Beau and Bett

by Kathryn Berla

  If she saw me, I couldn’t tell because she kept digging with a fierceness I was sure I didn’t have when I was doing the same job. I walked toward her until I was close enough to see the gloves on her hands, the pink Converse sneakers and cap, the ripped jeans and the white T-shirt that looked pretty dirty and sweaty from where I stood.

  “Oh,” she said when I got close enough. “Didn’t see you come in.”

  She leaned the shovel against the fence and drew the back of her arm against her forehead. Sweat looked good on her.

  “You have some dirt where you just wiped,” I said, and she took another swipe at it. “Now you have more.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me and for the first time it didn’t make me flinch.

  “Just messing with you,” I said. “You don’t have any dirt on you.”

  “I’ve done twenty-eight yards since you left yesterday,” she announced.

  “Twenty-eight, is it? Really quite impressive. You actually measured twenty-eight yards?”

  “Yes, I did,” she said, and I could see one of those steel measuring tapes clipped to the waistband of her jeans.

  “Man oh man, are you going to be sore tonight,” I said. “So, why’d you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Those twenty-eight yards.”

  “Because it needed to be done, obviously. I didn’t think you’d be here until this afternoon.”

  I felt the devil sneak up inside me. “Are you sure about that?” I said. “After all, I was here last Sunday morning.”

  “And last Sunday morning you didn’t know you weren’t supposed to be here.” She picked up the shovel and punched it into the ground.

  “Give me that shovel,” I put my hand lightly on hers. “It’s my job, not yours.”

  “It’s mine too,” she said without looking at me, and I did notice she didn’t push my hand away or try to shake it off. And I didn’t hurry to remove my hand from hers either, although this all happened in a matter of seconds, not minutes. She plunged the shovel again and that’s when I noticed how taut and strong her muscle was under that soft, smooth skin. And that’s also when I removed my hand.

  “Seriously, why’re you doing this?” I asked. “Even if I wasn’t going to be here this morning, you knew I’d be coming in the afternoon. You should’ve left it for me.”

  “And I told you . . . it needed to be done. Do you think I don’t know how to work after spending my entire life on this ranch? Do you think you invented work?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. It’s obvious you know how to work. I’m just wondering why you’d want to, that’s all. I mean, considering there are other people around to do the work for you.”

  “There wasn’t anyone around this morning.” She was still leaning on the shovel looking at me, and I was still standing there with my hands in my pockets, arguing with her like a fool.

  “Well now I’m around so I can do it. Give me the shovel, please.” I was pretty proud of myself, maintaining my cool and being so mature.

  “No.”

  I lowered my voice and spoke slowly and deliberately, carefully enunciating each syllable. “I need the shovel so I can mark off my hours. I cannot mark off my hours if I’m not doing anything.”

  “Fine,” she said and thrust the shovel into my hands. Then she marched through the orchard toward the lawn.

  “Wait,” I called out after her. “Are you coming back?”

  Aargh! This girl is maddening.

  Several minutes later she was back with a different shovel.

  “Where’d you get that?” I asked stupidly. I knew the answer.

  “From the shed.”

  “It’s not a trenching shovel.”

  “It will still work.”

  “Here, take this one and I’ll use yours.” I extended the handle to her, but she ignored me.

  “I’m fine with this one.”

  She set to work about ten feet away from me. “Carlos told me there’s probably a rattlesnake den around here, and one of the guys almost stepped on one in the vineyard yesterday.”

  “So it’s good we’re doing this,” I said with a grunt as I hit a buried rock with the tip of my shovel. I started working my way around the rock, chipping at the edges so I could pop it out like a loose tooth. “Do you speak Spanish?”

  “No,” she said. “Just the little I’ve learned in school.”

  “How do you speak to Carlos, then?”

  “He speaks English.” She stood on the upper edge of the shovel blade and bounced a few times. The soil was tougher in this area than where I’d worked the day before.

  “I didn’t know that. He never spoke English to me.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t like you,” she said very matter-of-factly, the way you’d tell someone their fly was unzipped.

  I could’ve followed through with something witty and biting. In fact, I was just itching to do that, but she hadn’t really said it in a mean way. Besides, I didn’t want to be cruel to Bettina. Hadn’t I set my alarm for seven o’clock to have some alone time with her that morning? Hadn’t I?

  “How about your dad?” I asked instead. “Does he speak Spanish?”

  “More like Spanglish, but better than me. He was born here.”

  “Nana Diaz?” I realized my mistake of being overly familiar as soon as I said it, but she didn’t seem to care.

  “She’s fluent,” she said. “Anything else you need to know about my life?”

  What I really wanted to do—needed to do—was apologize for being such a thoughtless jerk the day before. I’d told her she didn’t have a filter and then I’d proceeded to throw away my filter and say some hurtful things. If I was to be totally honest, I’d say it might be payback for my enforced month of labor. But Bettina didn’t want me to be there and she’d told her dad to let me go. It wasn’t her fault he was so determined to teach me responsibility and character, as if I didn’t already have them. Bettina was odd—that much was true. But it’s also true there were things about her I absolutely admired.

  “Did you do the dishes this morning?” I said instead. “We wouldn’t want your nana to get mad when she comes home from church.” I mentally kicked myself in the butt and then pulled myself together to start over. “Bettina . . . ” I stuck my shovel into the ground, holding it with my arm parallel to the ground like I was some sort of frontiersman staking a claim. I hoped that my confident-looking stance would give me the necessary confidence to apologize in a real way. “There’s something I have to say to you.”

  “I know,” she said, all the while digging. “And I accept your apology.”

  “What apology?”

  “You were just going to apologize about yesterday, weren’t you? So, I accept your apology.”

  This was the second time it seemed she had access to my thoughts—like somehow she’d stolen the password to my brain. I muttered something unintelligible. She was a thought hacker.

  “And that’s the second time you’ve said my name,” she said.

  “No, it can’t be.”

  “It is.”

  I was still in the ridiculous position of holding the shovel upright with my outstretched arm.

  “Yesterday, at lunch—I must have said it a dozen times.”

  “You didn’t. Not once.”

  This had the effect of flustering me and I returned to my work. She was digging fast, keeping the edges straight and the depth consistent, which was hard especially considering she had the bad shovel. But I was starting to catch up to her.

  “How many times have you said my name?” It occurred to me it might have shot a bolt of lightning through me to hear my name come out of those lips.

  “None.”

  “Ah-ha! That’s what I thought.”

  “Ah-ha, what? This isn’t a name-saying competition. I was just stating a fact. Just like you state a lot of facts and make a lot of observations.”

  That pretty much shut
me down.

  “Anyway,” she said. “What is your name? Just B-O?”

  “No, it’s B-E-A-U. It’s French. It actually means handsome in French.” I waited for the compliment I hoped would follow.

  “Mine’s Italian,” she said.

  “Are you guys Italian?” I asked even though I knew the name Diaz wasn’t Italian.

  “I’m half Italian,” she said. “My mom’s Italian. My dad’s side of the family is from Mexico.”

  “Interesting.” I dug the last scoop of earth before catching up to her. “Where’s your mom?”

  “In Italy.”

  I immediately regretted asking. Italy was pretty far away so this couldn’t be a happy story and maybe Bettina preferred not to get into it.

  “That makes sense,” I mumbled idiotically. “If she’s Italian, she’d be in Italy.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” She waved me past her and I leapfrogged ahead about ten feet, so we could still hear each other. “It doesn’t make any sense at all, actually.”

  “So, then why’s she in Italy?”

  “Because she left us . . . or rather, she left me.”

  “Why would you say that?” I turned to look at her, but she kept digging so I resumed my digging. “People don’t leave kids. Their marriages just bust up sometimes.”

  “That’s what Dad wants me to believe. He says she left because she couldn’t stand the sight of him, but I know that’s not true. It was me she couldn’t stand the sight of. He’s just trying to make me feel better because he loves me.”

  “It could totally be true. And if that’s what he said, then why wouldn’t you believe him?”

  “You’ve met my dad. How could you not love him? Everyone loves him.”

  I thought about how I was only there working my butt off on the weekends because of her dad, and I thought maybe not everyone loved him so much.

  “And besides,” she said. “I overheard Nana talking to Dad about it, so that’s how I know.”

  Twenty-Nine

  “I’m tired,” Bettina said. “I need to sit down.”

  I could tell it cost her to say that because she wasn’t the type to admit to a weakness. I knew that just from the short time I’d spent with her.

  “Sit down,” I said. “I was hella sore last night. Dehydrated, too . . . in fact, I was even a little sick.”

  She leaned her shovel against the fence.

  “Why don’t you keep me company?” I suggested. “It makes it go by faster when you have someone to talk to.”

  “Tell me about it.” She looked around and settled about five feet behind me against a slender fruit tree and the meager shade it provided. “Do you like persimmons?”

  “My mom makes persimmon pudding, but I can’t stand the texture of the fruit: so slimy, way too sweet, and I hate the way it leaves a film on your teeth.”

  “Have you ever had a Fuyu persimmon? They’re not like that, they’re more like apples.”

  “A persimmon that tastes like an apple? I don’t believe it.”

  “Try this,” she stood and selected a beautiful orange fruit from the tree and tossed it to me. It was hard and had the shape of a tomato. “It’s a Japanese persimmon . . . Fuyu,” she said. She examined a few others before picking one for herself. She sat down again, leaning against the trunk, and took a bite.

  “Is it okay?” I asked cautiously. “Eating it like this? Without washing it?”

  “Haha! I wouldn’t have thought you’d be the type to be scared of germs.” She took another enormous bite and I could hear the crunching from where I stood.

  “I’m not scared of germs,” I said, rubbing the persimmon vigorously against my shirt and considering for the first time that she probably hadn’t rinsed the grapes we had the other day. My mom washed every piece of fruit that came into our house and was always warning us to do the same. “I’m just not a huge fan of getting salmonella or whatever.”

  “Salmonella? Go wash it under the hose if you’re scared.” She took another big bite and crunched away. Two more bites and even the core was gone. She tossed the little bit remaining, barely a stem.

  I wasn’t one to walk away from a challenge, not that she’d actually issued one. What was the worst thing possibly alive on that persimmon? It hadn’t been on the ground, but a bird could still drop a turd on it. I gave it one last rub against my T-shirt, then sank my teeth into it. It was delicious. Better than an apple.

  “Good, huh?” She didn’t rub it in or even remark on all my frantic T-shirt scrubbing.

  “Yup.” Crunch, crunch. “What did you hear your nana say?”

  “Huh?”

  “That day you heard your nana talking about your mom. What was she saying?”

  “Oh, that.” She took a deep breath and exhaled loudly like she was trying to get rid of the memory. “I was a bad baby, I know that much. That’s what Nana said.”

  “How can a baby be bad?”

  “I cried, like . . . all the time for a year. I guess that would be enough to drive anyone away. It would probably drive me away.”

  I looked at her sitting under that tree, her legs folded across each other. She was strong and determined. “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Well, anyway. My mom left when I was three, so I mainly just remember her from the pictures we still have. And then Nana had to leave the town in Arizona where she’d spent most of her life. All her friends. The house where she raised my dad and his brother. Where my grandfather, Papá Lupe, died. She had to come help my dad raise me, so who wouldn’t be mad about that? I can understand why she’d hold it against me.”

  “That’s all just speculation. You said you overheard her saying something to your dad.”

  I was done with my persimmon, having eaten it almost to the stem. I tossed what was left over the fence.

  “When I was about ten, my dad hosted a big wedding reception for one of my second cousins. There were tons of people, maybe hundreds. And there was a huge line for food at the buffet table. I’d been standing in line for a long time and right when it was my turn to serve myself, one of the guests, a woman I didn’t know, cut in front of me and took a plate and started serving herself.”

  “And?”

  “And I said, ‘Excuse me but there’s a line and I’ve been waiting for a long time and you just cut in front of me.’ Then she turned around like she just noticed me and the huge line for the first time and she said, ‘You’re a very rude little girl, no wonder your mother left you. Weren’t you taught to be respectful of your elders? Someone should give you a good spanking.’ ”

  “Wow!” It was pretty hard for me to say more than that. How someone could be that cruel, I couldn’t comprehend.

  “Nana was walking by just at that moment and she heard what the lady said so she pulled me aside and I explained everything. I could tell Nana was mad at me, even though she didn’t say anything, and she even went and got me a plate of food. But later that night, I heard her talking to my dad in his study. They thought I was already asleep in my room, but I was still awake and had come down to get a drink. Nana was saying I’d always been trouble and I should have shown more respect to the old lady. I could tell she’d been crying, probably because she got stuck with me after my mom left. My dad was really mad and said the lady, who turned out to be some distant relative, was never welcome in our house again. But yeah, that’s when I learned the real reason my mom left us. Left me.”

  I walked over to where she was sitting and sat down beside her—not too close but close enough. “Listen,” I said. “Sometimes old people get cranky. I don’t know why—maybe it sucks to get old. But nobody ever left a baby ’cause they were bad. No kid is ever bad. Your mom had issues and who knows what they were? Maybe they were her own issues or maybe stuff between her and your dad. But it wasn’t you, trust me. I know that much, and I don’t even know you.”

  She shrugged her shoulders and stood up. “It’s obvious that Nana
agreed with the lady.”

  “I don’t think it’s obvious at all. Have you ever considered that maybe she was mad at the lady and not you? Or maybe even mad at herself for not saying something?” It bothered me that Bettina was so willing to believe the worst about herself. “Let me ask you something if it isn’t too personal,” I said. “If your mom’s in Italy, and you’re not really close to your nana, do you have anyone you can talk to? I mean, the way a girl talks to her mother.”

  Angie and Maman were always having talks about things. Me and Papa too. I wanted it badly for Bettina—someone she could confide in like a mom.

  “Ray’s wife, Diane, is pretty nice. She talks to me when she’s around.”

  “I guess that’s better than nothing,” I said, realizing it might not have come out the way I intended.

  “Come on. We’d better get back to work.”

  But the rest of the time she gave up on digging. I knew she’d reached her limit with all the work she’d already done, and she’d proved her point. Whatever her point was, at least she’d proved it to herself, I could tell. But she stayed down there with me the whole time I was working and whenever I advanced about ten feet or so, she’d pick herself up and move with me.

  Thirty

  I’d been working about three hours under the hot sun when Bettina suggested taking a break.

  “I don’t think I should,” I said. “I’m still on the clock.”

  “Who’s going to know? Look how much you’ve done—we’ve done. There’s something I want to show you.”

  I wasn’t hard to convince even though I knew enough to keep my eye on the time and be back at trenching by noon.

  “Where to?” I asked as she led me through the side gate.

  “Follow me. It’s a surprise.”

  I hoped it wasn’t going to be another fancy luncheon she’d prepared but she wasn’t heading toward the house, she was heading toward the vineyard where the tractor was parked. “Hop on,” she said after scrambling into the driver’s seat. “I’ll take you for a ride.”