Tropic of Orange

by Karen Tei Yamashita

  Buzzworm thought about Nicole of Paramount. Chicana with maroon-brown twenty-four-hour lipstick don’t come off even at Raging Waters. Even if she’s kissin’ a storm outside the Power event. Did she run with a girl crew? How old was she today? Did she know she got some extra eternal buzz minutes on her life for free today?

  Buzzworm caught the news. You give us twenty-two minutes . . . First twenty-two minutes it was: spiked orange alert. Several oranges found to be laced with unidentified chemical. Possibly extra vitamins. Possibly alcohol. Possibly marijuana. Possibly Prozac. Public alerted to report and turn in any suspicious fruit. No reports of polluted orange juice, concentrates, or orange derivative products. Several Van Nuys supermarkets reportedly removing all fresh oranges from consumer stock. Sunkist and Dole orange reps to make public statement at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. FDA investigators, local Health Department inspectors, and FBI agents working around-the-clock.

  But the talk shows were saying things like, “Fresh-squeezed orange juice. Some people have probably forgotten the taste of it. One orange every day, freshly squeezed, will clear up the complexion in one week. By the end of two weeks, your insecurities will be gone; you’ll be getting dates and going to parties.”

  Next twenty-two minutes, the new update came in: spiked orange scare! Deaths of two Van Nuys residents traced to spiked oranges. Three hospitalized. Oranges now believed to be injected with a very lethal form of some unidentified chemical. Buzzworm shook his head. Maybe it wasn’t just Van Nuys. Maybe Margarita and the little homey had made it home the same way. But they weren’t the names on the news. ’Course they’d probably never be. They got under some other statistics. When the class action suit came ’round, they’d be left behind. Buzzworm stopped in his tracks and did what he rarely did—dropped the earphone from his ear. Class action his ass. Margarita’s words came back. One free naranja imported from Florida. He’d given it to that righteous little homey. Where did Margarita get her oranges? Where did any of the street vendors get their oranges? They had them piled in bags on shopping carts or in the backs of trucks. They were on every street corner, every freeway off-ramp, every intersection. A bunch of oranges got smuggled in and took a detour. Some detour. A dead end was what. And it wasn’t just Van Nuys.

  But the talk shows were saying, “Joining Weight Watchers changed my life. I lost thirty pounds in one month. Now I’m a new person. I have lots of energy and renewed self-confidence. I just like myself better and feel happy now. And one of my own secrets is to have a tall glass of fresh orange juice every morning . . .” Do O.J. and be healthy, wealthy, and wise.

  But, next twenty-two minutes it was: illegal orange scare. Chemical breakdown of spiked substance in oranges traced to cocaine. Highly concentrated liquid form. A single orange could be worth maybe one kilo.

  Buzzworm started running. He was going to have to make the rounds quickly. Going to have to find all the Margaritas and the Margaritos on all the street corners and ramps in the city. Check out the distribution patterns on oranges.

  Talk shows were still talking, “Fresh O.J. will end your problems with arthritis, give you a mental boost, increase your muscular surface naturally.”

  But Buzzworm could already sense the consequences. The entire LAPD was lined up on either side of the Harbor Freeway readyin’ up to catch any homeless wantin’ to flee the canyon. They were all preoccupied with looking down on that situation like a bunch of buzzards. Meanwhile, every peddler in the orange business was seeing his merchandise confiscated at gunpoint. Some were slugging it out. Some knew the value of the merchandise and were finding ways to hide it. Oranges were being shoved under floors, into holes dug in the ground, under the hoods of cars and into ice cream carts, into every available crevice out of sight. Before Vons or Lucky could blink, their oranges disappeared. They went out the front by the bags and out the back by the crates. You mighta thought it was only gangs or druggies or the mafia going after them, but it was everybody, like it was a lottery. Housewives and yuppies, environmentalists and meat-eaters, hapkido masters and white guys in dreds with Nirvana T-shirts—all going for the spiked oranges. How badly did a person need a screwdriver? How badly a psychedelic orange? What were they thinking? Buzzworm wanted to know. Didn’t they hear about the two people dead? Others in critical condition? Didn’t they understand the addictive effects of drug use? Couldn’t they just say no? Couldn’t they dare to say no?

  Maybe not. Talk shows were talking about, “You take orange peel and grind it up, add one tablespoon olive oil, one tablespoon Vaseline Intensive Care. Spread it over your shoulders, your body, everywhere. Then you bake yourself in the sun fifteen minutes. It’s an instant tan you women can wear with strapless dresses or you brawny men in tank tops.” Avoid ingesting; just use topically.

  But it was already too late. You give us twenty-two minutes was coming in loud and clear: illegal alien orange scare. Like Margarita said, imported. But not from Florida. Rainforest Russian roulette oranges. Unidentified natural hallucinogen plus traces of rare tropical snake venom. You got high, saw God, and got killed.

  Talk shows never stopped. “Scientists are reviewing evidence that regular doses of vitamin C during a human lifetime may directly affect genetic formation in areas of intelligence and physical strength.”

  “But now that O.J. is out of the question, Tiffany, what do you suggest?”

  “Well, fresh is best. You could go to tomatoes and pineapple, but here’s an insider tip: passion fruit. It’s always had more concentrated amounts of vitamin C, plus it has the benefit of soothing your nerves naturally.”

  Next twenty-two minutes: Death oranges. Minute doses produce exquisite high. Exquisite death. DEA was now involved. Mexican government, too. Everybody down South being looked into.

  Oranges went underground. The word was emphatic: All oranges were suspect. And deemed highly toxic. Waste companies hauled the rotting stuff by the tons to landfills. Environmental experts declared them toxic waste. Sniff the chalky fungus and you could be dead fast. The poison could leach into the water system. Fruit flies could spread it too. County Ag Inspector Richard Iizuka said it loud and clear: See an orange? Call 911.

  Talk show Tiffany didn’t miss a beat: “That’s right. Passion fruit is all the rage. Minute Maid is selling it under the trade name, Passion™. Make the change now. Passion™.”

  Buzzworm scratched his head. Looked like you could take out an entire industry in just twenty-two minutes flat. Nothing to it. Why should he be surprised? Put the crack industry in in ’bout the same amount of time. Problem was, was taking longer than twenty-two minutes to take it out.

  He looked up, up at his palm trees catching the light, fluttering like tinsel, unlike any other trees. Called his city tinsel town. Wasn’t because of the palms, though. Palm trees looked like they were all bending, all stretching their necks in the same direction. Pointing. Trying to say something.

  Buzzworm thought he’d seen everything. But lately things were going off in their own direction. And some people were looking down the barrel of a deadly party in the center of an orange. Looking for the eternal buzz.

  CHAPTER 23:

  To LaborEast & West Forever

  Arcangel shoveled more sand and cement into the wheelbarrow, tossed in another bucket of water, and mixed the heavy gray slop with a hoe. Rodriguez came to check the consistency of the mixture and nodded, “You have some experience in this business I can see.” He pointed at the unfinished brick work. “How are you at walls?” He smiled and shook his head. “The other day, I must have been ill. I could swear that this wall that I planned very carefully to be straight was suddenly curved. I ran my hands across it like this, and it seemed to have this great dip in it, all along here.” Rodriguez pointed it out to Arcangel. “Can you believe it? Impossible! It’s perfectly straight. Maybe it’s my eyes.”

  “Is that so?” Arcangel pulled the wheelbarrow heavy with wet mortar up to the wall and wiped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.
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  Rodriguez scooped the stuff up with a trowel, carefully placed a brick and tapped it lightly. He continued, “Everyone knows my work around here. ‘If you want a straight wall, call Rodriguez,’ they all say. Imagine. I must be going crazy. Too much praise is a bad thing. You begin to doubt yourself.”

  Arcangel nodded.

  “A young journalist, a Chicano,” Rodriguez waved his trowel about for special emphasis, “from the north, owns this place. Every now and then he shows up. The girl is only housekeeping for him, but she at least has brains. He must have wasted hundreds of dollars on plants and materials he brought from the north. Most of it has died, rotted, or rusted. Our climate requires hardier stuff. Finally, she has made the garden grow. And this wall, it should have been built years ago.”

  The two men worked side by side laying mortar and bricks with a kind of rhythm that would suggest they had labored together all their lives.

  “I’m glad you came along,” confessed Rodriguez. “I’m getting too old to do this work alone.”

  “I can only work for you today.”

  “Too bad. This place has work for a lifetime.”

  Work for a lifetime. Arcangel pondered this.

  “Where will you go? A factory further north? The government has a long-range plan, but don’t be fooled by that. A lot of big words about programs and production, but who does the work? They always forget the people who sweat for their bread. Unless it’s an election year, there’s nothing in it for people like us. No,” he shook his head, “stay here with me. This,” he pointed at his wall, “is work you can see.” He stood back for a moment and stared proudly at the wall.

  Arcangel smiled. “Yes, it is a good wall.”

  “Some people work with their brains. Like the journalist who owns this place. You and I, we work with our hands. But it is work just the same. Good work.”

  “Noble work.”

  “A good word. Noble.” He paused to think. “You and I. We are old men. No one thinks like this anymore.” Rodriguez looked sad. “My son said I am working all these years only to die.”

  “He was drunk,” Arcangel said as if he had been there listening.

  “He said poor people are doomed to work to their deaths. That we eat and drink all our earnings because anyway we will die.”

  “It’s true. Anyway we will die.”

  “But I am not working to die,” Rodriguez protested. “I work to live!” He looked as if he would cry. “All these years with the little I earn, I worked for my children to live. Even soldiers who labor with death, labor to live! Even my youngest son who ran away—” Rodriguez could not continue.

  Arcangel sympathized. “You are right. Death is a strange excuse for poverty.” Rodriguez’s youngest son had run away to be a soldier and died in an ambush. Arcangel had held the dying heads of so many soldiers in his arms. Most of them were boys; they had not even seen the end of a second decade. They foolishly believed.

  Believed in everything:

  revolution,

  illegitimate uprisings,

  coup d’etats,

  communist takeovers,

  nationalization of the private sector,

  populism,

  military dictatorships,

  leftist dictatorships,

  destabilization tactics,

  covert operations,

  inflationary policies,

  corruption,

  unionism,

  cultural assimilation,

  development, and

  progress.

  Whatever it was, they believed.

  “He was only a boy.” Rodriguez shook himself out of an old grief. “You must be hungry. We will stop here for now.” Arcangel watched the man’s stooped walk to the shade of the orange tree. He sat at the base of the tree and rummaged through the contents of a small bag, beckoning Arcangel. “It’s nothing much. Tortillas. Some fruit.”

  Arcangel walked over with his great suitcase that never left his side. He opened it and produced the gifts he had received the previous day at the market: tomatoes, onions, potatoes, corn, limes, cookies, fresh tortillas, small sacks of grain, cans of condensed milk, and the orange. The orange seemed to sleep swaddled in a soft bed of shirts in one corner of the suitcase. Arcangel gently patted it.

  Rodriguez looked on with surprise. “You are a walking market.”

  “No. I am a walking kitchen,” he smiled, producing a pan and a knife and a portable gas stove. He pointed at the stove. “This is American. I got it in Nicaragua. Left behind with the garbage in a mountain camp.” In a matter of minutes, he produced a hot meal for the astonished bricklayer. “I have been traveling a long time.”

  “How long?”

  “Five hundred years.”

  “Impossible,” Rodriguez laughed at the joke.

  “Perhaps. I have seen more than a man may ever wish to see.” He closed his eyes for a long moment. He could see again

  the woman who sold him the nopales in the plaza

  and this Juan Valdez picking Colombian coffee

  and Chico Mendes tapping Brazilian rubber.

  He could see

  Haitian farmers burning and slashing cane,

  workers stirring molasses into white gold.

  Guatemalans loading trucks with

  crates of bananas and corn.

  Indians, who mined tin in the Cerro Rico

  and saltpeter from the Atacama desert,

  chewing coca and drinking aguardiente to

  dull the pain of their labor.

  Venezuelan and Mexican drivers

  filling their trucks with gasoline,

  their cargos of crates

  shipped by train,

  by ship, and

  by air and

  sent away,

  far away.

  He saw

  the mother in Idaho peeling a banana for her child.

  And he saw

  lines of laborers gripping

  soiled paychecks at the local bank.

  All of them crowded into his memory in a single moment. Now there was this bricklayer Rodriguez and his family as well. Everyone was so busy, full of industry. But Eduardo Galeano had himself explained to Arcangel that

  this industry was like an airplane.

  It landed and left with everything—

  raw materials,

  exotic culture, and

  human brains—

  everything.

  Everybody’s labor got occupied in the

  industry of draining their

  homeland of its natural wealth.

  In exchange

  they got progress,

  technology,

  loans, and

  loaded guns.

  Arcangel saw his thoughts as a poem scratched across the unfinished wall, but Rodriguez interrupted. “This is very good,” he complimented the chef. “You will come to my home tonight, and I will also fill your belly with good food.”

  “You remind me of a man I once knew in Colombia,” Arcangel reminisced.

  “Did he lay bricks?”

  “No. He was a gravedigger.”

  “Well,” Rodriguez shrugged. “He too worked with the earth.”

  Arcangel thought about this. “José Palacios. I worked for him for six years. In six years, we buried six hundred bodies. Side by side, they formed a line of dead longer than this wall. We dragged them out of the Cauca River. Bloated bodies. The stench was terrible, but no one came to claim them. We marked the graves N.N. No nombre.”

  “A war?”

  “Yes, the war over an innocent indigenous plant.”

  “The traffic,” Rodriguez nodded. “It all goes north to the gringos. If they want it so much, why don’t they plant it in their own backyards? Make it in their own factories?” He stood up suddenly with anger. “How many people run along this road. Every hand is greased. My first son. Such a fool. Such a big shot. He used to carry a gun and fly a plane. He used to bring things: hard liquor, cigarettes, perfumes. I made
him take it all away. It was only a matter of time. They shot him in the head through the window of his car. He used to brag to me, ‘Drugs,’ he said, ‘have come to kill our poverty and marry our politics. It’s a very powerful marriage. Join the honeymoon while it lasts.’ My first son was not a bad boy; he was only foolish—another stupid hero of a narcocorrido. He didn’t want to be poor anymore.”

  Rodriguez returned to his work. Only work could make him forget that he only had one son left, and that son drank every night and scoffed at his work, at his straight walls, his careful laying of one brick after the other, because after all he would die, and the bricks that depleted the earth did so to make room for his body. Two bricks for his head, two bricks for his hands, two for his feet. Knowing this, Arcangel set the bricks with special care, blessing and naming each brick, reconstructing Rodriguez’s dying body again and again into that very straight wall. But it was a strange mumbling mantra, and Rodriguez, peering over the wall at his laboring partner, thought Arcangel might be chanting in Latin:

  Trade balances and stock market figures.

  Negatives and positives.

  Black and red numbers.

  Percentages and points.

  Net, gross, and dividends.

  IMF debts.

  Loans and defaults.

  A twenty-eight billion dollar trade deficit?

  Devaluate the peso.

  A miracle!

  No more debt for the country. Instead

  personal debt for all its people.

  Free trade.

  Arcangel remembered seeing the slain body of Emiliano Zapata, killed in an ambush by a vain young colonel named Jesús Guajardo and thrown across a mule as it passed through Zapata’s homeland, through the Villa de Ayala from the Hacienda Chinameca on April 10, 1919. By the end of the day, when the body was flung to the ground and peeled from the dirt to reveal the familiar and handsome features—the dark brows and thick mustache, Arcangel recalled—it was just another body, its blood thickened to clay. Now, from the mountains of Chiapas at the border of Guatemala, that very name had been reinvoked by the people who called themselves Ch’ol, Lacandón, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Tojolabal, and Zoque.