"Can't you tell your friends to go to the front door and ring the bell?"
One 95 degree July afternoon, my friend Leslee and I were out in the cool garage inside a cardboard refrigerator box. We were playing, "Grapes of Wrath" after a book and movie our parents couldn't stop talking about. Her mother's and my mother's families had arrived in California when the dust bowl hit Oklahoma in the late 1930s and they couldn't remind us often enough of the hard times they lived through and how good we kids had it. Nine years old each, Leslee and I made entertainment out of it.
A cardboard refrigerator box became a tent at the edge of a sugar beet field somewhere in the C
entral Valley. We were "suffering," complaining of our empty stomachs and dirty faces. Leslee had taken two packages of Jello mix from her mom's kitchen,and we were dipping our fingers in it, licking it off, and proclaiming our good fortune in finding a meal for the day. She called me "Malcolm" and I called her "Clem," and we talked in phony Okie accents about the Mexicans who stole the gasoline out of our pitiful truck and left us stuck in an empty crop field. We were going to miss the hops harvest in Fresno.
We heard the gate open and close. Then the man-door of the garage opened, and in walked Annette. She found us. Annette was the five year old girl who lived next door. She was a very sweet little girl with the dark eyes, olive skin and wavy brown hair of her Sicilian family. Her brother and sister were in high school, so she had no siblings to play with, and her mother wouldn't let her leave the yard. Mrs. Certa was in her late 40s, at least. Always tired looking, stooped shouldered and baggy-eyed, she ambled along with her slip showing below a calico skirt. She usually wore a colorful apron with ruffles and seemed to be always cooking something. Mom complained that Mrs. Certa couldn't understand English, so didn't seem to get it when Mom sent Annette home several times a day.
"I tell Annette to go home and she won't stay home. I tell Mrs. Certa to keep her daughter at home, and she just smiles and nods at me. Annette walks into my house without knocking and always looks and smells like she needs a bath."
Certa's backyard was filled with tomato plants, strawberries and basil in very tidy rows. A small cement patio held two metal adirondack chairs with a small table stood in the middle, with gardening tools leaning against the house siding.
Annette wanted to play with us in the Stockton migrant workers' camp. She didn't want to go home.
"Tell you what," said Leslee, offering her soggy box of Jello. "You can play with us if we can go in your back yard and look at your garden. That was agreeable to Annette. So the three of us sat in the shade of an imaginary oak tree reminising about Oklahoma in the days of glory before the drought. Annette smiled at her orange Jello stained finger, and smiled at Leslee and me.
"Let's see that garden." said Leslee.
Annette said we should be quiet and not wake up her mother.
We crept through the mirror image of our own gate and tiptoed along the side path. The tomatoes were as tall as we were! There were bell shaped fruits we hadn't seen before, some huge red ones, ("Beefsteaks," pronounced Leslee), and some small round cherry tomatoes. At the far side of the yard in the semi shade was the basil, but we didn't know what that was. And in between the two crops were three rows of big, glistening strawberries.
I walked into a row of the pear shaped tomatoes and took a big whiff of herbaceous air. Leslee followed and held up a branch.
"Lookit!" She cried, then crouched down quickly realizing she'd breached the hush.
One 95 degree July afternoon, my friend Leslee and I were out in the cool garage inside a cardboard refrigerator box. We were playing, "Grapes of Wrath" after a book and movie our parents couldn't stop talking about. Her mother's and my mother's families had arrived in California when the dust bowl hit Oklahoma in the late 1930s and they couldn't remind us often enough of the hard times they lived through and how good we kids had it. Nine years old each, Leslee and I made entertainment out of it.
A cardboard refrigerator box became a tent at the edge of a sugar beet field somewhere in the C
entral Valley. We were "suffering," complaining of our empty stomachs and dirty faces. Leslee had taken two packages of Jello mix from her mom's kitchen,and we were dipping our fingers in it, licking it off, and proclaiming our good fortune in finding a meal for the day. She called me "Malcolm" and I called her "Clem," and we talked in phony Okie accents about the Mexicans who stole the gasoline out of our pitiful truck and left us stuck in an empty crop field. We were going to miss the hops harvest in Fresno.We heard the gate open and close. Then the man-door of the garage opened, and in walked Annette. She found us. Annette was the five year old girl who lived next door. She was a very sweet little girl with the dark eyes, olive skin and wavy brown hair of her Sicilian family. Her brother and sister were in high school, so she had no siblings to play with, and her mother wouldn't let her leave the yard. Mrs. Certa was in her late 40s, at least. Always tired looking, stooped shouldered and baggy-eyed, she ambled along with her slip showing below a calico skirt. She usually wore a colorful apron with ruffles and seemed to be always cooking something. Mom complained that Mrs. Certa couldn't understand English, so didn't seem to get it when Mom sent Annette home several times a day.
"I tell Annette to go home and she won't stay home. I tell Mrs. Certa to keep her daughter at home, and she just smiles and nods at me. Annette walks into my house without knocking and always looks and smells like she needs a bath."
Certa's backyard was filled with tomato plants, strawberries and basil in very tidy rows. A small cement patio held two metal adirondack chairs with a small table stood in the middle, with gardening tools leaning against the house siding.
Annette wanted to play with us in the Stockton migrant workers' camp. She didn't want to go home.
"Tell you what," said Leslee, offering her soggy box of Jello. "You can play with us if we can go in your back yard and look at your garden. That was agreeable to Annette. So the three of us sat in the shade of an imaginary oak tree reminising about Oklahoma in the days of glory before the drought. Annette smiled at her orange Jello stained finger, and smiled at Leslee and me.
"Let's see that garden." said Leslee.
Annette said we should be quiet and not wake up her mother.
We crept through the mirror image of our own gate and tiptoed along the side path. The tomatoes were as tall as we were! There were bell shaped fruits we hadn't seen before, some huge red ones, ("Beefsteaks," pronounced Leslee), and some small round cherry tomatoes. At the far side of the yard in the semi shade was the basil, but we didn't know what that was. And in between the two crops were three rows of big, glistening strawberries.
I walked into a row of the pear shaped tomatoes and took a big whiff of herbaceous air. Leslee followed and held up a branch.
"Lookit!" She cried, then crouched down quickly realizing she'd breached the hush.
She held in her hand a big caterpillar-worm-looking creature. It was three inches long, bright green with red and yellow spots. There was a horn-like hook at the tail end. We easily found more and put them inside a terra cotta planting pot. They began to crawl out. By that time, we'd remembered the strawberries.
Annette said, "No! No! Can't have!" But Leslee and I already had our mouths full and we were filling the bottoms of our t shirts like pouches.
"I'll take some tomatoes to my mom," said Leslee, remembering the dust bowl.
Just then, my little brother, Steve came walking along the fence top. Pestier even than Annette, he wanted to see what we were doing.
"HEY!" He shouted at us.
Just then, Mrs. Certa began to open the patio door, her voice ahead of her, talking loudly in Italian. Steve hightailed it, and that distraction allowed Leslee, Annette and I to creep out the gate unnoticed. All the woman could see was the back side of my brother before he dropped into another back yard for safety.
Annette quietly went home, out the gate and through her own front door. Leslee walked down the street to share the produce bounty with her family.
Steve came home a few hours later after playing somewhere with his friends. He'd left his skateboard behind a previous visit, so was traveling via sidewalk rather than fenceline. He came running up from Hillcrest Avenue all sweaty and excited.
"Some Gyspy lady was following me!" he said. "I started up our street from Madeira Way and she was walking behind me. I didn't want to come all the way home because then she'd know where I live. I went around Duke Way and there she was again!"
He looked at Mom and Dad, who were a little doubtful. Steve was supposed to be home an hour earlier to clean his room, and it seemed a likely story.
"I went around Pestana Way and down to East Avenue, then up Hillcrest to get away from her. I think she's trying to kidnap me!"
Mom gave him chocolate milk to calm his nerves, then he went off to his room. Leslee and I had moved to the kitchen by then, and were examing a bottle of baby aspirin next to the toaster. She was just about to suggest we eat a few of those, when the doorbell rang. Mom yelled at Steve to answer the door.
He performed the duty and gave a loud scream, "It's her! Mom! It's the Gypsy and she's here to get me!"
We ran to the front room to rescue my little brother and see the Gypsy.
Little brown-eyed Annette peeked out from behind the colorful skirt of Mrs. Certa.
"She thinks he stole her strawberries," Annette said, eyes downcast.
The next time Annette came into our house without knocking, Mom put her in our bathtub.
