“But you live that way.” She pointed toward the city. “Go inside, now,” she said to Gabriela.
“Goodnight, Tía.” The girl disappeared inside, leaving Marisol and Hector alone beneath the streetlamp.
“May I walk you back home?” he asked.
Marisol didn’t know how she could say no, alone and with a flashlight, even if it was a short walk. She nodded and turned around, heading back into the dark street without waiting for him.
“What did your cousin feed you?” she asked.
“Um . . .”
“Did you forget already?” She sneaked a peek at him, knowing the look of a man caught in a lie.
“No. Just a simple meal. Red beans, some pork, a bit of corn.”
Marisol kept walking quickly despite her sore feet. At the corner, she said, “Nearly there. You can go now. I’ll be fine.”
Hector narrowed his eyes. “No. I’ll walk you to the door. You can never be too careful. People may be watching.”
Near the entrance to her building was a small playground. What wasn’t broken was covered in graffiti and the ground glittered with smashed bottle glass. The swing set was covered in vines; they had even reached across to the slide.
“Such a shame.” Hector sighed.
“The vandalism or the fact that nature is taking back what’s hers?”
“Both. The children need a place to play.”
“Hmmph.”
“Marisol?” Hector laid his hand gently on Marisol’s arm. She froze, one hand clutching her key in her pocket. “Be careful.”
“We’re at my door, Hector. I’m safe.”
He shook his head, his lips pressed so tightly together that they all but disappeared. “Just . . . be careful,” he said.
The playground behind him was dark, but Marisol was sure she saw movement. He spun around, alerted by her distraction. “What?” he asked. “Who’s there?”
One of the swings moved forward and back, just a fraction.
“It’s just the wind.”
“Marisol, there’s no wind tonight.”
No matter how much she hated to admit it, he was right. The tree’s leaves and the football flags on the balconies all hung slack. Nothing moved, except for the vine twining through the swings’ chains.
Hector stumbled, and Marisol reached out to catch him. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, just tired is all.”
Marisol sighed. “Would you like some tea before you go? To help you feel better, I mean.”
“It’s time I left,” he said, not taking his eyes off of the swing set as he walked away.
The following weeks passed with a speed that alarmed Marisol, yet being forced to take action often defeated fear. After many messages passed from hand to hand, whispered conversations on the walk to and from the greenhouses, furtive meetings at different locations, and advice from the Nueva helper, they chose the Monday before Mother’s Day in the United States. If no workers stood on the line that week, no roses would go north. And after Mother’s Day came prom season, and after that the wedding season. Nueva Flora often brought in extra temporary workers that week, meaning that the most local workforce would be depleted. Hacienda Roja’s owner wouldn’t have a choice.
The morning of the Friday before their plan was to go into effect, the changing room at Roja was quiet.
“Did you hear?” Gabriela whispered to her aunt. “Laura . . .”
“The baby?” Marisol asked.
Gabriela shrugged. “Mama said it was early but not too early. The baby is tiny and sick.”
Marisol caught her sister’s eye from across the small room. “When will it be enough?”
Lucinda shook her head and turned her back.
On Monday, Marisol’s nerves were as frayed as the hem of her jeans. As soon as everything was up and running, a susurrus slid along the line as the women took off their gloves and stepped away, bunching together to get to the door and out into the open before Hector or the other managers could stop them. Gabriela had taken up a spot on the line near her aunt and hurried out under her protection. Lucinda, who had avoided Marisol for weeks, was the lone woman left in the barn.
Marisol found the rest of the workers standing at the side of the road. They all still wore their sweatshirts, some with hoods pulled up against the rain. Their bags were still inside the storage room, but they had all stashed keys and wallets in their clothes. The Roja had nothing of theirs.
They waited.
After a few minutes, the management team, all men, came outside. “Back inside,” the largest of them yelled at the women. “Back inside and back to work or we will call the owner. And you know what will happen.”
Marisol worked to keep her voice calm. “And if we don’t, no roses will go north. So go ahead, call the owner. Tell him our demands.”
The man, who was said to have eaten at the owner’s table, loomed over Marisol and pointed his finger in her face. “You will go back inside.”
Marisol felt the women behind her, an invisible force at her back, their power strengthened by her mother, her abuela, their love for their children, and the stories they told. “Your hands aren’t blistered,” she said. She shook her head and turned her back on him while he yelled threats.
Half an hour later, Hector came outside. Lucinda stood in the doorway protected from the rain, arms crossed, watching.
“The owner says you come inside before lunch you can keep your job and you just lose half a day’s pay,” he called, a mobile phone in one hand. “You don’t get back to work, you’re fired. And the other farms won’t hire you. So c’mon now, back inside.”
Marisol again stood at the front of the crowd of women. She shook her head and crossed her arms, mirroring her sister. “And who are you going to get to come work here this week, when all of the roses need to go north for all of the rich mothers? Huh? We don’t ask for much: decent toilets, a room where we can eat, better gloves.”
Hector put the phone back to his ear and walked away into the greenhouse.
“Lucinda,” Marisol called to her sister. “Come join us.”
“Please, Mama.” Gabriela held her hood against the rain.
They stood like that, three points of a triangle, and waited for one point to give.
Hector returned. The triangle broke down and became a line from Marisol to Hector as mother and daughter looked on. “The owner says that you’re gathering illegally and trespassing on his land.” The rain fell harder, drowning out the sound of the crowd of women talking.
“Then I expect the policía will arrive soon.”
Hector shook his head. “Not policía. The owner’s men.” He frowned, and Marisol read sadness in his gaze. “If you all come back to work the owner will call them off.”
The women stood firm. The rain beat down.
Marisol held up her hands to the crowd, reminding them of their own hands—of the blisters and peeling skin, yellowed nails and calluses. She imagined she could hear trucks rumbling down the road toward them. Forgetting herself, she motioned behind her for Laura, wanting to protect her. Over the weekend she had visited her friend, had seen the baby boy, so tiny, his skin ashen with an undertone of aphid green. A hand—smooth or rough, she could no longer tell—slid into hers. Gabriela, the youngest of them all, not yet sick or ruined, not yet tired and sore, not yet resigned to her fate and invisible to the world. The madreselva’s scent rose beneath the patter of the rain and the growling of truck engines, and beneath it all was the droning of the bees. Marisol called out, “Flowers hide death. They bloom while the women who tend them wither away and die.”
The trucks were nearly upon them, but the droning of the bees had sunk into Marisol, making her teeth shake. Gabriela held her hand out to her mother in supplication and love.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, little girl,” Lucinda said.
“If I am old enough to work, I am old enough to fight. We need you with us, Mama.”
Lucinda rolled her eyes
up to the sky. Three trucks slid to a halt, the men in them holding bats and clubs. The women, dozens of them but with nowhere to go, stood in empty space and waited. Hector stood in the middle of the drive and waved his arms. The rain fell harder, drumming on Marisol’s head. And beneath the beat she heard—she felt—the buzz of the bees working away in the madreselva vines.
The men turned away from Hector, whose voice was lost in the noise of rain and men and insects, and toward the women. Marisol held her hands up again, the rain running down her palms and into the sleeves of her sweatshirt. She did not stand in surrender but in defiance.
The buzzing grew louder, deeper, and she felt it in her bones. A woman to her left screamed as one man lashed out and punched her. Like a flock of birds, the women surged away from him, but the men followed. The sound their bats made when hitting flesh wasn’t the crack she expected but a meaty thump. Beneath it all, the vibration intensified, and with it came the scent of the madreselva, sweet above the smell of rain and mud and blood.
The flock of women streamed away from the men, away from the greenhouses and Hector, and toward the wall at the edge of the parking lot. Marisol ran with Gabriela. A club swung down, catching Marisol’s wrist and breaking their connection, and the meaty thumps were from the club on her niece’s body, the man’s fist on her face. Blood dripped on the mud, mesmerising Marisol, who wondered how it would look when dry. She wasn’t herself anymore—she was all of them.
Lucinda screamed, distant beneath the buzz. Her sister, eyes wide and wild beneath hair that hung loose in the rain like vines in the forest, ran for the man, pushed him from behind. Lucinda was action, Marisol spirit. Gabriela now up and between them, the sisters ran. The men followed, their bats held high. The closer to the wall they got, the deeper the buzz, the more Marisol’s teeth shook in her mouth. She felt the tiny bones in her fingers and toes loosening, slipping their bonds, followed by the longer bones in legs and arms, but still she ran. Her ribs became a cage of bees, her head a kettledrum, but still she ran. Another truck pulled up and blocked the exit as they reached the wall. The women, trapped, slowed down, and Gabriela cried out and stumbled, taking Lucinda down with her. A man—a different one or the same, it didn’t matter because all men were keeping them from the madreselva—pulled his arm back for another swing and Marisol stepped between him and her family.
The vibration in Marisol’s head reached such a pitch that she could hear the vines, hear the bees, hear La Madre. The man blinked and shook his head, disoriented long enough for Lucinda to pull her daughter up and away. Marisol linked hands with them again, leading them to the wall and behind the shrubs and into the thick vines, taking shelter in La Madre’s hair, foolishly hoping like children that they wouldn’t be found. The rest of the women followed, spreading out along the length of the wall, desperate against the hard men and their harder fists and clubs. Marisol grabbed the hand of the woman next to her, and down the line in either direction the women were linked, each to each, the strong holding the injured, the old encouraging the young.
Hector stood in the yard behind the boss’s men. Some were on their knees where they had fallen from the momentum of swinging a bat that never met its target. Hector pointed and his head whipped back and forth as he searched for what he was sure was there. The leader walked along the edge of the vines, his bat sliding over the leaves. When he motioned Hector to join him, Hector hurried over, his hands halfway up in surrender.
Marisol knew Hector was shouting, but the sound was tiny and far away. “Where are you?”
Then the leader stepped back as if leaving but really just shifted his weight from one leg to another, lifted the bat above his head, and swung it down right where Marisol stood. She shook with vibrations so fast and so tiny that she was a blur. The bat passed right through her.
Within a few minutes the men—all different yet all the same—had climbed into their trucks and left.
The rain slowed to a drizzle. The bees slowed, and their constant exchange of information became private once again, leaving the women to their own concerns.
Hector spoke into his phone, and his voice grew louder with every word. “All gone, sir . . . your men came . . . disappeared . . . No, not in the greenhouses . . . Aren’t anywhere. What do you want . . . ? Yes. No, sir. The line is full of roses waiting to be shipped. Yes, sir, see you then, sir.” His shoulders slumped for just a moment before he straightened up and punched the phone to end the call.
“Marisol,” he said, his voice clear now. “I can see your eyes glowing at me from inside the vine. The owner says that you will get your new toilets and a new changing room. If you get back to work.”
“What about the chemicals?” one woman asked.
“And the shuttle?” another woman shouted.
“And the lunchroom?” asked a third.
Hector put up his hands in surrender. “He’s coming to see you all next week. If you get all of the roses batched and shipped in time for the mothers up north, he will meet with your leaders to work something out.” He stood alone, wet from the rain, and smiled.
The women looked each to each silently, questioning the offer and only ready to accept if it was unanimous. As one, they stepped out from behind the shrubs and trees and out of the thick vines that covered the wall. Hector stood in front of Marisol. The other women moved around them like river water around a rock. Lucinda took Gabriela toward the changing room to tend her wounds.
“Oscar was a friend, and I didn’t march with him that day.”
Marisol flinched at her husband’s name.
Hector continued. “I always regretted it. This was the best I could do for you, today.”
She weighed the emphasis on his final word. “Today? What have you done until now but be the mouthpiece for the owners, the hand that writes the reports, the man that cows to them and stands over us?”
“Where did you go?” he asked, his eyes on the vines that covered the wall.
She shrugged. “Nowhere.” A bee droned around Hector’s head. He ducked and it landed on Marisol’s arm for a second before zipping away. “We were right here,” she said. “We have always been right here, taking care of the flowers, taking care of our children. You just weren’t looking hard enough.”
Tiffani Angus, Ph.D., is a lecturer in publishing and creative writing at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK. A graduate of Clarion, she has published short fiction in a variety of genres (science fiction, fantasy, historical fantasy, horror and erotica) in several anthologies. Her academic research, which often results in creative writing projects, includes gardening history and gardens in fantasy fiction, women in apocalyptic fiction, and the dynamics of science fiction and fantasy writing workshops. When not languishing under fluorescent lights writing or teaching writing, she can be found geeking out in gardens that other people have planted. You can find her at tiffani-angus.com and @tiffaniangus.
A Choice in Exile
by
Stephen M. Coghlan
One month to go, Ducey “Deuce” McNellis typed into his tablet. And it feels like an eternity. Knowing that I’m not truly isolated has been somewhat of a relief to me, but the agony of loneliness has been harsh all the same. I can’t help but wonder what has gone on in the world since I was locked away. Inmates in jails have known more freedom than me.
He paused to chew on his stylus.
I’m certain that the psychologists and psychoanalysts are going to have a field day with me. I know that all of my writings, actions and inactions have been closely monitored and will continue to be for another year as I integrate myself back into society. I have known the illusion of privacy as my sole companion for so long that I wonder if I will function at all once I return to civilization.
A piece of plastic broke off in his mouth. Deuce turned his head and spat the fragment out beside his bed. He didn’t feel like writing anymore anyway. He knew that, as soon as the words were saved, they would be sent to a long list of doctors and scientists who
would poor over his scribbled thoughts as if they were religious zealots looking for justification in ancient tomes. It would all be picked apart, analyzed, categorized, and graded.
Rolling out from the covers, Deuce remained nude as he performed his morning routines. It was both humor and anger that drove him to do everything naked while the cameras watched until he had nothing left to accomplish in the living quarters. Only then did he don his uniform. The coveralls were itchy but well worn.
With a final wave to his audience, with his middle finger raised in salute, Deuce left his room.
The labs were at the opposite end of the bio-dome. That way the lone occupant had to move about at least once a day. Birds sang in the air, and a small monkey chattered from a nearby tree. The air was sticky and sickly sweet with rotting vegetation, and by the time Deuce had made it to this office his undershirt was plastered to his skin. He took the shirt off and hung it over a chair to dry.
Samples lay in their containers, and a book of math questions awaited him. A computer began asking him basic questions about his mental health.
How are you this morning, Deuce? The white letters stood out against the black screen.
Just dandy, he answered, tapping away on the keyboard.
Did you sleep well?
Like a lead brick.
30 days, 11 hours. Are you excited?
Deuce chuckled as he tapped out his answer. Does a bear poop in the woods?
Thank you, Deuce. I will talk to you soon.
Deuce knew that soon meant noon, on the dot. Shaking his head, he was preparing to take his first readings of the day when the computer beeped again.
That was not normal.
Awaiting his response was the scientist responsible for Deuce’s exile. He was a stern-faced man with dark skin and eyes that looked like burned caramel. His voice, when he spoke, was thick with his native accent.
“McNellis? Can you hear me?”
For a moment, Deuce considered ignoring the man for another month, but something about the scientist’s tone worried Deuce enough to reply.
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