“I don’t know why you’re so interested,” a slender, handsome man in his twenties said. “Us Mexicans complain about being poor but ask how many of us spent our checks on beer.”
His friend added, “And we think God is going to deliver us from this shit work.”
A man in knee-length jeans and dirty sneakers started tuning his guitar. He ran his fingers up and down the frets, strumming one string, then the next, and said without looking up, “I’ll play something to tell a small part of our Chicano story.” He hummed beneath their talk.
“Where is the song of Mexicans who are so submissive?” the handsome slender man asked. “Chicano life is unbearable because we make it so. No one is to blame for our miserable lives except ourselves.” He looked around. “Eh, where’s the story in scurrying away like mice to escape la migra?”
“Ah, well,” an older man said, “that may be the truth. I was one to lie to myself. I had all the fantasies as a young man, that I was special in my talents, but it turns out I was very common.”
Heads nodded.
“That was my experience, too,” a white-haired woman agreed.
The warble of an infant breast-feeding sounded in the dark.
They gazed into the fire expecting answers to problems. They were hesitant to share with outsiders but in starts and stops the talk opened up and bounced around.
Someone commented on the cut-rate price of cigarettes at the Isleta reservation in El Paso. Another advised about which slots were hot at the Santa Ana casino three hours north on the other side of Albuquerque. A woman gave the inside scoop on Walmart’s specials—diapers, rice, beans, flour. A woman wondered aloud when bingo would come to the camp and someone else said to be sure to remember to renew your worker’s permit. Words rose and cooled from each person’s mouth, then floated down into the fire and melted.
The man with the guitar tapped his fingers against the sound box.
“Leave it,” an old man said, scratching his gray head. He stooped over and tossed a stick into the fire. “God’ll see to the songs.”
The guitar player was about to sing but plucked softly.
The night smelled of cooling asphalt and exhaustion fell on them like autumn leaves off a looming tree.
A woman flurried the cinders with a poker and hot ashes scattered into the air.
Carmen looked at the faces, envious of their intimacy, each familiar with the sorrows of the other’s life.
“So, why you here?” a woman asked, her features measured so as not to challenge Carmen but invite her to speak. “You were supposed to do interviews and leave—you’ve been here a little over three months now.”
Carmen said, “Yeah, I kind of fell in love with the place.” Eyes turned to Lorenzo and women chuckled. “And to help you guys change things.”
“Nothing’s changing, mejita, except for the worse,” a woman said.
Carmen felt stupid for saying what she had, the abyss between them and her widened, and she could feel their disdain toward her. “I just want to make a difference,” she ended.
“I like those words,” a girl said and stepped out from the dark and Carmen saw that she had no arms. Where limbs were supposed to be, small flaps of skin dangled. She was one of the children marked by pesticide poisoning. The reason Carmen hadn’t seen any deformed people before tonight was because the parents kept them hidden inside, away from public eyes.
Carmen didn’t know how to respond and felt like there was a large rock crushing her heart.
“There are worse curses than slaving in the fields. To be a coward is one.”
She swung her eyes to the speaker, thinking he meant her.
“Ah,” a thin man offered, “over time hope drains your heart.” He shook his head dismally. “What paradise. Every apple you pick condemns you even deeper into hell.”
“You regret—,” she half asked.
“Regret?” The man looked at her sharply. “Instead of teaching philosophy, I’ve become an expert in sadness.”
The flames danced over their features and Carmen saw how different each person was—some had a wave of golden-wheat love for the land and their families, some had the windy laughter of a cherry tree, others the anger of a hundred firing squads, but one thing common to them all was they wanted to work for a better life and it was one of the most powerful dreams one could have.
20
December 2003
I was there, in the fire, as they talked and this is what I’d spent my life singing about. My songs were tinged with resignation that things will never change. My words savored their stories of suffering, my lyrics were about eyes looking at the horizon for a son that never comes. Hands to cheeks or brows, they thumb each memory as if it were a coin they rub for luck, rubbed so much it evaporated. I sang of rusty coffee-can hearts that memories were saved in: how and when they arrived, what the journey was like, how they settled in.
And before sleeping each night, each digs up the can and unfolds the handkerchief that keeps the memories protected and they run the coins through their fingers again.
I sang of meaningful pain, important pain. Etched in their facial lines of worry, each word was a rubbed forehead, scratched sore, picked pimple, trimmed mustache, a mother’s fingers pulling her child’s earlobe, wiping his lips.
I remember newcomers to the fields staked and shoveled foundations to erect scrap-wood shacks. I helped hammer and saw boards, told them my piece of land was the stage, located in the center of the universe. They thought it was a joke but after seeing me on weekends they knew.
Sitting in front of the old cracked mirror in my Pullman, I fluffed and brushed my hair, lotioned my face, brushed my eyelashes, puckered on lipstick, penciled a beauty dot on my right cheek, rolled on snake-diamond net stockings with rose-garters, shimmied into a tight blue dress with a pleated hem. Looking in the mirror at my plump butt, I smiled, my calves smooth as I slipped on candy-apple red heels, perfumed my wrists, tuned my guitar, strummed strings for pitch, and, later, looking as primitive as a tigress, I stomped arrogantly across the stage, my high heels clacking like claws on the boards, so loud it made men growl.
Camp women need to be like this sometimes, earthquake boulders down the dirt paths all around them.
I bared my soul, distilled it down from an armored surface of spikes to the inner bark of a cactus, made it my divining rod, quivering at every heart where it signaled life, where it recognized spirits, and there I let myself sing, my voice a power blossoming over them, waterfall petals that touched the hands and ears and hearts and drew blood from remembering their deep passion, remembering the authenticity with which they once lived.
My singing was my freedom, my radical liberation, my plan to subvert the powerful and challenge the rich, both powerless in my presence.
21
February 2004
On a Saturday afternoon in the compound, Carmen and twelve women sat on benches in the shade and husked white corn, washed spinach, cut squash, shelled green beans, roasted chili on a small makeshift brick and wire grill, and sorted pinto beans while some of their kids hurled rocks at crows in the cottonwoods around the camp. The women wrapped tamales in corn leaves, spooned ground beef and beans into tacos, warmed corn tortillas in a hole in the ground over an open fire grill on the comal, rolled burritos, and stirred red and green chili simmering in cast iron pots over the open fire. The posole and menudo steamed, and Carmen opened the meeting.
“I wanted all of you here to discuss forming a committee. A formal committee to file grievances on behalf of the workers and present them to Mr. Miller.”
The women bowed their heads down as if intent on their work.
“What’s wrong?”
Martina swept a pile of corn husks to her side of the table where she was rolling dough, masa, for tamales. Her friend Refugia kneaded the masa and filled it with strips of beef and red and green chili and Martina wrapped corn husks around it. “Carmen, this committee’s going to get us in trouble.”
“We have families in Mexico who depend on our money every week,” Nestora, an older woman said.
The women mumbled assent.
Nestora continued, “The problem will be the men.” She lit a cigarette, blew the smoke out, and stared at the sky over the fields, shaking her head slightly at what she was thinking. “Men are always the problem.”
“I don’t have time for it,” Lydia said, “unless the committee can help me with Maria’s quinceañera this month. She’s fifteen.”
“And maybe the committee can help with Juanito’s baptism,” Elaine said.
“We’ll have to make a big barbecue, sew the dresses,” Lydia added.
Carmen asked, “Why do you serve others and never worry about your own needs? This could make it better for your families.”
They gazed at her with endearment, puzzled by her idealism.
“I mean, you allow others to exploit and use you and yet it doesn’t seem like you even care.”
And then the youngest of the women, Christina, who seldom spoke, said, “We always accuse others of profiting unjustly from our labor yet we work and dismiss our long hours in the fields. We’re resigned to our fates, we’re reluctant to take advantage of benefits, we play stupid, but I’m not—I went to UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and graduated with a masters in economics. I never say it because it doesn’t mean anything here. You all complain about your low wages yet you’ve never asked for a pay raise.”
Carmen was amazed by Christina’s admission but the conversation returned to its meaningless chatter.
“Did you read in the paper, someone found the bones of Jesus?” Karina asked.
“That tortilla image of Christ sold for a thousand dollars,” Dolores quipped.
“I wonder if it was His bones as a boy or man,” Karina wondered.
“I can’t do it, Carmen. I don’t have papers, they’ll send me back,” Refugia said as she kneaded masa, rolled out the dough.
“Me too, I can’t,” Martina added.
An older woman said, “It won’t work, once a Mexican makes it, they turn against their own kind.”
Nestora sighed, “It’s true, a Mexican gets a green card and they think they’re higher, the elite of migrants whose backs the INS dried out with nice soft towels. They’re no longer mojados. Reminds me of the song, ‘La Jaula de Oro,’ the line that goes even though the cage is golden, it is still a prison.”
Carmen cut in, “We’re not going to march or protest, just file a grievance and present it to Mr. Miller. It’s not going to get you deported or lose you your job.”
“If we organize a committee, they’ll mark us as troublemakers. It’s a waste, it’ll change nothing.”
* * *
Later that evening, after she and Lorenzo had finished washing his pickup, she leaned against the truck grill.
“Come on, the keys,” he demanded.
“Come get them.” She clenched them between her teeth, lay across the hood, and gave a deep husky laugh.
“You look like a fish with a hook in your mouth,” he said. “Keys.” He extended his hand for them.
“Come get them,” she mumbled.
In an instant he was on the hood and had her in his arms. Coming out of the kiss he had the keys in his mouth.
“That’s how you get the keys to a woman’s heart,” he said.
“That’s how you reel a fish in,” she countered, teasing. She had been at the camp just short of a year now and she had no doubt her future would be with Lorenzo.
22
March 2002
Vito reassured Rafael that his business with Puro was strictly boxing and he promised it would stay that way. He had no inclination to sell drugs or get involved in any of Puro’s criminal activities. Rafael begrudgingly assented to the boxing. Rafael knew from having a brother who had been a boxer that if boxing was in the blood, no power in the world could keep the fighter from entering the ring.
They stayed up and talked a little, ate beans and rice. Vito decided to sleep outside in the truck bed, under the stars, to be alone. Rafael went to bed and didn’t tell him about his father’s stroke.
Vito thought, snuggling in the sleeping bag in the back of his pickup, that all the rich Puros in the world couldn’t own the stars. His legs were sore, his face ached, and his mind was still swimming with images of the fight. Shifting his head on the gym bag he was using as a pillow, he saw himself walking from the back of the cantina where the fight had been, gloves dangling over his shoulder, leather laces rubbing his neck. It was the first time people had stood and nodded at him with respect.
April 2003
The match with Stud a year back had been one in a series of incidents that ignited the divine plan of his life. First, his father had put him on the scraper. Then he had whipped the grower’s kid who had insulted Carmen and been thrown out of camp. The pipes had crashed through Puro’s Escalade window; his boxer had canceled and Vito had agreed to pay for the damages by taking his place.
He breathed deeply, inhaled the night air. He was amazed that his life consisted of a patchwork of coincidences—nothing planned or merited, his life was as unpredictable as it was satisfying, especially when the ref raised his arm as the winner.
He was becoming familiar with fight fans and it seemed they loved the violence, the drama, and beyond that, cared little about the gladiators in the ring. It was a spectacle or sideshow for them to enjoy.
His growing disaffection for boxing fans, particularly Chicanos and Mexicans, and something about putting his life on the line for what he loved made him feel contempt for those who sat on the sidelines enjoying it. After his first fight and thereafter, for the next nine months and some thirty fights, he nursed a secret repugnance for them.
Vito got serious about training and fought continuously, every three weeks, in warehouses, on flatbed trailers outside of truck stops, at concrete urban basketball courts, in barrio parks, at country bars, on factory floors, and by seaside docks, flattening his opponents as though he were puncturing tires with a knife, deflating the fight in them.
And despite his private disdain for the crowds, he provoked them by shouting, “This fight is for you! For those who sweat to earn their money! Stand up, mojados, stand up, Chicanos!”
Even after many fights, he had much to learn. He had the brawling eagerness of a raw, young champion, punches flailing like storm-hurled stones.
He was learning to use the space in the ring like a bird swerves and cuts and swoops through air, and not even his lack of experience dulled the mesmerizing luster of his youthful movements, in his gangling swing, his awkward darts, his back and sideways missteps and the way he recovered his balance, dodging in those vulnerable pockets of insecurity and fear glinted the sparkle of a deeper source of blinding power, destructive and avenging, shimmering now like a mirror that catches the sunlight and flashes reflections of brilliant rays awakening to its destiny.
After every fight, Vito collapsed in bed aching and lay on his back, inhaling hard to catch his breath as the spinning in his head slowed and he gradually recovered his sensibilities, deeply fulfilled. He dreamed fights, tossing and turning with opponents.
He went to parties with barbecue and beer—lighthearted, festive celebrations. He was becoming the people’s hero. There were bonfires with women and children gathered around telling stories about his fights, his unequalled bravery and mythical strength. There were those who composed corridos and sang about him, strumming guitars. At every gathering, there was a plank set across two fifty-gallon drums and amid the old cars, broken washing machine, bricks, sinks, and splintered benches, flood lamps rigged to the horizontal bar of a swing set without swings lit up a decapitated goat hanging upside down as its blood drained into zinc buckets. Men took shifts turning the homemade barrel roasters as chili seeds popped in the butane roasting cylinders. The freshly butchered goat meat was cooked over fire on spits and all the while people deferred to Vito, clapping for him, patti
ng his back, and crying “El Campeon!” He washed the chili and goat down with tequila.
He’d hang out with the people just long enough to show his gratitude for the food, the same ones who cheered with satisfaction when he almost lost. Everybody loved seeing an upcoming contender win, but losing quenched their appetites, too. He knew that, like all people forming relationships, his fans were two-blooded—lose and they went cold and indifferent, keep winning and they’d sacrifice their lives for you. People were fickle, especially those falling in love with another person. People loved boxers and as long as a boxer won he could do anything he wanted. However, if he lost, he could be the pope’s brother and they’d hate him.
Because his parents were Mexican immigrants, the Mexicans adored him. And because he and his brother Lorenzo were Chicanos, born on this side of the border, the Americans loved him.
He talked loudly and brazenly, didn’t care what others thought and had no interest in social propriety, manners, and sweet appearances. He did without the niceties but harassed fans rooting for the opponent, aggravated them when they booed him, incited spectators with derisive antics in the ring, egging them on with obscene slurs and gestures. He didn’t care because he knew that the first time he lost they’d be on him like a pack of hyenas on a freshly gutted carcass.
Their contradictions annoyed him and it was not his nature to philosophize; he went straight to the mark. They would never file a grievance on their own behalf, yet they whined about their suffering. Patriotic to a fault and proven a thousand times in battle, they’d throw themselves on a grenade to save others, yet were fearful of complaining to the boss about their low wages.
He despised the “I’ll do whatever you want me to do” part of them, the “I’ll work no matter how you treat me,” “I’ll drive myself to death if you want” part of them. He knew how each stood out in the cold waiting for a business owner to drive up and select some of them to work that day. They faithfully observed laws meant to benefit the bosses who stole their labor, stole their hours, and stole their lives away, and yet they taught their children to never steal. He was not like them, he would never beg for a job or be a slave to anyone.
A Glass of Water Page 6