I assure Aunt T that I’m okay and that I don’t need her to come to Santa Fe. After much convincing, she agrees to stay put in Haverford, but I’m sure I still hear typing.
We finish talking and the bus drops me off in front of SCPG, the lonely building plunked in a field sprinkled with scraggly orange flowers and prairie dog holes against a sky of cloudless, uninterrupted blue. I take a moment before I go inside to stare at this alien landscape. With no trees or buildings to block the horizon, I have that feeling again of too much space. Without anyone to bump up against and remind me I’m here, it almost feels as if I’m not. An ant with razor sharp mandibles bites the exposed flesh between my Converses and my jeans and with that little reminder that, yes, I’m here all right, I hurry inside before his friends can join the attack.
When I get to the lab Esha isn’t there, but Jonah’s at his desk, some sort of electronic trance music playing.
“How’d the game go?” I ask, stopping as I head to my cubicle.
He looks up with a huge smile and says, “We creamed ’em,” then proudly recounts the details of the game, including a replay of his own stellar serves.
He finishes the play-by-play and turns back to his work. Esha still hasn’t arrived, so I plop into my swivel chair and spin around a few times, seeing how fast I can make the thing go. I’m in the midst of a chair-spinning race: Faith Flores vs. Faith Flores, when Jonah politely suggests Esha might have left a note for me outlining my morning tasks. I grind my feet to the ground and stop mid-spin to check my desk. No note. I start to spin again when Jonah suggests that perhaps she forgot to put the note on my desk and left it on hers.
“Good thought,” I say, and vowing to finish the race later, I get up to check.
Esha’s desk in the corner of the lab is neatly organized, one pile of paper, an inbox and outbox, a few photographs, several phone numbers attached to the corkboard cubicle, but no note. I sit in her non-swivelly chair and bide my time by checking out the photos: A cute dog. A cute guy. Three photos of a cute monkey wearing a U2 baseball hat—okay, weird, but whatever—the pictures make me laugh.
“Find anything?” Jonah calls above the electronic drumbeat, a steady pulse like being inside a heart.
“Just that Esha has a thing for monkeys.”
Jonah gets up and comes over to Esha’s desk. He unpins one of the monkey photos and stares fondly at the animal. “This, Faith, is Waldo. He was sort of the lab mascot before you got here.”
I lean forward to take a closer look at the monkey. “He’s pretty cute with the long tail and the big eyes, but wouldn’t it be easier to stick with a dog or a cat?”
Jonah laughs. “He wasn’t a pet. Sonya—Dr. Richmond—had a fondness for him when she was in Peru. She e-mailed photos all the time. He’d sometimes show up when she was Skyping.”
“And the hat?”
“Esha gave it to Sonya before she left for Peru. They both love U2. Sonya always put it on Waldo’s head as a joke, but go figure—monkeys don’t like hats. Usually he’d throw it off, so getting the photos with him wearing it was kind of a big deal.” He sighs with a pining love and pins the picture back up. “We felt like we knew Waldo. Kind of miss the little fellow.”
What was Dr. Richmond doing in Peru?” I ask, steering the conversation away from hat-wearing, non-human primates.
“Working on Brugmansia.”
Brugmansia from the newspaper article. I close my eyes and remember now where I’d heard the name of the plant. It was when I was learning about SCPG and Dr. Richmond. “Something to do with developing an anti-seizure medicine?” I say, opening my eyes.
“That’s right.”
“And isn’t that also the name of the plant that the drug liquid gold comes from?” I ask, thinking again of the newspaper article.
“That’s right,” he repeats. “Plants are amazing. They can have many different uses.”
I wait for him to say more about the drug. When he doesn’t, I go back to Dr. Richmond. “So, what happened with her research?”
The music changes to some sort of experimental jazz that could be confused with noise. Jonah perches on the edge of Esha’s desk and folds his arms. “She spent a year in Peru working on the project. When she sequenced the whole genome, it turned out that the same chemical responsible for the anti-seizure properties is responsible for hallucinogenic properties,” he says. “She couldn’t isolate one from the other. A few million dollars later, she had to give it up. The board wasn’t happy. They’d invested a lot of money in Brugmansia.”
“That sucks. So will the GMO chile make up for the loss?”
“That’s the idea.” He lets out a breath. “We’re all working our asses off. That’s why the board meeting next month is such a big deal. Sonya has to showcase the financial feasibility of her project and get their approval for more funding. If she doesn’t…” He shakes his head and lets me fill in the rest of the statement, which I imagine goes like this: if she doesn’t, the place could close.
At that moment, the door flies open and Esha flutters into the lab, looking harried and apologetic. I scoot out of her chair as she scurries over to her desk. “Sorry I’m late,” she says. “I was up north in Chimayo.”
Jonah stays perched on the edge of her desk, his eyes fixed on Esha. “Everything okay with the chiles?”
“Everything’s fine,” she says, waving away his concern. “Just a distribution issue. We have to be careful with the GMOs and Holly monitoring our every move.”
Jonah nods gravely and goes back to his desk. Esha turns on her computer, and I’m left wondering why they have to be careful and who Holly is. The GMO chile isn’t on the market yet. Isn’t that what Dr. Richmond said? So how could there be a distribution issue? Maybe they’re planning ahead, I think and turn my thoughts to today’s tasks, ready to delve into my work. But alas, delving in is impossible because I have nothing to delve into. I’m left stranded on my own little taskless island. I clear my throat, hoping Esha will look up and remember me, Faith Flores, her faithful intern.
“So,” I say, rising to my tiptoes and clapping my hands when her eyes stay glued to her computer. “I finished all the samples from yesterday.”
Now she does look up, eyebrows raised. “All of them?”
“Yep.”
“You’re fast. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone pick up the procedure this quickly. I guess it’s time to move on to something new.” I can’t tell if she’s happy about my fast learning ability or annoyed because she hadn’t planned the next task and has to come up with something for me to do. “I guess I’ll start you on QC today.”
“QC, great!” I exclaim, wanting to be agreeable, though I have no idea what QC actually is.
QC turns out to be quality control. I learn how to use instruments called a Qubit and a NanoDrop to make sure there’s enough DNA in each of the vials to be sequenced. I pick up the routine quickly, and as I work, I hunch over the NanoDrop, conjuring up ways to toss the word into conversation: Hey, what’s up? You need any nucleic acids measured? No prob, I’ve got the NanoDrop for you!
The day passes quickly. Jonah leaves early for a meeting, and by five o’clock it’s just Esha and me in the lab. I’m busy NanoDropping my time away, when I hear her talking on the phone.
“Yes, you’ll pick up the chiles at the Farmers’ Market this Saturday. That’s the plan until further notice. It’s more efficient than going up there and harvesting them.”
Hearing her discuss the chiles, my earlier questions come back, and being the trained eavesdropper I am, I listen.
“Rudy will meet you,” she says to whoever’s on the other end. “Don’t worry. He’ll have them all.”
I should mind my own business, but I’m the curious type. Minding my own business isn’t really my thing. Dr. Richmond’s genetically modified chiles, being careful, not everyone’s for it, some perso
n named Holly, a distribution issue. None of this, of course, has to do with me, which means, of course, I want to know everything. I’m pondering the situation when my phone rings with the guitar-riff ring tone that means Jesse.
“What’s up in La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís—the Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi?” he says when I pick up.
“I’m fine, thanks, you?” Hearing Jesse’s voice reminds me that I haven’t yet told him about my father, and with this realization my attention is diverted from chiles to personal matters. I pack up for the day and wave bye to Esha. As I step outside into the warm late-afternoon, though, I decide I don’t feel like getting into the whole dead father thing. Jesse deserves to know what I found out, but I can’t bring myself to go there. Instead, I tell him about working in the lab, taking the opportunity to drop in my beloved new words, NanoDrop and Qubit.
“Nerd girl,” he says fondly when I’m done talking.
I smile at the name. “Nerd Girl at your service.”
I feel the familiar affection for Jesse as we talk, but I also feel the distance. It’s just geography, I tell myself when we hang up. He’s there. I’m here. End of story. But somewhere deep in that locked box, I know geography isn’t the whole deal. Jesse makes me laugh. I can be myself with him. I’m attracted to him. I mean we haven’t done it, but that’s more to do with my past and mom’s revolving door of guys and one-night stands and heartbreak than with him. Maybe I just can’t get over the fact of how different our backgrounds are. Or maybe I can’t do commitment. Or maybe it’s just my age—I’m not even seventeen. Why do I need to decide on one boy?
***
The rest of the week passes quickly. Clem is busy with my new dead musician friend, Paganini. We see each other for meals and agree to hang out more on the weekend. I read, explore around campus, hang out some with Dahlia, who keeps me up on the intern gossip—like that Rejina and Bro Boy are a thing, and that Brian, the Asian with the blond hair, met a cute boy whose room he’s been sneaking into at night.
On Friday, Esha moves me away from the Qubit and the NanoDrop. I’m sad to leave my treasured tools behind, but she tells me it’s time to move into bioinformatics, the analysis of DNA data, and this new thing gets my nerd-girl adrenaline levels spiking.
While Jonah picks the tunes—a Norwegian punk band called Oslo Ess—and interjects musical factoids about Northern European alternative rock and rock venues (the INmusic festival in Croatia attracts 25,000 people a year—who knew?), Esha shows me sample DNA data that comes off the sequencing machine. I’ve seen this kind of data back in Philly, but then she shows me the real heart-pounding magic: how to access the data through the central server, where we can call up anyone’s research.
“Bioinformatics has many definitions depending on who you talk to,” she explains. “But in all cases it has to do with extracting meaning from biological data using computers.” She peers at me to see if I’m following. I nod, and she goes on. “In our case it means looking at a set of DNA sequences from a sample we’ve sequenced in the lab. We then find the locations of those sequences, in a reference genome.”
“Reference genome,” I repeat, cool new words with a secret thumbs-up for Nerd Girl. “Meaning?”
“Meaning a standard to compare against. So, we have a reference corn genome, for example. Soybean. Wheat. Anything in the DNA of what we’re looking at that’s reported as a difference, is a difference in respect to this reference. Make sense?”
A bolt of music electrifies the room, causing us to take cover, at least to cover our ears. Jonah pumps a fist in the air with a shout of yes! as our eardrums ring.
“Don’t you have work to do?” Esha calls out to him.
“Tons. Just getting warmed up.” He laces his fingers and cracks his knuckles.
Esha rolls her eyes, mutters something about his music, and continues explaining. “What we do in bioinformatics, and what you’re going to learn how to do, is to look for mismatches between the sequence reads in the data being analyzed and the reference.”
“And those mismatches are from variations in the genome, right?”
“That’s right, and we can explore those variations and what they might mean using statistics, and then identify the genes that contain the variants. Got it?”
“Sounds fun.”
Esha teaches me the basics and I spend the rest of the day looking at sequence reads from a sample corn genome, comparing the reads to the reference and, okay, having a blast looking for variants. So, hey, some people get off on sports or chess or acting in plays or going to Renaissance fairs and dressing up as kings or queens (nobody ever dresses as toothless, syphilis-ridden serfs), scrapbooking, playing an instrument, or model trains. For me, it’s DNA variants, those packages of letters that reveal worlds of hidden meaning.
When the day ends, the first week having flown by, I’m bummed to leave the lab. When I get back to my dorm room, though, I realize I’m exhausted. I lie down and wait for Clem to finish practicing and come get me for dinner. I’m chilling out, looking at a graphic novel Dahlia lent me, when there’s a knock on my door.
I assume it’s Clem and fling open the door with a raucous, “Nerd Girl at your service!”
It’s not Clem, though. In fact, it’s nobody I’ve ever seen. The person standing in the hall is a small, thin woman with a long, gray braid, a face as wrinkled as an unmade bed, and anxious brown eyes.
“Can I help you?” I ask, once I’ve stopped staring and wondering if she’s some intern’s grannie looking for her grandkid.
“Are you Faith Flores?” she asks tentatively.
The question takes me by surprise. How on Earth does this woman know my name? “Uh, yeah,” I say in a guarded voice.
“Dios mio,” she cries. Her face screws up with an emotion I don’t understand. She clears her throat, same as I always do when I’m about to communicate something difficult, then says the most impossible thing I’ve ever heard. “I’m Alma Flores, Alvaro’s mother. I’m your grandmother.”
Six
I laugh at the absurdity of the statement, but she doesn’t seem to be kidding so I say, “I don’t have a grandmother.”
“Don’t have a grandmother?” she repeats, a distressed arch in her eyebrows. “Everybody has a grandmother! You mean you just never met yours, but I wrote to you, Mija.”
Something inside me twists. I don’t speak Spanish, but I’ve been hearing the word mija since I got to New Mexico. I had asked what it meant and discovered that even though it literally means “my daughter,” older people use it all the time for younger people they feel affection for. I reach for the Zippo lighter, my breathing shallow and fast.
“You did get the letters, right?” she asks when I just stand there, mija reverberating in my brain.
I stare at her, trying to unscramble her words, decipher the hidden code, uncover the punch line. When she doesn’t crack a smile or tell me she’s kidding, I shake my head and mumble “no.” Her eyes widen. She lets out a little gasp, and her hand flutters to her chest.
Despite the static clogging my head, I realize I’m keeping her standing in the hall like an unwelcome missionary coming to sell me salvation, and I manage to ask if she’d like to come into my room. She nods and follows me through the door. I throw my clothes crumpled on the desk chair to the floor so I can offer her a seat, then plunk down on the bed, too tongue-tied to speak.
“I sent them to your address in Philadelphia,” she says, studying me with wide, worried eyes. “Alvaro wrote to you too.”
My breath does this funny wobbly thing in my chest. I squeeze the lighter in my fist, no idea what to say, thankful when she speaks again and I don’t have to.
“That’s why you never wrote back,” she says. The emotion in her voice is contagious, infecting my heart and stinging my eyes. “I thought it was because you were angry with
Alvaro for leaving and didn’t want anything to do with us. About two years ago I stopped.” She reaches into her pocket for a tissue, blows her nose with one sharp blow, then squashes the tissue in her fist. “I thought I’d give you space and someday if you were ready…and then you showed up here.”
I watch, stupefied, as she reaches into her purse and pulls out a photograph. She hands it to me without speaking. I lower my eyes. “Oh my God,” I gasp, my hand flying to my mouth when I see the image of a wispy blonde, my mother, nestled against a tall, dark man, who I match with the blurred photo of Alvaro.
“Your mother was Augustine Archer,” the woman says, getting up and slowly lowering herself to sit on the bed by my side. She’s so small her weight hardly registers, but her presence is enormous. “Everyone called her Auggie. She married my Alvaro.” She gives a hard sniffle and turns to face the window. “But he had a problem with drugs, and he left her. Abandoned her and his child. I never forgave him for that.”
I’ve gone black hole. Sucking in all words and sounds. How can this be? How can I just suddenly have a grandma? How is it possible I never knew a thing about her?
I know how it’s possible, though. Mom. She never wanted me to know anything about Alvaro. She must have stolen the letters to keep me from finding out. A feeling I haven’t felt since before she died arises. Fury. All these years I could have had a grandmother and Mom took that from me? I don’t know what to do with the rage, the nuclear emotion about to explode. I glare at Alma, but this isn’t her fault—even in my rage I know that.
“How did you find me?” I manage to say.
She turns from the window and takes my hand in hers. Her hands aren’t soft cookie-baking, grandma hands. They’re strong and wrinkled, the fingertips hard and calloused—working hands. People say eyes are the windows into the soul. I say it’s the hands.
Code Red Page 5
