Chapter 2: The Little House in the Poppy Fields
Matt stood in front of the door and spread his arms to keep Celia from leaving. The small, crowded living room was still blue with early morning light. The sun had not yet lifted above the hills marking the distant horizon.
"What's this?" the woman said. "You're a big boy now, almost six. You know I have to work." She picked him up to move him out of the way.
"Take me with you," begged Matt, grabbing her shirt and wadding it up in his hands.
"Stop that." Celia gently pried his fingers from the cloth. "You can't come, mi vida. You must stay hidden in the nest like a good little mouse. There're hawks out there that eat little mice."
"I'm not a mouse!" Matt yelled. He shrieked at the top of his voice in a way he knew was irritating. Even keeping Celia home long enough to deliver a tongue-lashing was worth it. He couldn't bear being left alone for another day.
Celia thrust him away. "¡Callate! Shut up! Do you want to make me deaf? You're just a little kid with cornmeal for brains!" Matt flopped sullenly into the big easy chair.
Celia immediately knelt down and put her arms around him. "Don't cry, mi vida. I love you more than anything in the world. I'll explain things to you when you're older." But she wouldn't. She had made the same promise before. Suddenly the fight went out of Matt. He was too small and weak to fight whatever drove Celia to abandon him each day.
"Will you bring me a present?" he said, wriggling away from her kiss.
"Of course! Always!" the woman cried.
So Matt allowed her to go, but he was angry at the same time. It was a funny kind of anger, for he felt like crying, too. The house was so lonely without Celia singing, banging pots, or talking about people he had never seen and never would see. Even when Celia was asleep -- and she fell asleep easily after long hours cooking at the Big House -- the rooms felt full of her warm presence.
When Matt was younger, it hadn't seemed to matter. He'd played with his toys and watched the television. He'd looked out the window where fields of white poppies stretched all the way to the shadowy hills. The whiteness hurt his eyes, and so he turned from them with relief to the cool darkness inside.
But lately Matt had begun to look at things more carefully. The poppy fields weren't completely deserted. Now and then he saw horses -- he knew them from picture books -- walking between the rows of white flowers. It was hard to tell who rode them in all that brightness, but it seemed the riders weren't adults, but children like him.
And with that discovery grew a desire to see them more closely.
Matt had watched children on television. He saw that they were seldom alone. They did things together, like building forts or kicking balls or fighting. Even fighting was interesting when it meant you had other people around. Matt never saw anyone except Celia and, once a month, the doctor. The doctor was a sour man and didn't like Matt at all.
Matt sighed. To do anything, he would have to go outdoors, which Celia said again and again was very dangerous. Besides, the doors and windows were locked.
Matt settled himself at a small wooden table to look at one of his books. Pedro el Conejo, said the cover. Matt could read -- slightly -- both English and Spanish. In fact, he and Celia mixed the two languages together, but it didn't matter. They understood each other.
Pedro el Conejo was a bad little rabbit who crawled into Señor MacGregor's garden to eat up his lettuces. Señor Mac-Gregor wanted to put Pedro into a pie, but Pedro, after many adventures, got away. It was a satisfying story.
Matt got up and wandered into the kitchen. It contained a small refrigerator and a microwave. The microwave had a sign reading PELIGRO!!! DANGER!!! and squares of yellow notepaper saying NO! NO! NO! NO! To be extra sure, Celia had wrapped a belt around the microwave door and secured it with a padlock. She lived in terror that Matt would find a way to open it while she was at work and "cook his little gizzards," as she put it.
Matt didn't know what gizzards were and he didn't want to find out. He edged around the dangerous machine to get to the fridge. That was definitely his territory. Celia filled it with treats every night. She cooked for the Big House, so there was always plenty of food. Matt helped himself to sushi, tamales, pakoras, blintzes -- whatever the people in the Big House were eating. And there was always a large carton of milk and bottles of fruit juice.
He filled a bowl with food and went to Celia's room.
On one side was her large, saggy bed covered with crocheted pillows and stuffed animals. At the head was a huge crucifix and a picture of Our Lord Jesus with His heart pierced by five swords. Matt found the picture frightening. The crucifix was even worse, because it glowed in the dark. Matt kept his back to it, but he still liked Celia's room.
He sprawled over the pillows and pretended to feed the stuffed dog, the teddy bear, the rabbit (conejo, Matt corrected). For a while this was fun, but then a hollow feeling began to grow inside Matt. These weren't real animals. He could talk to them all he liked. They couldn't understand. In some way he couldn't put into words, they weren't even there.
Matt turned them all to the wall, to punish them for not being real, and went to his own room. It was much smaller, being half filled by his bed. The walls were covered with pictures Celia had torn out of magazines: movie stars, animals, babies -- Matt wasn't thrilled by the babies, but Celia found them irresistible -- flowers, news stories. There was one of acrobats standing on one another in a huge pyramid. SIXTY-FOUR! the caption said. A NEW RECORD AT THE LUNAR COLONY.
Matt had seen these particular words so often, he knew them by heart. Another picture showed a man holding a bullfrog between two slices of bread. RIBBIT ON RYE! the caption said. Matt didn't know what a ribbit was, but Celia laughed every time she looked at it.
He turned on the television and watched soap operas. People were always yelling at one another on soap operas. It didn't make much sense, and when it did, it wasn't interesting. It's not real, Matt thought with sudden terror. It's like the animals. He could talk and talk and talk, but the people couldn't hear him.
Matt was swept with such an intense feeling of desolation, he thought he would die. He hugged himself to keep from screaming. He gasped with sobs. Tears rolled down his cheeks.
And then -- and then -- beyond the noise of the soap opera and his own sobs, Matt heard a voice calling. It was clear and strong -- a child's voice. And it was real.
Matt ran to the window. Celia always warned him to be careful when he looked out, but he was so excited that he didn't care. At first he only saw the same, bleached blindness of the poppies. Then a shadow crossed the opening. Matt recoiled so quickly, he fell over and landed on the floor.
"What's this dump?" someone said from outside.
"One of the worker's shacks," said another, higher voice.
"I didn't think anyone was allowed to live in the opium fields."
"Maybe it's a storeroom. Let's try the door."
The door handle rattled. Matt squatted on the floor, his heart pounding. Someone put his face against the window, cupping his hands to see through the gloom. Matt froze. He had wanted company, but this was happening too quickly. He felt like Pedro el Conejo in Señor MacGregor's garden.
"Hey, there's a kid in here!"
"What? Let me see." A second face pressed against the window. She had black hair and olive skin like Celia. "Open the window, kid. What's your name?"
But Matt was so terrified, he couldn't squeeze out a single word.
"Maybe he's an idiot," the girl said matter-of-factly. "Hey, are you an idiot?"
Matt shook his head. The girl laughed.
"I know who lives here," the boy said suddenly. "I recognize that picture on the table."
Matt remembered the portrait Celia had given him on his last birthday.
"It's the fat old cook -- what's her name?" the boy said. "Anyhow, she doesn't stay with the rest of the servants. This must be her hangout. I didn't know she had a kid."
"Or a husband," the girl remarked.
"Oh, yeah. That explains a lot. I wonder if Father knows. I'll have to ask him."
"You will not!" the girl cried. "You'll get her into trouble."
"Hey, this is my family's ranch, and my father told me to keep an eye on things. You're only visiting."
"It doesn't matter. My dada says servants have a right to privacy, and he's a United States senator, so his opinion is worth more."
"Your dada changes his opinions more often than his socks," the boy said.
What the girl replied to this, Matt couldn't hear. The children were moving away from the house, and he could make out only the indignant tone of her voice. He was shivering all over, as though he'd just met one of the monsters Celia told him haunted the world outside, the chupacabras maybe. The chupacabras sucked your blood and left you to dry like an old cantaloupe skin. Things were happening too fast.
But he had liked the girl.
The rest of that day Matt was swept by both fear and joy. He had been warned by Celia never, never to show himself at the window. If someone came, he was to hide himself. But the children had been such a wonderful surprise, he couldn't help running to see them. They were older than he. How much older Matt couldn't tell. They were definitely not adults, though, and they didn't seem dangerous. Still, Celia would be furious if she found out. Matt decided not to tell her.
That night she brought him a coloring book the children had thrown away in the Big House. Only half of it had been used, so Matt spent a pleasant half hour before dinner using the stubby crayons Celia had brought on other occasions. The smell of fried cheese and onions drifted out of the kitchen, and Matt knew she was cooking Aztláno food. This was a special treat. Celia was usually so tired when she returned home, she only heated up leftovers.
He colored in an entire meadow with green. His crayon was almost gone, and he had to hold it carefully to use it at all. The green made him feel happy. If only he could look out on such a meadow instead of the blinding white poppies. He was certain grass would be as soft as a bed and smell like rain.
"Very nice, chico," said Celia, looking over his shoulder.
The last fragment of crayon fell apart in Matt's fingers.
"¡Qué lástima! I'll see if I can find more in the Big House. Those kids're so rich, they wouldn't notice if I took the whole darn box." Celia sighed. "I'll only take a few, though. The mouse is safest when she doesn't leave footprints on the butter."
They had quesadillas and enchiladas for dinner. The food sat heavily in Matt's stomach.
"Mamá," he said without thinking, "tell me again about the kids in the Big House."
"Don't call me 'Mamá,'" snapped Celia.
"Sorry," said Matt. The word had slipped out. Celia had told him long ago that she wasn't his real mother. The children on TV had mamás, though, and Matt had fallen into the habit of thinking of Celia that way.
"I love you more than anything in the world," the woman said quickly. "Never forget that. But you were only loaned to me, mi vida."
Matt had trouble understanding the word loaned. It seemed to mean something you gave away for a little while -- which meant that whoever loaned him would want him back.
"Anyhow, the kids in the Big House are brats, you better believe it," Celia went on. "They're lazy as cats and just as ungrateful. They make big messes and order the maids to clean them up. And they never say thank you. Even if you work for hours making special cakes with sugar roses and violets and green leaves, they can't say thank you to save their miserable little souls. They stuff their selfish mouths and tell you it tastes like mud!"
Celia looked angry, as though the incident had happened recently.
"There's Steven and Benito," Matt reminded her.
"Benito's the oldest. He's a real devil! He's seventeen, and there isn't a girl in the Farms who's safe from him. But never mind that. It's adult stuff and very boring. Anyhow, Benito is like his father, which means he's a dog in human clothing. He's going to college this year, and we'll all be glad to see the last of him."
"And Steven?" Matt said patiently.
"He's not so bad. I sometimes think he might have a soul. He spends time with the Mendoza girls. They're okay, although what they're doing with our crowd would puzzle God Himself."
"What does Steven look like?" It sometimes took a long time to steer Celia to the things Matt wanted to know -- in this case, the names of the children who'd appeared outside the window.
"He's thirteen. Big for his age. Sandy hair. Blue eyes."
That must have been the boy, thought Matt.
"Right now the Mendozas are visiting. Emilia's thirteen too, very pretty with black hair and brown eyes."
That must be the girl, Matt decided.
"She at least has good manners. Her sister, María, is about your age and plays with Tom. Well, some might call it play. Most of the time she winds up crying her eyes out."
"Why?" said Matt, who enjoyed hearing about Tom's misdeeds.
"Tom is Benito times ten! He can melt anyone's heart with those wide, innocent eyes. Everyone falls for it, but not me. He gave María a bottle of lemon soda today. 'It's the last one,' he said. 'It's really cold and I saved it especially for you,' he said. Do you know what was in it?"
"No," said Matt, wriggling with anticipation.
"Pee! Can you believe it? He even put the cap back on. Oh, she was crying, poor little thing. She never learns."
Celia suddenly ran out of steam. She yawned broadly and fatigue settled over her right before Matt's eyes. She had been working from dawn to well after dark, and she had cooked a fresh meal at home as well. "I'm sorry, chico. When the well's empty, it's empty."
Matt rinsed the plates and stacked the dishwasher while Celia took a shower. She came out in her voluminous pink bathrobe and nodded sleepily at the tidied table. "You're a good kid," she said.
She picked him up and hugged him all the way to his bed. No matter how tired Celia was -- and sometimes she almost fell over with exhaustion -- she never neglected this ritual. She tucked Matt in and lit the holy candle in front of the statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She had brought it with her all the way from her village in Aztlán. The Virgin's robe was slightly chipped, which Celia disguised with a spray of artificial flowers. The Virgin's feet rested on dusty plaster roses and Her star-spangled robe was stained with wax, but Her face gazed out over the candle with the same gentleness it had in Celia's bedroom long ago.
"I'm in the next room, mi vida," whispered the woman, kissing the top of Matt's head. "You get scared, you call me."
Soon the house shook with Celia's snores. To Matt, the sound was as normal as the thunder that sometimes echoed over the hills. It in no way kept him from sleep. "Steven and Emilia," he whispered, testing the words in his mouth. He didn't know what he would say to the strange children if they appeared again, but he was determined to try to talk to them. He practiced several sentences: "My name is Matt. I live here. Do you want to color pictures?"
No, he couldn't mention the coloring book or the crayons. They were stolen.
"Would you like some food?" But the food might be stolen too. "Do you want to play?" Good. Steven and Emilia could suggest something, and Matt would be off the hook.
"Do you want to play? Do you want to play?" he murmured as his eyes closed and the gentle face of the Virgin of Guadalupe floated in the candlelight.
Copyright © 2002 by Nancy Farmer
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