She watched him through the kitchen window as he worked.

The blade of the hoe moved sharply, with precision, sliding under the topsoil to cut the weeds off at the root. There were few men his age in the city that could match her husband’s build, could match his thick shock of wiry hair. Broad shoulders, narrow wait, hard and heavy hands.  Built by work, cultivation, the weight of years of sod and stone.

A bowl of chopped onions, cilantro and minced serrano chilies sat next to the cutting board, waiting for her chop and add the brick-red tomatoes he had picked not even an hour ago. All of it from their garden, all of it gown by him who labored six days a week in the gardens of others just to spend half of the seventh tending his own. She drew the knife across the first tomato as she drifted back to the first time she saw him, cliff diving with his younger brother to the howls and gasps of tourists in Acapulco.

He was muscular even then, deeply tanned, grimly serious as he traced the ebb and flow of the waves to time his death-defying leaps. Oaxaca, she half-dreamt. When there were violets in my hair and the borrachos fell over themselves to offer me a song. She had come to the coast with her mother to visit a sick uncle when she spotted him. He dove all day for American dollars, and at night he spent them in the cantinas, dancing and taking every girl for her turn with him on the floor. Only once he would say, bowing, and when he kissed my cheek and took my hand and danced with me two times in a row, then three, I knew we would always dance with each other. What can I promise you? he’d asked her, the night of their first dance, and she had answered him: A garden. Promise me a garden, always, and I will promise you my love. And he told her I promise you a garden, always, and later he promised her America.

And now here they were in the home he bought her, built with his sweat and hung with his laughter, their children grown and married. Their children, who would be at the door in a matter of hours with their own children, a garden of smiling faces and round bellies and outstretched arms. As she dropped the tomatoes in the bowl and squeezed a wedge of lemon over it, stirring, she watched him working still, keeping his promise. Their back yard was small, but even so he pressed and kneaded and drew up corn and beans and vegetables, and flowers for her, always flowers, while all the neighbors scratched their heads and fought to keep their grass green. On the radio there was mariachi, and it was summer, and down the back of his shirt a wet V fell steadily from his neck like a cliff diver. So shall I keep my promise, she thought, rapping crisply on the glass and waving to him. He turned to her there and nodded, giving her a wink, shaking the soil from the hoe and mopping his face with the front of his shirt.

She wound the tips of two fingers through the juice and tomato pulp on the cutting board and let them rest between her lips for a long moment. Oaxaca, she smiled, when I was nineteen and taut and every gray hair on my father’s head. Her family had tried to warn her off, half a lifetime ago, but his eyes shone like moonlight on water and are still shining, and we knew then what they could not know. She undid the loose knot and opened up her dress to the window, where her husband was stomping his boots and collecting his tools, not looking up. She pulled a violet from the vase on the counter and slid it behind her ear.

For our age we are built well, she thought, turning to meet him as he would come through the door.

Petal smooth and shifting you
reach your rolling neck
and roll your reaching arm,
a pure and perfect smile;

Your knees may scrape
your arms may bruise
someday you’ll love
something you lose

My whispers curl along
your small ear and fair-haired you
kick out and are still,
filling up canyons with
murmurs and gasps…

Your head may bump
your tummy hurt
someday two tears
will streak the dirt

Sleep with the peace of prayer,
wake with the awe of stars,
your fingers
fall open
like spring;

I never knew hope
I never knew fear
I never knew what
ferocity was
until

You will lose some
innocence
You will leave some
fingerprints

How can I say
you came from me
when you’re more than
I knew
could be?

We pull up to the gate at 5:30 but have to sit until almost 6, waiting for enough light to filter through the fog so we can make our way into the fields. The marine layer doesn’t usually creep this far inland, but this week it’s been heavy, sticking around, settling into the valleys like wet smoky mud. Probably why the foreman was late.

Paco’s van smells like cheap whore and taco shop and I’m glad to be out.

He’s jawing at the foreman, trying to get an angle. He’s always looking for an angle. I don’t know how you get an angle on a strawberry field but Paco wouldn’t be Paco if he didn’t try.

It’s just us – Paco, Luis, Hector and me – and 4 or 5 older ladies that showed up in a beat-down Astro. They look like Indians – maybe Zapotecs  – coffee skinned, compact, bundled up. They move efficiently, speaking a few words to each other in Chatino. Fair enough.

Paco walks over and jabs an elbow in my ribs. “You like that, cabron? You want to hit that?” I grab some flats and leave him to his sneering.

It’s been the four of us for about a year. Luis and Hector are brothers, don’t talk much, and only in Spanish. Most of what they earn goes back to Mexico, apart from Luis’ taste for Budweiser. Hector has two kids, though. Goes home for Christmas every year and comes back with two new pictures. Paco – I don’t know where he came from. I’ve heard him tell a half-dozen different stories and none of them sound true. Someone in Fresno told me they thought they recognized him from a wanted poster in Texas, which wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t think he’s dangerous. I can just see how his mouth and his angles could have landed him in something that went way over his head. It might be why we always work the edges of the season, off-peak – always a week early, a week late.

After a few hours I stop and stretch. The fog is still thick. I’m glad. Good weather. I can hear Paco singing a corrido but I can’t see him. Glad again.

I pull a book from my back pocket and flip it open. Harvest Poems, by Carl Sandburg. Picked it up at a yard sale a few weeks ago. I always have a book in my pocket. When I get a new one I leave the old one in a laudromat or on top of an ice machine or newspaper rack. They probably mostly get thrown out, but I always imagine someone else picking them up and reading them, wondering where they came from.

Luis is standing right in front of me. Fog is tricky like that – makes me forget. Can’t see anybody all morning and all of a sudden someone steps out of nothing and there you are with your book in a strawberry field like an idiot. He can see I don’t need more flats but leaves me some anyway. I shove the book back in my pocket and start picking.

My back aches, so I bend my knees more. Pretty soon my legs ache. Paco always says I’m soft and he’s right. I’m from Pacoima. I’m second generation. I graduated high school and played baseball and used to write stories my English teachers said were good. Even took some classes at a community college, but that wasn’t going too well so I hooked up with my uncle to work the central valley. Just for the summer, to figure things out. That was 18 months ago.

Towards midday the fog is burning off, thinning out. The Zapotecs have almost twice as many flats ready as we do. We get our sandwiches and sodas out of the van and sit under an old pepper tree near the gate. I pull out my book. I like the poems of Carl Sandburg. He talks about unions and soldiers and Abraham Lincoln. I like most when he talks about work and workers. He was a poet but he knew about sweat and blood returning to earth. What it is to have dust in your lungs and sun in your eyes. He knew the people who dig coal, dig ditches, who pitch shale over their shoulders, looking for a vein of hope. People who sleep outside, hidden between tall clumps of pampas grass, staring up at a low splinter of moon with bellies full of stolen tomatoes.

Paco and Hector brush themselves off and head back out. Luis reaches into the cooler for his after-lunch beer. I read.

After a few minutes Luis clears his throat. “Hector was going to be a lawyer,” he says softly, “He was going to school in Mexico City and everything. Then he got Rosanna pregnant and had to quit. Had to work.”

He takes a long drink and watches his brother load trays of strawberries onto a flatbed. “He would have been a good lawyer.”

It’s the most he’s ever said to me. He reaches into his backpack and slides me a bus ticket to Los Angeles. The way he does tells me Hector doesn’t know. This is between him and me.

“It’s good work up here, but not for you. Paco hates when you read because he doesn’t understand. Hector, he hates it because he does.”

I take the ticket. It’s for tonight.

“You read better than you pick, guero.”

I don’t know what to say. I fold the ticket and tuck it into my book, searching for words. Finally I flip to “Happiness” and read it to him in Spanish, only I change Desplaines river to Rio Grande and Hungarians to Tejanos.

He looks at me blankly for a moment, then light begins to break across his face. He smiles, laughs, hoists up his tall boy can.

“A felicidad,” he says.

“To happiness.”

scissors, glue and
concentration;
patience and some
motivation

Henry doesn’t
talk a bunch,
puts in his teeth
to eat his lunch

then gets wheeled
to his room,
his glue and paint,
familiar fumes

over London,
over France,
see if Jerry
wants to dance

iron crosses
swarmed like flies,
one by one
dropped from the skies

Drove a schoolbus
fifty years
flak guns ringing
in his ears

then went home
to model planes,
Corsairs, Hellcats
in his veins

we lost a lot of boys,
you bet;

a few still up there,
flying yet.

Dude this sux.

Beats chem. and study hall. What did u bring 4 lunch?

Forgot. Is there machines?

Didn’t see any. U want half my sandwich?

Ok. Thx. Wtf are we doing here?

Learning about stars, duh. And not smelling Ms. Carmody’s no soap using ass.

No I mean like wtf are we doing here on this planet. What if it goes on forever backwards and forwards? All the space and dust and stars are really just a molecule in something else. Or what if there is a tiny world living on the atoms on the electrons in my hair?

R u high right now?

Yeah a little. But what’s the point? All this space isn’t really space, it’s full of all kinds of shit and we’re just tiny people on a tiny planet in a tiny galaxy in the corner of a cloud of crap floating around.

Wow you’re in a good mood. But #1, electrons don’t have atoms, it’s the other way around.  And #2, so what if there’s a bunch of random shit in the sky? We still have a chem. test on Friday and u obviously need to study. A lot.

Did u see those nebulaz? When you’re little u think the sky is the biggest thing there is and then u find out there are all these other skies past the sky. And then we’re all just made up of a bunch of tiny atoms and electrons and whatever. It doesn’t make any sense. And it doesn’t even matter. OMG I am going to fucking strangle that guy if he says how about that one more time.

I know. How about that universe? Look, a dipper, how about that? Doooofus! Hey did anyone ask u to homecoming yet?

No. I thought Dylan was going to but then at Brianna’s party I told him I only go out with guys that can suck their own dicks. I thought it was hilarious but I was really wasted.  I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m a whore now. BFD.  Did u ask Madison.

No, Kevin did. She blew him off but he’s kind of my friend so it would kind of suck either way. Brianna had a party?

Yeah, Saturday. U didn’t miss much. When is this over?

I don’t know. So r u going?

To homecoming? What for? I can listen to lame pop music at home. Dances are stupid anyway.

Yeah they are. I’m probably going to skip it too.

My dad left.

Back to Iraq? I thought they had to give him 6 months before they sent him on another tour?

No, he left us. A few days ago for some redneck skank he met over there. Don’t say anything ok? If school finds out they’ll make me go see that fucking weirdo shrink again.

OMG that SUCKS! Wtf? Why didn’t u tell me?

Dude, keep up. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t say anything at first because I didn’t really believe it. I thought it was just something he said because they were fighting. U know how they are. But then he left and he took the dog so I know he’s not coming back.

That’s crazy! How does it not matter? I can’t believe he took Baxter. That’s fucked.

Whatever. He hasn’t been around much and even when he’s here he’s not really here. He forgot my birthday last year, remember? Anyway I was so mad at first. And sad. I don’t even know what it was. Like I was frozen or something. Or totally blazed. U know when you’re so high u can’t move? Well u probably don’t but it was like that.  But now I’m sitting in this stupid freezing upside down toilet bowl room and it’s like it’s all the same.

Um, u lost me.

There’s stars in the ceiling, there’s stars in the sky. What’s the difference?  My dad came back,  he left, so what? Everything just keeps on doing whatever it does and u can’t stop any of it, so what’s the point? I could jump in front of a bus tomorrow and it wouldn’t matter, u know?

No, it would matter a lot. I get what u mean about feeling small but come on. Just because there are all kinds of things u can’t change doesn’t mean u don’t count.

Well I know people would be sad and whatever, but they’d get over it. People die all the time. People leave all the time.

Ok so u don’t matter to the cosmos. Nobody does. But u matter to me.  And if u jumped in front of a bus your dad would still be a total dick and we’d still have a chem. test and the sun would still come up. But I wouldn’t have a best friend to show my poems to or teach me guitar chords or sit on the roof with all night or pass notes to during boring field trips. And every time I heard a new band or saw a new slasher movie or wanted to call someone for no reason and talk for 3 hours, I’d think of u and I’d end up going crazy wondering why I never told you this and no, I’d never get over it for my whole life. Because u fucking matter to me more than anything in this whole stupid shit filled universe.

Dude r u crying?

No why r u?

It looked like u were a little.

Kind of looks like u are.

Shut up. I’m starving did u bring chips?

You left a letter that explains
read by a man
whose spirit drains

There was someone down the track
who stole your heart
who made you pack

With just your clothes, your hopes and dreams,
and ticket for
the nine-fifteen

You boarded and you took your seat
the whistle blew
you skipped a beat -

Three pages filled, left by your keys
with reasons and
apologies

Is all of you that still remains
read by a ghost
who’s chasing trains

I must be good at something –

law of averages and such –

just haven’t figured out yet

what it is or quite how much

broken bells

and broken clocks

and rusted keys

to broken locks

I know nobody’s perfect

so the converse must be true –

everyone must have a place

and something they can do

broken clocks

and broken plates

and hinges hung

with broken gates

the people rushing past me

all have somewhere else to be -

six billion people out there

so there must be one for me

even broken clocks

they say

are right a couple

times a day.

Pink was the fattest kid in fifth grade, second fattest in the whole school. Marco Ortiz was the fattest, but when you saw his parents you understood why. They were both huge – sumo huge – standing between them, Marco looked like an Olympian. Pink’s mom was 5’2” and barely 100 pounds. He didn’t know what his real dad looked like but his stepdad Steve, apart from a mild beer belly, was pretty fit. His sister was a rail, but everyone knew it was because she’d been scoring Adderall  from the ADD kids since sixth grade. She was going to kick it last summer, before freshman year, but then she made varsity cheer at Hollywood High and that was pretty much the end of that.

He’d worn a pink polo shirt on the first day of second grade, and a couple of kids started calling him Pink. Then Leslie Silverman told everyone it was because he ate 10 Pink’s chili dogs every day, and that was why he was so fat. He didn’t even like Pink’s chili dogs, but that didn’t matter. Everybody called him Pink now, except his sister, who called him Tiny. Just to be a bitch.

It was Tuesday. Pink sat down to lunch at a far table, unpacking a PB& J, apple, and bag of Fritos. He’d had a PB&J at recess and there was a sleeve of Oreos and another bag of chips in his backpack, but he knew better than to eat everything at once, especially at school. Halfway through his sandwich there was an eruption of laughter from the other side of the quad; a few minutes later, Sam, a 4^th grader, took a seat across the table. His real name was Osama, so of course he went by Sam, but his accent was so thick you could barley understand him. He’d come over from Dubai only a few months ago. Sometimes Pink sat with him at lunch, or he with Pink, and sometimes the girl who was held back two years in a row would join them, but it was generally a pretty quiet affair. Sam was eating some kind of weird meat mixed with rice and didn’t look up.

His mom told everyone Pink had a thyroid problem, but he didn’t know what a thyroid was. The last time he’d been to the doctor, the doctor told his mom something about if he didn’t lose weight he’d probably get diabetes, which has something to do with sugar and can make you blind.  That set his mom off, yelling at the doctor about how good a parent she was and not to judge her. Pink wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything, but he hadn’t been to a doctor since.

After school, Pink got off the bus two stops early, rounded the corner onto Laurel Canyon, and walked to Famous Cupcakes. If there was a bunch of photographers out front you knew one of the Kardashians was inside. Kids said Sprinkles was better and that people only went to Famous because the Kardashians owned it, but Pink liked Famous. He bought four cupcakes –strawberry for his mom and sister, chocolate coconut for him and Steve. And a large soda. It was a long walk home.

By the time he turned onto his street, the back of his shirt was soaked with sweat, dripping from beneath his backpack. It ran from his neck and down his temples. It slicked his fingers, making it hard to hold the box in front of him. But it was worth it.

He dropped his backpack by the door and set the box on the island in the kitchen. It was quiet. He grabbed another soda from the fridge and found his sister upstairs, in her bathroom, putting on some makeup.

“Where’ve you been?” she said when she noticed him standing there. She continued before he could answer. “Steve got stuck in some mammoth production meeting that’s supposed to go crazy late, and mom had go show some houses to somebody. Somebody important – a Clipper – something like that. She’s taking him to dinner after.”

“Tonight?” Pink asked.

“No, last night. Don’t be stupid. I mean, she got the call at like, four. You know how they are. They make you do shit at all hours just because they can. That’s why I’m going to be famous,” she said, blotting her lipstick and dropping the tissue in the basket, “so I don’t have to work for famous people.”

She slipped past him and walked into their mom’s bedroom. Pink followed. She was in the bathroom again, at the sink, spritzing perfume on her neck.

“Where are you going?” Pink asked.

“I have to go study.”

She disappeared into the closet and emerged holding a pair of red high heels. “Don’t tell mom I wore these,” she said as she passed him again.

She slipped on the heels at the bottom of the stairs and opened the door. Pink followed her out. A guy in a letterman’s jacket was sitting in a white Mercedes in the driveway, engine running.

“Don’t worry, Tiny. I’ll be back before Mom is. There’s pizzas in the freezer.”

She slid into the passenger seat, giggled, and was gone.

Pink flipped through the channels. Nothing good. He licked the crumbs from his fingers and dropped the last wrapper into the empty box next to him on the couch. He flipped a little more and turned it off. It was almost 10; his sister would probably be home soon and yell at him for still being up. He picked up the ribbon he’d won at the science fair earlier that day. Honorable Mention. He’d never won a ribbon before, but suddenly Honorable Mention didn’t seem all that great. He dropped it into the box too, closed the lid.

He looked at his reflection in the dark of the TV screen.

A tear rolled slowly, cutting through a streak of pink frosting on his cheek.