Kirstin Valdez Quade - Night at the Fiestas - Stories

Andrea cut across the rows, feeling the brush of the leaves against her arms. When she emerged from the orchard, she was at the far edge of the blueberry field. From here, she couldn’t see the party, but the music skimmed over the bushes, the violin’s manic dance softened by distance. The canes were taller than Andrea, and they bobbed in the breeze as if to the music, until, with a flourish of trumpet, the song ended. Brief, tepid applause, then the canes bobbed only for themselves. Her anger was gone now, and her shame, too. Andrea was left with just the sound of the wind in the leaves and a terrible sense of loss. This place had mattered to her, she realized — it still mattered to her — and now it was irretrievable. Never again would she be allowed to return.

Mr. Lowell hadn’t actually yelled at her that day when she was nine. He’d called out, “Stop! Please stop!” as he jogged down the row toward her. Then he’d slowed and said more gently, as though approaching an escaped and not entirely tame pet, “Hi there, honey.” He’d taken the scratched five-gallon bucket from her hands and thanked her for her help, and he gave her the cold Coke from his lunch cooler, settling her on the tailgate of his truck until her father emerged from the trees.

Before that, though, before Mr. Lowell found her, Andrea had been alone in the row of Jubilee blueberries, the leaves shining and swaying over her head.

Seek, pluck, seek, pluck. The percussion of the berries as they dropped into the bucket. The berries firm and warm between her thumb and forefinger, their fragile dusty skin printed from her touch, the sweet burst on her tongue. The scent of the sun and soil and leaves.

Her head was pleasantly hot and fuzzy with a soft sense of calm and focus, of complete absorption in her task. She was covering the entire bottom of the bucket, a single even layer, and then she’d form the next layer and the next until the entire bucket was filled with that fragrance and sweetness and heft.

“Jubilee,” she said, the word as mild and sweet as the berry itself. “Jubilee, jubilee, jubilee.” Through the rows, she could hear the indistinct voices of the other pickers and the burble of the irrigation system.

Now, ten years later, she picked another berry and then another. When her hands were full, she made a hammock of her skirt and filled it, not caring that now she’d never be able to return the dress. She picked and she picked until she forgot there were other people around, and as the leaves rustled and the light scattered over her, she forgot herself, too.

LAST NIGHT CRYSTAL DREAMED SHE WAS SITTING NAKED on the corduroy rectory couch next to Father Paul, who was snipping at her fingers with orange-handled scissors. In the dream she was holding a prayer card on which was printed, in place of a saint, a still from her sonogram. She felt stinging cuts on her knuckles and in the webbing between her fingers, saw the warm blood running down her wrists and beading on the laminated surface of the card, but she neither cried for help nor tried to get away; she was pinned to the couch by her pregnant belly.

If the dream hadn’t been so unsettling, it might have been almost comical, Crystal thought now, Monday morning, as she updated the calendar of events for Our Lady of Seven Sorrows: Father Paul, so benign and solicitous and eager for approval in waking life, starring as the villain in her dream. She glanced down at her fingers typing, intact. If she were to tell Father Paul about her dream — though she wouldn’t tell him anything about her life ever again — he’d be concerned and apologetic, as if it weren’t Crystal’s own warped brain that had cast him in the scene. Even the thought of his concern irritated her. Any minute, Father Paul would walk into the office, and when he did, she’d smile as if everything were just fine, as if their conversation on Friday had never happened.

Impressive, how efficiently her subconscious tallied, dismantled, and blended together her sins, molding them all into a tidy and disturbing little narrative as persistent and irksome as pine sap. First, on Friday, she’d been rude to Father Paul. Then, on Saturday, she’d gone to a party at a condo in a new development west of town with friends from Santa Fe High and had spent the evening sipping from other people’s drinks. That was bad enough. But she’d also left with someone, a friend of a friend, ridden back to his apartment in his truck, knowing full well that he was drunk but not feeling an ounce of concern for the babies or for herself. “I’ve never fucked a pregnant girl,” the guy had said softly, watching from the bed in his filthy bedroom as she pulled down her maternity jeans. He’d been cautious and attentive, and for as long as it lasted Crystal had felt deeply sexy and, for the first time in seven months, unburdened.

Only at dawn, once she’d slipped out into the chill and was waiting for a cab on an unfamiliar street in a tired, trucks-on-blocks kind of neighborhood, did it occur to her to worry about the babies, that they’d been squished or knocked about, polluted by his fluids. And Crystal might have been murdered, too — strangled, shot, beaten beyond recognition. Wasn’t murder the leading cause of death for pregnant women?

With a pang of dismay, she thought of her last checkup. She’d been given a 3-D ultrasound, the latest in prenatal imaging, the technician told her, which they were offering free because they were still training on the machine. The images were terrifying and unreal: boy and girl, fists and ears and pursed lips, bent legs stringy with tendons, alien eyes swollen shut. Everything looked yellow and cold and shiny, as if dipped in wax. “Say hello to your cuties,” the technician had said, and Crystal had watched in silence as they pulsed on the screen.

But today the babies seemed great, kicking up a storm, and she hadn’t been murdered. Saturday had been nothing more than a last hurrah, Crystal reminded herself, a harmless attempt to pretend that her life was still her own, whatever Father Paul or her mother might say. Looked at another way, the dream was even reassuring: at least Crystal felt guilt. At least she might think twice next time. Yes, everything was fine, and it was even nice to be back at work, away from her weekend and her nightmare, in the close clutter of the parish office, where the day was predictable, the tasks manageable — where, in theory at any rate, earnest, hopeful work was taking place all around her.

Meanwhile, the real Father Paul was late yet again, this time for his eight o’clock premarital-counseling appointment. A young couple sat on the couch facing Collette’s desk. The man plucked at one of his sideburns with sullen impatience; the girl sat upright and glanced nervously at him. Every few minutes, Collette looked up from folding the weekly bulletins and glared at them.

From her desk in the corner, Crystal sipped her Diet Coke and watched. Collette’s bad temper was democratic in its reach and, when it wasn’t directed at Crystal, could be very entertaining. Once, when they were alone in the office, Collette had startled her by pausing at her desk and saying, darkly, that Crystal was an example to young women, choosing life. For a moment Crystal had seen herself as Collette might: a tragic figure, a fallen woman, but, when it came down to it, contrite and virtuous, taking responsibility for her mistake. But then Collette had elaborated: “If girls are going to run around like that, they should pay.”

The young man opened his cell phone, then snapped it shut. “Eight fifty-seven,” he said. “Jesus. I got work to do.”