The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,198
grabbed a box. She walked to the picket fence and lifted the box to show off the contents, a collection of a dozen red spheres, each the size of a tangerine. Maureen walked across the lawn to take a look and the woman used her gloved hand to shake off some bits of loam and handed a tomato to Maureen.
“They’re beautiful.”
“I’ve got too many, believe it or not. I’m taking these to a friend of mine.”
“You grew all these?”
“My summer crop. Black cherry tomatoes, planted in April. They’re heirlooms, organically grown.”
“Organic,” Maureen repeated, and thought that the word carried lovely sounds to match its meaning—proximity to nature, purity, simplicity.
“Do you garden?” the woman asked.
Maureen opened her mouth to say no, then yes, but sputtered and said neither.
Finally she asked, “Is it hard to learn?”
“That hardly ever happens, you know that,” Ruthy said. “Every once in a while, we get these tiny miracles. I guess that’s why I haven’t quit yet.”
“¿Se acabó todo?” Araceli asked. They were standing alone, outside the courtroom, and she was still confused. At one moment, she was a woman with the ligatures of United States jurisprudence affixed to her skin, at another she was free to leave the courtroom and travel about the continent again. The judge had decided the government was wrong, but was a judge allowed to do that?
“Yes, it’s over,” Ruthy said. “The case was dismissed. There are no longer any charges against you. Like the judge said, you are free to go. Se puede ir. In fact, you should go now, and not hang around here at all. Because the DA’s office has gone totally nuts. The deputy DA wanted the judge to hold you for the immigration people, which is totally inappropriate. It’s sort of amazing to hear a county prosecutor say such a thing in open court. Did you see how angry the judge got? So don’t even go back to that address in Santa Ana. That’ll be the first place they’ll look for you—because he’s probably calling the ICE people right now.”
“Thank you, thank you so much for everything,” Araceli said, placing her hands on Ruthy’s shoulders, as if to hold her steady. She gave her a Mexico City kiss on the cheek goodbye, and as Araceli made her way down the hallway alone, she took one last glance at Ruthy’s turning, round silhouette and the hand that rested atop the cotton hillside of her belly. She walked briskly toward the parking lot, to give Felipe the good news and to think about what she should do next. Just outside the courthouse’s glass entryway, behind the nylon cordons that blocked a patch of concrete now empty of photographers, Araceli passed Janet Bryson, who was standing alone with a rolled-up sign she had only briefly displayed on the courthouse steps.
“They’re letting her go?” Janet Bryson said, having heard the news seconds earlier from the departing deputy district attorney. “Where is the media? Where is the outrage?”
Next Araceli walked past Giovanni Lozano, who had his poster-portrait of her dangling upside down in his grip. “They’re letting you go?”
“Sí,” Araceli said breathlessly. “¡Me voy!“ She hustled as fast as she could without breaking into a jog, the memory of her failed sprint from the Huntington Park police alive in her thighs and the panicked tom-tom beat inside her chest. Don’t run, because that will get you in trouble, but move quickly, mujer, because they might grab you at any moment. The ICE agents wore either stiff forest-green uniforms or navy-blue wind-breakers, and she scanned the path to the parking lot for them. There was a man following them back from the courthouse yesterday, in a car, driving slowly—perhaps he was with the ICE. Now she turned and saw a swarthy, middle-aged man in a suit, running after her with long strides of his tailored wool pants—could it be? Yes, it was the Mexican consul. “¡Araceli!” he called out. “¡Ramírez!” She was about to break into a run when she felt a hand land decisively on her shoulder and heard his Mexico City accent call out her name: “¡Araceli Noemí Ramírez Hinojosa!”
With his full arm over her shoulder, the consul now guided a still-surprised Araceli back down to the courthouse plaza and a waiting cluster of suited men.
“We’re here to help you,” the diplomat said, and Araceli detected that sly sprinkling of irony with which Mexican officials flavored their pronouncements. “And, more important, we have something to give you.”