Chapter 18
Flora had been gone now for two weeks, and Manny’s thoughts alternated between worry and resentment. He couldn’t help suspecting that Flora ran away to get back at him for lecturing her about shoplifting. Then again, he could have it all wrong, and perhaps, she really was in trouble. The fact that she hadn’t been to school in the past eight days worried him. He thought she’d enjoyed school, but then again, he hadn’t really talked to her about it.
Now, he and his mother were doing all they could to find her. While Manny worked and Della sat beside him, eating her sandwich, their mothers walked the streets, looking for Flora. They put up missing posters and asked around.
One evening, after Della had left, they dropped by the convenience store. It was late September, and his mother wore a sweater over her bright orange dress. Della’s mother, Isobella, who’d lived in America longer, wore a hoodie with leggings. She was a shorter, stockier version of Della and prone to fits of giggles. Today being no exception, she was already doubling over with laughter as they stood behind his customers, waiting for them to finish their business.
Once all the customers had left, his mother stepped forward. “Isobella and I have a plan.”
“Good,” he said, always ready for a new idea to help him find Flora.
“You and Della can never go out together because you work opposite schedules, but think about this.” His mother paused, as if she were going to reveal something profound and important, but Manny cut her off.
“Why are you worrying about Della and me when Flora’s missing?” He wouldn’t mind dating Della, but he suspected she thought of him more as a brother than a boyfriend. Their mothers, on the other hand, were already naming their children.
His mother shrugged. “These last few weeks have been so stressful for us. I thought you could use a break.”
“Della goes to yoga every morning at six a.m.” Isobella added.
Manny rang up a customer’s cup of coffee before he responded. “Della goes to yoga every morning. What does that have to do with you two getting yourselves some grandbabies?”
His mother pointed her finger into his chest. “You could go with her. You’re good at sports.”
“Mama! Yoga is not a sport.” He’d been to an introductory yoga class at the university, so he knew what he was talking about.
“It is too,” Isobella insisted. “They do it in the Olympics.”
He had never noticed a yoga event at the Olympics. Nor had he ever heard of a gold medalist in downward facing dog, but it would be rude to argue with her about it.
His mother leaned across the counter, and whispered in a sultry voice. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a sport. It’s sexy.”
Manny gulped. “Mom!” There was nothing like having his mother tell him something was sexy to turn him off from it entirely. He busied himself straightening the cigarette packages.
“We just talked to Della,” Mama said, her tone growing more serious, “and she says you can come with her tomorrow morning. She says it’s good for your muscle tone, and it’ll make you more flexible.” She reached out to squeeze his bicep. “You do need more exercise, Manny.”
That, at least, was true, though he’d rather be playing soccer. But he supposed that these two were going to keep bothering him until he agreed to go, and how bad could it be? With all the stress about Flora these last few days, he needed a way to clear his head. “Okay. I’ll go.”
∞∞∞
The next morning, before the sun rose, he slipped into his soccer shorts and met Della outside her apartment. They walked together to the studio a few blocks away. There, a group of women in skin-tight clothing crowded into a small, heated room.
He was the only man in the place, and after the class started he saw why. With all these curvaceous women bending into provocative poses in front of him, things became a little too stimulating. He turned his head to the side, where he caught sight of Della’s legs, curving from her thin ankles to her calves and then upward.
Maybe he was better off closing his eyes.
But he couldn’t follow along with the instructions that way. He had to watch someone, and at least Della was wearing a big, long baggy top over her leggings. She wore her hair in a long side braid, and she smiled at him when he looked at her. He liked that she didn’t try to cover up the freckles across her nose. She had a sort of style that was different from most of the women. It was almost as if she didn’t care too much about fashion, and Manny liked that about her. She never seemed to try to impress him. She was just herself, Della, with her strong opinions, telling everything like it was.
The instructor called out, and the women around him moved to a new position—the warrior pose. He watched Della and tried to copy her with his legs apart and his arms extended. It was harder than it looked, and he stumbled a little before he got his balance. Then his gaze traveled to Della’s legs again, and he stumbled even more. He would just have to shut his eyes and think of some new place to look for Flora. If he only knew where her friends lived, he could ask their parents about her.
The instructor told them to relax, but that wasn’t happening for him. He couldn’t even find a place to focus his eyes, much less keep his balance. As they moved down to the floor, he saw why the women preferred tight pants. When he lay on his back with his legs elevated, his loose shorts pooled at the top of his thighs. He knew for a fact that Americans didn’t put up with that kind of exposure, so he held onto the hems of his shorts with his hands, making sure they stayed around the middle of his thighs. He felt ridiculous doing that, though, so he sat up, which also made him feel ridiculous, being the only one who wasn’t lying on his back. He lay back down on the floor and extended his legs in front of him, accidentally kicking the woman in front of him in the head. “Excuse me,” he whispered, wondering how his mother ever thought this could be relaxing. Because of the heat in the room, his sweat dripped onto the mat beneath him.
Finally, they moved into another pose that worked better with his shorts.
“Are you having fun?” Della asked, looking as if she were trying not to laugh.
He wasn’t sure how to respond. Fun wasn’t the word. It took all his concentration to hold the pose without letting loose with any type of bodily noises. “It’s good exercise,” was all he could come up with.
“At least you’ve made our moms happy.” He wondered if that was all she cared about—making their moms happy—or if she actually hoped something might develop between them. He tried to read her expression but she turned her attention to the next pose. She was attractive, and they did get along well. Did he hope for something to develop? He’d been too busy getting a job and then worrying about Flora to think about romance, but wasn’t that how it always was for him? He couldn’t keep putting it off the way he’d done with Celia.
As the room grew hotter, he twisted his body through several more positions, thinking they were coming to the end of the class—it couldn’t be more than a half-hour long. Americans always liked things fast and easy. But when the minute hand passed the six, the instructor only congratulated them on being half-way through.
As he bent his body into another awkward pose, his mind traveled back in time to the day he and Celia had skipped out halfway through the soccer game they were watching. It had been more fun to escape out into the lava fields than to stay at the game with everyone else. Their spontaneity had made that moment special—the two of them doing exactly what they wanted in the moment, leaving behind others’ expectations in order to be alone together. That’s what he wanted to find with Della right now. “How about we go to breakfast?” he whispered.
“Don’t you like yoga?” Della asked.
He considered lying, pretending to enjoy this activity that was supposed to be relaxing but was in reality embarrassing, hot, and crowded. But if he wanted to have a relationship with this woman, he had to be honest about everything, the way he’d been with Celia. “Nope. Not really.”
She twisted her nose to the side and then smiled. “Okay. We can go to breakfast. Where do you want to go?”
He had no idea where Americans went to breakfast. At the convenience store, they preferred pastries that had been encased in plastic. He didn’t want that. “Is there a bakery around?” That’s where he’d want to go if he were back home.
She grinned. “There sure is.” She rolled up her mat, and together they walked out of the yoga place, excusing themselves as they squeezed past the women.
The bakery was about a half mile away in a brick building with a yellow front and a blue door. It smelled exactly as a bakery should—of yeast and wheat and warm sugar. He ordered the same as Della when they got up to the counter, a fried egg concoction sandwiched inside a bun, and he paid for both sandwiches, despite Della’s protests.
They sat down at one of a few wrought-iron tables in the corner and dug in. The buttery flavor combined with the spices and the soft bread reminded him of his days working at the German restaurant during college. “Now this is food.” He considered telling Della that she ought to come here to eat her dinner instead of the convenience store, but then he thought better of it. Maybe his mother was right—Della did like him, and the fact that she didn’t eat dinner here was better proof than anything.
They washed their sandwiches down with swigs of orange juice as Manny tried to think of a topic for conversation. All they’d spoken of for the last few days was Flora and where they could find her. Today Manny forced himself to talk of something else. “Do you remember much of Cape Verde?”
She shut her eyes, leaning back a bit, as if those memories brought her peace. “I remember most everything. I was thirteen when we left.”
“So, you remember our days together at the market?” He’d had a difficult time, over the past month, trying to remember much about Della in those days. They’d both been thirteen when she left, but she’d lived far away from him in the city, so they only saw each other on the days his mother took him to the market.
She bit back a smile. “Yes, but if I recall, you didn’t spend much time at the market. You were too busy studying or working at the farms. I spent more time with Flora than I did with you. I taught her most of the songs I knew while we sat there selling our mothers’ wares.”
Manny tilted his head toward the ceiling, remembering how powerful Flora’s voice had been back then. It seemed like he could hear her a mile away. “I haven’t heard her sing since my last year of college.”
“She had a beautiful voice.”
“Yes, I remember.” He couldn’t help thinking that he should have spent more time encouraging her over the last couple years. Why hadn’t he thought to have her sing for him? Now he’d do anything to hear her again.
Della brushed the crumbs from her hands with her napkin. “When my daycare kids’ parents come today, I’m going to ask them if they have any ideas of where we could look for Flora. Walking the streets doesn’t seem to be doing any good.”
Their time together at the bakery wasn’t turning out the way he had hoped. He’d hoped to focus on Della for a moment, but it was a point in her favor that she cared about Flora. For the last two weeks, Manny had spent several hours a night trying to find Flora, and his mother had spent hours during the day. He’d about decided that the only way to find her would be to wait for her to come home on her own.
“I hate to mention it,” Della said, refolding her napkin. “But have you ever considered looking for her at one of those drug houses?”
He scrunched his nose. He’d heard of such things on the islands, but he didn’t like to think of Flora getting caught in that trap. Besides, she didn’t have enough money. Still, he’d better check into it. “How would I find the drug houses?”
“Ask people who come into the convenience store.”
∞∞∞
By the time his work ended that night, he had a list of five houses to check. Still in his work uniform, he started out down the street, asking directions as he walked. Once he got close enough to the first house, though, he didn’t need to ask. He followed the sound of the music to a town home, where a few young people lounged on a doorstep. The sweet odor of marijuana drifted through the open door, and after knocking, he went inside. Flora didn’t seem to be there, though, and no one admitted to recognizing her from the picture he held.
He followed the same procedure at the four other houses, looking for Flora and asking if anyone had seen her.
On his way home, he couldn’t help feeling relieved that she wasn’t at any of those places, and he walked home along well-lit streets. As he meandered beside a row of larger homes, Cape Verdean music floated toward him. The sound took him back to that day standing outside André’s café with Celia—the last time he’d felt like dancing. He moved his feet to the rhythm, trying to get into the mood, to remember the good times.
As he came upon the house where the music played, he pulled out Flora’s picture and showed it to one of the girls standing on the porch. “Have you seen my sister?”
The girl pointed her thumb toward the front door. “I think she’s in the kitchen.”
For a moment, he froze. Could this girl be mistaken? He wanted to ask again, to make sure, but she turned back to talk to her friends, so he knocked on the open door, his heart pounding. When no one answered, he made his way inside, where the spicy aroma of cooking beans and fried potatoes filled the air.
Following the scent, he made his way past a crowd of people and down a hallway toward the back of the house, where he found the kitchen. Inside, a woman in a loose dress stood with her back to him as she stirred a pot on the stove. And sitting at the table, eating a plate of rice and beans sat— “Flora!” He rushed toward her, relief flooding through him as he saw that she looked healthy and safe. He wrapped her in his arms, pulling her up to stand as he hugged her.
She felt like a little kid in his arms, so small and vulnerable that he couldn’t help but forgive her for being stupid enough to run away. She was still a girl. Of course, it hadn’t been easy for him, working to earn the money to come here, and the last few weeks hadn’t been easy as he lost hours of sleep, trying to find her. But it was all worth it to know she was safe and healthy. He would have sacrificed more if needed. Did she have any idea how much he loved her?
She wriggled free from his arms and sat back down on her chair, folding her arms across her chest. “I’m not leaving here, Manny.”
“What is wrong with you? Do you realize that Mom’s been crying herself to sleep every night since you left? It’s been three weeks now, Flora. It’s time to come home.”
Flora rolled her eyes. “I’m living on my own, and I’m fine.”
“But you aren’t going to school. That’s one of the reasons we came here, so you could get a good education.” As he spoke, he was aware of the woman at the stove turning and watching him. He could feel her eyes, searching him up and down. For an instant, their eyes met. Those hazel eyes. The same eyes that had met his gaze under the mango tree, the same ones that had enticed him to his first kiss. Her face was different now—scarred and battered. What had happened to her? “Celia?”
Instead of answering, she covered her face with her hands, but she couldn’t hide what he’d already seen—the gash across her cheek and her misshapen nose. “What happened?” he asked, his volume increasing as he stepped closer to her, tempted to pull her hands away to see better. He didn’t care if André came after him. He wasn’t going to run this time. For the past year and a half, he’d thought he was the one who’d suffered because of Celia’s betrayal, but looking at her now in that oversize dress, he realized how wrong he’d been.
Now that he’d spent so much time helping to raise Flora, he understood more about teenage girls. He couldn’t blame Celia for marrying André. She’d been young and alone.
A sob escaped her as she moved past him toward the door. “Don’t look at me.”
He couldn’t let her go. It didn’t matter that she’d married André. She was all mixed up with his mind and heart. As children, they’d grown together like two vines, melding together until they seemed all one plant. He couldn’t stand by, pretending not to care.
“Did André beat you?” he asked softly, latching onto her elbow halfway up the stairs. All he’d ever wanted was for her to be happy, and he could see that she wasn’t.
Celia turned her face away from him. Maybe from fear—she didn’t want to get in trouble with André—or perhaps more from shame. “You should take Flora home,” she said, her voice trembling. “Joana’s probably missing her.”
This definitely had to do with André. Manny could kill him.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Flora said from behind them. “Mama can visit me if she wants, but I’m not going back home. Tell her I’ve got a nice place with my new boyfriend.”
Boyfriend? He whipped back to face Flora, his attention split between the two women.