Ana of California Read online

  “Wait—” Manny said.

  But Ana was already sprinting toward the farmhouse as the rain began to fall in sheets, thunder forcing her feet to run faster. She got to the back door of the farmhouse and pushed the door open, heading straight for the kitchen without wiping her feet. Abbie and Emmett were in a tense conversation at the counter and went silent when Ana, muddy and dripping, trampled in.

  “What on earth—” Abbie said.

  “You’ve got to listen to me—” Ana said, out of breath.

  “And you need to march right back outside,” Emmett said, walking toward her.

  “Please, just listen to me for a minute. They’re leaving.”

  “Who is?” Abbie asked.

  “All of them—Rolo, Vic, Joey, and René. They’re all going to the farm in Keyserville.”

  “What’s going on?” Emmett said, his voice rising in alarm.

  “I heard them talking, in Spanish, about wanting to go today, that they couldn’t afford to do this anymore. Joey said it was a business decision.”

  Emmett rushed over to the window above the sink and looked out. “Did Manny send you?”

  “No, but he said it was about the paychecks and that they had to go where the work was better.”

  “And you heard them say this?” Abbie asked.

  “Yes, but I don’t think they really want to leave, deep down. I mean, that’s what I believe. But they said they’re going, soon, and I want to help.”

  Emmett remained quiet as he continued to stare out the window.

  “I don’t want my paycheck,” Ana said. Emmett turned to look at her. “If it will help everyone else get paid, so they can stay, then I don’t want mine.”

  “Ana—” Abbie said.

  “I know I screwed up this morning, and pretty much every morning I’ve been here, but please let me fix it. I just—I don’t want to leave. What if I stay and work and you pay me in room and board? It’ll be like having an extra worker but with one less paycheck.”

  No one said anything, but Abbie looked at Emmett and held his gaze.

  “I was planning on paying everyone today, just didn’t know how to break it that the checks would be less this week,” he said quietly.

  “But without my paycheck it’ll be fine, right?”

  Emmett nodded his head, looking at the floor. “I think it’ll help, yes.”

  “Wait here,” Ana said. She ran upstairs to her room and pulled out the envelope of cash from her backpack. She ran back downstairs and handed Emmett the envelope.

  “Here’s all of my pay from the past few weeks,” she said. “I don’t want it. They said they wanted to go before lunch, so you better hurry.”

  Without a word, Emmett headed out of the house and across the garden to the barn. Abbie looked out the window and then turned back to Ana.

  “Well, that was above and beyond,” she said with a smile and a shake of her head. “Not that we knew we were about to lose it, but I think you just saved the whole goddamned farm—I hope—excuse the language.”

  Ana liked the way Abbie was looking at her, almost as if she were proud.

  “Well, what are you standing there for?” Abbie said. “Go get everyone and tell them we’re eating lunch inside. Take some umbrellas.”

  Ana put her hat on, grabbed a few umbrellas, and ran out of the kitchen, through the garden, and across the fields. Dolly escaped the barn again, out the half-open front door, and raced alongside her. Ana shouted out to Manny and the workers, all huddled under the tent, and hoped they’d hear her over the thunder.

  “What are you doing?” Manny said as she ducked under the tent, covered in mud.

  “It’s lunchtime,” she said, full of excitement, her heart racing.

  “Mija, I don’t know if everyone’s coming down to—”

  “And pay time.”

  The workers exchanged looks. Vic, in particular, had an expression that said “I told you so,” while Rolo and Joey remained still as if they wanted to go.

  “Give the guy a break,” Ana said, handing out umbrellas. “He’s a day late, but he’s got our pay. Have some lunch, get your money, and then you can decide to go.” She popped open an umbrella and held her arm out for René, who took it and walked alongside her and Dolly back down the hill as the others mumbled and followed. Abbie was waiting for them at the back door, though most of them hesitated, not wanting to track in so much wet dirt.

  “Everyone inside,” Abbie said. “C’mon. Everyone but Dolly.”

  One by one they walked into the house for the first time. She insisted Vic, Rolo, Joey, and René take seats around the country table, which was set for four. Manny and Ana sat on the bar stools near the counter, and Abbie handed out plates—on the same china she had used on Ana’s first day—with almond butter and raspberry jam sandwiches, thick-cut potato chips, and fruit salad with rose water and mint. Ana jumped up to fill glasses of lemonade and was passing them around when the back door opened and shut.

  Emmett walked into the room. It took a moment for him to register that the kitchen was suddenly fuller than it had been in years.

  “We’re eating inside today,” Abbie said to him. “Come and have a seat at the counter.”

  “I’d like to apologize,” Emmett said, not looking at anyone. “I’m a day late with pay, which is unforgivable.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out several envelopes, which he handed out, personally, to Joey, Vic, Rolo, René, and Manny. “I hope you’ll accept this with my apologies. I know it’s been rough lately—well, I’ve been rough—but I promise this won’t ever happen again. The farm exists only because of all of you. I don’t know what Abbie and I would do if . . .” His voice trailed off and he cleared his throat.

  “I also want to thank everyone for the hard work,” Abbie said, raising her lemonade glass. “Emmett and I are both grateful to have you in the Garber family. Let’s eat!”

  The workers remained silent, staring at Manny, but on Abbie’s cue they began to eat. Manny looked at Ana and then back at Emmett with concern.

  “Are those all the paychecks—” Manny said to Emmett.

  “A word outside, please,” Emmett said.

  Manny stood up and followed Emmett out. They huddled under the eave of the back porch as the rain continued to fall.

  “Ana deserves a paycheck just like all the rest,” Manny said. “The garlic was my fault—”

  “I know,” Emmett said. “She forfeited her paycheck, all of them, so I could pay everyone else—told me she didn’t want any more pay if it meant the rest could stay.”

  Manny was silent.

  “I know we’re in a tough spot, what with Keyserville and the shady way those guys do business, poaching everyone and promising what they can’t deliver. I don’t ever want this place to be like that. I don’t know how to apologize enough for being late on these paychecks, let alone not being able to pay them. But I don’t want you to leave. I don’t want anyone to leave. Don’t know what I can do to convince you to stay.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Manny said. “The others, I’m not so sure about. But let me see what I can do.”

  They went back inside, scuffing their feet on the doormat, listening to a rousing commotion as they walked back into the kitchen. Rolo was doubled over with laughter, pounding the table with his hand while the others laughed along, but René, his head down, appeared to be crying quietly into the collar of his shirt.

  “Oh, it’s absolutely perfect, Ana,” Abbie said.

  Ana swiveled around on the bar stool to show them a jar of jam with a rectangular piece of sketchbook paper cut up and taped to the front. “You see, René?” she said. “You’re perfect.”

  “Look what Ana made,” Abbie said to Manny and Emmett.

  Ana passed the jar to the workers at the table, who continued to snicker, before passing
it to Manny.

  “René’s Red Raspberry Jam,” Manny said, taking in the lettering, spare and elegant, and the uncanny pencil portrait of René in the middle, framed by raspberries and leaves. “Did you draw this?”

  “Yep,” she said, smiling and proud.

  “Incredible! It’s him, right down to the hat and dimple. Muy bueno,” he said to René. He handed the jar to Emmett, who looked at it for a while, shaking his head, but not in a bad way.

  “I have more, one of everybody,” she said, grabbing her sketchbook from the counter and opening it up. “I even have one of you,” she said, turning the book around to show everyone a colored-pencil rendering of Manny, complete with mustache and red bandanna around his neck. “I was thinking you’d be good for a jar too, though I don’t know what Abbie pickles that starts with an M.”

  “Magic?” Manny said with a wink.

  “I was thinking mustard greens, which could work, I guess, if we ever put labels on the CSA bunches. Oh, and there’s this one.” Ana flipped the page to an elaborate cartoon farm scene featuring a Chihuahua with chicken legs and a creature that appeared to be a cross between a cat and a pig. The “animals” had their arms around one another like long-lost pals and were standing in front of a blackberry bush made to look like a hungry monster.

  “Who’s that?” Rolo asked.

  “You and Vic, of course.” Rolo remained straight-faced, while everyone else burst into another round of laughter, heartier this time. Even René and Emmett cracked smiles.

  The gang left after lunch. Emmett gave everyone the rest of the day off because of the rain. Manny and René said they’d both be in the next morning to help with the farmers’ market haul. The rest, Ana hoped, would be showing up with her early on Monday. She kept her fingers crossed in her coat pocket as they left, each one thanking Abbie as they did, and then nodding to Emmett before shaking Ana’s hand. René gave her a courtly bow and kissed her hand.

  It continued to rain steadily throughout the afternoon. Ana headed upstairs and took Abbie’s advice about having a bath, though she couldn’t remember ever having had one before. She did as Abbie said and poured the bottle of blue liquid into the tub, watching as the bubbles rose until they nearly spilled over the edge. She got into the warm water, blissful at first, tedious after a while, and stared at the white wooden ceiling. “How long am I supposed to stay here?” she wondered.

  • • •

  Emmett finished feeding Dolly out in the barn. He went back to his bedroom and began picking up the glass from the photograph he’d thrown earlier, the one of him and Josie on their wedding day. He shook the photo from the broken frame and shoved it in the back of a desk drawer before he swept up the pieces. It had been exactly one year since Josie had gone out with friends, or so she’d said; needing a “girls’ night” was the way she put it. Emmett didn’t normally wait up, but he had awakened in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, so he had stayed up until dawn. When she hadn’t returned by the time he needed to head out to the fields, he walked outside to find a letter taped to the front door. He opened it, read it through once, and then burned it in the sink.

  Emmett hadn’t anticipated the anger that would return on the anniversary of that day. He hadn’t expected it to affect his work. He tied up the trash bag and took it outside, shielding himself from the rain with an umbrella. He walked over to the farmhouse and let himself in through the back door. Abbie was busy making a supper of spicy chicken, black beans, and grilled corn, with a crème caramel from a recipe she found in their mother’s Joy of Cooking cookbook. She smiled at him as he entered.

  “Thought I’d eat here tonight, if that’s okay,” Emmett said.

  “Absolutely. I already set the table. Would you mind running up and asking Ana to come down?”

  “I’d like to discuss something first.”

  “About Ana?”

  “Yes,” he said, removing his baseball cap and smoothing down his hair. “I’ve been thinking lately, too much probably, but having her here has been—”

  “A burden for you? Too much to handle?”

  “No, actually.” He didn’t know if it was the poignancy of the day or what had transpired earlier, but Abbie’s exasperated look, even more than her words, bruised him. “I was going to say—before you jump to conclusions—that it’s been more helpful than I thought it would be. We need it, frankly, and what with the whole payment thing—”

  “Pretty selfless, if you ask me, and quite wonderful. All those labels, all that time she took working on them . . .”

  “I’ve been thinking about how you and I grew up, how we juggled our schedules,” Emmett continued. “We used to help each other when Mom was sick.”

  Abbie put down the dish towel she was holding.

  “I remember,” she said. “It was hard . . . it’s been hard.”

  “It was harder when you left.”

  Abbie took a breath. Though she and Emmett had never discussed it, she always imagined that he and their father had been better off.

  “I was young,” she said. “I couldn’t handle being here without her.”

  “I understand the feeling.”

  Emmett continued, wringing the baseball hat in his hands. “Today’s the day, you know.”

  “What day?”

  “The day Josie left.”

  Abbie nodded her head. “I miss her too.”

  “But what I’m trying to say is, I think we need the help around here.”

  Abbie smiled. “I know.”

  “It’s more that it’s good for the farm, good for the business . . .”

  “Emmett Garber you can’t bring yourself to say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “That your sister was right.”

  • • •

  Emmett went up the stairs looking at the photographs and paintings the way he used to when his mother would tell him to go up to bed. He wondered how long it had been since he’d been upstairs, now that it was Abbie’s domain. Something about the creak of his footfalls brought back a flood of memories, from the giggling to the yelling to the week of their mother’s death. The hallway had gone quiet when Abbie ran away soon thereafter. He knocked on Ana’s door—Abbie’s old bedroom—and he turned the knob when she said he could come in.

  She was startled at the sight of him, poised as she was, sketching on the bed, her wet hair hanging down her shoulders, wearing his old Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers concert T-shirt.

  “Abbie said I could wear it, I swear,” she said, eyes wide. “All my clothes are in the wash.”

  “You can have it,” Emmett said. “Don’t think I could fit into it if I tried.”

  They looked at each other, neither one of them saying anything.

  “Is it dinnertime?” Ana asked.

  “It is.”

  Ana slid off the bed and tied her hair back as Emmett made his way into the hall. He stopped and turned back around. “I need to say thanks,” he said. “For today. I’m sorry I went off on you like that. I know how hard you’ve been working, and I think I forget that this farming stuff doesn’t come easy all the time.”

  “You said I was supposed to be fit for it, so I’m trying my hardest to be. It’s just new, I guess. I told you I had good hands, but I didn’t expect them to make such a mess in the dirt, you know? I mean, I still don’t understand what kohlsabi is or why anyone would ever want to eat something called that, or why you people worship worms the way you do.”

  “Kohlrabi?”

  “Exactly. But I’m serious about it and want to get better . . . if you’ll let me.”

  “Supper’s ready. Abbie made some spicy chicken thing.”

  They headed down the stairs. Ana thought Emmett looked different and realized this was the first time she’d ever seen him for any length of time without his baseball cap. She took her seat at the tab
le, and Emmett sat beside her. Abbie served plates full of food with glasses of iced hibiscus tea as the rain pelted the windows.

  “I’ve always wished for rain,” Ana said.

  “Why?” Abbie asked. “What I wouldn’t give for all of your sunny L.A. days.”

  “I always think it’s more atmospheric in L.A. when it’s gloomy, like all of the gray kind of folds into this two-dimensional wonderland. It makes the trees and flowers pop up against it. Whereas here, where there’s so much color, so much green, the bright days are the best because the sun has more to play with. I guess it’s about contrasts, always wanting the opposite of what you’re used to. Holy geez—” Ana said. “This is outrageously delicious.”

  “I did my best, used some oranges for the marinade.”

  “It’s so good. You used bacon in the beans, right?”

  “I did. Is that how your—how you like to have them?”

  “I’ll take them any which way, really. My abuela did frijoles de la olla with pinto beans, which is kind of similar. The secret is epazote.”

  “I’ve never heard of that before.”

  “It’s an herb,” Ana said. “See, I know some stuff, Emmett.”

  They ate together for the first time since Ana had arrived at the farm nearly a month before. The time had gone by quicker than she realized. Her phone call with Mrs. Saucedo was scheduled for that night. She reminded herself to find out about where she’d be going when she got back to L.A. the following Saturday, not that she wanted to think about it just yet. Abbie asked about her sketches and what gave her the idea to make the labels. Emmett asked about when she started drawing and if she wanted to be an artist. In turn, she asked them if they’d ever been to a famous art museum—Abbie, yes; Emmett, no—and why no one had ever made signs to mark all the crops.

  They did the dishes together, with Abbie washing, Ana drying, and Emmett putting everything away. And when it came time for Ana to make the phone call in the parlor, they asked her to sit back down at the table.

  “Emmett and I have been talking,” Abbie said.

  “Good. I mean, not that you weren’t. You know what I mean,” Ana said.