A Glass of Water

by Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Consistent with her optimistic outlook, Carmen thought one could make pie out of bitter apples and she did just that. Dora and Daniel, a married couple who were two of the oldest and longest employed migrants at the camp, answered their door to accept the delivery of a manila envelope. They opened it to find it contained a notice of a no-interest loan to start the flower nursery they had dreamed of. Hollering happily and waving the envelope, Dora rushed to share the news with her sewing-circle friends.

  Carmen extended her vision of a self-sustaining community and UPS arrived one day and unloaded boxes of books. Besides poetry and novels, she had ordered dozens of books entitled Get Green—a textbook with lesson plans about how to turn a neighborhood economy into a flourishing green community replete with solar panels, barrels to catch and save rain, and organic gardening.

  And as this was all happening, oil tankers packed with weed roared through the dead of night to docking stations in Las Cruces, were unloaded, and the marijuana was delivered to affluent neighborhoods in Santa Fe, Denver, Phoenix, Dallas, Santa Barbara, and Chicago, among other places.

  30

  September 2006

  Casimiro thinks.

  The light is on and I see him in the shed.

  She gave that talk this afternoon, says a wound opens in her every time she enters the boss’s house and sees his Mexican maids, gardeners, and cook. Opening the door and the yard gate and walking away from his yard, a wound opens in her.

  She’s a smart one that Carmen.

  Wound of shame? Wound of rage? Wound over how they’ve treated Mexicans, Chicanos, Indios?

  I, too, feel it in my muscles, my brain, my fingers and toes, the numbness on my right side. There’s a red feeling like fire that pours from a crack inside me.

  It is the wound-pain of not being recognized, entering a place and having no one greet you. Waiting at a table in a restaurant for a long time and no one comes to take your order. It is walking through a whole day and no matter where you go, there are citizens, media, organizations, and politicians telling you in every way that you don’t matter, don’t breathe, don’t count, don’t belong, don’t deserve even floor crumbs of the American dream.

  Carmen is right. For years he’s been toying with us like we were one of his dogs, carrying on in his good-old-boy language of the rich.

  He’s hammered meaninglessness into me, burrowing a dark churning force of self-hate to the depths of my soul. I accepted it, part of the day, present in every breeze, in every row, in every leaf, every whack of the hoe, every bead of sweat trailing down my back, in every tractor and truck and sack. It anchored on a bone of despair and in my mind reproduced a thousand times, its ebb and flow consuming me until, reluctantly, I gave in to this fate of poverty, of no opportunity. Worthlessness.

  The truth is we all have a choice to stay or leave and the fields didn’t have cage bars on them. I could’ve left. But I didn’t. And years later, after I vowed that my children would do better, would not have to endure the life I’ve had to, the light in the shed is on where Lorenzo is binding crates. Back a few years I should have stood with the protestors and boycotters and fought for a better life but I was afraid. I had my family and I sacrificed better paying jobs, accepted inhumane treatment, worked sixteen-hour days for three dollars an hour, but at least we had food on the table.

  When I was eight, in Mexico, the American dream peered down on me from the stars, peeked at me from behind the moon, galloped through the canyons of my boyhood home and over the fields I loved and hated, nibbling the corn kernels that sprinkled the road from the cobs heaped on the tractor bumping up and down over tread ruts and wagon-wheel trenches. And like a happy dog out scaring birds from bushes, first light was a welcoming paradise to my eye.

  I could smell the American dream in the sweet odor of cedar and juniper. At siesta time I was lulled by the peaceful notes a worker’s accordion sounded from under the coolness of a wooden plank bridge, or I admired it in the religious statues carved from scrap wood and read its liturgical parables in the water irrigating our cornfield. I tell you, it was everywhere that was good.

  When I killed that man in the hotel, it did something to my vision of the American dream. I prayed and prayed for forgiveness from God and tried to forget the crime I committed—maybe I didn’t forget it, but I buried it. I felt it inside me but after a while I trained my mind not to visualize it.

  I remember the first time the American dream took hold of me.

  Its toddler’s feet grew into my boots, its shoulders and arms stretched into my broadening shirt, it was enchanted using my brown eyes to see with. I was unable to contain my willingness to challenge myself to improve my life. I came without a passport, unknown. No birth certificate, green card, or anything else to label or pin me down.

  Getting in those crops before they spoil still stands as the highest law of the land. Every cop; INS, DEA, or border patrol agent, judge or prosecutor knows that putting fruit, vegetables, and meat on the table comes first. If the slave work stopped, the American dream would stop—shrivel up and rot sure as an apricot on the ground. Food must be on the table. That is more important than the laws prohibiting Mexicans from entering America.

  Imagine an America without wine, fish, bread, or catered banquets, without sweatshops to sew famous-name athletic gear, no Tiger Woods golf clubs, no Air Jordans, no Martha Stewart clothes, no clean streets.

  That’s why I am here, to service them, to make sure they pay low wages to make their money go further, to wash and change the oil on their five trucks they never drive, to clean and keep up their three houses they never live in, to stand in line on fifteen-hour shifts in their chicken factories, pig farms, and slaughterhouses.

  If Americans don’t get their way, the American dream breaks down, crumbles.

  They’d challenge me to see who could cut or pick faster and I never lost: hippie, weed head, pool hustler, barber, mitote, wino, scavenger, charity case, beauty queen, whiner, and Mexican wannabe gringo—I beat them all.

  I am close to the ground, with short legs and arms. I was fast.

  Over the years, in the fields, I made many friends who returned to Mexico. And each Friday, at the end of the day, many of us workers walked down the dirt road to wait for the mailman, hoping for news from Mexico.

  Away from home, we are a very lonely people, isolated from the world. We have no address, no number or name in the telephone book; no one outside of camp knows us. We raise our families prudently. In camp, we consider ourselves loving, religious, respectful people. Beyond camp, we are hunted down like criminals, considered aliens, and at any moment we can be handcuffed and hauled away like garbage in INS jeeps. Letters, then, keep many happy. I guess water understands dry soil the way I understand a letter from the few friends I’ve made.

  But after forty years I am tired. Now, in my wheelchair, what use can they have for a worthless, worn-out old man?

  The light still burns in the packing shed. My son works late.

  Nopal would be proud of him. Her portrait has an unyielding claim on my heart. It hasn’t been easy to carry on without her and I imagine what it would be like to have us together again.

  On workdays I was always up before the roosters crowed or the trucks roared into the yard to load up workers; she’d be standing outside, slapping her gloves to ward off the chill. Sunday mornings we’d lie in bed and laugh and talk and eat. I’d wear my best and only suit for church, then afterward, friends would visit and she’d cook a big lunch. She would be made-up, her hair brushed out loosely, and in her red skirt and white blouse she looked stunning. Conjuring her face in my mind always sweeps away the warm ashes of remorse.

  Her absence burns and, as always, the healing of the wound starts with looking at the land around me. Blue sky. Night stars. Moon. Sunlight on the leaves. And the magical air I breathed many a morning, I believe was drawn from the same place God lives.

  I accept my stroke. I don’t need to walk to enjoy the striking clarity
of water streaming from the Rio Grande into ditches, or to inhale the fragrance of prairie plants—sumac, purple bee plant, ground lichen, juniper mistletoe. A good day draws me into the potential it possesses and the growing warmth of the morning makes me feel that something might happen to dispel the thorn of despair lodged in my throat—it digs deeper each day until it will scratch the surface of my heart and puncture it.

  I stare up at the stars, distracted by guilt, thinking that I could have done something to prevent her death. I have become overly protective of Lorenzo. I didn’t do a good job, though: Lorenzo is working late in the shed tonight. (If I look the other way, to the boss’s house, I’ll see they’re playing tennis under the lights.) I should have given my sons a better life, at least a decent education. They deserve better. I hope they strike; I’ll be with them, viva la huelga.

  31

  March 2007

  Rafael finally agreed, after days of pleading and begging, to train Vito. Nine years ago he had made a solemn vow to La Virgen de Guadalupe that he would never enter into the boxing world again. He had managed his brother and he still blamed himself for his brother’s death—from a blood clot in the brain while he was jogging on the ditch bank one morning. But seeing Vito box was like hearing God speak to his heart, telling him to guide Vito.

  Before agreeing to train him, Rafael had to clear things with Puro. He laid down a set of rules that Puro had to swear he would abide by. Puro would put up all the money for training, food, travel, and equipment, and would set up the venues and do all the publicity. They knew what their roles were and they shook on it.

  Rafael had witnessed such a phenomenon twice in his lifetime—Muhammad Ali and Roberto Durán—and he had never dared to imagine that one day he might manage and train a boxer of their caliber. But Vito was just as blessed and talented. Rafael watched the crowds and saw their reverence and awe for Vito, the beam of a growing star gleaming in their eyes, shining brighter than anyone imagined.

  Rafa pulled in to the scrap yard and handed Vito an envelope of money. “You pulled it off, smart ass,” he smiled, referring to last night’s fight. “I thought he was going to kill you but you pulled it off. There’s enough lettuce there to buy yourself some nice clothes.”

  Vito thumbed the bills the way a dealer shuffles cards and replied, “No faith. I could see it in your eyes.”

  Rafa shrugged.

  “It’s about the risk. That’s what gets my heart going. And I’m just tuning up the carbs. Wait till you see me smoke the rubber. I need bigger fights.”

  A bunch of Vito’s boxer friends were standing around nearby, including Ignacio, his coworker and corner man, who nodded in agreement.

  “We could put an ad in the paper, take all comers. Headline it in the Sunday sports section.”

  “These are illegal,” Rafa said. “You can’t be advertising these fights.”

  “Yeah, but I got an idea. Come on, get out of the car and listen to it.” With Rafa and Ignacio all ears, Vito started, “Rodeos. Me and my brother used to go to them all the time. Small towns have them. There’s always these rich ranchers that show up, and when small towns gather, it’s all about grudge matches—I mean hundred-year-old grudges, from way back to the conquistadores times. These small-village people have long memories of being slighted or treated unjustly. So and so stole family land, cheated cousin so and so, screwed the sister and left her. You get the drift? Everyone wants to settle an old score and they do it by betting.”

  “We set up a match there, and I’ll tell you, some of those white ranchers got bookoo dollars. I want their money in my pocket: call it back wages. I’ll collect for my parents, too. Hell, for all my peoples’ back wages.”

  “I’ll think about it. Rodeos?” Rafael said, shaking his head.

  Inside his house, Rafael poured a cup of coffee from his thermos and sat down by the window. He had blamed himself for a long time when his brother died. He had been working him in the backyard, pushing him hard with the body bag, the speed bag, a little jump rope, sparring, and then a five-mile jog—when he fell—and he had died in Rafael’s arms.

  Rafael had told Vito one morning a week before, “When I saw you, that night I scuffled with Puro, in your first match, I didn’t want to admit it but I saw it—those fists of yours, the natural flow of your feet, your head bobbing and shoulders weaving like you were dancing, clearly, you had magic. Understand one thing—God will be watching us.”

  Training started one morning when Rafa made Vito run up and back a mile along the riverbank of wet sand, carrying a knapsack of rocks. The monotony of the seamless sand made Vito fall into a trance, his lungs and legs numbed.

  “It’ll strengthen your ankles. Hechale carbón! Put yourself into it one more time. Thirty minutes, come on. Go, go, go.”

  A month later Rafael changed it up. “Now you train for agility,” he said. “Roll, crouch, move left and right. Follow the path along the river and do not hit any branches in your way. Go to the Fourth Street bridge and turn back. Go!”

  Rafael fine-tuned Vito’s stance and the position of his hands and elbows, training him to duck, lean, and counterpunch. He ran him ten miles a day, had him sparring twenty rounds and slamming the body bag with such ferocity Rafa’s shoulder stayed sore.

  Vito slept deeply and, in the morning, still exhausted, he repeated the routine. He trimmed out jumping rope and pummeling the speed and midriff bag. One day blurred into the next, the only dividing line between night and day was pain, more pain.

  He changed from being a backstreet scuffler into a sleek work of beauty. Precise punching made the ring the square sheet of white paper where he composed his poetry; his fancy footwork made observers stop what they were doing and look, his fists blocking or spring-loaded. His ferocity, under constant compression, could explode or prowl for the right time to strike or counter.

  Every day at noon, Vito sat on a picnic bench outside the gym, drinking a strawberry soda, eating tamales and burritos from a chuck wagon in the parking lot. Lowrider kids leisurely reclined on car fenders; they liked hanging around him. Boxers from other gyms came to see him work out and their presence re-charged and powered him—he wanted them to take the message: he was the best.

  Legend grew around him. Word got around that he’d made his shoes from a deer he’d caught on foot, and gossip branched into myth, becoming a story of how he’d taken it down with his own bare hands.

  Leaning his arms and shoulders on the ropes every day at workouts, Rafa would yell, “Remember the lesson: let no man take your corner. It’s yours, all you have, you die defending that corner. Theirs is on the street, yours is in the ring. But nobody, nobody, comes to take your corner—you understand?

  “Never forget those kids on the streets—addicted, homeless, in gangs and without hope, in despair—but still, how they’re willing to die to defend a concrete curb, willing to fight protecting their corner on a dingy street without lights and worth nothing. Nothing in the universe is theirs except a little corner on a dark street smelling of vomit and drunk’s piss and littered with junkie needles and crack pipes and vials. A corner, it’s all they have of heaven, but it means everything to them, makes them visible to the world that makes them invisible, makes them count in a world that discounts them, and they’re prepared to kill for that corner, to give up their lives for that small dark piece of hell.

  “Now you show me how you’ll protect your corner. Last man standing, let’s see it, let’s see it!”

  32

  I am the afternoon sand that the gust scatters. Inhaled into lungs and nostrils and swallowed by mouths, I fuse into bloodstreams, blend into beating hearts, and swell into pulses. So strange that I learn new things about my family, am inhaled into the lungs of my son Vito, always the defender of the poor, balancing justice scales in the ring when the courts always favor the rich. Words reverberate in his marrow and beneath his tongue and in the back of his brain with a mysterious vibration that hums in his soul, rippling into ever-deepening
unknown in himself. The strange power he feels when he speaks to the crowd lingers in his mouth long after a fight.

  I am his breath when he steps to his corner, flinging his head back to loosen up his neck muscles. He disrobes, bounces on the balls of his feet, and, as the announcer calls out his name and points to his corner and Vito raises his hand, his corner is the center of the universe.

  It isn’t like he wants to be a leader. In fact, the first time he heard himself say anything provocative was more to get people to pay to see him fight than to be a human-rights activist.

  His talent as a boxer neutralizes the powers of cops, judges, and border patrol agents—defies their authority. Each punch relays the message that he waited all his life for this and he vaguely understood its power. The words he uses to give them pride pushes out from inside him. He has no credentials, no diploma, nothing to point out that his experience is theirs.

  But he knows that behind his verbal provocations and his clownish antics, he makes people turn their attention to him, he intrudes on their space until they acknowledge him.

  As the words come forth from his heart, strung together like grains of rice, to people holding out their souls like wooden bowls, his words feed some deep hunger in their hearts. He would yell out to them, making them count, bringing a smile to their malnourished hearts.

  And, if only temporarily in time and space, he was one of them and his champion presence made up for their lack of money. His taking a beating round after round made sense of their tortuous crossing of dangerous deserts on foot. His facing fighters intent on destroying him made sense of evading the armed gangs of smugglers and traffickers who wanted to rob, rape, and kidnap them. He gave their survival dignity not disgrace.