The Orange Blossom Express

by Marlena Evangeline

  Hard days night …

  CHAPTER 24

  Costa Rica: Two years earlier

  ESPERANZA MATILDA PEREZ WALKED THREE miles down the dirt road before Carlito Avila stopped to give her a ride. Esperanza had begged her mother that she should stay with the family, but Ruby insisted that jail was not a place for a young girl and Esperanza was older; she could work. The smaller children could not. Ruby had said a young woman needed to learn how to make her way in the world, and so Esperanza obeyed her mother. Ruby insisted it was not so much a choice as a necessity. The child needed to learn how to live in the world, and she could not do this in her mother’s prison.

  Esperanza hopped in the back seat of the 1950 Chevrolet and sat quietly while Carlito talked about the corn he had picked earlier that day. The crop was poor, he said, because there was no moisture in the air. There had been no rain for months and the plants could not find any nourishment; the corn had shriveled to gravely kernels inside burnt husks. Esperanza, however, was full of water. She could feel moisture seeping through her light skirt, the seed dripping out of her and sticking on the red-leather seat. She shifted uneasily. What she could not feel was the seed that was at that moment planting itself. What she could not know was the future that was making itself inside her even as she began her journey.

  Carlito let her off near the dump, so she could cross the river where the water was shallow and hike over to the main highway. Esperanza hated the smell of the dump and the dirt of the people living there in make-shift houses. She kicked at an aluminum can, but caught her sandal on a wire that was hidden by dirt. The wire stuck in the leather and she stopped to pull it out. She stood up and shook the wire away and looked around. She thought she heard a voice calling her back, but when she turned her head she saw no one. The dump was empty. It hardly mattered, she thought, little seemed to matter now. She moved on through the garbage and found the trail that wound down the hill to the river below. The trail was steeper than she had thought and she slipped once on loose rock losing her balance. After falling, she sat and picked small stones from the scrape on her knee. The knee hurt but she had no feeling in her mind. Only numbness. She was very lonely. She missed her mother’s life because it was the only life she knew.

  She walked to the river’s edge, favoring the leg with the bruise, and into the cold shallow water, then bent and removed her wet sandals and threw them on the bank. The cool water felt like ice against her sun-warmed skin, but she moved into it as if sleep-walking, deeper into the coldness, as if now she could not return to shore. The water cooled the bruise on her knee, and then covered her thighs, and her waist, then her chest, slapping against her neck when she started with her clothes on to swim in small quick movements. She ducked her head, and moved towards the strong current of the river, the quick moving water taking her with it.

  She was frightened, but she did not fight against it. The river cascaded into a small rapid that bobbed her along in the swift current and then emptied into a deep pool. She ducked her head again to get her long hair off her face and floated in the eddy of quiet water. The sun glimmered on the surface, making it seem like a wide yellow mirror. She turned on her stomach and kicked, then ducked under the surface with her eyes open, swimming downward. The water pressed against her chest as she moved deeper. At the bottom, she grabbed one of the bright rocks and examined it, her hair floated above her like seaweeds in shadowed light. Fish darted through her legs, nipping at her toes, brushing their scales against her wet brown skin, tickling; suddenly her breath went and she splashed to the surface, gasping, and swam to the side of the pool and climbed out of the water, slipping out of her wet clothes and placing her pedal pushers and blouse on rocks to dry. Then she flopped onto the dirt. Goosebumps formed on her arms, and she shivered in an uncontrollable spasm like a fish. The sun warmed her, and she relaxed for a second before another shiver erupted and her body jerked uncontrollably. An afternoon wind swept down the river and her body tensed into it. Her mind was still numb, but she could feel the way her skin shivered and how the fresh wind slipped over her legs and the drowsy way her eyelids sank and the weight of the sun on her face.

  After she awoke on the bank of the river, she had moved on to the highway, and caught a ride with a family driving all the way to Mexico, somewhere on the outskirts of Zihuatanejo. Since she had no destination in mind, she rode with them, helping with the children, building a fire by the road side when they stopped to camp for the night, then hiking down to a stream to collect water. The family was on their way to the hacienda of Gloria Marie Martinez where Renaldo worked.

  When they arrived, Esperanza told Gloria Marie that she had been turned away from home, and how her mother had said she must learn to work.

  “What is it you can do?” she asked.

  “I can cook,” she answered. “And I can fight.”

  “Fight?”

  “Yes. At home I learned to fight. My mother taught me.”

  “Then you might be a useful child,” she said. “First I will have you work in the kitchen, because I need a helper and we must eat. But there are other things to learn.”

  The clearing where the main house of the hacienda sat was carved out of the dense jungle. A log was stretched across the grass and one of the workers was chipping away the center for a canoe, but it was not yet hollow. A monkey chattered in a high tree and scampered to another. There was something about the hacienda that suited Esperanza, something solid, permanent. The walls of adobe bricks were made, years ago, in some other generation’s history, from the very earth under her feet. She responded with her body, feeling the connection to the past while she moved into her own future. She could feel it in the way her bare feet pressed into the grasses, and how her legs quivered as she strode over the ground, as if she were a young panther who had not yet learned her true power, but whose agility was visible in the graceful way she moved. She felt it when her voice rose in her throat as she laughed at the small children who ran helter-skelter through the yard.

  Gloria Marie had been born at the hacienda and knew of nothing but the expansive grounds and the fertile earth. She had taken the job of caring for land with great seriousness; she had made a commitment because she had loved the place of her birth beyond any reason. That commitment, in the course of many years, had turned to a greater love, and that greater love to wisdom. Gloria laughed then, saying the things she knew mostly seemed wise, but perhaps they were not always as wise as she would like them. She tried, she said, to make safe choices; she made her living from the land and had learned to treat it with great care. She added that Esperanza was welcome to stay as long as she proved to be a good worker; there was always room for a good worker on a busy hacienda. As they walked over the grounds, Esperanza admired the robust corn that had burst from the earth; the husk cradled stout ears and promised the milk of sweet kernels. Gloria Marie pulled an ear from the stalk and pulled back the husk, showing her the dazzle of yellow seed. Vines of squash tangled underneath the stalks and the size of the green pumpkins indicated the vigor of the soil. This was not like the shallow soils of her home, Esperanza thought, where the corn struggled for life in the dry climate. A small child tugged at Esperanza’s skirt, and she absently picked him up and slung him over her hip. He wrapped a small leg around her stomach.

  Gloria Marie gave Esperanza an upstairs room in the main house with a deck that looked over the grounds; the new perspective helped her look farther than when she had had to hitchhike. The room was above the kitchen, and Gloria Marie had apprenticed Esperanza to Patricia Alvarez, the cook. It was easy for Esperanza to slip down to work and then back up to her room warmed by the slow fires below. In her room, she could smell the comforting kitchen smells that seemed to seep into the adobe walls themselves and linger long after the kitchen fires had died. At night the scent of the drowsy air floated in the open windows carrying the smell of honey and vine through the hazy dreams of Esperanza’s settled sleep. She slept now on white sheets, not the tattered g
rayed cottons of her mother’s house, and she became accustomed to the clean smell of sun in her bed.

  Esperanza learned to make the Sunday mole, but Patricia still rolled out the tortillas; yet, during the early part of the week, on Mondays and Tuesdays when the family had gone to town, Patricia let Esperanza practice mixing and rolling the masa. Once Esperanza had gotten the consistency of the masa perfectly, but on that day she could only roll oblong tortillas and became frustrated. “Have patience, little one,” said Patricia. “Necessity will show you the perfect tortilla. The feel will come to you when you must learn it.”

  It was of no matter to Patricia Alvarez or Gloria Marie Martinez that Esperanza’s stomach had already begun to swell. Nor was it of any matter to Esperanza. The two women had not thought to ask about the father, and the child had not thought to tell them. What she knew was that the child would be hers to care for like her mother had cared for her. And somewhere inside her mind she knew that her own child would be luckier than she was. She could not form this thought into an idea, or a sentence, or an utterance, but it lingered inside her like a breeze that has collected an unknowable scent.

  Esperanza was in the kitchen, early, as usual, and turned the onion and the pepper and the garlic that cooked next to the morning fire, satisfied with the dark blistery skin the coals had burned. She took the onion off the fire and set the soft skinned fruit to the side when she heard a commotion in the courtyard.

  There were five men on horses stirring dust, circling in the courtyard. She was curious as to what they might want. Three of the men had raised guns in the air. As she walked outside, Renaldo ran towards where his two small children played close to the fish pond, barely discernable from the earth, and rushed them to safety. A large man with a round face pushed a roan horse into Renaldo, knocking him down. The squeak of saddle leather mingled with the shouts of the drunken men.

  Gloria Marie Martinez came from the house with a rifle raised, but a man turned quickly warning her to be still and holding his gun on her. Esperanza shuffled through the horses, trying to get to Renaldo and the children. A man pulled at her hair and she twirled dazed. A horse stepped on the top of her foot; she pushed the animal away, struggling. She bit the man’s leg and clawed him while he laughed and twirled his horse in a circle. She pushed the animal away, struggling; she bit and clawed his leg, while he laughed and twirled his horse in a circle. He pushed his gun against the child’s chest but he did not fire. Esperanza stood dazed while the horsemen circled the courtyard and disappeared.

  “You are a good fighter,” said Gloria Marie. “But you need better tools.”

  “When you take care of yourself,” she continued, “you can take care of everyone, but you must learn some new skills for this fighting spirit that lives inside you.”

  “Yes,” said Esperanza, “I want to learn.”

  “Then you must pay careful attention.”

  “I have been trying,” she answered.

  “Yes, I know, but you must be especially careful now. Things have changed for you. Your mother was right to send you away from her jail. She chose to stay there, and you have chosen to leave. Here you will learn how to build the kind of life you need. It will be a different way to live but you cannot do it by fighting with your fists. We all have many gifts. We have feelings and imagination. You must use these like a dream and imagine the kind of life you think is proper and how it is you should live it. Your feelings about what is right or wrong will help you. It is my fault,” said Gloria Marie. “I have kept you in the kitchen too long. I have long known of your other skills.”

  Gloria Marie’s own mother, Louisa, had not taught her well for the new world. Her own mother had taught only about dressing and sewing and cooking and not about the things that Gloria Marie had needed the most; the knowledge about running and defending the hacienda; this was a big job and in order to feed the many mouths that depended on her, she had to do it well. She needed to till fields in the spring, and then plant corn, and tend the crop, and harvest in the fall, and sell the harvest so she could live through the winter and buy seed for the next spring. She needed to learn about soil and fertilizer and what it took to make corn grow in its husk. She needed to fight if someone tried to rob her. If her husband had lived a longer life, he would have done these things. But he had not, so it was Gloria Marie’s job. In her younger years, Gloria Marie had never imagined running the hacienda by herself because she was full of love and life with her husband and many children. But life had moved her children to the far corners of the world, and taken her husband from her at an untimely young age.

  As a child, Marie had never liked the domestic chores, and had not done them well. Her mother had laughed at her because of it. And when she married, she had help so had never worried; it was not until her husband died that she learned the real joy of handling the family business. After a while she realized that her talents had never been in domestic chores anyway, and she had learned to make a good profit from the crops. Today she hired help for the kitchen and ran the business of the hacienda. But she had been remiss, she decided, not to teach Esperanza better skills at once. Had the horseman shot Gloria Marie when he had the gun pointed at her chest, the child would have had to fend for herself and would have been unprepared for the world. Gloria Marie’s own daughters had grown and left years ago, and her own daughters were well prepared for the world. Gloria Marie had seen to that. She had taught her own daughter all the things that she would now teach Esperanza. What was important was that learning would free the child. With the proper tools, Esperanza would have a choice. And choice meant freedom, and freedom meant dignity. The child would not have to live in jail like her mother, Gloria Marie would see to it; she would teach her with the love of a mother for her child. She would teach as Ruby would teach her, if Ruby had had Gloria Marie’s life. She would teach her things Ruby had instinctively known, the instinctive actions Ruby had instinctively used to protect Esperanza. Even murder. Even abandonment.

  “You have to go,” Ruby had insisted the last time Esperanza saw her.

  “This will be all right for the babies, but not for you. You must start your own life now. Remember all the things I have taught you, and remember to listen to your heart. The heart will teach you many things.”

  “But my heart is here, with you,” Esperanza protested.

  “No, my love, your heart is deep inside you. You will take it with you when you go and it will speak when you are ready to listen.”

  “Where will I go?”

  “I cannot tell you that. As you see, my choices have only brought me here.” Ruby shrugged her shoulders and leaned back in the wicker chair. She did not mind the jail for herself or her other children. They were young and would have food there. Esperanza, however, did not belong. Ruby was certain the child would suffer too greatly, but she did not know what to tell her to do. Something instinctual pushed the child away, like a lioness with her yearling cub, pushing her out of the pride to fend for herself. The reaction rose from a place deeper than thought; it rose from the center of her being, pushing the child to her own road, lest she circle back again. Necessity would be her greatest teacher, thought Ruby.

  “But mother, I don’t know how to do anything,” she said. The child didn’t want to go anywhere; she wanted to stay close to the familiar voice of her mother and annoying disturbances of her brothers and sisters.

  “You know how to fight.” The mother was firm with the child, watching her face, wanting to see the recognition of the value flood her face.

  “But how valuable can that be?” That she was a good fighter was no surprise to her, but she had no one to fight. So what good was it? she wondered.

  “Very valuable.” Ruby lowered her eyelids in her way and nodded.

  “What will I fight for?”

  “Fight for what you think is important.”

  “You are important,” Esperanza said, confused and frightened of the loneliness that was ahead.

  “Yes, I am yo
ur mother and I am important. But you are my child so that makes you important too. More so. Remember, that when you fight, you fight for me. You cannot help me or your brothers or sisters if you cannot fight for yourself and find a way to live.”

  “Who will teach me?”

  “You will find a teacher when you are ready to learn something of worth.”

  “How will I do this?”

  “You must listen. Your heart will tell you.” Ruby smiled inwardly at her own wisdom. Things she had not learned for herself, she was able to bestow on this child like commandments.

  “Did your heart tell you?”

  “I listened only to my body, not my heart.” Ruby laughed, not wanting to lie, only telling truths in her forthright manner.

  “You must listen first to your heart and your heart will tell your body how to speak. That is the best way,” she laughed again and tousled the girl’s long dark hair. She would be sorry to lose her, but she wouldn’t lose her forever. The child would be back. Her heart had told her this, and by now, Ruby had learned to listen.

  “But Momma, Momma,” she sobbed, throwing herself on the tiles in the courtyard next to Ruby’s chair and putting her head in her mother’s lap.

  “Let me stay. I’ll help with everything. I’ll do your work in the kitchen. I’ll help Angel.”

  “Do not break my heart, little one. Your place is not in the family anymore. I cannot let you stay.” The mother soothed the child with low sounds like the gentle plash of water sliding over mossy rocks.

  “You must go now, this minute. While the sun still shines on the highway, before the morning dew evaporates. Traveling will be easier for you now.”

  The child stood, her teary face a glistening brown, and grabbed the end of her blouse and wiped her face with it. Ruby’s resolve was failing, but she fought against it, and called to Consuela and Patricia and Louis to kiss their sister, and the children made slurpy kisses across the older child’s wet cheeks. Ruby grabbed her by her shoulders and turned her towards the front of the jail. When she kissed the back of her child’s head, the scent of Esperanza’s dark hair mingled with the moist smell of the tears running down both their cheeks, and Ruby squeezed hard on the small shoulders, clenching marks into the brown skin lest she pull the child back into her arms for her own comfort. With firmness she moved the child forward a step and let go and watched as the little girl moved away through the light of the door.