Broken Ground

by Karen Halvorsen Schreck

  “Thank you!” Silvia calls from where she sits on the riverbank, resting her back against a fallen tree.

  “Es mi placer,” I say.

  The longer I work at the washing, the more it does become my pleasure. I am clumsy compared to the other women, and I move much more slowly, trying to stay steady on my feet. But soon I realize this is a benefit. The children, seeing how much I’m sloshing about, gravitate to me. They seem to think I intend to get wet. Soon I am as drenched as they are; there’s no reason why I should try to stay dry. I wade deeper and deeper into the water. It’s not just fun; it feels good to boot—good to get really, truly clean. (Assuming the water is clean; I try not to swallow it.) Between dunking, scrubbing, and wringing out wet things, I cut my hand through the current so that arcs of water spew over the kids, who are soon splashing me in return. The women watch my antics, laughing and murmuring to one another. They might be laughing at me; they might be laughing with me. For the moment, I don’t care.

  I’m washing the last thing in the basket—one of Silvia’s dresses—when my feet skid out from beneath me and I go down, bubbles and dress churning in the murk all around. The slow current prods me, its pull surprisingly strong, and I panic. I claw my way to the surface, gasping for air, to see the children doubled over, they’re laughing so hard. The elderly women laugh, too, more openly this time, and two of them wade out to me and help me back to shore. “Gracias,” I say, and they laugh at this, too—at my clunky accent. I join in, not wanting them to think I’m offended.

  I spread out Silvia’s dress to dry, as I have all the other clothes, then go to sit beside her.

  “Well done,” she says.

  “I hope so.” I work on wringing out my dress.

  “You made some friends, Ruth.” I turn to see the children edging toward us. With a suppressed groan, Silvia tries to get up. I stand to help her. “It will take some time for the things to dry. I think we should go back and rest while they do,” she says. “I will tell the other women we will be back soon, or they will do our work for us.”

  “I don’t mind waiting here.” I catch Silvia frowning at me. “I’ll take it easy, I promise! But perhaps I should walk you home and then return?”

  “If you take it easy.” She sighs, glances again at the children. “You want to teach? Maybe even these littlest can learn something, claro?”

  “Claro.”

  BY THE TIME the clothes are dry—as dry as they’re going to get, with the sun lowering in the sky—the children and I have made mud pies. I have been a very slow-moving horse to ride. We’ve all been horses in a herd, with me the oldest, most cautious one. We’ve pretended to be other animals, too—birds, cats, dogs. We don’t have to speak each other’s language or, as is true of some of the littlest ones, say much at all. We understand each other well enough.

  Toward the end of our time, I sit down to take a rest. A few of the youngest children curl up next to me; soon they are asleep. The others continue to play. They cast frequent looks my way. It’s all I can do to keep from joining them, but the throbbing at the back of my skull, and the little girl nestled in my lap, ensure that I stay put.

  In the sun, resting with children all around, I find myself at ease for the first time since my expulsion. I consider writing Mother and Miss Berger, and it doesn’t seem an impossible task. What will I tell them? The truth: where I am now, and how I came to be here, and how I hope to stay awhile. If college was all theory, then assisting at Kirk Camp could be considered practice. I could say that. I form sentences in my mind, transcribe them on imaginary pages, the letters I will send to Mother and Miss Berger: Kirk Camp will be its own kind of education. In fact, my schooling here has already begun.

  When the other women begin to collect their laundry, I rouse the children and gather up Silvia and Luis’s clothes. I join them, lugging and dragging laundry up the hill. Some of the children accompany me, chattering away, laughing and lending a hand. But once we reach the camp, they scatter to follow the other women down various streets and paths, heading toward the places they call home.

  I find Silvia asleep on the narrow mattress she shares with Luis. She undid her braid; her hair spreads in loose black waves across her pillow. She stirs, made restless by the sound of the door opening and closing, but she doesn’t wake. Quietly, I set the basket of folded clothes at the foot of her bed. The clock on the floor beside Silvia reads five. I want to lie down, too, especially as six o’clock, Thomas’s dinner break, is fast approaching. I’ve been hoping that tonight I might watch him teach for the first time. A rest might make this possible.

  I start toward my cot, but then I see Silvia’s black book open on the table. This is the book she searched through for the proper herbs and methods to nurse my concussion. From it, she deduced what dried plant leaves would work best. She took me out to the garden she’d established behind the cabin; it grew in a carefully tended bed much like those Thomas and I built for his parents. Netting covered the plants—protection against birds, insects, and animals. Silvia lifted a swatch of the netting and picked a handful of leaves. Along with the growing things, dried herbs bound in tight bouquets hung upside down from the edge of the shack’s roof, which is woven from palm fronds. Silvia took down a few of these as well, and then we went back inside. “I inherited my work,” she told me as she ground the herbs, using a mortar and pestle. And then she revealed that the black book had originated with a long-deceased grandmother. The book had been supplemented with new discoveries and understanding acquired by later generations of women in the family. Silvia pointed out certain pages, written in an unfamiliar language. “Nahuatl. The old way of speaking,” she explained. Descriptions and directions were written in the book in Latin and Spanish as well, on pages stiff and stained with age, and peppered with pressed leaves, flowers, and herbs, exacting drawings of trees and animals, and anatomical sketches—parts of the body, whole, sound, and vital; parts of the body, injured, diseased, or infirm. There were sketches of women ministering to other women and men—applying ointments or poultices, binding wounds and broken limbs, too.

  With a start, I see that the book is open to a series of sketches of a woman giving birth.

  I turn quickly to Silvia. She lies on her side, facing me, frowning in her sleep, eyebrows drawn together like the wings of a blackbird. She is sweating, her upper lip wet, her simple dress damp at the scooped neckline and beneath her breasts. Her strong brown arms hold her belly protectively. She’s kicked off the blanket; below her knees, her bare calves and feet are exposed. I catch my breath at the sight of her ankles. They are terribly swollen, swollen as I’ve never seen before—skin straining, mottled red and purple with broken blood vessels. Her dusty feet are puffy, too, deeply marked by the straps of her woven sandals, toes ballooning around jagged nails. Silvia is a bird-boned woman turned bear-like at her ankles and feet. Two months until her due date. If this swelling isn’t relieved, how will she endure it?

  I choose not to lie down on my cot after all. I sit at the table, and squinting through my headache, try to understand the words and the pictures on the pages before me. This page was written in Spanish, but the language used is far more sophisticated than anything I know. I carefully turn the brittle pages, trying to find a sketch of a pregnant woman with swollen limbs, or a sketch of swollen ankles and feet—anything that might illuminate Silvia’s condition. But there’s nothing that I can decipher.

  So I turn back to where Silvia left the book open, and I keep watch over her. I listen to her breathing, her occasional murmurs and moans.

  Six o’clock comes and goes, then seven o’clock. But Luis doesn’t return for dinner at his usual time; Thomas doesn’t knock at the door. Thomas’s absence doesn’t surprise me; he’s kept a distance since the night of my arrival. But Luis always comes home promptly. The three of us share whatever Silvia and I have prepared, and then the two of them slip away to go for a walk, or sit by the river, or gather with others around the bonfire where Thomas teaches
each evening, and where, finally feeling well enough, I had hoped to go tonight. But tonight, no Luis. No Thomas. No scent of the bonfire drifting through the air. Silvia sleeps on. I can’t leave her alone, not like this. So I stay by her side, watching and waiting, and growing ever more worried.

  IT IS NEARLY ten o’clock when Luis barges in, Thomas just behind him. Their noisy entrance wakes Silvia, who lurches upright in surprise, and then moans, gripping her belly. Luis, a slight, strong man with a dapper mustache, is by her side in a moment, stroking her hair, whispering to her. I turn to Thomas. “What’s going on?”

  “Emergency meeting.” Thomas is breathless. “Luis, a few other men and women from camp, and me. There was another raid today over at Cooper Camp—people deported, family members left behind, families separated. The remaining folks are going to protest. With their loved ones gone, they feel they have nothing to lose. They’re planning a demonstration in the central plaza in Puebla. We met to decide whether to join them.”

  “No!” Silvia tries to stand, but her swollen ankles buckle; she drops back down on the mattress.

  “Sí.” Luis’s voice is quiet but firm, his hands still stroking her hair. “Ten cuidado.”

  Despite Luis’s request that Silvia be careful, she jerks away from him, uttering a rapid volley of words that I’m unable to translate.

  “No!” Now it’s Luis’s turn to cry out.

  Silvia reaches out a hand to me. One look at her passionate, determined expression, and I go to her and grip her hand. Pulling her up, I help her stand. Silvia leans on me, unable to bear her full weight, her belly firm and round against my hip. I shift my stance to keep both of us in balance, and something, a tiny elbow or heel—the baby!—jabs into my jutting hip bone. “Did you feel that?” I breathe the words.

  “Our child is troubled, too.” She stares her husband down. “Juntos, no separados.”

  Juntos. Together. No separados. I can guess.

  “The more witnesses, the better, far as I’m concerned.” Thomas sinks down in a chair, rubs at his knee and then below, where the prosthesis latches on. His shoulders slump with exhaustion. But when he looks up, his gaze is as intent and earnest as ever. “Whatever you decide—whoever comes tomorrow—you must remember to bring your work permits and any other legal documents. If things get complicated, your papers will be your only hope.”

  Somewhere, in some bureaucratic office, I imagine, are stacks of United States citizenship papers, identification papers, and work permits left behind, when people were forced to leave. Or perhaps these documents never made it to an office. Perhaps they, like other material things—photographs, clothes, household goods, books, and family mementos—have been stolen or destroyed. Meaningful or necessary, meaningful and necessary, lost in an instant, like the seemingly certain opportunity of my college education. But worse, far worse, is what the deportees have lost and will lose in days to come.

  “I’ll be at the plaza, too,” I say.

  THIRTEEN

  Next day, I climb into the bed of a pickup truck, and Luis and Thomas help Silvia, who carries her black book and the burlap bag she uses to hold herbs and medicines. Then, juntos, no separados, Thomas and Luis jump in beside Silvia and me. Three other Kirk Camp men have already taken their places here. Two more men sit with the driver. And so we are ten. We confirm that all have their work papers, and then we set off. It is not yet noon. Clear blue sky, birds, and flowers in abundance—it’s a picture-postcard day. We rattle down the dirt road toward Puebla’s central plaza. A far from sober group, the men seem invigorated, talking about this and that. Silvia sits on Luis’s lap so she’s at least slightly cushioned against the truck’s jouncing. We’re doing something—something peaceful, something of which Mahatma Gandhi himself would approve, Thomas tells me as we ride, as the farmworkers have shaped their protests after Gandhi’s acts of civil disobedience in India. We’ll meet with others, exchange information, and make plans. We have to figure out how to better help those who’ve been separated from their family members. We have to respond better to the local, state, and federal authorities when they make a sweep—as they may do today. “But we’re not striking. We have to remember that. Not like we have in the last few years. Strikes are against the law now,” Thomas says. “People were killed during those strikes. Many were injured or seriously wounded. Ultimately, the agricultural unions were dissolved. So we’re gathering with others from Cooper Camp, that’s all. We’re doing nothing wrong. We’ve nothing to hide. These men are all here legally, by invitation of the farm owners, and Silvia is, too. If times were different, there’d be no risk in what we’re doing today.”

  But I’m well aware every man present is taking a risk, Silvia is taking a risk, and maybe I am, too, who knows. Along with Luis, the hands of the three other farmworkers sitting here with us are stained red from the strawberries they started picking at sunup. These men walked away from their fieldwork. Most definitely, they will lose their few cents an hour. Possibly they will lose their jobs.

  One of the men, Marco, holds a red-stained paper bag; he collected some of the bruised strawberries, not worthy of sale, that would otherwise be discarded at the end of the day. He shares these with us now. The strawberries hold the heat of the sun; they are the sweetest, most delicious things I’ve tasted in I don’t know how long. We each get three. I eat mine slowly, finishing the last strawberry as we enter Puebla. Only now, nearing the central plaza, do we fall quiet and grow sober. There are squad cars everywhere, with policemen inside and posted at street corners, waiting.

  The truck lurches to a stop beside the plaza—a wide cobblestone square accented by flowering bushes and palm trees, with a large burbling fountain at the center.

  “Estamos aquí.” Luis squeezes Silvia’s hand, then releases it. And then, “Vámonos.”

  Luis, Thomas, and the other men clamber from the truck. Luis and Thomas help Silvia out, and I get out, too. People have already gathered near the plaza’s central fountain—more people than I expected, nearly fifty, I’m guessing. Most look to be of Mexican heritage, though there are a few white people—I count five, all of them men. There are four Mexican women besides Silvia. A man is shouting something in Spanish through a bullhorn. His voice bounces off the buildings—some Spanish colonial edifices; others, the practical storefronts of today—that surround the plaza.

  The ten of us start toward the fountain. Silvia slips one arm through Luis’s and the other through mine. We walk slowly to help support her. She murmurs something in Spanish to Luis, and then to me: “Why would he do this? Is he a fool?”

  I don’t understand. Silvia and Luis are talking heatedly. I call to Thomas, who’s walking just ahead of us. “What’s the man saying?”

  Thomas falls into step beside me, his expression tight with worry. “He’s chanting a slogan the strikers used during their demonstrations. Viva La Causa! Viva La Communidad! At least he’s not resorting to Viva La Huelga, as they always did.”

  “La Huelga?”

  “The strike. Still, this is not the wisest way to gather our supporters, I’m afraid.”

  We stand on the outskirts of the growing crowd, and the chanting crescendos as others begin to join in. Silvia, like the men in our group, has gone tense; her fingers bite into my arm. I tighten my hold on her as well—God forbid we get separated. Signs and placards are popping up around the crowd: QUEREMOS COMIDA, and beneath that, translated: WE WANT FOOD. Other signs make appeals in Spanish and English for due process of law, security, fair wages, education. Despite the press of people, those bearing the signs hold them high.

  Luis says something to Silvia, and then, ignoring her frantic protests, he works his way to the front of the crowd to stand by the man with the bullhorn. The man and Luis exchange a few words, and then Luis takes the bullhorn. He says something in Spanish only to be met with a grumble of resistance from the crowd.

  “He’s asking them to be quiet and calm,” Silvia tells me. “He’s reminding them that strike
s are against the law. He’s asking them to put down their signs.” Luis continues speaking. “ ‘We are gathered here to work for peace, not for strife,’ ” Silvia translates. “ ‘A few of us from Kirk Camp have been talking with members of the Farm Security Administration. Some of them understand our concerns. There’s talk of improvement—special camps where we will be safe and able to stay in this country, if we are here legally.’ ” Luis calls for Thomas, beckons to him.

  “He is asking Thomas to say more about the Farm Security Administration’s promises,” Silvia says.

  Thomas starts toward Luis. I can’t see him now—the people in front of me block my view. I stand on tiptoe, straining to catch a glimpse of him, and as I do, the sound of a gunshot ricochets around the plaza.

  Women scream, and men, and children—there must be children in this crowd!—begin to cry. There’s a great din of shouting: “Leva!” “Razzia!” “Raid!” “Roundup!” I wrap my arms around Silvia. I don’t let go of her, though the crowd presses and pushes as people scatter, running in all directions. A stampede—that’s what this is. We could be crushed. Silvia and her baby—if she falls down, they could be killed. She cries out as a man shoves us aside, and someone’s boot heel comes down hard on my foot. For a moment, that pain surpasses the pain in my head, which has flared again, threatening to obliterate my vision. I look around for help, but Marco and the other men in our group have vanished, lost in the chaos. But then I glimpse the back of Thomas’s shirt, his thick brown hair, his skin, so much paler than most. He’s forcing his way through the frenzied crowd, trying to get somewhere, trying to get to Luis, who’s being throttled by two police officers. “Let him go!” Thomas yells, his voice rising above the din, and then a baton strikes him across the shoulders, and another strikes Luis and they both go down.