Then they all went inside, and Francisco put on an apron, just like a woman, and went to work. “You people talk, and I’ll make dinner for all of us!” he said. He began making tortillas as if he’d made them all his life, cooking the meat and vegetables at the same time.
“And all these years,” cried Don Victor, “I’ve been blaming myself for your death, mi hijita, thinking that you’d died in that ship I put you on.”
“Oh, no, Papa,” said Sophia. “I never even realized that you people thought I was dead. You see, when you put me on that boat, Papa, I didn’t have any food, expecting that they sold it on board. But I was wrong; they didn’t have anything. Not even fresh water to drink. So I had to get off the boat just before they sailed. And it wasn’t until two days later, after I’d bought provisions, that I boarded the next ship.”
“But didn’t you know that the other boat capsized?” asked her father.
Sophia shook her head. “No, I never heard about that until months later because, well, I was out at sea at that time and I had enough problems of my own.”
Sophia stopped and started to laugh, and Lupe saw a strange mixture of anger, yet joy come into her eyes. “Oh, those wretches,” she said, laughing lightly as she smoothed out the apron on her lap the way their mother always did. “Do you realize that they robbed me the first night I was on that boat while I slept with my baby? It was terrible,” she said, still laughing. “Why, they had us all stacked up like cattle, and by the time we got to land, the whole ship smelled of human waste.”
She laughed, shaking her head, and Lupe realized that this was something that her family always seemed to do when they spoke of the terrible misfortunes that they’d suffered. They didn’t get angry or upset, like so many other Mexicans did. No, they smiled and laughed as if even these bad fates had been handed to them by a mischievous, but good-hearted God.
“Oh, it was difficult for me,” she continued. “I’d come with all that gold from La Lluvia but, by the time I got to Mexicali, I had nothing. But, well, what could I do? I was a woman alone.”
“So what did you do?” asked María, no doubt thinking about herself now that she was without a husband, too.
“Well, getting to Mexicali I sold my earrings and wedding ring, wanting to get American dollars so I could get across the border. But the money changer tricked me, by giving me useless currency from the Revolution. Oh, I argued with him, Mama, as hard as you would have, to give me back my earrings and wedding ring. But he told me to get out of his place or he’d call the police.” Sophia’s eyes danced with fire. “But not before I knocked over one of his elegant vases,” she said, laughing. “And then that night my fortune changed. I met some people who were going across the border, and I became friends with a woman and her husband. I told them my story, and they took me in as part of their family, and I had Marcos in the camp where they worked. Then I got contracted along with them to work in the cotton fields on the American side of the border.”
“Where?” asked Victoriano. “We worked in the cotton fields when we first got across, too.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Sophia. “I was lost.”
Sophia continued her story, and she told them how they’d been transported out of the town of Calexico in big trucks, going across tracts of flatland for hours. Then that night, they came to a ranch and she was given a little house to share with the family that she’d come with. The next day, they were at work before daybreak. Sophia left Diego and her infant with the woman whom she’d befriended, and she worked with the woman’s husband in the cotton fields all day long. Within a few days, Sophia and the woman’s husband became the two best cotton pickers in all the fields.
“I did, too!” cut in Carlota. “Victoriano and I were the best in all Scottsdale, Arizona! We even beat the big negroes from Alabama,” she said.
“You, too?” laughed Sophia. “Well, I’ll be. It must be because we’ve always been quick of hand.”
“And we’re quick because we’re short!” said Carlota.
“All right, go on,” said Doña Guadalupe. She knew why Carlota had said that. Ever since Lupe had gotten so tall, Carlota picked on her.
“Oh, yes, where was I?”
“Picking cotton,” said Lupe, “with that woman’s husband.”
“Oh, yes, well, there we were, and I thought we were becoming rich because we were doing so well, until at the end when we went to get paid.”
Sophia stopped and, for the first time since she’d been talking, Lupe saw her sister get angry with rage. But then her husband, who’d finished with the tortillas and was now feeding the children dinner, came over and took her hand. Lupe saw her sister’s eyes go soft with love. It moved Lupe’s heart to see such tenderness between a man and a woman.
“You see,” said Sophia, “I was in line to get paid along with the other people, but when it came for my turn to get my money, the foreman gave me only half my wages. Oh, it still makes me so mad, I could scream,” she said.
“Calm down, querida,” said Francisco. “It’s done now, it’s done.”
“Thank you,” said Sophia, holding her husband’s hand. “Well, anyway, then I said to the foreman—his name was Johnny—But why do you do this? I made more money than this.’
“‘Move aside,’ he told me, ‘I have other people to pay.’
“Seeing all the people behind me, I moved aside, but I didn’t leave. No, I just stood there, waiting until the last man was paid.
“‘Well, I see you waited,’ Johnny said to me.
“‘Well, of course,’ I said, ‘you still owe me half my wages.’
“‘Are you married?’ he asked me.
“‘No,’ I said, ‘but I don’t see what that has to do with this.’
“He stood up. He was a big pocho who could speak both English and Spanish and liked to brag that he’d been born on this side of the border. ‘If you had a husband, I’d give him your money for you,’ he said, ‘but since you haven’t got a husband, I can’t give you any more money than I’ve already given you.’
“But why not?’ I asked.
“Because you made too much money, and the other men will get angry at me if I give you as much as you made.’
“But I earned it!’ I yelled at him. ‘I worked hard for it!’
“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know you did, but these men have families to feed.’
“But so do I! I have two children!’
“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but you should be married. It’s not right for a beautiful woman to be alone.’ Then I’ll never forget, he came around the table and smiled at me and said, ‘Look, I’m a good man and I make good money, so marry me, and I’ll take care of you and your children.’
“I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. I was so outraged that I began to cry. But the fool didn’t know who he was dealing with. So he took my tears to be weakness and drew close to me, saying in a very nice voice what a decent man he was and how much he’d been loving me since the first day that he’d seen me.
“Oh, Mama, I tell you,” said Sophia, turning to their mother, “that man had absolutely no idea how we’d been raised by you. ‘You’re no decent man!’ I screamed at him so loudly that all the camp could hear me. ‘You’re a bully, and a coward, and you have no idea of how to treat a lady!’ And saying this, I turned and walked away.
“But then that same afternoon, the trucks came and loaded the people up to take them to the next ranch. You see, the cotton was done where we were, so it was time for us to go. But, when I tried to board the truck, the driver said I couldn’t go on his truck. I went to the next truck and was told the same thing. The man I’d been working with said it was an outrage, and he tried to get me aboard the truck that he and his family were on, but the driver only threatened to take him off his truck, too. So he had to think of his family and keep quiet.
“After the trucks were gone, I was all alone on that ranch with the foreman and this old lady who kept the main house. Oh, I tell you, I thou
ght it was the end of the world for me.
“Then that night, to make matters worse, the old lady came to my house and said, ‘Mi hijita, I don’t know why you’re so upset. It’s a very good offer Johnny has proposed to you. He’s rich. He works all year-round for these big farmers on both sides of the border. I say, give your thanks to God that you’re so attractive that such a man came forward and made you an offer like a gentleman. It could be worse, you know. He could have just grabbed you and used you like it’s happened to me so many times.’
“Oh, I became so enraged! No human was going to break my will. I’m your daughter, Mama! So I grabbed the old lady, pushing her out of my house, but then she began to cry. Can you believe that? And she told me that she’d get in trouble if she went back without having talked me into marrying Johnny. Poor woman. So I let her stay, and we talked some more and I proposed to her that we run away together.”
“‘But where will we run to, child?’ she asked me.
“Down the road!’ I told her.
“‘But which road?’ she asked me.
“‘That one,’ I told her, pointing to the road in front of the ranch.
“‘But that road goes nowhere, child,’ she said. ‘There are hundreds of roads crisscrossing all over these flat fields. I’ve come out to this ranch three seasons already, and I still don’t know where I am.’
“And suddenly, I realized that she was right. I had no idea where I was and, in the heat of the day out in those treeless fields, a person could easily die of thirst. Also, I had a child to carry, and the land was perfectly flat in all directions. There were no hills or high ground to show you where you were. It was like being lost in the middle of the ocean, I swear.
“That night Johnny came by again and said, ‘Listen, honey, be reasonable and accept my offer. I’m rich, and I ain’t so bad to look at, either.’”
Carlota laughed. “He really called you ‘hoe-ney,’ just like an americano?” she asked, laughing all the more.
“Well, yes.”
Carlota went into hysterics, yelling, “Hoe-ney! Oh, oh, oh, hoe-ney!” And she continued laughing until her eyes watered.
Everyone just looked at her, wondering why she thought this was so funny. But then they, too, started to laugh, breaking the tension of this awful story.
“Anyway, to go on,” said Sophia after Carlota calmed down, “Johnny went on and told me, ‘Look, be reasonable; you got nothing, and I promise you that I’ll take care of you and your two sons for the rest of your lives.’ Then he gave some candy to Diego and played with Marcos, trying to show me what a good man he was.
“Look, yourself,’ I told him, ‘if you were really a good man, like you say you are, then you’d pay me my money and take me to town in your truck so I could clean up and buy a dress and look really pretty for you. Then, there in town, where I’m free to decide, you can ask me if I wish to marry you. But not here, where you have me trapped like a prisoner. Because, believe me, no matter how much you try to impress me here, even by playing with my two sons, I know it’s all false!’
“And I got up, screaming at him and telling him that he was a bad man, trying to take advantage of a woman alone. And I pushed him out of my house, hitting him with my fists, but he only laughed, telling me that I was the prettiest woman he’d ever seen, especially when I got mad.
“The week passed, and every day he’d come by and propose to me, and every day I’d throw him out. But then, the second week, he closed the doors to the little ranch market so I couldn’t get any food to eat. By the third day Diego was so hungry that he was crying all the time. That’s when I knew that he was the devil, and a woman has absolutely no chance in this world without a strong man.
“Late that same afternoon, I was holding my children, praying to God for a miracle, like you always taught us, Mama, when I saw this, excuse me, Francisco, but this is what I thought when I first saw you, an old man coming up the road, and he looked like he could barely walk.
“Getting to the buildings, he glanced around, saw no one, and began to search around. He found the water trough where the livestock drank but, instead of taking a drink, he just laughed and jumped into the trough, with his clothes and all. He looked so funny splashing around, that I began to laugh like I hadn’t laughed in months. But hearing my laughter, he jumped out of the trough and began to run.
“‘No,’ I yelled after him, ‘don’t run! I need your help.’
“My help?’ he asked, pointing to himself.
“‘Yes. Please, come back here.’ But he wouldn’t come. So finally I had to go out and get him.”
“But why should I have come back to her?” said Francisco, laughing good heartedly as he stood by the stove, cooking. “I’d been bitten by the dogs on the last ranch, so no one was going to catch me this time.”
“But I got hold of him,” said Sophia, “and brought him back to my little house and fed him the last of our meager soup that we had.”
“I was starving,” said Francisco. “I’d walked all day and hadn’t eaten. It was a great feast for me.”
“Then I told him my story and he became so red-faced with what I thought was anger,” said Sophia, “that I was sure that he was going to go up to the main house and massacre Johnny when he got home.”
“But she was wrong,” laughed Francisco uproariously, “I was so scared that I was just trying to keep the food down that I’d eaten so it wouldn’t come up on me.” He laughed again. “So getting my food back down, I said to her, ‘Well, then, I better get out of here quick! Because if he finds me with you, he’s sure to beat me up.’”
“‘Beat you up?’ I said to him. ‘But it’s me he’s mad at, not you!’”
“I finished my bread and got up to go,” said Francisco. “I’m going,’ I told her. Oh, I was scared.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” said Sophia. “Here was my miraculous prince sent to me by God, and he wanted to run away. So I looked at him and his balding head and his big scared eyes; I remembered how he’d jumped into the water trough with his clothes on, and my heart went out to him. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘let’s go then, I’ll go with you.’ So he helped me get my things, and we left immediately.
“We followed a cattle trail across the fields, and he carried Marcos most of the way. He was much stronger than I’d expected. We traveled for three days, and every night we found plenty of water. Francisco trapped rabbits, and we ate well. By the time we came to town, I knew I loved this man, Francisco Salazar, very much. He was a good man. And he respected me, and he was so funny. He reminded me of you, Papa, especially with his thinning hair.”
Everyone else laughed, including Francisco, but Don Victor didn’t think it was funny. He mumbled something under this breath, turning uneasily in his chair.
“So in the town of Brawley, we got work at a ranch together, and we worked side by side for several months and made good money; then I decided to marry him.”
“Just like your very own mother!” said Don Victor, jumping to his feet. “There I was, free as a bird, a finish carpenter making good money, when she came into my life with two children and married me, just like that, too!” He laughed and laughed and went across the room and gave Francisco a big abrazo.
“Welcome to our family, Francisco; may God help you! Because I can’t! These women are tyrants! All of them!”
And so they ate the food that Sophia’s husband had prepared, and it was delicious. The tortillas were round and perfectly cooked. María got so excited about Francisco’s cooking that she couldn’t stop complimenting him.
“I swear it, you’re the lucky one, Sophia,” said María. “You lose everything and still come up with a prince! Oh, if only I could be so lucky.”
“Francisco has a friend, Andrés, that he works with,” said Sophia.
“Can he cook?” asked María.
“He taught me,” said Francisco.
“Then it’s settled, I’ll marry Andrés,” said María. “He’s mine!”
They all howled with laughter.
The following afternoon, they all gathered together by the orchard behind their rented house in Santa Ana. Lupe helped Victoriano dig a hole so that they could plant the lily bulbs they’d brought from La Lluvia.
“Let us pray,” said Doña Guadalupe, “for I promised God that I’d plant my beloved flowers the day that we found Sophia. And we’ve found her.”
The sun was going down as Lupe and her family knelt down on the rich, dark soil and gave their thanks to God. They were far from home and they’d been fearful that God hadn’t come with them. But they had been wrong. God lived here, too. This land, this country, was filled with God’s grace as surely as their beloved canyon had been full of miracles.
They bowed their heads in prayer, and the right eye of God turned to liquid flame, disappearing behind the orange trees in colors of red and yellow, as round and golden as the fruit hanging in the dark, green trees.
Several months later, Lupe and her family were in a caravan of old trucks, going to Hemet to pick the apricots. They’d found out that they couldn’t make ends meet staying in Santa Ana. They’d have to follow the crops part of the year to support themselves.
As they were passing through Corona, one of the rusty old trucks overheated and they had to pull over. They also had to get fresh milk and provisions.
Lupe was riding in the back of the third truck. She was wearing loose-fitting work clothes and a big straw hat. Lupe was holding María’s daughter, who had curly black hair and huge dark eyes. She was absolutely beautiful. María was holding her other child, a boy, and she was sitting across the truck bed from Lupe, next to her new husband Andrés, whom Sophia’s husband Francisco had introduced to her.
Andrés wasn’t big and handsome like Esabel, but he was kind, steady, hard-working, and he did love to cook.
Sophia hadn’t come on this trip with them. She’d decided to stay home with her newborn infant and see if she and her family couldn’t make a living without following the crops. After all, it was time for her oldest to start school, and she did want them to be educated.
Rain of Gold Page 34