Delta Girls by Gayle Brandeis

Author:Gayle Brandeis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction - General, Delta Region (Calif.), Women figure skaters, Single mothers, Contemporary, Fiction, Romance, American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +, Mothers and daughters, General, Migrant agricultural laborers
ISBN: 9780345492623
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-06-22T06:36:44.527000+00:00

I SUPPOSE IT WAS INEVITABLE. AS SOON AS THE NEWS hit the wires, people began to arrive, wanting to see the whales. People in wheelchairs, young families with strollers, older couples, college kids. People wanting to invade our space.

The Vieiras didn’t let anyone onto the property unless they paid twenty dollars and picked a bag of pears for the orchard, and then they only let them in for a couple of hours each afternoon, so we didn’t have too big a crowd on the island, but Roberts only charged five dollars a day and, for ten dollars more, let people set up camp in the dead part of the orchard. They could easily look across the slough and see us in our houseboat. I warned Quinn to keep the blinds down, especially when our lights were on at night.

“I think we need to think about taking off,” I told Quinn. “Too many people.” And not any time with Sam. She had stopped giving us updates, stopped hanging out on our deck. Every once in a while, she lifted her chin and smiled in my direction, but it seemed a formality, an empty gesture. How ridiculous of me to think she might want me for a friend. I could feel my heart shrink quickly back down to hold just me and Quinn, our tight little circle.

“We can’t leave now,” said Quinn. “We need to make sure the whales are okay.”

“The whales don’t need us,” I said. “We better pack before this becomes even more of a circus.”

Quinn threw herself on the bed and glared at me. “I’m not going,” she said. “You can leave, but I’m staying right here.”

“I know you don’t want to go, sweetheart,” I said, “but we have to.”

“Why?” Her face was a red mask of grief. It pained me to see the creases between her eyebrows, the violent downward crank of her mouth.

“There’s too many people.”

“So?” Her voice was strangled.

“So …” I searched for an explanation. “Something could happen.”

“Something could happen even if no one’s there,” she said.

“It’s different,” I told her.

“How?”

“People are unpredictable.”

“So are whales.” She spit out the words. “So are pears.”

“Pears are pretty predictable,” I said.

“So are bees,” she said, and I instinctively reached for the EpiPen.

“Just start packing.” I grabbed her blue suitcase from the closet, set it on the bed. She turned away from me, so I opened the drawers and started to pull out the shirts and shorts she had folded herself—she was better at folding than me. She curled herself into a ball next to the suitcase and sobbed. I took her books off the shelves, set them on top of her clothes. I got her toothbrush, her bathing suit, from the bathroom. Our life felt so spacious when we were sitting on our deck, looking out at the Delta sky, but it could be easily compressed into a few small containers.

I packed my own suitcase, packed our food, our toiletries, into paper grocery bags.

“We better head out,” I said, walking to the door.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.