Red
Lupe wrapped her arm tightly around Jess’s shoulder, bowed slightly in grief. Loss was hard, senseless loss harder, and it was important to Lupe to be there for her in these difficult times.
“Everything happens for a reason,” Lupe tried, because she figured that was a platitude for a reason. “God’s plan, and all that.”
“She was just so little. Barely starting out in the world,” Jess replied, and Lupe could swear she heard her holding back a sniffle. Her heart clenched at the sound of it. She tried rubbing her hand against Jess’s back in circles, a little, to see if that would help.
“You’ve got eleven more though, right?”
At that, Jess turns to mournfully bury her face in Lupe’s neck, clutch desperately at her waist. She’s not crying, not exactly, but Lupe wouldn’t blame her if she were.
She looks down regretfully and the ruined, chewed up carcass of a tomato plant at their feet. Jess cared for all her plants, but the tomatoes were undoubtedly her pride and joy.
Lupe stroked the top of Jess’s head in a way she hoped was soothing, and said, her voice full of righteous ire,
“Bunnies are fucking assholes.”
Carson needed Lupe, badly. She was on edge, wound up, and nothing would bring her relief until she got together with Lupe and hashed out this whole situation with the Comets new first basewoman.
And yet, she couldn’t find her anywhere. She’d checked all the most likely places: the porch, Jess’s room, Lupe’s own room, the kitchen. She’d even checked the bathroom until Maybelle, coming out of the shower with a towel wrapped around herself, informed Carson that she was liable to lose her nose if she kept sticking it places it didn’t belong.
Finally, she buckled, and asked for some help.
“Have you seen Lupe?” she asked Ana, who responded by rolling her eyes.
“She’s out back with McCready and her gun, standing guard.”
“Her gun?” Carson sputtered, and rushed out the back door.
They were out there, just as Ana said, sitting on a pair of chairs from the dining room, overlooking the victory garden, which had been a project by some of the Peaches with more farm-type experience. Obviously not Carson.
And, just as Ana had claimed, Jess had a pistol propped on her knee. Carson gestured wildly.
“You can’t shoot a gun here!” she announced. “This is a neighborhood, there’s kids playing outside!”
Jess blinked at her a few times, unaffected, and displayed the gun to her lazily.
“Relax, Shaw,” she said, in a dismissive sort of way that Carson found a bit offensive and would have said something about had Lupe not been there to outnumber her. “It’s a starter pistol. No bullets.”
“Oh.” Carson replied. She supposed that provided context to the undersized, tommy-gun-shaped cap gun Lupe was holding onto. “Where did you get a starter pistol?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jess answered, and leaned towards Lupe with her mouth cracked to announce she wanted her turn with the shared cigarette, which Lupe obliged, sticking it helpfully between her lips. Carson found the whole thing rather unhygienic.
“Well,” she said, because she felt she ought to say something. “I better not hear any complaints from the neighbors.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Lupe responded, popping off a few caps into the air. Carson shot off like a rabbit.
Poor, innocent, never done a thing wrong in her life Esti was just minding her own business, walking down the first floor hallway, when she was bum-rushed, ambushed from behind.
“C’mere, come try this, Esti,” Lupe exclaimed, grabbing her by the elbow and tugging her purposefully, with no regard whatsoever for the magazine Esti had been on the way to retrieve from the mailbox out front.
Instead, Esti was directed to the kitchen, where Jess was standing at sink, washing vegetables.
“You have to try this,” Lupe repeated, still practically vibrating with excitement. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted, I mean it.”
She grabbed a tea saucer off the table, which had a fork balanced across it and was empty except for some moisture on it, and brought it to Jess at the sink. Lupe set the plate down and Jess wordlessly paused her work, turning to a cutting board where she cut two thin slices of juicy, red tomatoes, and placed them gently on the saucer. Then she tipped the salt shaker over them and passed the dish back to Lupe, smiling.
Lupe brought the tomato back to the table and generously offered Esti the fork, to have the first try.
Esti took a forkful and chewed. It was nice, summery, but hardly revolutionary. Lupe stared at her, expectantly.
“Mmmm,” Esti announced, politely.
“Right?” Lupe asked, thrilled. “And we grew those right here. Can you believe it?”
Esti feigned admiration. She knew Lupe, who grew up in an apartment, wasn’t used to fresh food, besides maybe the herbs that her mother grew on the windowsill. But back home, the Gonzálezes’ cook went to the market almost daily, so Esti’s standards were a little higher.
“She’s on her fifth tomato,” Jess announced, still bent over radishes in the sink. “She’s gonna turn into one if she keeps it up.”
“They’re good!” Lupe defended, offronted, and Esti, who didn’t want Jess to think she didn’t appreciate her cooking, piped in,
“They are! Very good, Jess! The best!”
Jess chuckled to herself, and stooped to reach under the sink. She pulled out an onion, and shucked its outer layers as Lupe scarfed down the remaining portion of potatoes.
Jess carved out a couple thick chunks of onion and brought them over to the table, passing them out.
“Here, try this,” she instructed. Lupe popped her piece into her mouth without hesitation. Esti took a polite but reasonably sized nibble.
“Tastes like the onion,” Esti said, diplomatically. Lupe, the kiss up, said,
“It’s pretty good!”
“You should try it with peanut butter,” Jess suggested, which Esti took as her cue to leave.
She quietly retreated from the room as Lupe followed Jess to the cupboard to dig for the jar of peanut butter, and she crossed her fingers that they’d remembered to stock up on toothpaste the last time they’d been to the drug store.