Fernanda! Oh sweet, Fernanda!

I worked part-time at a small deli and market in Monterey during my first semester of grad school. It paid $8.00 an hour, but it was close by and I needed a job. Ya think ya better than me? It turned out to be one of the best working experiences of my life. I became a member of the Monterey community. I knew my regulars on a first-name basis, “How ya doing Mrs. Delgado? How’s Johnny? He enjoying 2nd grade?” I felt like a character straight out of Cannery Row. I got an intimate look at the local Monterey life that I would never have experienced cooped up in the marine lab.

There were days where I couldn’t understand how the place was still in business. The market was located in a sleepy part of a sleepy town. Most patrons came only to buy a cheap bottle of wine or a loaf of bread.  I’d sip coffee and read Steinbeck, pausing momentarily to slice meats or cheeses for a customer. There is something special about reading books that take place where you’re currently living.

Anyway, the owner of the store was a born and bred Montereyan named Tommy. Tommy was a short, stocky, 43-year-old surfer. To this day, I will remember him as one of the greatest bosses I’ve ever had. I respected the hell out of him. Tommy was notoriously good at connecting with people. If he ever ran for mayor of Monterey, he’d win in a landslide. He knew every person that came into his store by name and their mother. He was a true man of his community. Tommy never finished high school but was one of the most grounded and sharp people I have ever met. He had a perfect balance of kindness and fear. He’d give you the shirt off his back, but you also got the feeling he could murder you and dump your body in the bay.

Now I’m going to blow your preconceptions away, Tommy is Korean. Boom! You racist fuck. I know you assumed a tall, white man because he’s a business owner. Wait, you did think he was Korean!? Because he owns a small convenience store. You sicken me.

Tommy would come in every day to check in on the store and since it was typically slow, that meant we would take our coffee to sip on the outside patio and bullshit. That’s when Tommy told me about a woman named, “Fernanda.”

Fernanda is likely dead now, but Tommy had known her for decades. Fernanda was an illegal Mexican immigrant who came to Monterey County as a child to pick fruits and vegetables in the fields like so many others. She had been a regular at his store since he opened, and in typical Tommy fashion, they developed a really strong relationship.

Fuck what you’ve heard about Cannery Row and Pebble Beach, Monterey County is and has always been a farming community. Strawberries, artichokes, and basically every fruit that keeps America’s grocery stores stocked is picked by poor migrants in the nearby Salinas Valley. Not that long ago, farm owners thought it inefficient to have their pickers break while crop-dusting planes dropped their pesticides. The pickers would pick their strawberries or lettuce while caustic chemicals rained down on them. Word has it, these weekly chemical douses resulted in a lot of deformities and cancers amongst the local, illegal Mexican population who would never speak out due to fear of being deported.

One day at the market, Fernanda entered at a slower than normal pace. Tommy immediately took notice but didn’t want to make Fernanda feel uncomfortable. He knew she’d tell him if she was feeling ill, but she said nothing.

A week later, Fernanda walked in even slower, gathered her goods, and laid them out on the counter for Tommy to scan and tally.

“Fernanda, are you OK? You seem under the weather.”

“Yes, Tommy, I am fine. Just a cold. It will go away.”

“Of course. Get better.”

Tommy never pressed. This situation would happen for over a month, each time appearing sicklier, each time struggling a bit more down the aisles and always stubbornly telling Tommy, “I’m fine.”

Finally, after seeing her barely able to lift a can off the shelf, Tommy pleaded, “Fernanda, you are not getting better. You need to see someone.”

“Yes. OK. I am not getting better. I will go get help.”

“Good. Let me know if you need me to drive you to the doctor’s.”

Two months then went by and Fernanda had not come into Tommy’s shop. Tommy was concerned, but the entire situation was out of his hands. Then one day, Fernanda walked in. She was slower and looked more even more decrepit than ever.

Tommy left his cashier station and walked with her while she perused the shelves. She pointed at items and Tommy would gently lay them in her cart. He walked at a turtles pace to keep up with her. All the while asking about her health.

“Fernanda! Where have you been!? Are you OK?” Tommy let out.

“I was gone seeing doctors. I got treatment. I am getting better now.”

“Good. I'm glad to hear that.”

Two weeks later Fernanda walked in looking even deathlier. Like an animated corpse run by a dozen hamsters in exercise wheels. Her movements were jerky and uncoordinated. Tommy knew people didn’t get better at the drop of a dime, but how was she getting so much worse? She could barely walk at this point.

“Fernanda, I thought you went to the doctors. What did they do to help you?”

“I got treatments from doctors back in Mexico.”

This statement left Tommy perplexed. Why Mexico? There was a perfectly good hospital half a mile from the market. You might think she was scared to go to the hospital for fear of deportation, but like so many, Fernanda became naturalized due to Ronald Reagan’s immigration reform bill which granted amnesty to anyone living illegally in the US before 1982 while he was President.

“What did the doctors in Mexico tell you?”

“That I was sick and I had poisons in me.”

“Poisons?”

“Yes, it’s the poisons that are making me ill. So the doctors gave me a treatment to remove them from my body.”

Tommy went along with it, “Ok. I guess that makes sense. Please be careful and let me know if I can help you.”

“Yes, Tommy. Be good.”

A month later, Fernanda slowly enters the market with Death only steps behind. Tommy sees her and walks towards her.

“Fernanda, you are not well. I'm taking you to the hospital right now.”

The chilling nearness of death finally scared Fernanda and she reluctantly agreed.

Tommy brought her to the emergency room and sat in the waiting room with her worried until the medical staff could examine her. After a few hours of looking her over a doctor approached Tommy, “Hi, you are here with Fernanda, correct?”

“Yes. Is she OK?”

“Yes, we think she is OK for now, but we are still working on her. This is a very peculiar case. We found several lesions on her back that appear to be necrotic.”

“She’s dying?”

“No, she has a lot of dead tissue on her back. When we looked at her she had these black lumps on her back with sutures down the center. Puss was crusting over the seam. I asked the nurse to slowly cut through and open them. The lesions burst open and we pushed at them from the sides like a pimple. Dark meat poured out until we realized they were organs.”

“Her organs came out of her back!?”

“No, the organs were not hers. We first thought they were the livers and kidneys of a chicken. But Fernanda told us they were likely pig.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She said she went down to Mexico for help. She went to some backwoods shaman who cut her open and shoved animal organs in her because he thought it would absorb her poisons. She has rotting, black, pig organs in her that we are removing right now.”

Tommy finished his story and gave a this-world-is-fucked-up kind of laugh.

“What did she actually have?” I asked.

Tommy replied, “Who knows, does it matter?”