Water Rites by Mary Rosenblum Page A

hungry. Others looked from her to the Bee Man and got mad, like Alberto had gotten mad at the foreman. Nita hunched against the wall, dizzy and trapped.
    The Bee Man didn’t look at her at all. Nita closed her burning eyes, trying to shut out the stares and the crowd noise. When she opened them again, Alberto was standing in front of the neatly lined-up honey jugs. “Hello, Nita,” he said in his too-loud, too-careful voice.
    Nita looked past his thick shoulders. Mama was walking up the crowded aisles.
    “How are you getting along?” Alberto was asking the Bee Man. “I haven’t seen you for awhile.”
    “Okay.” The Bee Man turned a jug of golden honey slowly between his hands. “But I’m thinking of moving on again, so I guess Nita ought to go back home with you.”
    Nita stared at him, Mama forgotten for a moment, stunned by his words. He wanted her to go, wanted it with an intensity that took Nita’s breath away, made her feel sick and empty inside. Nita’s lips moved, silently shaping the word to ask him. Why?
    “You see?” Alberto turned to Mama, his temper flaring. “I told you this wasn’t going to work.”
    “It’s not Nita’s fault,” the Bee Man said. “It’s nothing she did or didn’t do.” He looked past Alberto, straight at Mama. “She’s just a kid. You take her home, and you keep her there. Let her grow up.”
    “Don’t you talk to me like that. “ Mama shouldered past Alberto. “You think I don’t know what you’re saying? You think I kicked my daughter out, sent her off to whore, maybe? Well, you think about what it’s like for us, mister. If we get kicked off the farm, where do we go? To one of the camps, to live on hand-outs with the no-good and the drifters? What do we do? Alberto said you’re a nice man, that you’d take her.” She clenched her fists, glared at the Bee Man. “You want to blame someone, you blame her father — you blame Sam. We had a good place, a good farm. It wasn’t much, but we took care of ourselves. And our kids.” Her voice trembled.
    “He left me with the children to feed. So, now we got to scratch in the dust, bow to some strutting little rooster of a foreman who sniffs around my daughter like a dog after a bitch in heat! You want to blame someone, you blame Sam. Not me. Not my son!” She spun on her heel and stalked away, pulling her sun-scarf up over her gray hair.
    “I apologize,” Alberto said between clenched teeth. “For my mother.” He had gone pale under his weathered tan. “Nita, get up. Let’s go.” He reached past the Bee Man, grabbed her by the arm.
    “Wait a minute.” The Bee Man caught Alberto’s wrist. “What happened to her? Why can’t she talk?”
    “She just stopped.” Alberto looked away. “She looks like Papa,” he said. “It’s scary, how much she looks like Papa.” His face twisted. “Mama didn’t mean that Papa walked out on us. It wasn’t like that at all. Papa was organizing a water strike, up in The Dalles. That’s where we lived. Two men drove up to the house one day and shot him, right in the yard. Just shot him down in cold blood. Nita was right there with him. She saw it all.”
    Run! Mama had screamed, but he hadn’t run.
    The Bee Man was mad, now. Not scared any more. Mad. Like Alberto. Like Mama.
    Nita twisted out of Alberto’s lax grip and ran. The Bee Man shouted something, but she closed her ears to it, dodged around a pile of vegetables. Green squashes went flying and a woman screeched at her. Nita ducked her head as she darted through the forest of shoulders and hips, pursued by flashes of surprise and irritation. Her eyes ached as she ran, dry as the riverbed.
    *
    The Bee Man followed her. In the breathless heat of late afternoon, Nita heard him call her name as she climbed up a narrow, twisting creekbed high in the folded mountains. Too late, she looked back and saw the footprint she had left in a damp patch of creekbed clay. The thunder that had awakened her last night had