Flight Behavior
Page 28

She opened the door immediately. “May I help you?”
It was the little girl between the adults who spoke: “Preston!”
“Hi, Josefina,” he said heartily, sounding like the man of the house.
Dellarobia looked from her son to this child and her parents. “Preston, is this a friend of yours?”
“She’s in Miss Rose’s room too,” he said. The two of them hugged in an obedient, ritualistic way, like children at a family reunion, leaving Dellarobia to meet the parents’ gaze feeling thoroughly adrift. The man had a large mustache and wore work clothes, a zippered jacket and billed cap. The wife was a bit more dressed up in a summery flowered shift under her blue cardigan. This family hadn’t gotten around to the winter coats either, from the looks of it. They both pumped her hand firmly and said their names, Lupe and Reynaldo and a last name she instantly forgot.
“Well, come in,” she said. The child said something to the parents, and they cautiously followed, wiping their shoes on the mat and entering the house so tentatively, Dellarobia had some difficulty getting the door closed behind them. She’d halfway unbuttoned her coat before realizing, startled again, she was half naked underneath. The wet clothes she’d stripped off earlier still lay in a puddle in the hallway. These people must think they’d come calling at a pig house.
“I am so sorry to keep you standing out there. We were out. If you all would please sit down in the living room, I’ll join you in just one minute. Preston, would you be a real big boy and go to the kitchen and get everybody a glass of water?”
Again the girl spoke to her parents in Spanish, exchanging several sentences this time. Whatever she told them did the trick, as they walked directly to the sofa and sat down. Dellarobia quickly checked on Cordie, who was sleeping, and then scurried to the bedroom to run a brush through her hair and put on something decent. When she returned to the living room, she saw Preston had delivered water in the plastic cups he was allowed to use: Lupe had Shrek, and Reynaldo had SpongeBob SquarePants. They held their drinks formally. Dellarobia noted the wife’s plastic summer sandals worn with pantyhose, and felt for her, knowing exactly what it was like to be a season behind on every kind of payment. The man had removed his cap and placed it on the arm of the sofa. His mustache made two curved lines around the sides of his mouth like parentheses, as if everything he might say would be very quiet, and incidental. Josefina was their princess, in flowered bell-bottom stretch pants and a plaid top. She sat between her parents smiling shyly at Roy while her father held out the back of his hand for the dog to sniff, encouraging her to do the same. Roy let himself be rubbed under the chin, then went and lay down in the entrance hall, satisfied that he had secured the perimeter.
“So,” Dellarobia said, wondering whether she should offer cookies. She moved a pile of clothes out of the armchair to sit down, and Preston sidled close, sitting on the carpet at her feet. “It’s nice to meet one of Preston’s friends. He’s my oldest, so it’s been kind of strange for me, sending him off to kindergarten, where he’s got this whole other world I don’t know about.”
She instantly regretted the “whole other world,” which they might take the wrong way, but it was too late, the little girl was already passing it on. They smiled and nodded, seemingly uninsulted. Dellarobia was coming to understand that these parents did not speak a word of English. They must be living in Feathertown if they had a child enrolled in school. But whatever their situation, they were evidently doing it with a kindergartner as their ambassador. Did she go with them to do their shopping and banking? She couldn’t imagine. And could not have been more floored by what the child said next.
“My mother and father wants to see the butterflies.”
“You’re kidding me!”
The girl began to translate, but Dellarobia stopped her. “No, don’t say that. Tell me how they know about the butterflies.”
“We know about them a lot,” Josefina said, this time without consulting her parents. “They are mariposas monarcas. They come from Mexico.” She pronounced it Meheecu, a small, quick slide back to the mother tongue.
“Okay,” Dellarobia said, astonished.
“The monarcas are from Michoacán, and we are from Michoacán.” Josefina flashed a mouthful of white teeth, gaining poise by the minute. She was a little taller than Preston, and seemed much older. They might have had to enroll an older child in kindergarten, to learn the language, Dellarobia supposed. Or maybe she’d just seen twice as much of life as the kids around here. It seemed probable.
“Monarchs,” Dellarobia said. “Now see, I’ve heard that name before.” She racked her memory. Animal Planet, maybe.
“Monarch-es,” the girl repeated, shifting the emphasis around so it was English, or the next thing to it.
“Are you saying they used to be down there, and now they’re all coming up here to live?” Dellarobia recognized a familiar ring to those words, which people often said about immigrants themselves, and again she worried about causing accidental offense. But the girl was focused on the butterfly issue.
“No,” she said. “They like to live in Michoacán. On the trees. They live in big, big . . .” She drew a wide shape with her hands, struggling for a word, then said, “Racimos. Like uvas. Sorry, like grapes.”
Dellarobia could have dropped her teeth. “Yes, exactly. Like big bunches of grapes hanging from the trees. You’ve seen that?”
The girl nodded. She said something rapidly to her parents that made them nod vigorously as well.
“My mother, somebody tells her they are coming here like that. Her friend read in the newspaper. We went to another house to ask for seeing the monarcas. And that lady sayed us to pay money to see them, so we don’t go.”
“My mother-in-law, Hester, you mean. A lady with a long gray ponytail?” Dellarobia signaled a line from the back of her head.
Josefina nodded. “Yes.”
“She was going to charge you money to see the butterflies? When was this?”
“A long time.”
“Around Thanksgiving?”
The girl asked her mother a question, who answered with a word that sounded like November. “It was November,” Josefina replied.
That witch, thought Dellarobia. Free of charge for churchy locals only. Leave it to Hester to hoard the miracle. “How did you know to come here?”