And again.
The day drags. The few times the men have enough breath to talk, they leave me out of their conversation entirely. Papi seems content to pretend I’m not there at all except when Francisco or Guillermo decide to make a dirty joke. Then he reminds them I’m here and they all lapse into sullen silence.
The first six hours of our shift pass mostly in this uncomfortable quiet; the clang of rocks hitting the inside of the ore bin the only sound marking the passing of time. At the midday break, I collapse on the ground and close my eyes, my body a misery and my mood bleak.
I lie against the pitted red rock and stare at the sky. I’ve never felt so starved for the sky before. I survey the entryway to the mine, examine the tired, dirty faces of the men and boys. I see Francisco and Guillermo sitting at the far end with Papi and another group of miners. Francisco is scowling at whatever the other men are saying, and it looks like Guillermo is tuning everyone else out instead of participating. Maybe it’s not me; maybe they’re just grumpy people. I decide that, after lunch, I will make more of an effort to talk to them. Nothing can be as bad as the boredom of doing awful work while everyone ignores you.
Victor’s arrival breaks up my bitter musing.
“Hi,” he says, lowering himself beside me and pulling off his helmet. He carefully extinguishes the flame and sets it next to him before he pulls out his lunch pack. I glance over and do a double take.
“Are those potatoes? In a sock?”
Victor’s grime-streaked face splits into a grin, his even teeth startling against the dark rock dust coating his skin and lips.
“What’s so weird about having potatoes for lunch?” he asks innocently.
“That,” I say sternly, pointing in case he missed it, “is a sock.”
He shrugs and runs his hands through his hair. It’s straight and black, like all of our hair, and his sweat makes it stick up at crazy angles. He doesn’t smooth it down.
“Yeah,” he admits. “But it’s a clean sock.”
Glancing across the entry lot, I see Victor’s papi unpacking his lunch. The look on his face when he gets to his sock-wrapped potatoes is priceless. I snort a laugh and roll my eyes at Victor, pulling out the plastic bag Mami wrapped around my lunch.
“Want a piece?” I hold out the llama jerky.
Victor grins and reaches for it, but I don’t let go of the other end.
“You can only have it,” I say, very solemnly, “if you don’t put it in any of your socks.”
“I promise,” says Victor. His straight face is only ruined when he winks.
We eat quietly for a little while, and then Victor drifts off to chat with some of the other boys who work the mine. I wonder, if he stays out of school and if I go back to school, which one of them will replace me as his best friend.
Shaking off the thought, I lean on my elbows and tip my face up so the sun shines on it. Reaching into my pack, I grab my coca pouch and savor a few swallows of water. Then I spit out the old, pulpy leaf wad I chewed all morning and fold fresh coca into my cheek. The brittle leaves crack when I bend them and their dryness sucks the moisture out of my mouth. I wait for my saliva to soften them and think about the mess at home. I can’t stand the thought of having another night like last night. I need to find a way to make this up to Mami and Abuelita.
Then I smile. Thanks to Victor, I think I may have an idea.
* * *
When the whistle blows to signal the end of the midday break, it’s far too soon. Every muscle complains when I stand; every bit of my mind rebels at the thought of burying myself alive again.
I hobble over to where Papi, Francisco, and Guillermo are removing the chunks of rock they’d placed on either side of the wagon’s wheels to keep it still while we rested. Francisco completes his task in mechanical silence, pointedly ignoring me. I join Guillermo’s side and brace myself to push the cart again. Then we’re off, rolling into the mine.
The first time I trip, I’m not sure what did it. It’s only the third time that I see Guillermo’s foot. My patience already frayed by the long day and the men’s sour mood, I whirl on him.
“Knock it off! What’s wrong with you?”
Papi’s eyes flick to us when I speak, but then he ignores us again.
Guillermo doesn’t even try to deny it; he just chuckles in my face.
“Clumsy little girl.”
I glare at him, and as I do, I realize that under all the grime masking his face, he’s not much older than me. He has just the faintest fuzzy outline of a mustache starting.
“What’s your problem?”
“Everyone was talking about you at lunch.” He gives me a snarky smile. “Do you want to know what they said?”
I hesitate. Although, yes, I do want to know what the miners are saying about me, I don’t want to tell this unpleasant boy that. Besides, given his tone, I don’t think it was anything I’d enjoy hearing.
“They said,” Guillermo goes on without waiting for my answer, “that you were an abomination. That your presence is going to bring the wrath of the Tío down on us. That the best thing would be if you left and never came back, but stayed where you’re supposed to be.”
“It’s not permanent,” I mumble, reflexively echoing what César said to the unhappy miners the first day I arrived.
“Nope,” Guillermo says, “it’s not. And the less permanent it is, the better. So why don’t you do us a favor, little girl, and find your feet aboveground?”
I stumble when his leg swipes forward again, catching myself against the side of the ore bin to keep from falling. I burn inside at his words, but Papi is on the other side of the bin, and I don’t want to do something that he would consider embarrassing. I know I have to be careful, especially if all his buddies spent lunch telling him off for bringing me. That will have made him angry. He’ll either push back against all of them if he decides this was his idea, or he’ll take it out on me if he decides I’m to blame. The fact that Guillermo and Francisco and all the others think I want to be down here is laughable. This wasn’t something I picked because I thought it was a good choice. I picked it because I had no good choices. Guillermo swipes at my feet again and I dodge out of his way.
“Grow up or shut up,” I snap at him, and move to load the cart from a slightly different angle so as to avoid his feet.
I spend the next two runs trying to keep as much space as possible between myself and Guillermo. Naturally, this means I end up closer to Francisco. I decide, if Guillermo’s going to be a jerk, I can use all the allies I can find. Even if he does look ancient and dour, at least he won’t be immature enough to trip me like some bully on a playground. So the next time Francisco bends with me to lift a particularly bulky piece of rock into the bin, I speak up.
“Do you have children, Don Francisco?” I ask, figuring that’s a safe topic.
Francisco points his chin at Guillermo, whose turn it is to break up the larger rocks. “That’s one,” he says. “I have four boys.”
Great. They’re related. Now that I look, I can see the resemblance. Both men are tall and wrapped in wiry muscles from the hard labor of the mines. Both have similar narrow faces, though Guillermo is merely slim, while Francisco tips toward gaunt. When Francisco reaches into his coca pouch and adds a handful of leaves to his cheek, one side bumps out, and in a flash I realize why his face has been niggling at me. He’s the same man who spat on the ground when I first arrived at the mine, the one I called Bumpy. I struggle to keep my smile in place, a whole lot less sure than I was a moment ago about him being an improvement over his son.
“That must be busy. I have only one brother at home.”
Francisco pins me with a glare that is not at all friendly, and my next words shrivel and die.
“You should be at home and your brother should be here,” he says seriously.
“I . . .” I l
ick my lips to gather my courage and try not to choke as the tastes of rock and sweat fill my mouth. “I’m just here until he gets better.”
Francisco shakes his head solemnly. “Your father”—he drops his voice and gestures at Papi loading the ore cart—“should never have let you come down here. We will all be made to pay for your stupidity.”
I feel like I’ve been punched.
“I won’t be here long,” I mumble.
Francisco shrugs and sets his shoulder to the side of the ore cart. “The damage is probably already done,” he says.
I’m glad we’re pushing the cart again and I need my breath for other things, because it keeps me from answering.
Francisco doesn’t talk to me again as we heave and strain the bin out of the mine. He doesn’t talk to me when we stand off to the side and swing the bin on its hinges so it dumps our load of debris on the pile. When we head back in and he still hasn’t spoken to me, I start to think that maybe we’re done, but as we scrabble with our feet against the angled floor, using our bodies as brakes to keep the bin from freewheeling out of control, he starts talking again.
“You say you’re only here until your brother gets better,” Francisco mumbles around the coca wad in his cheek. “Either you’re an idiot or a liar. I worked with that brother of yours for a day, and let me tell you, that’s all I needed to be able to tell: that boy will never make a miner. Always wheezing, barely able to keep up, let alone work in any meaningful way. If you’re waiting for him to get better and stay better, you’ll be working here the rest of your life.”
Guillermo, the tripping jerk, clearly eavesdropping, chimes in.
“Even if that scrawny runt does come back and César decides to keep wasting good pay on him, the mines will kill him quickly enough.”
I glance at Papi, knowing he must be able to hear this, but he won’t meet my eyes.
I clamp my lips shut to avoid saying something that could make him angry at me and focus on my feet. Luckily, we’ve arrived at the slag site again and I can vent my frustration. Even though my muscles cringe, I throw myself at the pile of rock, heaving pieces that are too big for me into the wheeled bin with a fury that makes the men shake their heads at me.
How dare they—how dare they talk about Daniel and me like that! How dare they insult me and then turn around in the same breath and say my brother is going to die?
I spend my energy before my anger has burned off, and it leaves me feeling shaky. I slump against the cold side of the hinged bin and rest my cheek against its grime-crusted surface. The others leave me alone. Every time one of them throws a rock into the bin, I feel the reverberation through my cheek, into the bones of my face.
The thing that really kills me, though I hate to admit it, is not that these strangers said those horrible things, but that Papi heard them say it and did nothing. Not a word of defense for either of his children. Almost as if he agreed with them.
I do not cry.
Finally, unable to bear the others working while I don’t, I heave myself off the side and bend over to pick up another rock.
In and out, in and out. Again and again and again for another six hours. I don’t lag behind once. When we finally stop at dinnertime, I think I might have caught a glint of new respect in Papi’s eyes for my hard work. But by then I’m too tired to care.
* * *
When I walk in the door, I’m thrilled to see that, even though he’s still pale and covered in fever-sweat, Daniel is sitting up in bed. I squat just off the edge of the pallet we share, not wanting to get grime all over where we sleep.
“Hey,” I say, taking off the helmet and tucking it under my arm. “How are you feeling?”
Despite the fact that he hasn’t done anything but sleep for most of two days, he stares at me through red-rimmed eyes that have deep purple bags under them.
“Better,” he says. “Ana . . . I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“You know . . . if I weren’t so sick, you would never have had to go into the mine.”
“Not your fault you got sick,” I say, because we both know he’s right.
“Still. I’m sorry. I know how awful it is.”
I consider telling him it’s not awful or that he’ll be better in no time or that I don’t mind. But none of those things are true, and unlike Daniel, who treats it as a competitive sport, I don’t like lying. Instead I ruffle his sweat-dank hair.
“You’re worth it,” I tell him. I stand and strip off what I’m starting to think of as my miner’s coveralls and go outside to try to wash off some of the filth before dinner.
When I get outside, Abuelita is hunched by the dung stove, stirring the soup. She glances up when she hears me, but when she sees who it is, she turns away again.
I stand by the blue plastic water barrel and slowly rub the rag along the lines of my impossibly dirty hands and face. Then, putting down the cloth, I head over to the stove and hunker beside my grandmother. For a moment we stare into the flames together, quietly.
“Once, there was a boy who was a miner,” I start, trying to mimic the rolling storyteller sound of Abuelita’s voice. “This boy’s mother had died a few years ago, and now there were only him and his father, and they lived in a little house. His father was no good at cooking and keeping the house up, so the boy figured out how to boil water and wash clothes and did his best to keep the place clean. Then one day, the boy and his father were packing to head off to work in the mine, and the boy realized that he didn’t have any bags to put their lunch in.”
Abuelita is looking at me now, I can see out of the corner of my eye, but I don’t turn, not yet.
“The boy was frantic. It was almost time to leave, and he had to pack his lunch and his father’s or they’d be late for work! He checked all around, but he couldn’t find any plastic bags. No jars with lids. No box or container of any kind. He thought about tossing the potatoes straight into the work sacks, but they were full of dirt and rock bits. That seemed like giving up, and this boy isn’t one who gives up easily. Then,” I say, and I turn to Abuelita, “he had an idea. The boy raced over to where he had hung the laundry to dry after washing it and pulled a pair of socks off the line. Then he stuffed three potatoes into each of the socks and put them in the two lunch packs.” I smile at her. “Imagine his father’s face when he opened his lunch sack in front of all of his friends at the midday break!”
Abuelita cackles, delighted.
I smile at her. “Victor did that today.”
She purses her lips for a moment more, but she can’t resist a good story.
“Did he really?” she finally says, standing to lift the pot of soup.
“Yup,” I say, reaching out to help her. “And when I teased him about it, he argued that the socks were clean! He didn’t see any problem with that at all.”
“Those Sánchez boys!” She laughs. “Too much creativity by half. You’d never know it now, but Victor’s father was exactly the same. Now, when he was a boy . . .” As Abuelita launches into a story of her own, I know that she’s taken the first step toward forgiving me.
Each holding a handle, we walk the pot inside and sit down to eat dinner as a family.
7
My days slip into a routine and February sneaks away like a thief. Every morning before dawn, I haul my aching body out of bed into the chilly air and pull on my filth-encrusted mining outfit. I barely remember what it feels like to be clean. Half asleep, I follow Papi on the long walk to the edge of El Rosario. I wait outside, staring into the jaws of the mine, until I get assigned to a crew. Then, work. Hand drilling. Blasting. Breaking rock. Hauling ore. Each task feels harder than the last. I spend my first six hours down in the belly of the Cerro Rico sweating in the hellish heat and straining every muscle I’ve never used past its endurance.
When we break for lunch, I sit off to the side with Victor, drin
king in the only half hour of sunlight I’ll get to experience for the whole day and eating whatever Mami was able to spare from home. Work like a miner, eat like a miner, Mami jokes when I tell her not to give me too much. I worry that she and Abuelita are skipping meals to feed me more. But with the extra bolivianos I’m bringing home—the ones that Papi doesn’t get to first—we have been able to buy more food, so maybe it’s all okay.
After lunch, it’s back into the mine for another six hours. By this point the heat and my exhaustion have made me clumsy. I rarely have the energy to talk to anyone during the afternoon. By the end, I shuffle around mechanically, doing the best I can to complete the tasks set for me. These are my most dangerous hours, because my mind is muddy and my reflexes are slow. When the full carts whisk by me, I press myself into the wall and turn my face to the side, but don’t leap to safety. I don’t pay as much attention to my flame. Sometimes when they blast, I don’t even count to make sure all the charges detonate. These are the hours when the devil visits me. Working beyond the edge of exhaustion, I hear the echo of his laughter in the vibration of the pneumatic drills, and flickers of his eyes and teeth haunt the edges of my vision. I shake my head to clear it like a llama tries to clear its face of flies, but it never works. In those long hours, the devil tracks my every move.
At the end of a day of work I come aboveground with the feeling of someone who’s been buried alive clawing their way to the surface. It’s dark by then, and I stumble home with Papi down the narrow mountain path, praying that I won’t trip over the edge and die. When I get home, I strip off my stinking suit, mechanically eat whatever Abuelita has prepared, let Mami massage some of the aches from my shoulders, and fall into bed.
I fall asleep every night hungry for more food.
I wake every morning hungry for more sleep.
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