Ana of California Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  ANA OF CALIFORNIA

  Andi Teran is from El Paso, Texas. Her nonfiction has been published by Vanity Fair, Monocle, and the Paris Review Daily. She currently resides in Los Angeles. Ana of California is her first novel.

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  First published in Penguin Books 2015

  Copyright © 2015 by Penguin Group (USA) LLC

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Teran, Andi.

  Ana of California : a novel / Andi Teran.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-698-15638-8

  1. Teenage girls—Family relationships—Fiction. 2. Foster children—Fiction.

  3. California—Fiction.

  I. Title

  PS3620.E73A85 2015

  813'.6—dc23 2014042525

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

  either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously,

  and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses,

  companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design and hand lettering: Brianna Harden

  Cover photographs: (top) Jesse Chehak; (bottom) field, Inga Spence/Alamy; woman, Asia Images Group/Getty Images; house, Grant Heilman/Grant Heilman Photography

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  EPILOGUE

  TO ALBERT AND BARBARA,

  AND FOR CELIA

  In between two tall mountains

  there’s a place they call Lonesome.

  Don’t see why they call it Lonesome;

  I’m never lonesome now I live there.

  —CONNIE CONVERSE, “TALKIN’ LIKE YOU (TWO TALL MOUNTAINS)”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to Pamela Ribon for setting this entire adventure in motion. Many thanks to everyone at Penguin, especially Pete Harris, Patrick Nolan, Claire Abramowitz, and to my editor, Emily Murdock Baker, for the encouragement and guidance. Thank you to Alexis Hurley and InkWell for the incredible support and that second glass of wine.

  Love and thank you to my family and friends: to Nicholas Almanza, Carrie Teran, Margie Copeland Ruth, Margaret and Graham Millar, and to Lucy Robertson and the Heirlooms; to Faye and Ellery Casell for being my rainbow in a happy tree; to Elizabeth Hanks, Emily Ryan Lerner, and Katie Orphan, aka the ladies of Sweater Weather Underground, for their feedback; to Chelsea Fairless and Sam Buffa for their expertise; and to Rebecca Davis, Alex Diaz, Julie Sagalowsky Diaz, Christina Gregory, Deirdre Corley, Alex Garinger, Shannon Wier McMillan, Matt Mullin, and Amy Dickson Noland for their kind ears and loving support.

  This book is dedicated to my parents and to my grandma, who are an enormous inspiration to me. Thank you forever. And, most of all, thank you to Hamish Robertson for absolutely everything tied in a blue ribbon wrapped around my heart. You are the reason.

  CHAPTER ONE

  She was out of beginnings, this she knew.

  Ana ran her hands through her knotted hair, wondering when she’d last washed it. She’d been up for more than twenty-four hours, and there was still ketchup on her shirt.

  “This is the fifth home you’ve been expelled from in the last ten years.”

  “To be fair, it was only four. I was at the Mitchell house twice.”

  “Well, this time it’s . . . a situation.”

  Ana stared at the wall behind the desk. She’d seen the corkboard many times before and had studied the photographs of Mrs. Saucedo’s children over the years. She’d watched them grow older, lose teeth, win ribbons, and pose for class photos. There was always a birthday card or thank-you note pushpinned to the board. Today it was a small California license plate bearing the word MOM.

  “I know it’s been hard, but we need to find a solution,” Mrs. Saucedo said, adjusting her glasses. “I’d like us to work together on this.”

  Ana let her eyes roam around the room. The walls were still a pale industrial green, and there was a fake tree in the corner, the same one with the rubber branches that would never grow. She remembered the first time she saw the tree and how it had been strung with lights and ornaments. There were reindeer, paper stars, and angels made of tin. One branch was weighed down by a heavy gourd, the middle hollowed out to hold figurines of a man and a woman staring down at a baby, a glittered star hanging above them. She remembered how she wanted to climb inside the gourd and live there forever.

  “Feliz Navidad,” Ana said, still staring at the tree. “Those were the first words you said to me.”

  Mrs. Saucedo looked down at her desk. Everything was in its place save for Ana’s file, which was thick and open to a photo of a little girl in a pink puffy coat.

  “I remember,” she said.

  “It was cold, not like today.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “It was the first time I ever wished for snow—not that it would ever happen.”

  Ana shifted in the chair. The armrests were worn and rough under her fingertips.

  “Would you like to talk about what happened that night?” Mrs. Saucedo asked, knowing Ana never did.

  This time, though, Ana did want to talk about it. She remembered everything, every detail. Back then, it was referred to as “an accident,” and also, “the incident,” but Ana chose to name it as you would a melodramatic poem or story—“With Sorrow and Black Doves.” She was the only one who had seen what had happened the night she was brought in to child services, and every time she entered Mrs. Saucedo’s small office, the memories of The Night That Started It All returned harsh and fast. She’d managed to shut them away year after year, but there, in that windowless room, the images flickered in the periphery.

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Mrs. Saucedo said, keeping her voice soft and slow, trying to catch Ana’s eyes, which remained fixed on the tree.

  If there was anyone she could talk to it was Mrs. Lupe Saucedo, the nice lady behind the desk who genu
inely cared about her well-being—even after all these years. Though she hadn’t felt it physically since they’d met almost a decade ago, Mrs. Saucedo’s warmth remained. She remembered how the woman’s arms had embraced her that day and how the scent of roses and clean cotton still tickled her nose. Mrs. Saucedo had whispered to her back then too.

  “‘Ya me canso de llorar y no amanece.’”

  “You’re not crying and you do have hope.” Mrs. Saucedo sighed. “Please, this isn’t a telenovela. Like I’ve told you many times before, the drama does you no favors.”

  “It’s a line from a song, not a comment on my psychological state.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear you still speaking Spanish. I think your grandma would be proud.”

  Almost as a reflex, Ana’s hands squeezed the armrests of the chair. She kept her eyes focused anywhere but on Mrs. Saucedo’s face and concentrated instead on her own breathing. She wanted to speak but feared giving in to her tears, so she dipped her chin to her chest.

  What she wanted to tell Mrs. Saucedo was that the line had been from her grandma’s—her abuela’s—favorite song, and that she had memorized every word. She wanted to explain that if there had been music playing on the day of the incident, it would have been this very song. She imagined the voice of a banshee swooping in to replace the screaming, how a trumpet might have substituted for blasts, and how she wished the plucking of an acoustic guitar had kept her company in the aftermath of silence, a melancholy soundtrack for the newly alone.

  “I don’t speak it as much as I should,” Ana said, instead tucking her hands between her knees, which wouldn’t stop bouncing.

  “You understand I have nowhere left to send you, yes? We talked about three strikes less than a year ago, and since then you’ve gone from the group home to another failed foster situation. This is it—no more homes, no more chances,” Mrs. Saucedo said. “It might help to talk about what happened that night, talk about your abuela, and talk about what we can do to get you to where she’d want you to be.”

  “If it’s all right with you, I’d rather talk about what’s been going on the past few months.”

  Mrs. Saucedo had heard complaints about foster parents before. She anticipated an elaborate explanation, knowing Ana’s flair for the dramatic. In her younger years, Ana’s stories were wildly embellished but had since boiled down to silent defiance after being removed from her third foster home.

  “I spoke with Ms. Fenton.”

  “I’m desperate to hear what she had to say.”

  “I think you know exactly what she said.”

  “If you had any idea how we’ve been treated all summer . . .”

  “Ana . . .”

  “—And how the rules were completely . . .”

  “It’s not your place to step in.”

  “But it wasn’t right, and someone needed to do something because no one ever does.”

  “I understand the conditions were not the best,” Mrs. Saucedo said, trying not to raise her voice. “And for that I apologize. But Ms. Fenton is a longtime foster mother, and despite the strict household, it is not your job to tell her how to discipline the other children.”

  “So, I’m just supposed to sit there and let two little kids go without any food for the second day in a row? I’m supposed to kick back while the so-called mother of the house eats the freezer and shelves clean just to prove a stupid point? It’s Ludicrous, capital L.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She doesn’t give any of us lunch or dinner—like zero food—anytime she feels we’re doing something wrong, which is pretty much all the time. She got angry that I gave an ice cream sandwich to the kids to share, and I get that it was the last one in the freezer and everything, but it was all we had. And she took it out on them. It’s not the first time it’s happened, either.”

  “Ms. Fenton relayed to me that you were combative and inappropriate, and while I disagree wholeheartedly with her methods, I do not condone your response to them.”

  “Believe me, I can skip a ton of meals, but the kids? She takes their toys away and never lets them play, as if their lives weren’t completely messed up already, as if we weren’t starving enough. So, yeah, something needed to be done. Sorry but not sorry.”

  “I was unaware this was going on,” Mrs. Saucedo said, taking a breath. “I understand your point, but staging a death scene isn’t funny and you know it.”

  Mrs. Saucedo thought she detected a smile. Ana sometimes smiled when she was uncomfortable, rarely when she was proud or defiant. It was a habit that often led to miscommunication.

  “That’s not what we were doing,” Ana said, sitting up and looking at Mrs. Saucedo for the first time. “Like I said, there was nothing in the cupboards and only ketchup in the fridge, so I told the kids to imagine they were eating hamburgers. I squirted ketchup in their mouths, and we pretended we were so full we couldn’t get up from the floor. It was just a stupid game . . . something I made up to take their minds off things.”

  Mrs. Saucedo had a hard time believing that had been the extent of it.

  “Haven’t you been going to the recreation center for lunch?” she asked, remembering Ana and her foster siblings were part of the Summer Food Program. “Hasn’t Ms. Fenton been making sure that you go?”

  “She didn’t let us out of the house a few times this week because she was angry that I stayed late at the library. Sometimes when she gets angry, she punishes all of us and says we’re ‘putting her in a mood.’ It’s a mood I like to call completely insane.”

  Mrs. Saucedo kept her eyes on Ana.

  “I’m not making this up.”

  “I never said you were.”

  “Really, Mrs. S., she’s the most deplorable woman. I don’t mean to call you out or criticize the way things are done around here or anything, but the way you guys pick foster parents sucks. I know it was stupid to leave, and I know I’ve done it a few times before, but after she refused to feed us again, after so many days with no lunch, and after we were forced to sit on the couch while she inhaled a bag of Cheetos without offering us any and then told everyone it was all my fault—you have to understand why I had to get out of there. But I wasn’t making a run for it, I swear. I was going to get something for everyone to eat.”

  Ana chewed her bottom lip and kept her hands folded in her lap. She looked down at her ripped jeans, focusing on the misshapen hearts and stars drawn all over her exposed kneecaps, the remnants of an afternoon spent playing “art school” with her foster brother and sister, the two she knew she’d probably never see again.

  “Not to elaborate, but she made us do all the housework too. Honestly, I don’t mind, but if there was toothpaste on the mirror, or if I didn’t iron all the wrinkles out of her shirts, she would take it out on all of us. I tried to be nice, to do extra work. I tried to ignore the way her disgusting boyfriend used to stare at my T-shirt as if invited by a logo emblazoned across my chest, and I tried to do everything you’ve always told me to do.”

  “You don’t have to say anything else,” Mrs. Saucedo said.

  “But I shouldn’t have left like that . . . I get it.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have. Nor should you have called Ms. Fenton what you called her, regardless of how she treated you.”

  Ana had heard the sound of the screen door slam behind her as she ran out of the house. Her throat was raw and the imprint of small hands still warmed her palms. She remembered running through the gravel in the front yard and all the way down the block, ignoring the heat of the sidewalk seeping into her sneakers. She couldn’t remember how far she’d gone or why she’d neglected to say good-bye, knowing, even then, that she wouldn’t be allowed to return. She had promised she’d never leave her foster siblings there—that she’d never leave them period—but she’d broken that promise again, in the same way it had always been broken to her.
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  “You’re almost sixteen,” Mrs. Saucedo said. “You are old enough and smart enough to know how and when to rise above a situation. I know you were looking after the others, but the person you need to look after most is yourself.”

  Mrs. Saucedo studied Ana’s face, which was tense; her eyes focused on clasped hands, one thumb picking at the other. She’d seen this look before.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I know you don’t want me to get into it, but I should probably tell you that she brought up my mother.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That I’m going to end up just like her.”

  Mrs. Saucedo took a breath. “Is that all she said?”

  “No.”

  “I want you to tell me exactly what she said.”

  It wasn’t the first time Ana’s file had been used against her, if the file even allowed her to be assigned to a foster home in the first place. No one wanted to deal with a child who had been marked as difficult or traumatized.

  “She said I’m going to end up in jail, where I quote unquote ‘belong,’ if a bullet doesn’t find me first. It’s not like I haven’t heard it before.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “Isn’t it?” Ana said, hands gripping a bouncing knee.

  “Your parents knew what they were involved in, and the rest . . . None of it was your fault,” Mrs. Saucedo said, removing her glasses and placing them on top of Ana’s file. “We’ve talked about how to deal with difficulty, how to temper your emotions, but we’ve never talked about why they flare up every time you settle in to a new place. We’re either going to talk about it now and figure out the next steps or I’m going to have to make a decision without your input.”

  “Just put me in another foster home. I can start over again.”

  “That’s not an option.”

  “What if I lived with you? I can do all the housework. You can put me in the garage or something, and I’ll babysit your kids until school starts—really, I can help out. I’ll be quiet, and you won’t even see me.”