foot: organic
title: organic
pairing: iker casillas/sergio ramos
rated: r
note: every summer i start a story that could be summarized as "sergio ramos and the summer time blues"and i never complete them. this is a shorter, sweeter version i rediscovered that demanded to be finished!
At ten a.m., the guard ushers Sergio Ramos to the front of the courtroom. Looking back is pointless because there are no reassuring faces, no gentle smiles, not even a hang loose to help. He tugs at his button down and tries to look like he’s feeling something besides the cold anger in his gut. The other defendants shift in their seats bored or restless or relieved that it’s not them, not yet.
The judge, Diarra says his plaque, folds his hands while watching Sergio step up to the low podium where the juvenile defender leans, tie askew and eyes heavy with sleep. Beside Sergio, the case worker opens a folder and begins to read. That voice always sounds like buzzing in his ear, thin and tiny, fading each day since Sergio overheard her speaking to another public defender. What is that phrase again? Sergio shakes his hair over one shoulder and frowns. She had called him another statistic. In the eyes of the State, the institution that is supposed to help rehabilitate his behavior, he’s just a number, another indication that there is something rotting in the center of a person who doesn’t fit inside the mold.
When Diarra speaks his low voice fills the room and hangs like a roiling cloud. “Mr. Ramos. This is the first time I’ve ever seen you in this courtroom. And I certainly hope it will be the last”, he says. Sergio looks up at him, meets his gaze and nods once. “Good. Unfortunately, the issue at hand goes further than poor decision making. I understand that your mother refuses to speak to the court.”
And the police, and the social worker, and the juvenile probation officer. Her own family. Sergio lowers his head. “I’m used to going it alone,” he mumbles.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ramos, but I didn’t hear you.” Judge Diarra leans forward and his gaze is calm, watchful.
Someone giggles behind him and it sets off another round of shifting. The ancient wood creaks under smartasses.
Sergio squares his shoulders and says, “I’m used to it.”
“Yes. And that appears to be the problem. You are in danger of becoming a ward of the state because of that... Disregard.” Judge Diarra opens another folder runs his finger the pages of his life: Ramos, Sergio MTC-2012-23633.
“Wait,” says Sergio but words fail him. That makes no sense. All he did is take the car out to the corner store and ride around the block a bit. It was just a car, nobody hurt, and he brought it back in fifteen minutes, he was a family friend, in fact, he’s sleeping with my mom, but it doesn’t fucking matter. He got busted and his mother isn’t around to care. How did he get from three months juvenile probation to being taken out of his home? All the apologies and the promises he had planned melt like ash on is tongue. “What?”
“Your brother’s petition to assume custody has failed," continues Judge Diarra leveling a sure and steady gaze at him. "It would place you back within your mother’s home. Ms. Sanderson believes that foster care is an option that will ‘lead to the betterment of your future,’ Mr. Ramos. Do you think that’s true?”
“I.” Sergio swallows. He doesn’t look anywhere but the judge. Not the defender who sighs heavily, not the case worker who coughs nervously beside him. He looks at that calm and holds on until he can feel the ground beneath his feet again. “I think there’s a better option. Sir.”
"I agree. Fortunately for all of us, we were able to contact a member of your family. Luciana Garcia. She has agreed to take you in until your next court date.”
Judge Diarra remands him to the care of his aunt. The gavel cracks in the in the silence and time begins to move again.
Sergio breathes out a sigh echoed by no one.
It's going to be okay though. He's used to going alone.
:::
Luciana Garcia-Just call me Luci-is like no one he’s seen before in his family. But she is his mother’s sister, tall with strong hands and long, dark hair. It’s the only resemblance between them, hair black as night and lashes that spread over their cheeks when they close their eyes. His mother’s hair is nearly gone now, thinned out day after day, long strands pulled out by her brush, by a fist.
She lives in Fresno which is another difference. His mother never felt right unless they were in the middle of the city, any city. Ventura had been the closest to small his family had ever seen.
They climb into her jeep and start driving north. The sidewalk gets older the further they go until it’s split by thick grass that becomes people’s property, wide land choked with weeds. It’s the first time he’d ever seen this highway that cuts through the crumbling city limits away from the beating heart of southern California. The only place Sergio had ever known. The road goes places he’d never thought about before but he’s heard names. Stockton, Bakersfield, Merced, and the closer he gets the more they seem like fables, cities that exist at the end of the world. How is he going to live in the fucking valley? Farmland. Sergio’s mouth twists and he flings his body back into the seat with a sigh.
"What are you thinking?"
It’s been almost two hours since they’d left and this is the first real question that his aunt has asked him. That’s another difference he noticed right away and cataloged as they traveled. Luci hasn’t tried to speak to him, hasn’t tried to tell him how lucky he is or how horrible her life will be now that he’s in it. His mother had always moved through the house bumping into doors, slamming cabinets, screaming about how the groceries were gone, the lights out, her love faded, her beauty fading with the birth of her daughter, and then crying the next. Her tears fell fat with passion to be trapped in a glass, a cruel measure of the life that had failed and the children she never wanted. Talking. She always talks like that, slurred and broken.
“That every mile is taking me away from the beach,” he mumbles. He can see her nod, a tiny, contained motion, out the corner of his eye.
“Did you know we grew up close to the water,” she says. “Just fifteen steps and there we were.”
He hadn’t known. In the past, Sergio wondered about them, his extended family. He’d thought about what it’d be like to know their names and speak to them on holidays. The homes across the street, the ones with clean yards and fresh paint seemed to have their families over all the time, and on the Fourth of July, Sergio would peer at his window and watch the line of cars extend to both ends of the street like a shiny snake of many colors, smell the barbeque, hear the laughter.
“It was this tiny house. Only three bedrooms and the kitchen and bathroom. Imagine the six of us plus your abuelo.” She laughs shaking her head a little. Sergio can’t remember hearing anything like it before; sweet laughter from a woman. “But we all grew up swimming. And your mother and I really loved the beach…. Surfing.
“There wasn’t a day we weren’t out there, especially in the summer.” She taps her nails on the steering wheel. “I haven’t been to the beach in almost a year.”
Sergio lets his head lull against the car door.
"Do you surf?" She sounds genuinely curious.
"Yeah. A little,” says Sergio. “Doesn’t matter now, does it? We’re going to be like, five-thousand miles away.”
“Closer to three-hundred.”
“That’s a long way from the beach,” Sergio mumbles.
“It’s only four hours. What’s four hours when you’re trying to see something you love?”
Four hours. A fifteen minute bus ride to the court house. It takes a long seconds but he’s able to keep his breathing steady and his voice doesn’t even waver when he says, “Yeah.”
If Luci notices she does not let on or apologize. The music kind of rises up between them even though neither had touched the dial. He doesn’t recognize the band but it sounds like the beginning of summer when the suns’ rays stretch wide and move twice as slow. Luci wavers in and out of his vision like a bright dust spot and Sergio wonders if that’s why he’s never met her before. If she’s a reflection of his mother but from a mirror that never cracked and that’s why they’d never had visits from her family. If this could his sister’s future instead of shattered and haunting into the sagging house they grew up in. He hasn’t spoken to her in days and she railed at him about being so stupid, Sergio. How could he be so stupid? They had always asked each other the toughest questions.
Sergio has a couple resting on his tongue waiting to be unleashed. Some are angry, some really pathetic that he can’t bear to think let alone say out loud, especially the first one, the most important. Why did she come? Sergio tries biting his lip until the little pain raced from his lip to his gut. He opened his mouth to hiss and ended up saying something though it changed midway through-“So like, what do you do?”
“Art,” says Lucia. She laughs at the way Sergio’s nose wrinkles. “You’ll see what I mean when we get to my place.”
"You got a shop or do you…. Do you sell it?”
“Sometimes. You ever hear about Spanish tile?”
Sergio’s nose wrinkles again like it does when he’s think. “Is that like mosaics?”
“Mm. A little. I can craft it and other ceramics. I have a studio at my house. You can try it out if you want.” She’s quiet for a second. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, you know. What you might want to do.”
"Yeah? Well.” Sergio flexes his fingers on his knees trying to think of something else to say and his stupid mouth leaks half of the pain sitting in his chest. “I want to know what do you want from me? ‘Cause like. I don’t want to cause you any problems while I’m staying with you or whatever and. How come you just. Out of the blue, you’re here.
“Why haven’t I ever met you before?”
Lucia laughs again and this time Sergio hears the wet sound choking at her. He looks at her, really looks at his family, and sees that her face is slick with tears, and he knows she’s been crying for some time silent as soft rain. He didn’t notice before. It’s another question he could ask, why didn’t I know you were crying?
No one has ever cried for him before. Rene’s body has withered over the years and Mirian must have forgotten how to the day she locked herself in Sergio’s room that night everything changed. Luci has to be crying for him and not the end of life as she knows it
“I was wondering when you’d ask. I’ve just been sitting here trying to figure out what to say when you did.” She wipes her cheeks. “We’re not strangers. But I know it’s going to take some time for you to get to know me and. I don’t want this to be any harder on you than it already is, Sergio. I promise.
"Your case worker said a lot of things but nothing about school. And since there is only two weeks left up here, I thought it might be better not to register you yet. I thought you might want to get a summer job instead.”
“A summer job,” Sergio echoes. He turns in his seat and looks at her dead on, looks at her while she smiles and nods at him.
“It won’t change anything. It won’t make it any easier but. I was thinking about the year I was sent away.” The phrase lingers in the air between them heavy with meaning that Sergio couldn’t quite make out. It sounds like a confession. “And I worked through the summer. It didn’t change things but I made it through okay. Made a few friends.
“Met my husband, may he rest in peace,” she says after a long pause.
"So you want me to just pretend that I’m off on a working vacation or something? Pretend like I’m not on probation or that fucking no one ca-“ Sergio sinks back into his seat. “Like this is normal.”
“I’m not asking you to pretend,” she says voice low. “I’m not asking for anything except that you respect me and my home while you’re staying here and that you respect the fact that you have a chance to gain a little perspective for yourself.” Luci turns the blinker on and the exit looms like a deep green maw closing in on them. “Summer’s that time when things grow, you know?”
“What if I don’t want to work? What if I just want to….” But he can’t think of anything to do for himself. He doesn’t have any real friends that will miss him or, at the very least, he has no friends he will miss. He hates school anyway with their big, square buildings and chain link fences. He had never realized how much like prison his high school really was until he entered juvenile detention center and saw the same wide fence and hallways. But a summer job sounds just as bad. “What if I just want to sit around for a while?”
“Idle hands aren’t the devil’s work. They’re just bored and looking for something to occupy the time. You live with me, you work.”
:::
After two days wandering the huge rooms of his aunt’s house, Sergio decides maybe he can find a job for the summer.
Luci just smiles and asks if he’d like to use some of her connections around town. At the edge of her potting studio filled with bright lights and twisting pillars of clay that make his stomach tighten, Sergio decides he’ll take his own chances.
“For a week,” he says. “Then you know. I might take you up on your offer.”
“I can agree to that,” says Luci smiling. She’s always smiling at him.
Sergio spends two days filling out applications wondering what it is newly sixteen year olds can do in Fresno that doesn’t involve welcoming people to Jack-in-the Box, can I help you? He finds out on the third day when he’s looking at the job section of the newspaper and sees twenty different ads looking for help on local farms. One stands out or at least the description sounded different. It reminds him of the World War II reels they showed in his history class where the guy spoke like he was standing on a box telling folks to step right up through his paper megaphone: see the beauty of this land; the magnificent fruit trees with organic fruit you can pluck and bite; so juicy you’ll find home again; Fernandez Family Orchards-Bliss in every bite. He circles the name with a bright blue pen before asking Luciana if he can use her computer for research.
It turns out that the Fernandez family has farmed this part of the valley for nearly two-hundred years surviving annexation or stratification, a gold rush, both world wars, and a fire in the sixties. They have two orchards-apple and cherry which are in bloom or ripe? A concrete boy, the freshest fruit he gets are from banana splits at Dairy Queen-and a co-opt farm. There’s even a family restaurant that celebrates homegrown California culinary cuisine-Sergio’s lips move as he reads the description of dishes on the website until his stomach complains loudly. The best part is he’ll get paid nearly ten dollars an hour.
When he was ten and his sister twelve, they had decided they would have new shoes for the school year. They saved every Coke can plastic bottle they could find, scoured behind gas stations and the ball fields through the summer from March to July, and when August came, their grand total was sixty-four dollars and eighteen cents. It’s the most money either of them had ever seen, and their mother laughed and promised that they’d get new shoes.
Next year.
He can do a lot with almost ten dollars an hour.
Luci’s blue phone sits snug between his shoulder and ear, the only comfortable thing about him as the phone rings once. Twice. Sergio twirls his fingers around the curly plastic. His palms sweat when he’s nervous and slide easily over his jeans. Four times and then someone picks up. He licks his dry lips and tries not to sound like his heart is beating like a drum.
“Hi,” he says. “My name is Sergio Ramos. I’m calling about one of the jobs in your orchard.”
:: 2886
one | two | three | four
pairing: iker casillas/sergio ramos
rated: r
note: every summer i start a story that could be summarized as "sergio ramos and the summer time blues"and i never complete them. this is a shorter, sweeter version i rediscovered that demanded to be finished!
At ten a.m., the guard ushers Sergio Ramos to the front of the courtroom. Looking back is pointless because there are no reassuring faces, no gentle smiles, not even a hang loose to help. He tugs at his button down and tries to look like he’s feeling something besides the cold anger in his gut. The other defendants shift in their seats bored or restless or relieved that it’s not them, not yet.
The judge, Diarra says his plaque, folds his hands while watching Sergio step up to the low podium where the juvenile defender leans, tie askew and eyes heavy with sleep. Beside Sergio, the case worker opens a folder and begins to read. That voice always sounds like buzzing in his ear, thin and tiny, fading each day since Sergio overheard her speaking to another public defender. What is that phrase again? Sergio shakes his hair over one shoulder and frowns. She had called him another statistic. In the eyes of the State, the institution that is supposed to help rehabilitate his behavior, he’s just a number, another indication that there is something rotting in the center of a person who doesn’t fit inside the mold.
When Diarra speaks his low voice fills the room and hangs like a roiling cloud. “Mr. Ramos. This is the first time I’ve ever seen you in this courtroom. And I certainly hope it will be the last”, he says. Sergio looks up at him, meets his gaze and nods once. “Good. Unfortunately, the issue at hand goes further than poor decision making. I understand that your mother refuses to speak to the court.”
And the police, and the social worker, and the juvenile probation officer. Her own family. Sergio lowers his head. “I’m used to going it alone,” he mumbles.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ramos, but I didn’t hear you.” Judge Diarra leans forward and his gaze is calm, watchful.
Someone giggles behind him and it sets off another round of shifting. The ancient wood creaks under smartasses.
Sergio squares his shoulders and says, “I’m used to it.”
“Yes. And that appears to be the problem. You are in danger of becoming a ward of the state because of that... Disregard.” Judge Diarra opens another folder runs his finger the pages of his life: Ramos, Sergio MTC-2012-23633.
“Wait,” says Sergio but words fail him. That makes no sense. All he did is take the car out to the corner store and ride around the block a bit. It was just a car, nobody hurt, and he brought it back in fifteen minutes, he was a family friend, in fact, he’s sleeping with my mom, but it doesn’t fucking matter. He got busted and his mother isn’t around to care. How did he get from three months juvenile probation to being taken out of his home? All the apologies and the promises he had planned melt like ash on is tongue. “What?”
“Your brother’s petition to assume custody has failed," continues Judge Diarra leveling a sure and steady gaze at him. "It would place you back within your mother’s home. Ms. Sanderson believes that foster care is an option that will ‘lead to the betterment of your future,’ Mr. Ramos. Do you think that’s true?”
“I.” Sergio swallows. He doesn’t look anywhere but the judge. Not the defender who sighs heavily, not the case worker who coughs nervously beside him. He looks at that calm and holds on until he can feel the ground beneath his feet again. “I think there’s a better option. Sir.”
"I agree. Fortunately for all of us, we were able to contact a member of your family. Luciana Garcia. She has agreed to take you in until your next court date.”
Judge Diarra remands him to the care of his aunt. The gavel cracks in the in the silence and time begins to move again.
Sergio breathes out a sigh echoed by no one.
It's going to be okay though. He's used to going alone.
:::
Luciana Garcia-Just call me Luci-is like no one he’s seen before in his family. But she is his mother’s sister, tall with strong hands and long, dark hair. It’s the only resemblance between them, hair black as night and lashes that spread over their cheeks when they close their eyes. His mother’s hair is nearly gone now, thinned out day after day, long strands pulled out by her brush, by a fist.
She lives in Fresno which is another difference. His mother never felt right unless they were in the middle of the city, any city. Ventura had been the closest to small his family had ever seen.
They climb into her jeep and start driving north. The sidewalk gets older the further they go until it’s split by thick grass that becomes people’s property, wide land choked with weeds. It’s the first time he’d ever seen this highway that cuts through the crumbling city limits away from the beating heart of southern California. The only place Sergio had ever known. The road goes places he’d never thought about before but he’s heard names. Stockton, Bakersfield, Merced, and the closer he gets the more they seem like fables, cities that exist at the end of the world. How is he going to live in the fucking valley? Farmland. Sergio’s mouth twists and he flings his body back into the seat with a sigh.
"What are you thinking?"
It’s been almost two hours since they’d left and this is the first real question that his aunt has asked him. That’s another difference he noticed right away and cataloged as they traveled. Luci hasn’t tried to speak to him, hasn’t tried to tell him how lucky he is or how horrible her life will be now that he’s in it. His mother had always moved through the house bumping into doors, slamming cabinets, screaming about how the groceries were gone, the lights out, her love faded, her beauty fading with the birth of her daughter, and then crying the next. Her tears fell fat with passion to be trapped in a glass, a cruel measure of the life that had failed and the children she never wanted. Talking. She always talks like that, slurred and broken.
“That every mile is taking me away from the beach,” he mumbles. He can see her nod, a tiny, contained motion, out the corner of his eye.
“Did you know we grew up close to the water,” she says. “Just fifteen steps and there we were.”
He hadn’t known. In the past, Sergio wondered about them, his extended family. He’d thought about what it’d be like to know their names and speak to them on holidays. The homes across the street, the ones with clean yards and fresh paint seemed to have their families over all the time, and on the Fourth of July, Sergio would peer at his window and watch the line of cars extend to both ends of the street like a shiny snake of many colors, smell the barbeque, hear the laughter.
“It was this tiny house. Only three bedrooms and the kitchen and bathroom. Imagine the six of us plus your abuelo.” She laughs shaking her head a little. Sergio can’t remember hearing anything like it before; sweet laughter from a woman. “But we all grew up swimming. And your mother and I really loved the beach…. Surfing.
“There wasn’t a day we weren’t out there, especially in the summer.” She taps her nails on the steering wheel. “I haven’t been to the beach in almost a year.”
Sergio lets his head lull against the car door.
"Do you surf?" She sounds genuinely curious.
"Yeah. A little,” says Sergio. “Doesn’t matter now, does it? We’re going to be like, five-thousand miles away.”
“Closer to three-hundred.”
“That’s a long way from the beach,” Sergio mumbles.
“It’s only four hours. What’s four hours when you’re trying to see something you love?”
Four hours. A fifteen minute bus ride to the court house. It takes a long seconds but he’s able to keep his breathing steady and his voice doesn’t even waver when he says, “Yeah.”
If Luci notices she does not let on or apologize. The music kind of rises up between them even though neither had touched the dial. He doesn’t recognize the band but it sounds like the beginning of summer when the suns’ rays stretch wide and move twice as slow. Luci wavers in and out of his vision like a bright dust spot and Sergio wonders if that’s why he’s never met her before. If she’s a reflection of his mother but from a mirror that never cracked and that’s why they’d never had visits from her family. If this could his sister’s future instead of shattered and haunting into the sagging house they grew up in. He hasn’t spoken to her in days and she railed at him about being so stupid, Sergio. How could he be so stupid? They had always asked each other the toughest questions.
Sergio has a couple resting on his tongue waiting to be unleashed. Some are angry, some really pathetic that he can’t bear to think let alone say out loud, especially the first one, the most important. Why did she come? Sergio tries biting his lip until the little pain raced from his lip to his gut. He opened his mouth to hiss and ended up saying something though it changed midway through-“So like, what do you do?”
“Art,” says Lucia. She laughs at the way Sergio’s nose wrinkles. “You’ll see what I mean when we get to my place.”
"You got a shop or do you…. Do you sell it?”
“Sometimes. You ever hear about Spanish tile?”
Sergio’s nose wrinkles again like it does when he’s think. “Is that like mosaics?”
“Mm. A little. I can craft it and other ceramics. I have a studio at my house. You can try it out if you want.” She’s quiet for a second. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, you know. What you might want to do.”
"Yeah? Well.” Sergio flexes his fingers on his knees trying to think of something else to say and his stupid mouth leaks half of the pain sitting in his chest. “I want to know what do you want from me? ‘Cause like. I don’t want to cause you any problems while I’m staying with you or whatever and. How come you just. Out of the blue, you’re here.
“Why haven’t I ever met you before?”
Lucia laughs again and this time Sergio hears the wet sound choking at her. He looks at her, really looks at his family, and sees that her face is slick with tears, and he knows she’s been crying for some time silent as soft rain. He didn’t notice before. It’s another question he could ask, why didn’t I know you were crying?
No one has ever cried for him before. Rene’s body has withered over the years and Mirian must have forgotten how to the day she locked herself in Sergio’s room that night everything changed. Luci has to be crying for him and not the end of life as she knows it
“I was wondering when you’d ask. I’ve just been sitting here trying to figure out what to say when you did.” She wipes her cheeks. “We’re not strangers. But I know it’s going to take some time for you to get to know me and. I don’t want this to be any harder on you than it already is, Sergio. I promise.
"Your case worker said a lot of things but nothing about school. And since there is only two weeks left up here, I thought it might be better not to register you yet. I thought you might want to get a summer job instead.”
“A summer job,” Sergio echoes. He turns in his seat and looks at her dead on, looks at her while she smiles and nods at him.
“It won’t change anything. It won’t make it any easier but. I was thinking about the year I was sent away.” The phrase lingers in the air between them heavy with meaning that Sergio couldn’t quite make out. It sounds like a confession. “And I worked through the summer. It didn’t change things but I made it through okay. Made a few friends.
“Met my husband, may he rest in peace,” she says after a long pause.
"So you want me to just pretend that I’m off on a working vacation or something? Pretend like I’m not on probation or that fucking no one ca-“ Sergio sinks back into his seat. “Like this is normal.”
“I’m not asking you to pretend,” she says voice low. “I’m not asking for anything except that you respect me and my home while you’re staying here and that you respect the fact that you have a chance to gain a little perspective for yourself.” Luci turns the blinker on and the exit looms like a deep green maw closing in on them. “Summer’s that time when things grow, you know?”
“What if I don’t want to work? What if I just want to….” But he can’t think of anything to do for himself. He doesn’t have any real friends that will miss him or, at the very least, he has no friends he will miss. He hates school anyway with their big, square buildings and chain link fences. He had never realized how much like prison his high school really was until he entered juvenile detention center and saw the same wide fence and hallways. But a summer job sounds just as bad. “What if I just want to sit around for a while?”
“Idle hands aren’t the devil’s work. They’re just bored and looking for something to occupy the time. You live with me, you work.”
:::
After two days wandering the huge rooms of his aunt’s house, Sergio decides maybe he can find a job for the summer.
Luci just smiles and asks if he’d like to use some of her connections around town. At the edge of her potting studio filled with bright lights and twisting pillars of clay that make his stomach tighten, Sergio decides he’ll take his own chances.
“For a week,” he says. “Then you know. I might take you up on your offer.”
“I can agree to that,” says Luci smiling. She’s always smiling at him.
Sergio spends two days filling out applications wondering what it is newly sixteen year olds can do in Fresno that doesn’t involve welcoming people to Jack-in-the Box, can I help you? He finds out on the third day when he’s looking at the job section of the newspaper and sees twenty different ads looking for help on local farms. One stands out or at least the description sounded different. It reminds him of the World War II reels they showed in his history class where the guy spoke like he was standing on a box telling folks to step right up through his paper megaphone: see the beauty of this land; the magnificent fruit trees with organic fruit you can pluck and bite; so juicy you’ll find home again; Fernandez Family Orchards-Bliss in every bite. He circles the name with a bright blue pen before asking Luciana if he can use her computer for research.
It turns out that the Fernandez family has farmed this part of the valley for nearly two-hundred years surviving annexation or stratification, a gold rush, both world wars, and a fire in the sixties. They have two orchards-apple and cherry which are in bloom or ripe? A concrete boy, the freshest fruit he gets are from banana splits at Dairy Queen-and a co-opt farm. There’s even a family restaurant that celebrates homegrown California culinary cuisine-Sergio’s lips move as he reads the description of dishes on the website until his stomach complains loudly. The best part is he’ll get paid nearly ten dollars an hour.
When he was ten and his sister twelve, they had decided they would have new shoes for the school year. They saved every Coke can plastic bottle they could find, scoured behind gas stations and the ball fields through the summer from March to July, and when August came, their grand total was sixty-four dollars and eighteen cents. It’s the most money either of them had ever seen, and their mother laughed and promised that they’d get new shoes.
Next year.
He can do a lot with almost ten dollars an hour.
Luci’s blue phone sits snug between his shoulder and ear, the only comfortable thing about him as the phone rings once. Twice. Sergio twirls his fingers around the curly plastic. His palms sweat when he’s nervous and slide easily over his jeans. Four times and then someone picks up. He licks his dry lips and tries not to sound like his heart is beating like a drum.
“Hi,” he says. “My name is Sergio Ramos. I’m calling about one of the jobs in your orchard.”
:: 2886
one | two | three | four