Dark Water - Laura McNeal [34]
English.
Twenty-one
I’ve always been suspicious of those who say, Things happen for a reason and What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Things happen all the time for no reason at all, and what doesn’t kill you scares you witless.
I got a ride home with Hickey that Friday afternoon because my mother had to stay late for a meeting, and tired of being my Siamese twin all week, she said I could go with him. “But you’d better be there when I get home at five,” she said. “With dinner prepared and the house tidied up,” she added.
Hickey and Greenie were going to a movie in Temecula and I was glad, almost, that they had an excuse not to invite me.
“Just drop me here,” I said at the bottom of my uncle’s grove. Hickey didn’t insist, and off they went, leaving me by myself at the fence. The chain link was too high to climb while wearing a backpack, so I went to the nearest locked gate and took a chance that I knew the combination. That’s how I surprised them.
Two or three Hispanic guys, none I knew by name, were sitting on wooden crates and drinking from paper cups. Not far away was an RV that one of the workers lived in with his wife and two little boys, both of whom were sitting on the steps, watching Amiel. Amiel had drawn a circle in the dirt, and in the center of the circle he was juggling four balls, and the men were saying, “¡Más! ¡Más!” and longer words I didn’t understand, though they seemed to be cheering him on. The little boys were smiling, and so was their mother, who stood just inside the open door of the RV.
Amiel bounced the balls on his chest in sequence and caught them one by one, then reached in his pocket. He held out two more balls and bowed, which made the little boys clap madly. The woman noticed me just then, and her gaze made the men turn their heads, and soon everyone, including Amiel, was staring at me.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hola,” one of the workers said, and I could feel them all wondering what I was doing here and what I would say to my uncle. It was three-thirty, and I had a general sense that the workday started at seven for everyone, since that’s when it started for Amiel. There wasn’t anything wrong with what they were doing after hours, but I didn’t know how to say that.
One of the men started to pick up his crate and go, but the little boys were shrieking, “¡Más! ¡Más!”
Amiel made a gesture to the man, as if to say, “Sit down,” and then he said to me, in a scratchy sort of English, “You can stay.”
That he had spoken was surprising, more so that he spoke English, but that both of these things should be on my behalf filled me with a spreading liquid happiness. I sat down on my backpack and hugged my knees and was permitted to belong where I didn’t belong. He juggled the six balls, and when they asked for siete, he juggled seven, then ocho, then the high-altitude popcorn explosion of nine. He bowed, and we clapped, and after he stowed the juggling balls in a canvas bag, they thought of more stuff for him to throw: avocados, oranges, and finally, long toy swords that the little boys brought from the house.
“Ay, los cuchillos,” one of the men shouted, laughing.
Amiel nodded and slowly, with one eyebrow arched, put one sword between his teeth.
The little boys clapped and the men said, “Andale,” which I couldn’t translate, and Amiel juggled the toy blades for a while, throwing them high and catching them by the handles. He never missed, and we clapped, and then the woman started bringing out plates of rice and beef and salsa to us. One of the little boys brought Amiel and me cans of 7UP, but the men, I noticed, all drank beer.
The men talked to each other in Spanish while we ate, which was nice, though I caught nothing more than a