sleek machine longingly as I spoke.
“Why, because it’s from your boyfriend?” He grinned. “But I got one for Seth too.” He reached under the table and handed Seth an identical box. Seth’s mouth fell open. I saw Julia’s eyes narrow ever so slightly, but her infectious good mood was soon back.
“Okay,” she said, almost bouncing in her seat, “let’s order your first legal drinks. On me!”
Julia had picked the restaurant — something fancy, naturally — but no one minded because she had a way of making things feel celebratory. She also insisted we go out dancing afterward, since we could get into clubs now.
“I bought this dress just for tonight, and you’re not taking me home until I get a chance to show it off properly,” she said coyly, looking at Seth from under her long lashes.
Dec wasn’t as hard to appease as I’d thought he would be. Jaden simply pointed out that we’d have trouble keeping up in school if we kept sharing the antique desktop in the living room, and Dec was sold.
* * *
October was almost over. I’d already written my midterms and had done surprisingly well, considering I’d spent as much time shoveling as studying. Seth hadn’t been so lucky. School was stressing him out so much that he’d starting biting his nails, a habit he’d abandoned years ago.
Dec harangued him all through dinner one night and kept it up as we moved into the living room afterward. “If you don’t pull up your grades you’ll never make anything of yourself. At this rate, you can kiss engineering goodbye.”
“Then I’ll do something else,” Seth said impatiently.
“There you go again, just giving up!” Dec said angrily. “You can do this, you just have to try harder. Have you thought about the courses you’ll take next semester? Maybe you could take some easier electives to get your average up.”
“Like what? Particle physics?”
Dec’s nostrils were beginning to flare. “Don’t get fresh with me.” He took a breath, apparently determined to take his own advice and keep trying. “How about Canadian History?”
“Only if you want to bore me to death.”
My eyes grew round. It wasn’t like Seth to challenge Dec so openly. Or at all.
“You know, there was a time when people took pride in learning our country’s history!” Dec exclaimed.
“Yeah, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be,” Seth deadpanned.
Dec looked like he might ignite, but I couldn’t help myself — I fell onto the couch next to Seth, hiding my face in a cushion to muffle my laughter. Someone mussed my hair and I rolled over, still giggling, to see my brother grinning down at me. We both looked up at the sound of Dec’s reluctant chuckle.
Dec pointed his finger at Seth. “Don’t think this means you’re off the hook.” But he was smiling.
We’d only had a few days of calm when Seth showed up in my room, wearing the look of tortured anticipation I’d come to recognize.
“More names from Olivia?” I guessed.
“Yup.” He slid onto the foot of my bed and leaned against the pale yellow wall. The color had made a nice backdrop for the daisy wall stickers my mom and I had strewn over the walls, but most of the flowers had peeled off over the years. “And you’ll never guess where one of them lives.”
I dropped down next to him and held out my hand. He handed me a scrap of paper.
“Argentina?” I gasped.
“Weird, huh? You’ll have to write to that one — there’s no phone number and I bet he only speaks Spanish.”
Weird wasn’t the word. I was feeling more than a little creeped out.
“How about the one in Oregon? Should we call him tonight?” Seth said.
I shook my head. “Dec’s downstairs. Let’s do it tomorrow.” Dec was only part of my reason, though. I was unaccountably worried about our search.
I called Jaden as soon as Seth left the room. My mixed-up feelings poured into the phone, probably making no sense at all, but he listened quietly through it all.
“I’ll be there tomorrow,” he said finally. “Sleep well, querida.”
But I didn’t, of course. I barely slept at all, so it was no wonder that my haggard appearance caused Jaden some concern the next day. Fortunately, Dec had run out to the store, so Jaden and I sat in the living room. He looped both arms around me as I spoke.
“Do you want to hear something ironic?” I said quietly. “I used to worry that I’d grow up and fall for someone I was related to. That I’d find myself madly in love only to discover the man of my dreams was my half-brother or my cousin. I’d wonder if my father was someone I passed by every day, and I’d search the faces in every crowd, looking for some resemblance, some spark of recognition.”
“Well, if it reassures you, I don’t think there’s anyone named López in my mother’s family tree, and she can trace her ancestry quite far.” He smiled at me. “I don’t think we’ll create any further scandal in that sense.”
I was still uneasy. “Maybe this whole search isn’t a good idea after all.”
“Why do you say that?” Jaden murmured.
“I’ve started thinking about the people I could hurt.” I rested my face against him and confessed into his soft cotton shirt. “And what if instead of two families, I end up with none? Ours will be even more uneasy with me than they
already are, and the new one might want nothing to do with me.” My voice was so quiet I wasn’t even sure he’d hear me.
“You’ll always have this family, Téa. And you have the right to know where you came from.” He took one of my hands in his. “Would you like to talk to Dec together?” It was almost too tempting, the idea of having Jaden’s strength to hold me up, but I shook my head slowly.
“Thanks, my love, but this is something Seth and I have to do by ourselves.”
* * *
I wrote a short letter to the Argentina Alfonso. It felt sort of quaint to be contacting someone by snail mail in this day and age. We also called the man in Oregon, who turned out to be another dead end.
“At least he was nice about it,” Seth said.
I frowned. “He sounded kind of evasive. Did you ever think that we might reach the right man, and he could just lie to us?”
Seth shook his head in frustration. “This is no good. We need more details, something else to narrow the odds. Let’s call Jan, maybe there’s something else she can tell us.”
It was my turn to see Jan this time. I arranged to meet her at a Tim Horton’s coffee shop near Burlington, where she lived. I got there first and was in the lineup when Jan arrived. She hurried right over to me and grabbed me in a hug.
“Sweetie, it’s so good to see you again,” she said loudly.
“You too.”
We got coffees and found a table. I inspected her quietly, surprised at how different she seemed from the woman I remembered. She had lots of artificially-red hair in the same outdated style from ten years before. Her fingers were nicotine-stained and when we sat down she pulled out a pack of cigarettes, then shook her head as she stuffed them back into her purse. I’d forgotten what a heavy smoker she was.
“Damn no-smoking laws,” she grumbled. “I have to hide out in my own house like a criminal just to have a smoke.” She had the raspy voice that came with the habit. “You’re looking good,” she went on, giving me the once-over. “You didn’t grow much, not like your brother. What a handsome one he’s turned into! The spitting image of your mother, if she was a man.”
