"Tuberculosis?" the doctor repeated impatiently.
"No."
"Ringworm?" he asked, turning my body around to check my back.
"I had it many years ago," I said.
When I was in third grade, I noticed I had two red spots about the size of a quarter, one on the left side of my stomach and another on the back of my scalp. I showed them to Mamá and told her they itched. "The devil made these marks. That's why they're red," she said, not blinking an eye. When she saw I was about to cry, she hugged me and said, "I am kidding, Panchito, es roña. I'll take care of it." She rubbed the red spots with garlic every day, and within a couple of weeks they were gone. The strong smell not only got rid of the ringworm, but it also kept my schoolmates away. Whenever I came near them, they yelled, "You stink like a Mexican!" and sprinted away from me, holding their noses.
"Your back looks fine," the doctor said. I felt an itch in my scalp, but I did not dare scratch it. "What about mental conditions: feeble-mindedness, insanity, psychopathic personality, epilepsy, narcotic drug addiction, chronic alcoholism?"
"No," I said, not knowing what those words meant.
"What about physical defects?"
"None." I figured he did not believe me, because he had me stretch out my arms and walk across the room. He then had me sit on the edge of the examination table, and he tapped my knees with a flat-nosed rubber hammer. My knee jerked so hard that I almost kicked him on the chin. The nurse then checked my weight and height.
"A hundred pounds and four feet eleven inches. You're a bit small for your age," she declared.
It was not the first time I was told that. My classmates at El Camino Junior High School, where I was the smallest kid, reminded me of it every time they chose teams to play basketball during recess.
"You can get dressed now," she said. "We're done."
Roberto went in next. When he came out his face was as red as a beet. He looked like he had been in a fight. His hair was messy and his shirt was half tucked in. He and I compared notes and laughed nervously when we got to the part of undressing in front of the nurse. "Qué vergüenza," he said. Mamá's checkup took a lot longer than Roberto's or mine. She did not say a word about it and Roberto and I did not ask.
After waiting for several days, we were notified that our petition for an immigrant visa had been approved. Papá, Mamá, Roberto, and I were beside ourselves when we got the news. We could not stop smiling. My younger brothers and sister did not understand what it all meant, but they jumped up and down on the stained mattress like grasshoppers. "This calls for a special meal," Mamá said. That evening she went out and bought enchiladas, rice, and beans.
After supper, Papá lay on the bed to rest his back. "I've been thinking about where we go from here," he said, lighting up a cigarette. Back to Santa Maria, of course. Where else? I thought. Papá bit his lower lip and continued. "It's the rainy season; there's little work in the fields during this time, and my back is getting worse." He paused, puffed on his cigarette, and went on, "The only sure thing is Roberto's janitorial job. What if he goes back to Santa Maria and the rest of us go to Guadalajara and stay with my sister Chana? It'll give me a chance to see a curandera about my back. In the spring, when I am cured, we can go back to Santa Maria and I can work in the fields again." My heart fell to my stomach. I did not want to miss more school. I wanted to tell Papá that I did not like his idea, but I did not say anything. Papá never allowed us to disagree with him. He said it was disrespectful.
"What if Panchito goes back with Roberto?" Mamá said. "That way he can help him at work and both can attend school." I knew Mamá had read my mind. She winked at me when she saw me smile.
"You're a grown man, a real macho," Papá said, directing his attention to my brother. "You can take care of Panchito. Verdad, mijo." My brother grinned and nodded.
The thought of being apart from Papá, Mamá, and my brothers and sister saddened me, but the idea of missing school and not being with Roberto pained me even more.
"I'll go back with him, but I'll miss you," I said, holding back my tears.
"We'll miss you too," Mamá said, wiping her eyes.
"I'll send you money every month when I get paid," Roberto said proudly.
"You're a good son," Papá said, motioning for Roberto to sit by his side on the bed.
"They're all a blessing," Mamá added, smiling at Roberto and me and hugging Rorra, Torito, and Trampita.
We decided to leave the hotel that evening to avoid paying for another night. I went with Mamá to the office to check out. I wanted to look at the rocks one more time. The clerk caught my eye and said, "Those are copper pyrite rocks."
"They look like gold," I replied.
"It's fool's gold." He picked up the rock I had taken before and handed it to me. "Here, you can have this one. It'll bring you good luck."
I glanced at Mamá. She smiled and nodded. "Thanks," I said, taking the rock and placing it in my pocket. I am glad I returned it and didn't throw it away, I thought.
We finished packing and headed to the bus station on foot. It was starting to rain, so we hurried. Roberto, Papá, Trampita, and I carried the cardboard boxes. Mamá held Rorra by the hand. Torito and Rubén ran behind us, trying to keep up. "Not so fast!" they cried out. "Wait for us!" Armed guards stopped us at the border gate and asked us for documentation. Their green uniforms gave me the chills. Papá showed them our papers, and they let us cross to Nogales, Arizona.
We were dripping wet by the time we arrived at the bus station. Mamá went up to the counter and bought two one-way tickets to Santa Maria for Roberto and me and five tickets to Guadalajara for the rest of the family. We went to the restroom and dried ourselves with paper towels, then sat in silence on a wooden bench, waiting for the bus. Torito and Trampita were fidgety. They jumped off the bench, ran to the pinball machine, and pushed each other, trying to pull on the handle. Papá made a sharp hissing sound like a rattlesnake to get their attention. He made this noise whenever he was annoyed with something we were doing. They did not hear him, so he hissed louder, but the loudspeaker announcing departures and arrivals drowned it out. With a slight tilt of his head toward the pinball machine, Papá motioned for me to get Trampita and Torito. Papá gave them a stern look and told them to sit and be quiet. I sat between Trampita and Torito and placed my arms around them. I felt sad, thinking how much I was going to miss them.
I glanced at the clock on the wall and went outside to get fresh air. It was pouring rain. Looking up at the dark sky, I wished we were all going back to Santa Maria together. I heard an announcement over the loudspeaker, but I did not pay attention. "Our bus is here, Panchito," Roberto said, as he and the rest of my family approached me from behind. Roberto and I hugged Papá and Mamá and kissed our brothers and sister.
"Que Dios los bendiga," Mamá said, giving us her blessing. Tears came to her eyes as she forced a smile. Roberto and I climbed onto the bus. We took our seat, wiped the fog off the window, and waved. The rain pelted the bus with full force as it pulled away.
Across the aisle, a little boy played horse on his father's lap. He jumped up and down and repeatedly smacked the side of his legs, shouting, "Faster, faster!" I turned away, closed my eyes, and leaned on Roberto's shoulder. I wept silently until I fell asleep.
When I woke up, the rain had disappeared. A strong wind whipped up dust, debris, and gravel and forced the bus to slow down to a snail's pace. Once the wind died down, the bus pulled over at a rest stop next to an old gas station and market. Roberto and I climbed down to stretch our legs. On the side of the station was a makeshift open stand braced by four posts. Hanging from one of the upper-right posts was a crate with a wooden crucifix on it. Roberto and I made the sign of the cross and bowed our heads. I prayed silently that my family would arrive safely in Guadalajara. We climbed back on the bus and continued our journey.
We finally arrived in Santa Maria in the early evening of the next day. We took a cab to Bonetti Ranch, where we were
welcomed by a torrential downpour and a pack of bony stray dogs. The cab drove slowly, bumping up and down and swaying from side to side as it hit potholes full of water. It felt as though we were in a ship in the middle of a stormy sea. Our barrack was cold and lifeless. We placed our boxes on the floor and turned on the kitchen light. "Well, here we are, Panchito," Roberto said sadly. When he saw me choke up, he added, "Time will go by fast, you'll see."
"Not fast enough," I said. We unpacked our boxes and went to bed. Neither one of us slept well that night.
Home Alone
The next morning Roberto and I woke up to the rattling sound of the alarm clock. I turned it off and listened to the silence of dawn. The sounds of Papá's coughing, the rattle of his aspirin bottle, and the rolling of Mamá's twelve-inch lead pipe as she pressed dough to make tortillas were absent. So too were the smells of chorizo and scrambled eggs. I missed Mamá's gentle tapping on my shoulders and tugging of the blanket to wake me up. In the distance I heard the barking of dogs. Every morning they circled the large, empty oil barrels that served as garbage cans. As I got dressed, I heard farm workers warming their car engines before leaving to look for work picking carrots or thinning lettuce.
What I did not miss that morning was emptying the bedpan, which had been one of my regular chores. Papá, Mamá, and my younger brothers and sister used it, but Roberto and I did not. I hated taking out the Folgers coffee can and emptying it in the outhouse every morning before I went to school. I felt embarrassed to be seen by our neighbors, especially the girls. Every day, I tried to convince Mamá that one of my younger brothers, Trampita or Torito, should take over that task, but she did not agree. Holding the bedpan behind me, I would poke my head out the front door to make sure the coast was clear. I would rush to the outhouse, holding the bedpan steady and trying to chase away a pack of hungry dogs that followed me. Don Pancho, one of our neighbors, knew how much I disliked emptying the bedpan and teased me whenever I ran into him. One morning he was coming out of the outhouse as I carried the Folgers coffee can. "What do you have there, Panchito?" he said, smirking.
"Your coffee and pan dulce," I shot back angrily. He was taken by surprise as much as I was. He told Papá, who scolded me for being disrespectful. But Don Pancho never made fun of me again.
Alone in the barrack, Roberto and I took care of regular chores. We made our bed, swept and mopped the floor, and fixed breakfast. My brother washed the dishes and I dried them and put them away. We left the house sparkling clean, just as we did every morning before heading off for school.
Roberto dropped me off at El Camino Junior High School on his way to Santa Maria High School. I was excited to be back at school, but nervous. How far behind in my classes would I be? What would my teachers and classmates say to me? My teachers, Mr. Ken Milo and Miss Ehlis, must have known how I felt because they did not ask me any questions. They seemed happy to see me back. My classmates acted as if I had never left. I figured my teachers must have said something about it to them or they simply forgot. I felt lucky, but anxious, expecting one of them to ask or to say something at any moment. No one asked, but in case they did, I had an answer. I would tell them that the Border Patrol officer had made a mistake thinking I was here illegally, that once I proved to him I was born in Colton, California, he let me back in.
Roberto was late picking me up from school that afternoon. I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw him. He looked troubled.
"I lost my job at Main Street School," he said, teary-eyed.
"What do you mean?" I asked in a panic.
"Mr. Sims was angry with me because I missed so many weeks from work. He said he didn't know where I was, so he hired someone else."
"Didn't you tell him what happened?" I asked.
"Of course not!" he snapped. "I couldn't tell him. When I got the job I said I was an American citizen." He rested his head on the steering wheel, gripping it with both hands. His knuckles turned white. "This means we'll have to go back to the fields." My heart fell to my stomach.
"Again!" I exclaimed, clenching my teeth. My shoulders felt heavier than ever.
For the next two weeks, Roberto and I worked picking carrots and thinning lettuce after school and on weekends when it did not rain. We thinned lettuce using a short hoe. When our backs hurt from stooping over, we thinned on our knees. To ease the pain, we took turns lying flat on our stomachs in the furrows and pressing down on each other's backs with our hands. Working together all day, Saturday and Sunday, Roberto and I managed to finish an acre, for which we were paid sixteen dollars.
Picking carrots was easier than thinning lettuce, but a lot messier. The ground was usually muddy, so our shoes and pants got soaked in mud. We worked on our knees, pulling the carrots out of the ground after they were loosened by a tractor-plow. We topped off the leaves by hand and dumped the carrots in a bucket until it was full. We then emptied the bucket into a burlap sack. We got paid fifteen cents a sack.
During that time we never had carrots or lettuce with our meals. Since neither of us knew how to cook, baloney sandwiches replaced Mamá's delicious taquitos. At supper-time, the hand can opener quickly became our best friend. Almost every day we ate canned ravioli with either canned peas or canned corn. Other times we had chicken noodle soup. For dessert we had a peanut butter and jam sandwich or vanilla ice cream. For breakfast we had scrambled eggs or Cream of Wheat with globs of butter and sugar.
Roberto gave up eating baloney sandwiches when he got a part-time job working at noon at Velva's Freeze, a hamburger and ice cream store located on Broadway, a few blocks from the high school. During the lunch hour on school days, he walked to Velva's Freeze and helped serve ice cream cones. He got paid a dollar an hour and had a hamburger with french fries and a Coke every day.
Mary O'Neill, the owner of Velva's Freeze, was a childless widow in her late fifties. She was short and thin. Her wrinkly, pale skin blended with her short gray hair, and her dark blue eyes sparkled when she talked. Everything she wore was white, including her shoes. The only colors on her were the ketchup and mustard stains on her apron. She liked my brother, and when she found out that he and I were living alone, she invited us to dinner on Saturday. We were to meet her at five-thirty at the ice cream store.
That Saturday afternoon Roberto and I stopped picking carrots at four o'clock and went home to get ready. We were excited and a bit anxious about eating in a restaurant for the first time. I tried to imagine what it would be like. We heated water in a large pot and poured it into a large aluminum tub. We took a bath in the shed, which was attached to the side of our barrack. Papá built it with discarded wood from the city dump. We used Fab laundry detergent to wash our hair because soap and shampoo were too mild to cut the sulfur and oil in the water. We dressed in our best clothes and arrived at Velva's Freeze on time.
"I am so glad you're joining me," Mary said. "Have you been to the Far Western in Guadalupe?"
"We've been to Guadalupe, but not the Far Western," Roberto responded.
"Good! We'll go there," she said enthusiastically. "They're famous for their steaks."
A steak dinner sounded a lot better than canned ravioli. The Far Western restaurant was about nine miles from downtown Santa Maria. It was dimly lit and had dark brown wooden tables and chairs that were thick and heavy. In the middle of one of the dark-paneled walls hung a stuffed moose head with long antlers. I heard deep voices and the clinking of glasses coming from another room. "It's the bar," Mary said, noticing how I was craning to see what it was. "You can't go there—you're too young." She chuckled and lit a cigarette. The waiter, dressed as a cowboy, brought us the menu. I glanced through it, noticing the high prices and a long list of different kinds of steak. I always thought steak was steak.
"What kind of steak do you like?" Mary asked, putting down her menu. Roberto had a blank look on his face. She waited for an answer. I hated her patience at that moment. I expected her to tell us. At home we had no choices; we ate whatever Mamá cooked.
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Breaking the long silence, I finally said: "I'll have whatever you have."
"I am going to have New York steak," she answered.
"Me too," I said quickly.
"Good. What about you, Roberto?"
My brother's face turned red. He glanced at me from the corner of his eye, brought the menu up to his face, and said: "I'll have the same."
"And to drink?" she asked.
"Just water, please," Roberto answered.
"Me too," I said.
"Well, I am going to have a glass of red wine. It goes well with steak," she said. I did not quite understand why red wine and steak went together. Then I noticed that Mary placed one hand on her lap and the other on the table. Papá and Mamá taught us to always have both hands on the table. Roberto must have noticed it too, because he kept changing his mind. One minute he would have both hands on the table, the next minute only one. He finally settled on one, just like Mary. I figured it was the right thing to do, so I did the same. The next thing that caught my attention was that Mary's napkin had disappeared. Roberto's napkin and mine were still on the table. At home we did not have napkins. After taking a sip of wine, Mary lifted her napkin and wiped the corners of her mouth, and then her napkin again disappeared underneath the table. I thought she had dropped it. I pretended to drop mine. As I leaned down to pick it up, I saw Mary's napkin was on her lap. I placed mine on my lap and kicked Roberto under the table at the same time so that he would notice. He caught my signal and placed his napkin on his lap too. During the rest of the meal, Roberto and I did exactly what Mary did. I figured she must have noticed what we were doing because she did things very slowly, giving us time to follow. Roberto and I did not enjoy our meal, but we had a good time being with Mary.
Roberto and I continued going to school and working in the fields after school and on weekends. We missed our family and worried about not being able to send them money to help them out. We were barely making ends meet ourselves. But things were about to change.
Breaking Through Page 2