by David Bergen
SHE left the following morning. Katerina gave her a ride to the nearest town. She advised against walking. It would be hot, what with the baby. She made Íso a lunch large enough to feed five. There was a bottle of water. Katerina had handed Íso her clothes, freshly laundered, and those shirts and pants that had holes had been mended with a fine stitching that was almost invisible. Katerina gave her a few small tops and shorts for Meja. When Íso said goodbye, Josef wanted to hold Meja one last time. Katerina hugged Íso and whispered in her ear. If there is danger, she said, walk the smaller roads. And do not trust strangers.
Íso said she would be careful.
Katerina said that she would pray for her. God keep you, she said. And she kissed the top of Meja’s head.
Late that afternoon, on a rarely used side road, she found shade beneath a row of trees that produced a green fruit. She sat in the grass and unpacked the lunch. Ham sandwiches and raw celery and boiled eggs and cheese cut in chunks. There was a sauce made from crab apples for Meja and there was sliced watermelon and homemade yogurt with fresh raspberries. And a glass jar with cherry Jell-O that had gone to liquid but was taken greedily by Meja. Another glass jar, this one full of honey. After eating, Íso looked around to make sure she was alone and then she removed her top and lay on the grass and settled Meja on her chest and let her lie between her breasts. She noticed that one of her nipples was oozing a small amount of milk. She directed Meja’s mouth towards her nipple. Meja tasted. Tasted again. And then latched. She didn’t get much save the pleasure of the sucking, and the pleasure might have even been greater for Íso, who marvelled at the muscles of Meja’s jaw. Good girl, she said, and she gave her the other breast and when she was finished, they lay side by side on the grass and they slept.
She woke to the sky above and she knew that she had never seen a sky so grand and so large and so deep, and she thought that God above must have great difficulty keeping track of his responsibilities, for even she, Íso, was overwhelmed by her one responsibility, Meja. She thought of her mother, and she anticipated her joy at seeing Meja. She worried for her mother’s safety, but she knew that her mother had family and friends, and she knew that her tío, Santiago, would help. He would not let anything bad come to pass.
KATERINA had sewn a sling for the baby and in this way Íso could walk longer distances without her arms tiring. Katerina had provided a map as well, and marked out the smaller roads. Isó filled her water bottle at a Chevron station and purchased some food and walked out into the countryside and settled that night into another maize field. She ate a sweet bun that was dried out. Meja was breastfeeding well now. Íso had enough milk for three minutes on both sides. Then she fed her mashed banana. She’d run out of diapers and had taken to using cloths that Katerina had passed on to her. Done up with safety pins. She cleaned the cloths using the toilets and sinks of the gas station restrooms and hung them from her backpack to dry, or laid them atop cornstalks when she and Meja sat in the fields to rest.
She woke early and walked all that day. She found some cattails in the ditch and picked two and stuck them in the side pockets of her backpack. Late in the afternoon, the sky grew dark and it began to rain, a drizzle at first, and then it descended in black sheets. There was no shelter to be had and so she walked with her head down, covering Meja as best as possible.
A vehicle pulled up and stopped. The passenger door opened and a hand gestured. She looked inside but all she saw was the shape of someone, and because the rain was so relentless she made her decision and she climbed in and shut the door.
The man was alone. He was well dressed and he wore cowboy boots and his hair was combed back and he wore a wedding ring. The rain fell slantwise. The wipers were frantic. The sky was black. Look at that mess, the man said. He reached into the back and fished for something and produced a hand towel, green, and offered it to her. Dry off that face, he said. And the baby. She obeyed. She wiped the water from Meja’s head and then cleaned herself up and placed the towel on the bench between them.
The man put on music. He said that she was lucky. As was he. His voice was high and it had a timbre of surprise. He asked her name. She told him. He asked the baby’s name. She told him. He touched the baby’s head, by the crown, and she felt as if he had touched her without asking permission. He sang along to the radio and his voice was weak and she thought of all those boys singing in the sitting room of the farm where they had kneeled to pray. He said that he was delivering the Cadillac to a dealership in Tulsa. He said that she was a 1979 Eldorado. The car was wide and generous and all of leather and chrome and it was like a boat, and she knew that there was no way to leave the boat. She knew that she had made a mistake.
The man turned off onto another highway and she thought that they might be going in a different direction but she wasn’t sure. She saw lights ahead and she said that she would stop there. She pointed. He laughed and said that there was nothing in that place, just a light indicating a spot on the ground. Not safe there, he said. They passed the light and she saw a farmyard and outbuildings and a farmhouse.
Take me there, she said. She was shaking, and she didn’t want him to know, but she knew that he was aware, because her voice was tremulous.
He ignored her and turned off the radio. He said that she was young. Good thing I found you, he said.
She spoke then. She said that her child was very young and she was tired and hungry and if he could take them to a nearby town she would pay him. She reached into her bag and took out her money wrapped in plastic and she held it up for him and said, Here, take it.
Don’t want your money, he said.
He sang a little song then. She understood the words, she was not stupid. She knew English, even if the words were vulgar. And then he was singing the same words in Spanish, and she began to cry.
And she stopped. She picked up the towel and dried her tears and she looked at the man and saw his profile with his small chin and she said that she would do whatever he wanted. What do you want? she asked.
No no no no no. That’s not how it works. What I want. What you want. In this you have no choice. When you climbed into my car you forfeited any choice. Sweet little Mexican wetback thinks she has a choice. No no no no.
I’m not Mexican, she said.
He laughed. He reached out with his right hand to stroke her face. I know you, he said.
She whimpered, and Meja began to whimper as well. He released her and she held Meja to her chest and whispered in her ear, Okay, okay.
His free hand lay on his thigh now and he drove with his left. Outside the rain was abating and only two vehicles had passed, a transport truck and a car, both heading in the other direction. The clouds scattered and the rain stopped, as if someone above had turned off the tap. The wipers squealed against the windshield. They flapped on and on. The sun was in front of them to the west and it was bright red and it was setting and in another place it would have been beautiful. She saw the sky and the clouds moving above and the hedgerow to her right and a stand of dairy cows shouldered and circled as if in prayer. Meja slept. The man did not speak. Dusk came and she knew that she would die. And if this were to be, what would become of the baby? She said, Keep my baby safe.
He slowed the car and looked past her into a field where there was a lane. He picked up speed. Slowed again. In a world that asked for haste, he was unhurried. Time stretched out to infinity. He told her what he was going to do to her. He had a list. He laid it out for her in measured terms. He was an accountant tallying up his day’s earnings. And for each number on that list, she said that she had a baby and could they drop off the baby in a safe place and then he could have her. You can have me, she said. But my baby.
You’re a choir of one, he said. Sing on. He said that the baby was wanted, and that the baby had a price. The baby will be safe, he said. But you, you have little importance. No price.
He’d picked up speed again, but he was still looking for a spot, and she closed her eyes and opened them an
d she saw Meja on her lap. Look at you, she said.
When he slowed again, to a crawl this time, she opened the door. She heard him call out. The car stopped. Again he spoke, but she did not hear. She felt him reach for her but she was already outside and running down through the watery ditch and out into the field. She put her baby down in the dirt and the grain and she ran in the opposite direction, out into the field of wheat that lay in the dusk like a grey blanket over the earth.
BECAUSE it made life simpler, Sayed Kalif called himself Sami K. He was a physicist, educated in England, and he’d worked for a time with a research firm in Washington, DC. One day, driving to work, he was pulled over by an unmarked police car. He was blindfolded and taken to a building, unknown to him, where he was interrogated and humiliated for three days. He was fed several bowls of soup during that time, a thin gruel with a few peas swimming in the broth, and he was interrogated at random. He was asked questions to which he did not know the answers, and by the third day if he had been told what to confess to he would have happily done so. And then he was released. Three months after he had been taken, he quit his job and moved to Neodesha, Kansas, where he purchased an abandoned homestead off Route 37. He figured he had enough money in his bank account to last two years. A creek bordered his land. The outbuildings and house were in disrepair. At first he used water from the creek and then he hired a driller, and after four attempts the driller struck water. Electrical lines ran above ground from the hydro poles on Route 37, but he foresaw a limited future and within six months he had set up an off-grid solar power system. He patched the hardwood floors on the main floor of the house. Painted. Repaired and shingled the roof. There was a pot-bellied stove and from a stand of oak he selected his trees and cut them down and worked them into eighteen-inch logs that he split by hand and stacked by the shed, where they sat to cure for the cold days to come. He drove a Camino with no box, just the chassis, and he’d welded angle irons to the chassis and bolted in two sheets of plywood so that now he had a bed of sorts. He raised chickens for the eggs and killed the chickens when they stopped producing and with these chickens he made a broth that he poured into sealer jars and delivered to the neighbours around Drum Creek. A gesture of goodwill and peace, given to wary folks who were surprised to hear this trim, bearded dark-skinned man speak with an English accent.
On a Tuesday in late August he worked in his garden, digging up potatoes and carrots and picking ripe tomatoes. In the afternoon he drove to Coffeyville and picked up milk and bread and butter at the supermarket. At True Value he purchased 2 x 4 studs and framing nails and pink insulation and ten sheets of half-inch plywood, and he strapped this to the bed of the Camino and drove back to his land. Heading north on 169 he encountered a thunderstorm so fierce that he had to pull to the shoulder and wait it out. After it had passed he drove slowly, wary of his load and of the black puddles that caused his Camino to plane. It was dusk when he passed a car stranded on the far shoulder. No hazards. Long and boat-like. He slowed and then carried on. The car was an Eldorado, vintage, and it wasn’t from those parts. He would have noted it previously. He slowed and pulled over. Made a three-point turn and drove slowly back towards the vehicle. His headlights revealed nothing save the empty car, slightly akilter on the shoulder. Nose pointing at the ditch. Passenger door ajar. He sat in the Camino and contemplated. The last light had just been siphoned from the sky. He exited and shut his door. Stood in the gloom. Heard a cat mewl out in the field. He approached the Eldorado. Looked out towards the field. Heard once again the cat, or some small animal. He had no interest in a confrontation, or trouble, or anything that might lead to trouble.
He looked into the passenger side of the Cadillac and saw a backpack and beside the backpack a baby bottle. He straightened and looked out again towards the field. Mosquitoes hovered near his neck and ears. The air was clean, there was a slight breeze, and he could smell clover. The cat mewled once again. He returned to his Camino and reached in behind his seat and pulled out a spade, a tool of cultivation, but it could be used for protection. He walked down through the ditch into the deep, wet grass and by the time he’d reached the wheatfield his boots and the cuffs of his pants were soaked. He went looking for the source of the cries and found a baby lying on the ground, nestled in the wheat. He stooped and picked it up. Wiped the tears off the baby’s face. Held it. The baby was acquiescent and pushed against his chest. Thumped its legs as if it was incredibly happy to have found a human.
Who are you? he whispered.
Deeper in the field he heard voices, and he moved forward. He now carried the baby and he carried the spade, and so his hands and arms were full. The noises grew and he recognized them as human voices and he wondered if the baby was more important than the trek forward. He hesitated. He decided to lay the baby back against the softness of the grain. He did so. He built a little nest and made sure it was comfortable. And then he promised that he would return. The baby said nothing. Its eyes were dark and trusting.
He carried on, following the path of broken grain, and he came upon a man sitting astride a woman. He thought at first that they might be in congress, but they were fully clothed, and he saw that the man was rudely holding the woman and the things he said were rude and he heard her whimper, and then cry, and he saw that this was wrong, and so, fearing for his own existence, and aware of the baby back in the grain, he gripped the spade as if it were a baseball bat and he said, Look at me. When his voice was not heeded, he again said, Look at me, and as the man turned to look, he swung the spade at the man’s head.
HE didn’t know what to do with her. He’d come to this land to escape, to settle and roost like an endangered species that senses the desire of others for its extinction and yet will struggle against that annihilation. He had been fervent in his privacy, and even the giving of gifts to neighbours—the broth from the boiled chickens, thick and lidded with grease—had been a gesture of separation. I will give, but not take. I come in peace. Leave me be. And now here she was, and he was at a loss. They had come up out of the field, running, she holding his hand and he holding the child. They’d left the man akimbo, groaning and mumbling, in the wheat beside the abandoned spade. The swing of the spade had been just hard enough to fell him briefly. A light knock. Sayed was not a violent man.
If she had not had the child he would have dropped her in Morehead, on the main street, or driven her to Coffeyville and booked a room for her at the inn. In the passenger’s seat, she kept turning her head to look, as if expecting a following, and with each turn she moaned and then returned to her child and clutched at it. She wept grievously and her whole body shook and even after the weeping had halted she continued to shake.
He asked if that man was her husband.
She looked at him, dismayed. No, she said. No.
You didn’t know him.
She shook her head.
He told her that she was safe. That no harm would come to her. But she seemed to be deaf, or not to believe. And so he took her home.
SHE slept in an old shed that he converted into a bedroom for her and Meja. There was a single cot and a small wooden table and two chairs and there were two windows that looked east towards the house where he lived. They did not eat together at first. He delivered food morning and evening, and if she was still sleeping, he left it on the stairs by her door. In the morning a plate of scrambled eggs or a bowl of Cream of Wheat, a pot of tea, a piece of bread and some jam. In the evening he might bring her fresh tomatoes and cucumber and a bowl of rice with a rich creamy sauce that was spicy and carried heat, a flavour unlike anything else she had tasted. It was delicious. Or one time, baked quartered potatoes that tasted of lemon and rosemary. Baked tomatoes as well. She was allowed to use his bathroom and shower, but only when he was not in the house. The same rules applied to his kitchen, but because he cooked for her, she had no reason to use the kitchen. His existence might have been perceived as meagre, if she hadn’t known this kind of reality back in her own village. He
spoke little, and when he did speak, it was to offer instruction, or to ask if she was okay. She was. He was very fond of Meja and he took to touching Meja’s head or clutching Meja’s fist and speaking to her softly. In those moments she saw the kindness in his eyes.
In her nightmares the man killed her, and she woke, horrified, and she lay panting and soaked in sweat. In another she killed him, and bit out his tongue and spit it on the ground. Horrifying as well. And when she woke she touched herself to verify her own existence and she realized that she was alive, and safe. As was Meja, lying by her side. They were in a bed with clean sheets, and the room had a padlock. Sami had shown her how to use it, and so each night when she retired, she slipped the lock into place and slept with the key beneath her pillow.
She heard him talking one morning, when she had risen early and gone outside her hut to walk with Meja. She asked him about this later in the day, and he paused and said that he had been praying. He prayed five times a day—three times silently, two times out loud. He asked if she prayed, and she said that she did.
The first time he left to get supplies, he told her to stay out of sight, and he said that if anyone should come, she was to remain invisible. When he used the word “invisible,” she thought that he was right. She wanted to be invisible.
When he worked in his garden, she helped as Meja sat on a blanket between the rows of tomatoes. And then Meja was crawling along the rows and reaching for the bright fruit. He thought this was delightful. Let her, he said, whenever Íso tried to save the tomatoes from Meja’s grasp. In the mornings she gathered eggs and delivered them to his kitchen. When he slaughtered a few chickens, she helped with the plucking and evisceration. She chopped wood. She asked if she might keep his house clean, and he said that she wasn’t his maid. She said that she had to earn her keep. He said that she had nothing to earn.
