Because It Is My Blood

VII I BEGIN A NEW CHAPTER; AT GRANJA MAÑANA

AN ENDLESS TEN DAYS LATER, we arrived in Oaxaca, where, along with a sailor named Pip, I was transferred into a small dinghy.

As we approached the shoreline, my seasickness began to resolve itself only to be replaced by a homesickness such as I had never known before. It was not that the coast of Oaxaca lacked charms. The rooftops were dotted in promising shades of orange, pink, turquoise, and yellow, and the ocean was bluer and better-smelling than any water you’d find in my hometown. In the distance, I could make out mountains and forests, green, so green, with icy swirls of white. Were these swirls clouds or mists? I did not know—the icy swirl was not a meteorological phenomenon that we city girls were familiar with. The temperature was 67°, warm enough that the chill I had experienced since swimming to Ellis Island ten days ago at last began to fade. Still, this was not my home. It was not the place where my sister lived or where my grandmother and parents had died. It was not the place where I had fallen in love with the planet’s most inappropriate boy. It was not the land of Trinity and of buses with my boyfriend’s father’s picture on the side. It was not the land of chocolate dealers and drained swimming pools. No one knew me here and I knew no one—i.e., Mr. Kipling and Simon Green’s plan had worked! Maybe the plan had worked too well. I could die in this boat, and no one would care. I would be a mysterious body with a bad haircut. Maybe, at some point, a local cop would get the idea to use that tattoo on my ankle to identify me. But that was the only thing that identified me, this body, as Anya Balanchine. That regrettable tattoo was the only thing separating me from oblivion.

I wanted to cry, but I feared appearing unmanly to the sailor. Though I had not yet seen myself in a mirror, I could sense how awful I looked. I could see (and smell) the flecks of vomit on my one suit of clothes. My hair I did not wish to consider. I did feel my much abused mustache slipping off my face. I would discard it as soon as the sailor and I parted company. If I were to pass as a boy—I didn’t yet know what story had been told Sophia’s relations—it would have to be one without facial hair.

We were nearly to the shore when the sailor said to me, “They say the oldest tree in the world’s here.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s … interesting.”

“I mention it because Captain said you were a student botanist.”

Right. That whole lie. “Yeah, I’m going to try to see it.”

The sailor studied me curiously, then nodded. We had reached the beach of Puerto Escondido, and I was glad to be quit of that boat and of boats in general.

“You got someone meeting you?” the sailor asked.

I nodded. I was supposed to meet Sophia’s cousin, a woman named Theobroma Marquez, in the Hotel Camino, which was supposedly in a shopping area called El Adoquin. I was unsure of how to pronounce any of this, of course.

I thanked him for the ride.

“You’re very welcome. Word of advice?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Keep your hands in your pockets,” the sailor said.

“Why?”

“Boys’ hands don’t look like that.”

Well, this boy’s do, I wanted to say. I mean, what if I really had been a boy? What business was it of his? I felt outraged on slightly effeminate student botanist Adam Barnum’s behalf. “Which way to El Adoquin?” I asked in my most imperious voice.

“You’re almost there. El Adoquin runs parallel to Playa Principal.” He pointed me in a direction, then rowed away. As soon as he was gone, I ripped off my mustache and stuffed my incriminatingly girly hands into my pockets.

I walked toward the town square. My clothes were heavy, appropriate for autumn in New York, and I began to feel light-headed from the humidity. The fact that I hadn’t eaten anything aside from a past-prime apple in several days may also have contributed to my light-headedness. My stomach was acidic and hollow, and my head throbbed.

It was Wednesday morning, and despite my disheveled appearance, no one much noticed me.

A funeral procession traveled down the street. The coffin was covered in red roses, and a puppet skeleton controlled by sticks was held in the air. The women wore black lace dresses to their ankles. An accordion was wailing, and everyone sang a discordant song that sounded like musical weeping.

I crossed myself and kept walking. I passed, of all things, a chocolate store! I had never seen one out in the open like that. In the window were stacks of small, puck-like disks of chocolate wrapped in waxy papers. The exterior was paneled in rich mahogany, and inside were red stools and a bar. Of course, it made sense. Chocolate was legal here. As I was looking in the window, I caught sight of my own reflection in the glass. I pulled my hat farther down over my head and resumed looking for the hotel.

I quickly identified the Hotel Camino, as it was the only hotel in the area, and went inside. At this point, I could tell that if I didn’t sit down, I was going to pass out. I went into the hotel bar and scanned the room for Theobroma Marquez. I looked for a girl who resembled Sophia, though aside from her height, I found I could barely remember anything about her. The bartender had not yet come on duty. The only one there was a boy around my age.

“Buenos días,” he said to me.

I really was on the verge of fainting—rather Victorian of me, I know—and so I sat down at one of the tables. I took off my hat and ran my fingers through my hair.

I became aware that the boy was staring at me. It made me self-conscious so I put my hat back on.

The boy came over to my table. He was grinning, and I felt as if I were the punch line to some great joke. “Anya Barnum?” That settled it. I was relieved to know that I was a girl, but not a Balanchine. This seemed a fine compromise. He offered me his hand. “Theobroma Marquez, but everyone calls me Theo.” The name was pronounced Tay-oh. I was also relieved that Theo spoke English.

“Theo,” I repeated. Though he was short, Theo looked sturdy and strong. He had eyes so brown they were almost black, and dark eyelashes like a horse’s. He had stubble that indicated the beginnings of a beard and mustache. It was sacrilegious to say it, but he looked a bit like a Spanish Jesus to me.

“Lo siento, lo siento. I did not recognize you at first,” he said. “They said you would be pretty.” He laughed as he said this, not in a mean way, and I didn’t feel all that offended that I’d just been called ugly.

“They told me you were going to be a girl,” I replied.

Theo laughed at that, too. “It’s this estúpido name of mine. A family name, though, so what can I do? Are you hungry? It’s a long drive to Chiapas.”

“Chiapas? I thought I was staying at a cacao farm in Oaxaca.”

“You cannot grow cacao in the state of Oaxaca, Anya Barnum.” He said this in a patient voice that indicated he was dealing with someone impossibly ignorant. “Granja Mañana is in Ixtapa, Chiapas. My family supplies to and has chocolate factories in Oaxaca, which is why I am the one who has to get you today.”

Oaxaca or Chiapas. It didn’t matter either way, I supposed.

“So, are you hungry or not?” Theo asked.

I shook my head. I was hungry but I was also eager to get to my destination. I told him I needed to use the bathroom, and then we could be on our way.

In the bathroom, I took a moment to consider myself in the mirror. Theo was right. I wasn’t pretty anymore, but luckily, I wasn’t all that vain either. Besides, I had a boyfriend, sort of, and I wasn’t in the mood for seducing boys anyhow. I washed my face, paying special attention to the sticky residue that the mustache adhesive had left on my upper lip, and slicked back my hair. (Readers, how I did miss that mane of mine!) I threw the necktie into the trash, rolled up the sleeves of my shirt, and went back out to join Theo.

Theo studied me. “You are less hideous already.”

“Thanks. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Come, the car’s over here.” I followed him out of the bar. “Where are your things?”

I told the same lie about them being shipped.

“No matter. My sister will lend you whatever you need.”

Theo’s “car” was a green pickup truck. On the side, GRANJA MAÑANA was painted in gold, and beneath that was a grouping of what I thought at the time were leaves in fall colors.

As it was a big step up to the truck, Theo offered me his hand. “Anya,” he said with a furrowed brow, “don’t tell my sister I said you weren’t pretty. She thinks I have no manners already. I probably don’t, but…” He smiled at me. I suspected that smile got him out of (and into) all sorts of trouble.

We drove out of the town of Puerto Escondido and onto a strip of road that had a wall of green mountains and rain forest on one side and ocean on the other. “So, you’re friends with Cousin Sophia?” asked Theo.

I nodded.

“And you’re here to study cacao farming?”

I nodded again.

“You have a lot to learn.” He was probably thinking of the apparently hugely embarrassing gaffe I had made in thinking that cacao was grown in Oaxaca.

Theo gave me a sidelong glance. “You’re from the United States. Is your family in chocolate?”

I paused. “Not really,” I lied.

“I only ask because many of Sophia’s friends are in chocolate.”

I didn’t know if Theo or the Marquezes could be trusted. Before I’d left New York, Simon Green had told me that he thought it would be best if I kept my history to myself as much as possible. Luckily, Theo did not pry any further on this point. “How old are you?” he asked. “You look like a little baby.”

It was the hair. I lied again, “I’m nineteen.” I had decided that it would be better for me not to be seventeen, and saying eighteen sounded more fake to me somehow.

“We’re the same age,” Theo informed me. “I’ll be twenty in January. I’m the baby of the family, and that’s why I’m so spoiled. Circumstance has turned me into a petted, silly lapdog.”

“Who else is there?”

“My sister Luna. She is twenty-three and very nosy. Like with me, you can say, ‘Oh, Theo, my family, they are not really in chocolate,’ and I won’t press. Your business is your business. But with her, you should have a better answer, so you know. And then there’s my brother, Castillo. He is twenty-nine. He is at home through the weekend but usually he is off studying to be a priest. He is very serious, and you won’t like him at all.”

I laughed. “I like serious people.”

“No, I am kidding. Everyone falls in love with Castillo. He is very handsome and everyone’s favorite. But you shouldn’t like him better than me, just because I am not serious.”

“I’ll probably like him better than you if he manages not to call me ugly in the first minute of my knowing him,” I told him.

“I thought we were over all of that. I explained! I apologized!”

“You did?”

“In my head, sí, sí. My English is not that good. Lo siento!”

His English seemed fine to me. I decided then and there that Theo was lovable and awful and that most of what he said was going to be nonsense. Theo turned the truck onto a different road that led uphill and away from the ocean. He continued, “I have another sister, Isabelle, who is a married lady and lives in Mexico City. And then there is Mama, Abuela, and Nana. Mama runs the business. Abuela and Nana know all the secret recipes and they do the cooking. They will think you are too skinny.”

I felt sad at the mention of the name Nana. “Abuela is your grandmother, right? So, who is your nana?”

“My bisabuela,” he replied. “Great-grandmother. She is ninety-five years old and as healthy as can be. She was born in the 1980s!”

“People live a long time in your family,” I commented.

“The women, sí. They are strong. The men, not so much. We have weak hearts.” An old woman was pushing a cart filled with a yellow fruit that looked like an overgrown apple down the side of the road. Theo pulled the truck over. “Excuse me, Anya. Her house is not far, but I know her back bothers her when it rains. I will return in less than ten minutes. Don’t drive off without me.” Theo got out of the truck and ran over to the woman. She kissed him on both cheeks, and he began pushing the cart down the road and then disappeared with the woman into an opening in the forest.

Theo returned to the truck with a piece of the fruit in each hand. “For you,” he said, placing one of the large fruits in my hand. “Maracuyá. Passion fruit.”

“Thank you,” I said. I hadn’t ever had or even seen one before.

Theo restarted the truck. “Do you have a great love, Anya Barnum?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“A great love! A grand passion!”

“Do you mean a boyfriend?” I asked.

“Sí, a boyfriend, if you favor such a boring word. Is there someone who you’ll weep for and who weeps for you back at home?”

I considered this. “Does it count if it’s hopeless?”

He smiled at me. “It especially counts if it is hopeless. The woman I was helping. She is the abuela of the girl I love. Sadly, the girl has told me she can never love me back. Yet still I am pulling over to help her grandmother. Can you explain this?”

I could not.

“Can you imagine the kind of girl who is so heartless as to resist someone so lovable as me?”

I laughed at him. “I’m sure there is a story.”

“Oh yes, it is very tragic. Why does everyone always like love stories? What about absence-of-love stories? Aren’t they much more common?”

Out my window, there was a large stacked-stone structure. “What’s that?”

“Mayan ruins. There are even better ones in Chiapas on the Guatemalan border. My ancestors are Mayan, you know.”

“Theobroma? Is that a Mayan name then?”

Theo laughed at me. “You do have a lot to learn, Señorita Barnum.”

The road was bumpy, and I was starting to feel carsick. I leaned my head on the window and closed my eyes and soon I fell asleep.

I awoke to the sound of a bleating goat, and to Theo shaking my arm. “Come on. I must get out and push the truck. I will leave her in neutral and you try to steer.” I looked out the window. It had started to rain, and the rain had caused mud to run over part of the road. “You know how to drive, right?”

“Not really,” I admitted. I was a city girl, which is to say I was well versed in bus schedules and walking shoes.

“Not a problem. Just try to stay in the center of the road.”

Theo pushed the truck, and I steered, too little at first but then I got the hang of it. About twenty minutes later, we were back on the road. That was my first lesson in cacao farming, I suppose. Everything took longer than you thought it would.

As we continued driving up the mountain, it got darker and darker as the forest became increasingly dense. I had never in my life been somewhere so wet or so green, and I couldn’t help saying this to Theo. “Yes, Anya,” he said in what I would later come to know as his “very patient” voice. “That’s what it’s like when you live in a rain forest.”

We came to a metal gate with the word MAÑANA on it. A second gate was open, and as we drove past, I could see that it said GRANJA.

We drove down a long dirt road. “This is the farm,” Theo said.

The trees were about twice the height of the workers who tended them. For grooming the trees, the men used flat swords that were over a foot long.

“They’re pruning the trees,” Theo informed me.

“What do you call the tool they’re using?” I asked.

“A machete.”

“I thought those were used for killing people,” I said.

“Sí, I am told they are good for that, too.”

Finally, Theo pulled up to the main house of Granja Mañana. “Mi casa,” Theo said.

Theo’s casa was as big as a small hotel. It was two epic stories, both a faded yellow with gray stonework around the windows and arches. The ground floor had a blue-and-white tiled porch, the second level, a series of sociable stone balconies, and the roof was covered in festive terra-cotta tiles. The house was undeniably massive but not, to my eye, unfriendly.

When I got out of the truck, Theo’s mother was standing on the porch. She was wearing a white blouse, a coral necklace, and a khaki skirt, and her dark brown hair grew past her waist. She said something to Theo in Spanish and then she hugged him as if she hadn’t seen him in weeks. (It turned out that he’d only been gone a day.)

“Mama, this is Anya Barnum,” Theo introduced me.

Theo’s mother hugged me. “Welcome,” she said. “Welcome, Anya. You are my niece Sophia’s friend here to learn about cacao farming?”

“Yes. Thank you for having me.”

She looked at me, shook her head, clucked something else in Spanish to Theo, and shook her head again. She looped her arm through mine and escorted me inside.

The house was even more colorful indoors. All the furniture was in dark wood but the walls and the pillows and the rugs were in every hue of the rainbow. Over the mantel was an almost childish painting of what I thought at the time was the Virgin Mary in a field of red roses. (I would later learn that this depiction of the Virgin is known as Our Lady of Guadalupe.) There were several thick blue glass vases with orchids in them. (The orchids were native to the orchard. My own nana would have loved them.) A spiral staircase in blue-and-white tiles like those on the porch took up the center of the main room. It was a lot to take in, though I imagine it wasn’t the decor but the humidity and the fact that I hadn’t eaten in so long that made me feel light-headed.

“Call me Luz,” Theo’s mother said.

“Luz,” I said. “I’m…” I’d had some practice fainting in the last several weeks, and I could feel myself starting to slip under. I tried to edge toward one of the sofas so that my head wouldn’t end up slamming against those picturesque, though let’s face it, pretty unforgiving-looking tiles. I began to fall backward. I saw Theo running toward me, but there wasn’t time. As I was about to hit the floor, I landed in someone’s arms.

I looked up. Above me was a very square face with a big chin and a wide nose. His eyes were light brown and very serious, and his mouth was stern somehow. He had stubble enough that it could reasonably be called a beard, and extremely thick eyebrows. “Are you hurt?” he asked in Spanish, though somehow I knew what he was saying. His voice was deep and sounded the way an oak tree might sound if it could talk.

“No. I just need to lie down,” I said. “Thank you for catching me. Who are you, by the way?”

I heard Theo sigh heavily. “That is my brother, Castillo, Anya.”

Luz shouted instructions and next thing I knew I was installed in a bedroom on the second floor.

When I awoke the next morning, a pretty girl with thick hair like my sister’s was seated by my bed. The girl looked nearly identical to Luz, only twenty or so years younger. “Oh good,” she said. “You’re awake. Mama wanted us to watch you in case you took a turn for the worse and we needed to take you to the hospital. She thinks you’re probably just malnourished and unaccustomed to the humidity. She says you will live. Stupid Theo. He should have taken you for lunch. We all yelled at him—‘Theo, what kind of host are you?’—and now he feels pretty awful. He wanted to come in here to apologize to you but Mama is traditional. No boys in the girls’ rooms. Even grownups. I’m twenty-three.” I had thought she was so much younger. “You’re nineteen, right? You look like a baby! Back to Theo. He never thinks about anyone but himself because he is the baby of the family and ridiculous and we spoil him terribly. It’s no use yelling at him really. I’m Luna, by the way.” She paused to offer me her hand to shake. Luna and Theo were both fast talkers. “You’re not bad-looking but you need a better haircut.”

I self-consciously clutched at my hair.

“I can do it for you later if you want. I’m very artistic and I’m good with my hands.”

At that moment, two older women entered the room behind Luna. They looked alike except the first was old and the second was really, really old. I realized they must be the grandmother and great-grandmother that Theo had mentioned in the truck. The older of the two, Theo’s nana, pushed a ceramic mug into my hands. “Drink,” she said. When she smiled at me, I could see she was missing one of her top teeth.

I took the mug. The beverage was brown with a reddish hue, and thick like wet cement. I didn’t want to be rude to my hosts, but the substance didn’t look all that promising.

“Drink, drink,” Theo’s nana repeated. “You feel better.” The two older women and Luna were staring at me in anticipation.

I raised the mug, then set it down. “What is it?” I asked.

Luna laughed at me. “It’s only hot chocolate.”

I reported that I had had my share of hot chocolate.

“Not like this,” Luna assured me.

I took a cautious sip and then a larger one. Indeed, it wasn’t like any hot chocolate I had had before. It was spicy and not all that sweet. Cinnamon was involved but also something else. Paprika, maybe? And did I detect something citrusy? I drank the rest of the cup. “What’s in this?” I asked.

Bisabuela shook her head.

“Secreto de familia,” Abuela said.

I didn’t know much Spanish, but I certainly understood about family secrets.

Bisabuela took the mug from me, and then the grandmothers were gone. I sat up in bed. I was already feeling better and I told Luna so.

“It’s the chocolate,” she said. “It’s a health drink.”

I had heard chocolate called many things in my lifetime but never a “health drink.”

“Nana says it’s an ancient Aztec recipe. They used to give it and nothing else to the soldiers before they went out to battle.” Then she told me that if I was interested I should ask one of the older women or Theo, who was interested in all that chocolate folklore.

“Is it folklore or is it fact?” I asked.

“A little of both,” she said. “Come, Anya, I put some clothes for you in the closet.”

She pointed me in the direction of the shower. Wanting to be a good houseguest, I asked her if there were any water restrictions. Luna made a face. “No, Anya,” she said patiently, “we do live in a rain forest.”

In the afternoon, Theo took me on a tour of their farm. He showed me the huge nurseries where they grew the cacao saplings, and the open-air buildings that were used to store the wooden boxes where they would ferment the mature beans, and on the sunniest side of the plantation, the patios that were used to dry out the beans before they were sold. We went out to the orchard last. It was quite shady and moist, as it was located under a rain forest canopy. Theo told me that cacao required both the shade and the moisture of the rain forest to grow. Obviously, I had never been in a cacao orchard and I had certainly never seen a cacao pod up close. Some of the cacao leaves were purplish but many had begun to change to green. Tiny white blossoms with pinkish centers grew in clusters along the branches. “Cacao is one of the only plants with flowers and fruits at the same time,” Theo informed me. The pods themselves were slightly smaller than the palm of my hand, but the thing that surprised me the most was their color. I’d always known chocolate as brown, but some of the cacao pods were maroon, almost purple, and others were gold and yellow and orange. They looked fantastical to me. Magical, I suppose. I wished Natty could see them, and for a second, I wondered if I should have tried to arrange for her to come out here with me. Of course, that would have been impossible for many reasons. “They’re so pretty,” I couldn’t help but say.

“They are pretty, aren’t they?” Theo agreed. “In less than a month, they’ll be ready to cut from the trees so that they can begin the fermentation process.”

“What are the farmers doing today, then?” The farmers had the same machetes that I had seen yesterday and at their feet, wicker baskets.

“They’re cutting off any pods that show signs of having been infected with fungus. That is the irony of cacao—it craves water, but can also be destroyed by it. The fungus is called Monilia, and even just a little bit of it can spoil an entire crop if it is not checked.” He expertly scanned the nearest tree, and pointed out a green-yellow cacao pod that was black at the tip with radiating specks of white. “Do you see? That is what the beginning of pod rot looks like.” He took his machete out of his belt and handed it to me. “You slice it off. It’ll be harder than you think, Anya. Cacao farming is not woman’s work. These trees are strong.” Theo made a muscle with his arm.

I informed him that I was no weakling. I took the weapon from Theo. It was heavy in my hands. I lifted it up to swing at the plant, then stopped myself. “Wait. How do I cut it? I don’t want to mess it up.”

“At an angle,” Theo told me.

I lifted the machete and sliced off the infected pod. My cut looked jagged. The plant really was tough. Doing this all day would probably be pretty exhausting.

“Good,” Theo said. He took the machete from me then recut the incision I had just made.

“I thought you said I was good.”

“Well, you will get better,” Theo said with a grin. “I am encouraging you.”

“Maybe I need my own machete?”

Theo laughed at me. “It’s true. The selection of a machete is a deeply personal matter.”

“Why don’t you have machines to do this?” I asked him.

“Ay, dios mío! Cacao resists machines. She likes human hands and caresses. And she needs human eyes to spot the Monilia. She hates pesticides. Attempts to genetically modify her beans have all been complete failures. She needs to struggle or the cacao produced will not be the richest. She needs to face certain death over and over again. Mi papá used to say that growing cacao in the 2080s was identical to growing it in the 1980s or the 1080s—that is to say, she has always been impossible to grow, and she is still impossible to grow. That is why it became illegal in your part of the world, you know. I am fairly sure that it was the cacao that sent my father to an early grave.” Theo crossed himself and then he laughed. “But I love it anyway. Everything worth loving in this world is difficult.” Theo kissed one of the pods with a big smack of his lips.

I walked away from Theo, down one of the orchard rows, scanning each tree for signs of fungus. The light was low, so it was not the easiest work. “There!” I exclaimed when I finally found one. “Give me your machete.”

Theo handed it over. I imitated the swift swinging motion I had seen him use, and the cut I made was, I thought, respectably clean.

“Better,” Theo said, but he still recut it.

We continued walking through the orchard. I’d scan for signs of Monilia, then I’d point it out so that Theo could cut it off. Theo was very serious about the cacao, and he talked much less than on the drive to Granja Mañana the previous day. He was a different person on the farm, and I found him much easier to be with than the boy in the truck. As we headed toward the rain forest side of the plantation, it grew increasingly dark and damp. It was strange that these trees, these odd flowering trees, had been the source of so many problems in my life, and yet I had never even seen a picture of one before.

Three hours later, we had only covered a very small part of the orchard, but Theo said we needed to go back for dinner.

“Theo,” I began, “I didn’t understand something you said before.”

“Yes?”

“You said that the reason cacao became illegal was because it was difficult to grow?”

“Yes. This is true.”

“Where I’m from, we’re taught something different,” I told him. “We’re taught that the main reason cacao became illegal was because it was unhealthy.”

Theo stopped and stared at me. “Anya, where do you hear such lies? Cacao is not unhealthy! The opposite! It is good for the heart, the eyes, the blood pressure, and just about everything else.”

His face was turning red, and I feared that I had offended him so I backtracked. “I mean, obviously, it’s more complicated than that. We’re also taught that the big American food companies were under pressure to stop making such unhealthy food products, and so as a concession they all agreed to stop making chocolate. The reason being that chocolate was rich and calorie-filled and had addictive properties and so … Well, the public basically turned on chocolate. They thought it was dangerous. Daddy always said it was a wave of poisonings that set it off…” Yes, Daddy had said that. I hadn’t even thought of that during the Gable Arsley fiasco. “And that this led to strict regulation of cacao as a drug, and then its eventual banning.”

“Anya, even tiny little babies know that the chocolate poisonings were set up by the rich men who owned the food companies. The reason they stopped making chocolate was because cacao is hard to grow and hard to ship and the supply was becoming more and more expensive. It was easy for the food companies to get out of the cacao business because it was good for the bottom line. It was about dinero. It is always about dinero. It is as simple as that.”

“No,” I said softly. Still, I wondered if that was possible. Was it possible that chocolate wasn’t dangerous, or even unhealthy? Was what I’d been taught in school propaganda, a history cobbled together out of opportunistic half-truths? And if that were the case, why hadn’t Daddy ever said that to me? Or Nana?

Theo cut a pod off a tree. “Look here, Anya, this one is ripe.” He set the pod on the ground, then split it in half with a blunt whack of his machete. Inside the pod were about forty white beans arranged in neat rows and stacks. He picked up half the pod and held it out to me in the palm of his hand. “Look inside,” he whispered. “It is only a bean, Anya, and like you and like me, it is of God. Could there be anything more natural? More perfect?” He expertly removed a single ivory bean with his pinkie. “Taste,” he said.

I took the bean into my mouth. It was nutty, like an almond, but underneath there was the faintest hint of the sweetness to come.

Early every morning, Theo and I and the other farmers would go out to the orchard to look for signs of mold and, also, any ripe cacao pods we could find. The unusual thing about cacao was that it didn’t mature all at once. Some of the pods were early bloomers and some were late. It took practice to recognize just the moment when a pod was ripe. The weight of the pod, the size, the color, and the appearance of thick veins—all these signs could vary. We were careful with our tools (machetes for the pods close to the ground, and a long-handled hook for the ones higher up) because otherwise they could damage the tree. Our tools were blunt, and the bark was delicate. Though it was shady, I still got a deep tan. My hair grew out. My hands became worried with blisters, then thick with calluses. I had borrowed Luna’s machete as she had no use for this part of the process.

The major harvest took place just before Thanksgiving, which no one at Granja Mañana celebrated anyway. Still, I could not help but think of Leo in Japan, and my sister and everyone back in New York. On the first day of the harvest, the neighbors arrived with baskets and for nearly a week, we collected the ripe cacao pods. After we had collected the pods and moved them to the dry side of the farm, the pod smashing began. We used mallets and hammers to open the pods. Theo could do almost five hundred pods an hour. My first day of pod-smashing, I think I managed ten in total.

“You’re good at this,” I told Theo.

He shrugged off my compliment. “I should be. It’s in my blood, and I’ve been doing it all my life.”

“And do you think you’ll do this forever? Cacao farming, I mean.”

Theo whacked another cacao pod. “A long time ago, I thought I’d like to be a chocolatier. I thought I’d like to study the craft abroad somewhere, maybe with one of the masters in Europe, but now that doesn’t seem likely.”

I asked him why, and he told me that his family needed him. His father was dead, and his siblings really had no interest in the family business. “My mother runs the factories, and I run the farms. I can’t leave them, Anya.” He smiled wickedly at me. “It must be nice to be able to go far away from home. To be free of obligations and responsibilities.”

I wanted to tell him that I understood. I wanted to tell him the truth about myself, but I couldn’t. “Everyone has obligations,” I insisted.

“What are your obligations? You come here without a suitcase or anything else. You contact no one and no one contacts you. You seem pretty free to me and the truth is, I envy you!”

After all the beans were removed from the pods, they were scooped into ventilated wooden boxes. Banana leaves were placed over the beans, and then the beans were left to ferment for about six days. On the seventh day, we moved the fermented beans to the wooden decks, where they were spread out and left in the sun to bake and dry.

At this point, the least difficult part to my mind, Luna took over, freeing up Theo to go to Oaxaca to check on the Marquezes’ factories. Occasionally, she and I had to rake the beans to make sure they were drying evenly. The entire drying process took a little longer than a week because every time it rained, we had to stop to cover the beans again.

“I think my brother likes you,” Luna said to me as we raked through the beans.

“Castillo?” I had seen very little of him since that day he caught me in his arms, though my impression of him had certainly been favorable.

“Castillo is going to be a priest, Anya! I mean Theo, of course.”

“As a sister maybe,” I said.

“I am his sister, and I don’t think so. He is always going on and on to Mama about what a good worker you are and how you are like him. How you have cacao in your blood! And Mama and Abuela and Bisabuela adore you. I do, too.”

I stopped raking to stare at Luna. “I honestly don’t think Theo likes me, Luna. The first day we met, he mentioned a girl he was in love with and he made a point of telling me how ugly he found me.”

“Oh, Theo. My brother is so adorably awkward.”

“Well, I sincerely hope he doesn’t like me, Luna. I have a boyfriend back home, and…” And I chose not to complete the thought.

For a while, Luna said nothing, and when she next spoke, there was no small amount of outrage in her voice. “Why do you never talk about this boyfriend? And why does he never contact you? He can’t be a very good boyfriend if he never contacts you.” (Readers, it was much commented upon at Granja Mañana that I didn’t have a slate.) Obviously, there was a good reason why Win never contacted me. I was a fugitive. But I couldn’t very well say that to Luna.

“I don’t even think you have a boyfriend. Maybe you are saying this to be nice, but you are not nice at all. Maybe you just think you are so much better than us!” Luna yelled. “Because you are from New York.”

“No, it’s nothing like that.”

Luna pointed her finger at me. “You need to stop leading Theo on.”

I assured her that I hadn’t been.

“You are stuck to him like glue every day! He is a baby, so of course he gets the wrong idea.”

“I honestly only wanted to learn about cacao. That’s what I came here to do!”

Luna and I continued to turn over the beans in silence.

Luna sighed. “I am sorry,” she said. “But he is my brother so I am protective.”

I understood very well about that.

“Don’t mention that I said anything to you,” Luna said. “I don’t want to embarrass him. My brother has much pride.”

After the beans were dried, they were gathered up into burlap sacks so that Theo could drive them down the mountain back to the factories in Oaxaca. This took several trips. “Would you like to come with me?” he asked before the last of that season’s drives.

I did want to go with him, but after my conversation with Luna, I wasn’t sure if I should.

“Come, Anya. You should see this. Don’t you want to see where the beans end up?”

Theo offered me his hand to help me into the truck, and after a moment’s consideration, I accepted.

We drove for a while in silence. “You are quiet,” he accused me. “You’ve been like this ever since I got back from the city.”

“It’s … Well. Theo, you know I have a boyfriend, don’t you?”

“Sí…” He drew out the word. “Yes, you told me.”

“So, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me.”

Theo laughed. “Are you worried that I like you too much, Anya Barnum?” Theo laughed again. “That is really very conceited of you!”

“Your sister … She thought you had a crush on me.”

“Luna is a romantic. She contrives to set me up with everyone, Anya. You can’t listen to a word that comes out of her ridiculous mouth. You should know that I don’t like you at all. I find you just as ugly as the day we met.”

“Now you’re being hurtful.” My hair was longer, and I knew I wasn’t as sickly looking as when I had arrived.

“Who is being hurtful? What of my feelings? You could barely look at me when you thought you might have to reject me,” he teased me. “Apparently, we are both completely repulsive to each other.” Theo reached across the seat to ruffle my hair. “Ay, Luna!”

The beans were unloaded at the main factory in Oaxaca, where they began the process of becoming chocolate. “Let me give you a tour,” Theo said. He led me through the factory, which was bright and terribly modern-looking compared to my dark and timeless farm. (Yes, I had begun to think of it as my farm.) The beans we delivered would be cleaned today, Theo explained, then they’d spend the rest of the week being roasted, winnowed, milled, cocoa-pressed, refined, conched, tempered, and last, cured. There were rooms for each step. At the end of this, you were left with the round hockey puck–like disks of chocolate that were the signature creation of the Marquezes. At the end of the tour, Theo handed me one of the disks. “And now you have seen the entire life story of Theobroma cacao from start to finish.”

“Theobroma?” I asked.

“I told you it was a family name,” Theo said. He went on to explain that he had been named for the genus of the cacao tree and that his was a Greek name given by a Swede who had been inspired by the Mayans and the French. “So you see, mine is a name from everywhere.”

“It’s a beautiful name…”

“If a bit feminine, didn’t you once say?”

“Where I’m from, once they found out about your name, they’d probably think you were a criminal,” I said without thinking.

“Yes … I have often wondered why a girl from a country where cacao cannot be grown and where the substance is banned would be so interested in its production as to stay with a family in Chiapas. How did you become interested in cacao, Anya?”

I blushed. I could feel we were beginning to tread on dangerous ground. “I’ve … Well, my father died, and chocolate was his favorite.”

“Yes, that makes sense.” Theo nodded. “Sí, sí. But what will you do with all your knowledge once you go back to your home?”

Home? When would I go back home? It was nearly 80° and I could feel the chocolate growing soft in my hand. “Maybe get involved with the legalize-cacao movement? Or…” I wanted to tell him about me, but I couldn’t. “I haven’t decided yet, Theo.”

“Your heart drew you to Mexico, then. That is how it is sometimes. We do things without knowing entirely why, just because our heart tells us that we must.”

Theo could not have understood less how it was with me.

“Come, Anya, we need to get back to the house. The night after the harvest is done, my grandmothers always make mole. It takes all day, and it is a mucho big deal so we can’t be late.”

I asked him what mole was.

“You have never had mole? Now I feel very sorry for you. You are so deprived,” Theo said.

Mole was indeed a mucho big deal, and the farmers were invited to share the meal as were all the neighbors. Castillo even came home from the seminary. There must have been fifty people crowded around the Marquezes’ long dining room table. I was seated near Castillo and Luna as they were the only English speakers aside from Theo and his mother. After Castillo said grace, the feasting began.

It turned out that mole was basically a Mexican-style turkey stew. It was spicy and rich and pretty delicious. I had seconds and then thirds.

“You like,” Bisabuela said with her gap-toothed smile as she scooped out another portion for me.

I nodded. “What’s in this?” I was imagining shocking my family by throwing it into my usual repertoire of macaroni and cheese.

“Secreto de familia,” she said, and then she said something else in Spanish that was beyond my still-limited comprehension.

Castillo explained, “She says that she would tell you what’s in it, but she can’t. She doesn’t believe in recipes and with mole, she especially doesn’t believe in recipes. It is different every time.”

“But,” I insisted, “there must be general parameters. I mean, what makes the sauce so rich?”

“The chocolate, of course! Didn’t you guess that’s why my grandmothers make it after the harvest?”

Turkey with chocolate sauce? I had certainly never heard of that. “You couldn’t serve this where I come from,” I told Castillo.

“That’s why I never want to go to America,” he told me, as he finished another portion.

I laughed at him.

“You have sauce on your face,” Castillo said.

“Oh!” I picked up my napkin and dabbed the corners of my mouth.

“Let me,” Castillo said as he grabbed my napkin and dipped it into his water glass. “It is a more serious business than you think.” He wiped my face roughly, like I was a little kid.

After dessert, which was tres leches, a sponge cake drenched in three kinds of cream, one of the farmers brought out his guitar and the guests began to dance. Theo danced with every girl that was there, including his sister, his mother, and both his grandmothers. I sat in a corner by myself, feeling heavy and satisfied and barely thinking of all the problems and the people I had left behind. And then the night was over. Luz, Theo’s mother, packed up the extra mole in takeaway containers so that everyone could have what she called “segunda cena,” or “second supper.”

After the guests had left, I started to move the chairs back into their places. “No, no, Anya,” Luz said to me as she patted me on the hand, “we do all this tomorrow.”

“I’m not good at putting things off,” I said.

“You must, though. Come into the kitchen. Mi madre makes chocolate for the family.” By chocolate, she meant the drink I had been served my first morning so I was eager to go into the kitchen to see if I could figure out what was in it. Theo, Luna, and Castillo were already seated around the kitchen table; Bisabuela must have gone to bed. The counters were piled high with pots and pans and dishes and cooking detritus. On the counter nearest Abuela sat the remains of a chili pepper, an orange peel, a plastic bear half-filled with honey, and what looked like the crushed petals of a red rose.

“No, no, no,” Abuela said upon seeing me, just before she covered the counter with her arms. I could tell it was meant as a joke, so I wasn’t offended.

“I won’t look,” I promised.

Then, as often happened, Abuela said something I couldn’t understand in Spanish though I did catch my name. (As she pronounced it, Ahhn-juh.) A second later, Theo stormed out.

“Theo,” Luz yelled. “Come back, bebé! Abuela was only joking!” Luz turned to her mother. “Mama, you shouldn’t tease him like that!”

“What?” I asked. “What just happened?”

“No es nada, Anya. Grandma had a little fun at Theo’s expense,” Luna explained.

“I heard my name,” I insisted.

Castillo sighed. “Abuela said that Anya can have the recipe when she becomes a member of the family.”

I looked at Abuela. She shrugged, as if to say What can I do? Then she began furiously whisking whatever was in the pot.

I told them that I’d go talk to him.

I went out to the living room. He wasn’t there, so I took a flashlight and went outside to the orchard, which was Theo’s favorite place. Though it was dark, I knew he would be there and he was, machete in hand, checking his beloved cacao trees for signs of mold.

“Theo,” I called.

“Just because the season is mainly over, you can never stop watching the crops, Anya. Hold that flashlight over here, would you?”

I redirected my beam toward him.

“Look here. Monilia. Unbelievable!” Theo hacked away at the baby pod. The incision was not clean. Had it been my cut, Theo would have done it again.

“Here,” I said, taking the machete from him. “Let me.” I swung the machete.

“Not bad,” Theo admitted.

“Theo—” I began, but he interrupted.

“Listen, Anya, they are wrong. I don’t love you.” He paused. “I just hate them.”

I asked him who he meant.

“My family,” he said. “All of them.”

I wondered how he could hate them. They had been so wonderful and kind to me.

“It is torture living in a house of women! They are a bunch of silly old gossips. And I can’t escape them. Ever since I was born, they expect me to run this place. Even my name, Anya. They expect me to do all these things, but they never ask. No one asks. I don’t love you, no.”

“So you said,” I joked.

“No, no, I do like you very much. But ever since you came here … I am jealous of you! I would like to see something other than this farm in Chiapas and those factories in Oaxaca and Tabasco. I want to be like you and not know what I am going to do next.”

“Theo, I love it here.”

“No, it is only fun for you because you don’t have to be here forever. I’d like not to see the same people every day for the rest of my life. They think I love you and in some way, I guess I do. I am happy to know someone like you. I am happy to know someone who thinks I am knowledgeable and who doesn’t talk like me and who hasn’t known me since I was in short pants. And maybe I do love you, if love means that I dread the day you’ll leave. Because I know my world will feel so much smaller again.”

“Theo, I love it here … And this place, your family, have been incredibly good to me. Where I came from … It’s not what you think. I didn’t have a choice. I had to leave.”

Theo looked at me. “What do you mean?”

“I wish I could explain, but I can’t.”

“I tell you all my secrets and you tell me none of yours. Do you not think you can trust me?”

I considered this. I did trust him. I decided to tell him part of my story. First, I made him promise never to speak of this to anyone in his family.

“I am like a safe.”

“A pretty noisy safe,” I said.

“No, you know me, Anya. I only talk nonsense. Nothing important ever comes out of these lips.”

“You say you are jealous of me, but I swear, Theo, I have far more reason to be jealous of you.” I told him about my father and mother being killed and my older brother being hurt and on the lam (I decided not to mention that I, too, was on the lam) and my grandmother dying last year and how the only one left was my baby sister and it was basically killing me that I couldn’t be with her every hour of every day. “I only wish I had the problems you have.”

Theo nodded. His eyes and the set of his jaw told me that he wanted to ask follow-up questions, but he didn’t. Instead, he was quiet for a long time. “You have done it again—made me feel like a foolish, stupid thing.” He took my hand and grinned at me. “You are going to stay through the next harvest, aren’t you? There’s so much more I could teach you. And I like having someone to talk to.”

“Yes.” Of course I was staying through the next harvest. I was every bit as stuck as Theo, if not more so. I would stay here until I got word that I could go back to New York or until the Marquezes wouldn’t have me anymore, whichever came first.