Motherish

by Laura Rock

  The workers had clothes for just one thing: working. Dress code was a loose pink smock and matching surgical cap. Management was strict about hair; Señor Ramos inspected for flyaway wisps during the mandatory team cheer that began each day. Pride in our product and homeland; excellence second to none. During break, Maru and her friends returned to the topic of his hair obsession as if adding another patch to a quilt they were fashioning together.

  “Regulations, maybe,” she said.

  “Yes, it’s for sanitation,” said Juanita. “I believe that’s the reason.” She echoed Maru loyally, yet sounded independent, more like the spirited ally she used to be before Maru’s brother, Adalberto, had stolen her thoughts.

  “We’re not making food,” Lucinda said. “Or medicine.” She struck a match and lit her cigarette, sucking hard.

  Rosita snorted. “It’s so he can look at your neck, obviously. Sicko.” She tapped her ash onto the weathered picnic table, where they sat during breaks. Beneath the table, a growing pile of butts reminded Maru of the white-tipped buds of the sole plant in the packed dirt yard, a manzanita branching across the rusty fence, continually setting blossoms only to drop them before they could flower.

  “But the uniforms—it’s nice not to worry about what to wear each day,” Maru said, ticking the reasons on her fingers. “If you fall behind, they don’t know immediately who it is. And it’s something we share, isn’t it? It shows we’re all sisters here.”

  “Oh, I was waiting for this,” Rosita said. She groaned. “Maria Eugenia. Maru-baby. You love this dump so much? Is that why you’re always singing? You do realize that over there”—she pointed north, toward the border—“they gain in one hour what we make working all day.”

  “What can we do?” Juanita said. “There is much we cannot change.” She bestowed a sad smile of resignation on Maru, who suffered Adalberto’s absence with her, if not so acutely.

  Rosita exhaled a stream of smoke. “There will be no change as long as we do nothing. Think about it: they will need us even more in the time of free trade than they did before.”

  Rosita kept them informed about the twists and turns of the North American treaty, whether they were interested or not. It was the reason so many new maquiladoras were springing up, she said, and it represented an opportunity, if the workers could just figure out how to express themselves through strong action.

  Maru shrugged. This side or that, she didn’t envy anyone. She hugged herself and felt, beneath the smock, her golden treasure. It sloshed with every movement. She was probably the only one who could hear it, but she’d been pretend-coughing whenever the machines stopped, wanting to fill the sudden void with a sound more definite than the ringing in her ears and the buzzing of the gigantic lights mounted overhead.

  Her lips twitched. Smuggling something as disgusting as urine into the plant was hilarious. Only Juanita knew, for it was she who had donated the precious fluid that was going to get Maru through test day. If she flunked the test, she’d be marched out of the building and replaced by another girl from the perpetual lineup of applicants. Rosita’s sister had been terminated in just this way, so the company could avoid paying motherhood benefits. Soon enough, she wouldn’t be able to hide the pregnancy, but until then she intended to keep her income. Even though her plan was to leave this place, she wanted the leaving to be on her own terms. She still needed to save money. And she still had to convince her husband that her new dream was worth following—the adventure that would carry them far from here. And that meant, for now, concealing her condition from the bosses.

  Señor Ramos appeared on the other side of the fence, pacing. They took their time standing up. Rosita cursed under her breath and ground her cigarette into the dirt.

  Maru was delayed by her need for the bathroom, so she was alone when Señor Ramos stopped her. They stood just inside the shop door, which was left open to catch a non-existent breeze. She stepped back, but he held her arm with moist hands, forcing her closer. He didn’t accord her the respect due to a married woman.

  “Tough times ahead”—he checked her name tag—“Maria Eugenia.” He scanned the cloudless horizon of the industrial park as if taking in the nightly business news while she waited, wondering where she might find thread to match the thin blue-washed-over-grey sky. “We find ourselves in a surplus employee situation,” he continued. “Definitely, no syndicates are needed here. Take care, my dear. Little gatherings turn quickly into nefarious activities.”

  “Señor?” Maru reclaimed her arm and corrected the distance between them.

  “Ladies chatting might be swapping recipes or they might be holding undesirable meetings; how am I to know? But you’re a team player, I’m sure. Listen, I’m doing you a favour by telling you.” He leaned in and sniffed deeply. “Is that perfume?”

  Maru focussed her gaze on the open collar of his guayabera and spoke softly to his wattles. “Señor, we talk only of church. You yourself would be most welcome at our services—even my husband and brother like to go.” She flushed at this bit of embroidery: Hector refused to attend church on the grounds that he was allergic to bullshit, and Adalberto had just gone away again. She and Juanita were the churchgoers. Just two nights ago, they attended services at the new storefront place, Congregación del Buen Pastor, for the first time. Everyone called each other Sister or Brother there. It was a simple whitewashed space with folding chairs, so unlike the gilded, incensed cathedral where Maru, the few times she’d ventured in, never dared to open her mouth in prayer or song. On Wednesday night, she sang like a goldfinch and flew home with a light heart.

  Señor Ramos lifted her chin, forcing her to look at his pale, plump face, which struck Maru as babyish for a man of his age and position. “Church, is it?” he said, as she held her breath. “I suggest that you girls watch yourselves.”

  A week had passed since Adalberto’s latest departure. He worked on a picking crew that rolled north with the hot weather. Maru knew better than to hope for a letter from her brother during the long months of his absence. Any news would have to come from Juanita, her almost-sister-in-law; she would receive phone calls, but Maru didn’t begrudge desperate lovers. If only Juanita would quit her mooning. Just this morning on the bus to work, bouncing over potholes, she’d smoothed Juanita’s cheek, gently chiding. “Birds come back, don’t they? And butterflies? Everything has its season.”

  “My Adal-beerrrr-to,” Juanita wailed. She opened her mouth to start again, but Maru clapped a hand over her lips and they collapsed in giggles.

  Juanita regarded her seriously. “Don’t you feel sick, Maru?” She grabbed the seat to steady herself. “This ride makes me want to puke, and I’m not even—”

  Maru covered Juanita’s mouth again.

  “We’re here,” she said. “Let’s sew something beautiful.”

  Sitting with Hector after supper every evening, Maru transformed the boring quality control tags that she carried home. Last night, she made bronze suns in the Aztec style, one after another. She stopped to study her needlework, then pulled the thread taut and knotted it in back. This sun beamed at her; it winked as if to say, how sly you are, my creator, how skillful.

  Humming a salsa tune—causing Hector to keep time with his shoulders for a few beats and ask, “Shall we dance, querida?”—Maru stippled the rays with silver. Practise had paid off. Her pieces were becoming more intricate, miniature tapestries showing off the wealth of colour in her mending basket. She’d been collecting the thread at work; little bits weren’t missed.

  This design was another joyful variation of her repertoire of flower-laden hearts, musical notes, rainbows, and stars. Lately, Maru had been experimenting with stylized patterns that held no obvious meaning but still made her happy, and that emotion couldn’t help but be transmitted to the ultimate owner of the garment. Her needle went in and out and around the tag until it was impossible to see the 867—the number of the onl
y worker who cared enough to customize jackets before they were baled like hay, loaded into shipping containers, and trucked northward.

  “Why do you bother with those things?” Hector said, flipping channels to find their telenovela. “This week Luisa is supposed to find her daughter. You know, she wasn’t just kidnapped, she’s also being poisoned. Pay attention to the clues or you’ll miss it.”

  Maru shook her head. “Such a pity men can do only one thing at a time.”

  Why bother indeed? She had wondered many times without reaching a conclusion. Maybe she was driven to make her art in the same way the great Rivera was moved to paint the life of his people on public walls. A vision of herself as Rivera’s rightful heir began to take shape; she stared at it through her stitches.

  “Ah, mi querida,” Hector murmured, leaning his head on her shoulder, “come back to me.”

  She stopped sewing to stroke his unruly black hair, but she did not come back. From a vantage point above and behind her body, she zoomed out to watch a scene unfold: the magnificent National Palace in the DF—she’d never been to the capital city but recognized the building known to every schoolchild—and beneath its red awnings stood men on either side of a giant painting covered with black cloth. As the painting suddenly stretched taller, the men scaled ladders that appeared as if by magic. They were expectant, waiting for the secret signal to unveil her art to the crowd that had gathered in the Zócalo in order to be among the first to see it. And now it was not a painting, but a two-storey tapestry pinned to cornices, and now a flag rippling in the breeze, hanging from the tallest pole in the city.

  “Hola, what planet are you visiting? Are you time-travelling?”

  “Shh.” She pointed at the TV, playing a montage of Luisa and her extended family in times of crisis and celebration, first young and then older, spooling through past seasons to reach the present one, which held the nation in thrall as the poisoned hostage storyline advanced.

  Forget Rivera, maybe she was just a humble graffiti artist, a kid with a can of spray paint who never tired of leaving her mark. Not a star like Luisa or her captured daughter—not a main character at all. There was value in being anonymous, even a kind of freedom. She must be careful not to get caught. That was why she paced herself, inserting only one decorated tag for every thirty or so jackets that she produced. The official tag covered hers completely. Señor Ramos discovering her embellishment was as likely as a camel passing through the eye of a needle.

  Her body had not changed on the outside, yet Maru felt different. Her breasts tingled without warning, flashing on and off. In the lower abdomen, nothing definite; some days she couldn’t even accept that she was pregnant. But peeing all the time was becoming a problem.

  The zone superintendent, an old woman named Teresa, said, “Hija,” when Maru asked for the washroom pass. “Again?”

  “And what should I do? I have to go.”

  “Save some for the test. Licenciada Vargas will be here shortly.” Teresa gave her the pass.

  “Yes, it will soon be our turn to piss in the cup. Good luck, abuelita,” Maru said, squeezing Teresa’s shoulder as she passed.

  “Smart mouth! You’re the one who needs it,” Teresa called after her.

  Squatting in the dingy stall, Maru remembered how she and Hector had planned to wait before starting their family, saving money for the future. Only they weren’t planners by nature, and eventually she persuaded him not to decide at all. “There are hidden gifts in everything,” she told him, “to be revealed at the right time.” But how was it that she had not yet found the moment to reveal the presence of the baby to Hector?

  Maru shook the container and listened to the liquid. She cupped her breasts, marvelling at how heavy and warm they were.

  Back at her station, she surveyed her growing pile of completed jackets. Other girls made mistakes or nicked themselves, ruining the product with their blood, but Maru had nimble fingers. She pushed fabric through the thrumming machine, singing against the noise. Today she chose mariachi music. If it weren’t for the din, anyone would recognize the tune as an old familiar played by strolling men in plazas across the land. Her friends would tease her again about being a sentimental fool, tell her to give hip hop a try. Well, let them have their fun. She looked around the shop until she could pick Juanita out of the pink crowd. She sat a few rows away, side by side with Rosita, both bent over their machines.

  Repetitive motion freed her mind to wander. A worry: Señor Ramos’s warning this morning. Though more intimate in tone, it reminded her of his rant last week, when he had stopped production with a shrill whistle and gathered everyone around him. He started making what seemed like a routine announcement—one of their shipments had been rejected, he said in measured tones, because of deficiencies. They would have to work double shifts to replace the order they’d already filled. The girls shuffled side to side, arms folded, as he continued his speech. He touched on the company’s past quotas and future goals, analyzing its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities—Free trade! Enormous new markets!—and threats, such as lazy, pathetic girls. His oration shifted to the history of the plant during his twenty-year tenure as manager. He recounted the vision of the founding executive team, of which he had been very proud to be part. The more Señor Ramos rambled, the more agitated he became. “Look how far we’ve fallen,” he shouted, emphasizing the word “fallen” by picking up a steam iron and heaving it at the far wall. Metal struck cinder block with a clang. The audience had not been making any noise to speak of yet became more completely silent after the iron was thrown. It was hard not to turn to inspect the crumbling gash left on the wall, but they faced Señor Ramos steadfastly. “We lose all the profit, do you understand? The customers expect better of us!” He dumped a box of scissors on the floor. His face reddened, and flecks of spit fell on some girls. “What don’t they want, those junkie bastard norteamericanos? They’re addicted to what we send to their malls! More and more and more, they want.” He walked out then, leaving Licenciada Vargas behind to make nice. Her speech, a polished meditation on learning from mistakes, was much shorter.

  And now she stood at the front of the room, tapping girls on the shoulder. Under her calculating gaze, Maru finished the placket of a right sleeve and began a left. She looked up once to see Señor Ramos scurry in, whisper in Licenciada Vargas’s ear, and be dismissed by her. He was the chief, but the coiffed, high-cheeked head of human resources commanded power of her own.

  The test was in progress: the chosen ones filed out to the washroom, where nurses stood by to document illicit pregnancy hormones. After each row, the lady turned on spike heels and studied the workers as if making a big decision. Maru almost burst out laughing. She couldn’t wait to tell Hector about this—how stupid the managers thought the workers were. Hmm, she thought sarcastically, who will be next?

  Perhaps the test had once been a game of chance, but now it was a spreadsheet like the ones charting zone productivity, updated and hung inside the workers’ entrance each month, for all to see. Licenciada Vargas spent five days in a zone; each day she picked every fifth girl; by the end of the week, all were tested. Today was Maru’s day. And Juanita’s day too. Another hour at most, she estimated, watching the fine lady wrapped in her swooping shawl despite the heat, the tropical-print silk a protective layer between her and them. Waiting was hard, but Maru had a plan. She began to sing a lullaby.

  When Adalberto returned every year, it was his custom to talk and talk, in soft, rapid torrents, until he wound down to his normal state of silence. Only then did his tense face relax. She and the rest of the family, cousins, aunts, and uncles, would settle around a bonfire, drinking cold beers, and listen patiently. They, the ones who had been left behind, knew he needed to re-enact for them his days away from home: the harvest of smooth tomatoes and prickly cucumbers, still radiating heat; the calluses on his hands and sweat trickling into his eyes; and the waves of exha
ustion crashing over his body after he’d picked a field clean. He described the state of every trailer he’d slept in along the way, including the vermin. “True fact,” he said once. “You can tell how far you’ve travelled by the size of the bugs. The colder the air, the smaller they grow.” Sometimes he attended hit-or-miss schools for migrant workers, not for nonsensical math lessons that made his eyes blur, but for the free dinner, and, in one particular rural school, the pretty teacher. When he got to the school, they knew he’d reached the end of his narrative. “You’d like that teacher, Hector,” he said, winking, “but I don’t know if Maru would like her too much.” She slapped his knee as he chugged his drink.

  The week before last, as he prepared to leave yet again, Adalberto had surprised her by pulling her aside and saying, “Next year, we go all together. You and Hector will come with me.” His tone was urgent. For his part, he’d made the decision and there was nothing else to say.

  She held him at arm’s length, beaming. “Perhaps we will surprise you,” she said, speaking to him but looking at Hector over his shoulder. Hector felt the summons and came to her side. He raised a bottle to salute his brother-in-law’s journey.

  Walking home, though, Hector scoffed at the invitation. It was a joke. A misbegotten sentiment to ease the separation. She did not disagree, for, before now, she hadn’t contemplated leaving their city, the web of relations who were her people and Adalberto’s, the job that allowed her mind to wander through brilliant patterns and colours of her future creations as she filled her quotas.

  In the days since Adalberto had asked her to come, the idea fluttered in her mind like a scrap of unfinished fabric calling for edging. It was both task and emblem, buoying her spirits at in-between moments of her day, as she reached for the pieces of a pattern to assemble, and as she rode the bus home in near-darkness.