Sofia sat with us in companionable silence as I rocked her.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, and she shrugged. She cocked her head toward Beezie, then back at me.
“The congestion . . . she’s full of dust,” she said, only half a question.
I nodded.
She shook her head. “The little ones—they get it the worst. It’s a good reason to leave. So many good reasons. I can give you some of this—saffron, mustard. They help. You can try garlic soup too,” she added. “But really, these are mostly home remedies.” She leaned forward and tousled Beezie’s hair. “She should go back to the doctor,” she said.
“We can’t afford it,” I said. “I don’t have a job.”
“I’ll find you one,” Sofia said simply. I couldn’t make out if she was truly so confident or really just good at pretending. I’ve never met someone so talented at making life submit to her.
Beezie had fallen asleep against me, her warm red cheek against my chest, with long troubled breaths. I know it sounds strange, but in those difficult days, I wrapped myself up in the tiniest things about her, because I felt always on the verge of losing her: the complexity and intricacy of her fingers in my own hands, the beautiful length of her lashes, her rattly laugh. It hypnotized me, listening to her and knowing that for those moments, she was okay.
Sofia told us her story: her family had farmed sheep in Texas, on the prairie—they hadn’t ripped up their prairie grass but the dust, indiscriminate, had buried them all the same, and their sheep had died.
“And then people started saying we should go back to Mexico. My father was born in Texas. It made no sense.” Her eyes were big, remembering. “Things fell apart. We lost the farm to the bank and we lost . . . other things you can never get back. My mom and my two brothers went to south Texas to look for work. I chose east.”
“You’re a strong person,” I said. “Much stronger than me.”
Sofia shook her head. “You become as strong as you have to be, don’t you think? When you’re trying to protect someone you love, you’ll do anything. Try any little trick that could possibly work, even if it’s just garlic soup. Walk your feet right off your legs. It’s just what people do.”
She studied Beezie on my lap and ran a hand gently across the top of Beezie’s head. “I know all the home remedies because I know about dust,” she finally said. “I know about willing someone to breathe and wishing you could breathe for them. And saying anything to try to make their fear smaller, even though you can’t.”
The room stretched around us in silence. Sofia looked suddenly lost. It was as if, in a moment, a heaviness in her posture pulled the air out of the room.
She pulled back, straightening up. “My dad. He was an older dad; I was the youngest. He worked too hard. I think that’s why the dust hit him hard, too.”
I waited for her to go on.
Sofia smiled sadly. “He was the kind of person who never sat back. He was always eager to learn the next thing, he was always tinkering with something, always something in his hands—a book or a piece of machinery or an animal he was tending to—he wanted to figure it out. He told me, ‘If I waste time I might as well be dead.’ He believed hard work always paid off, and that if you were good to people, they’d be good back to you. The dust . . .” she said, shrugging, “changed that.”
She tapped her fingertips against one another, looking at her hands. “Growing up, he pushed me more than he did my brothers . . . with school, with business, and everything. He saw something in me, I think, similar to him. He wanted me to leave town, to make something big of myself. He didn’t care what, just as long as it was more than being a farmer or a farmer’s wife.
“When he . . .” Sofia blinked up at the ceiling. I touched her hand to let her know she didn’t have to say the words, that I knew she was saying she had lost him. I tried not to think about what that meant about Beezie.
“After he was gone, I didn’t know what I wanted; it just fell into a shadow. So I followed what was inside him instead. I made my plans to come here. That was about a year ago, now, that I decided. I think that’s what he would have wanted.”
“But it isn’t what you want,” I said.
Sofia tilted her head back and forth to indicate she didn’t know.
“All my dad wanted was for me to have the things we didn’t. But all I want is what I had. I loved watching over our farm; I loved that it was physical and mental all at once. You have to know which seeds go where, when, and which plants complement one another, and the animals; it’s like a constant equation you are working out. But then, it’s also something you do with your body. Something where you touch the ground. It takes all of you. I love that.” She smiled. “And I like the idea of my own realm. I don’t want to look at bricks.” She leaned back on her hands. “But what of it? Someone else owns our farm now.”
I knew this feeling, from my mom, my neighbors. You could love a place as if it were a living thing.
“I was never a very spiritual person,” Sofia said. “But I pray to him. I keep asking him to lead me and help me. I don’t know. Maybe it’s foolish, but I feel he’s here.”
She studied Beezie, then me. “I’ll make you a pact, okay? I like you, and I think you like me. I saw Beezie and . . . it just makes me feel close to my father, to help, or at least to try. And we’ve got no one else. So we’ll be there for each other. If you think I’m so strong, you can rely on me. And I’ll do the same. We are homeless now, our families are far away. Why not have each other?”
I felt like she was rescuing me, because I couldn’t imagine she could need me half as much as I needed her. I could only nod, too overcome to speak.
We didn’t say good night until close to dawn. But by the time Sofia and I were done talking that morning, I believed I could survive another week in New York.
NEXT DAY—
One week turned into two, and two into three. Sofia made good on her promise to get me a job—this time at a garment factory along the river. But we didn’t flourish like she did. People at the stables began to request her by name. She had more work than she knew what to do with. She sometimes worked all night, out on an emergency or a birth at the stables, and would tiptoe in at dawn, nearly falling over with exhaustion. But every time she walked into the apartment she lit the rest of us up.
She was unlike anyone I’d ever met—or ever would have if I hadn’t left Canaan. And having her with us helped me miss home a little less.