by T. C. Boyle
Candelario Pérez arrived ten minutes later in a battered white pickup with six other men, and then the lot began to fill. Men came singly and in groups of two or three, appearing out of nowhere, loose-jointed and hopeful, men of all ages, their hands empty, their clothes simple and clean. A few of them stood apart, gathering across the road at the intersection of one of the side streets, or milling around in clumps of two or three in the post office parking lot, taking their chances with the gringos, but most shuffled across the expanse of gravel, dust and weed to report to Candelario Pérez.
And then the contractors began to arrive, the white men with their big bleached faces and soulless eyes, enthroned in their trucks. They wanted two men or three, they wanted four or five, no questions asked, no wage stipulated, no conditions or terms of employment. A man could be pouring concrete one day, spraying pesticide the next—or swabbing out urinals, spreading manure, painting, weeding, hauling, laying brick or setting tile. You didn’t ask questions. You got in the back of the truck and you went where they took you. And the bosses, the ones who did the hiring, sat up front, as motionless as if they were carved of wood. América wondered if they were somehow grafted to their trucks, if their mothers had given birth to them right there on the seat of the cab and they’d sprouted up behind the windshield like some sort of unnatural growth. All she ever saw of them was elbows and faces. She sat there quietly, waiting for someone who might need a floor mopped or an oven cleaned and the trucks pulled up, the tinted windows sank noiselessly into the gleaming door panels and the elbows appeared, followed by the sharp pointed noses and oversized ears, the flat hard calculating eyes wrapped in sunglasses.
Ten trucks must have pulled into the labor exchange that morning—and another half dozen into the lot by the post office—and forty men got work. Cándido was the first in line each time and each time he scrambled up out of the dirt for nothing. She watched him with a sinking feeling, his look of eagerness and hope as he disguised the hitch in his walk and tried to hold the bad arm rigid at his side, and then the face of rage and despair and the ravaging limp as he came back to her.
At nine-thirty or so the fat man wheeled into the lot in his rich long car. América had been chattering away about Tepoztlán to take Cándido’s mind off the situation—she was remembering an incident from her childhood, a day when a September storm swept over the village and the hail fell like stones amid the standing corn and all the men rushed out into the streets firing their pistols and shotguns at the sky—but she stopped in midsentence when she heard the crunch of’ gravel and looked up into the lean shoulders and predatory snout of the patrón’s car. She felt the living weight of the big man’s hand in her lap all over again and something seized up inside her: nothing like that had ever happened to her before, not in her own country, not in Tepoztlán, not even in the dump in Tijuana. She was seventeen years old, the youngest of eight, and her parents had loved her and she’d gone to school all the way through and done everything that was expected of her. There were no strange men, no hands in her lap, there was no living in the woods like a wild animal. But here it was. She rose to her feet.
America crossed the lot in a kind of daze, picturing the bright expanse of that big room with the Buddhas and the windows that laid all the world at her feet, and the money too, twenty-five dollars, twenty-five more than nothing. The window of the car threw her reflection back at her for a moment, then it ceremonially descended to reveal the face of the patrón. He didn’t get out of the car, but there he was, expressionless, the beard clipped close round his mouth to frame his colorless lips. Candelario Pérez came up to him, managing to look officious and subservient at the same time—A sus órdenes, let me bow and scrape for you—but the big man ignored him. He motioned with his head for America to go round the car and get in the front seat beside him, and then he glanced up at Candelario Pérez and said something in English, a question. Did he want Mary too, was that it? Mary was nowhere in sight. Probably drunk in her little redwood house sitting in front of a refrigerator stocked with hams. America turned to look for Cándido, and he was right there, right in back of her, and they exchanged a look before she dropped her eyes, hurried round the car and got in. The patrón gave her the faintest nod of acknowledgment as she shut the door and settled herself as far away from him as possible, and then he turned back to Candelario Pérez, who was touting the virtues of Cándido and the next two men in line—anybody could scrape the crud from a stone Buddha—but the fat man shook his head. He wanted only women.
And then they were out of the lot and wheeling up the canyon road, the trees rushing past them, the car leaning gracefully into the turns, turn after turn after turn, all the way up to the gate and the men working there with their picks and shovels. The radio was silent. The patrón said nothing, didn’t even look at her. He seemed pensive—or tired maybe. His lips were pursed, his eyes fixed on the road. And his hands—fleshy and white, swollen up like sponges—stayed where they belonged, on the wheel.
She had the big room to herself. She lifted the Buddhas from the cartons, dipped them in the corrosive, scrubbed them with the brush, affixed the labels and packed them back up again. It wasn’t long before her eyes had begun to water and she found herself dabbing at them with the sleeves of her dress—which was awkward, because they were short sleeves and she had to keep lifting one shoulder or the other to her eyes. And her nose and throat felt strange too—the passages seemed raw and abraded, as if she had a cold. Was the solution stronger than what they’d been using yesterday? Mary, the big gringa, had complained all through the day without remit like some insect in the grass, but América didn’t remember its being as bad as this. Still, she kept at it, the Buddhas floating through a scrim of tears, until her fingers began to bother her. They weren’t stiffening as they had yesterday, not yet, but there was a sharp stinging sensation round the cuticles of her nails, as if she were squeezing lemon into a cut, and she realized with a jolt that the big man had neglected to give her the plastic gloves. She held her hands up to the light then and saw that the skin had begun to crack and peel and that all the color had gone out of the flesh. These weren’t her hands—they were the hands of a corpse.
She was alarmed. If she didn’t have those gloves there would be nothing left of her fingers by the end of the day—only bones, as if in some horrible costume for the Day of the Dead—but she was too timid to go look for them. The patrón might be watching even now, watching to see if she was scrubbing hard enough, ready to burst in and abuse her in his harsh superior language, to send her home, fire her, lay his big bloated paw in her lap. Her fingers were burning. Her throat was a cinder. She couldn’t see the Buddhas for the water in her eyes. Finally, she stole a look over her shoulder.
No one was watching her. Both doors that gave onto the room were shut and the house was silent. The near door, the one she’d come in through, led to the garage and the stairway to the second floor, and the other must have been to the bathroom, judging from the amount of time Mary had spent behind it yesterday. For her part, America had been afraid to get up from her seat—who knew when the patrón would come to check on them?—and that was a trial, because she felt like she always had to pee lately and she’d had to hold it all day (it was the baby crowding her organs, she knew that, and she wished she could talk to her mother about it, even for a minute). But that was over. That was yesterday. The second she and Cándido got off the road and into the cover at the head of, the trail, she’d squatted in the bushes and the problem was solved. This was different. This was dangerous—and it wasn’t her fault. The patrón should have given her the gloves, he should have remembered.
It was eleven-fifteen by the sunburst clock. The mountains pressed at the windows. Her fingertips burned. The statue before her loomed and receded and her head felt light. Finally she got up from the chair and hurried across the room—she had to rinse her hands at least, to take the sting away, no one would deny her that ...
There was a bathroom behind, th
e door, as she’d surmised, pink and white tile, a little shower stall, fluffy pink mats and wallpaper decorated with dewy-eyed little rabbits, and she couldn’t help admiring it—this was just what she wanted, so pretty and efficient, so clean. She ran the cold water over her hands, and then, not wanting to risk dirtying the plush white towels, she dried them on her dress. That was when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, her hair all ragged and wild—she looked like a madwoman, a gypsy, a beggar in the street—but she suppressed the image, eased back the lid of the toilet and sat down quickly, thinking to relieve herself now and get everything over with at once.
Sequestered there in that pink bathroom with the bunnies on the walls and the pristine towels and the lilac soap in a little ceramic dish, she felt at peace for the first time since she’d stepped away from Cándido and slipped into the big man’s car. She studied the architecture of the shower, marveling at all that pretty tile, and thought how nice it would be to have hot water whenever you wanted it, a dab of shampoo, soap, a bristle toothbrush instead of a stalk of dry grass. And then she thought about the fat man, all lathered up with soap, and his pink ridiculous flesh and fat white feet. Maybe he’d go away to China to buy more Buddhas for his store and she could stay here and sleep in the big room at night and use the bathroom ten times a day if she wanted ...
She was thinking about that, daydreaming—just for a second—when a sudden noise from above brought her back to herself. There was a dull thump, as if someone had just pushed a chair back from a table, followed by the sound of footsteps. América jumped up from the toilet, afraid to flush it for fear of giving herself away, and in her extremity forgot what she’d come for. The footsteps were directly overhead now, and for a moment she froze, unable to think, unable to move. The gloves, that was it. She tore open the cabinet under the sink, rifled the drawers beside it—one, two, three, four—but there were no gloves and the footsteps seemed to be coming closer, coming down the stairs. She hit the chair on the run and snatched up her brush in a panic.
The footsteps ceased. There was no one on the stairs, no one overhead. The Buddha on the table gave her his look of inscrutable wisdom.
Three Buddhas later, she had to give it up. She couldn’t take it a second longer—no one could. She rinsed her hands again and the relief flooded over her. Then, steeling herself, she went to the door, eased it open and peered up the stairs to where a larger, more formal-looking door gave onto the floor above. She hesitated a moment, gazing into the penumbral depths of the garage. The car was there, the car that cost more than her entire village could make in a year, and there was a refrigerator too, a washer and dryer, all sorts of things. Tennis rackets. Sticks for that game they play on the ice. Birdcages, bicycles, chairs, beds, tables, a pair of sawhorses, cardboard boxes of every shape and size, tools, old clothes and stacks of newspapers, all of it amassed on the garage floor like the treasure of some ancient potentate.
She mounted the stairs on silent feet, her heart pounding. How would she ask for gloves? In pantomime? What if the big man got dirty with her? Wasn’t she asking for it by coming into his house all alone? She hesitated again, on the landing at the top of the stairs, and then she forced herself to knock. Her knock was soft, apologetic, barely a whisper of the knuckles against the wood. No one answered it. She knocked again, a bit more forcefully. Still nothing. She didn’t know what to do—she couldn’t work without those gloves. She’d cripple herself, dissolve the skin from her bones ...
She tried the doorknob.
It was open. “Alo?” she called, her face pressed to the crack of the door. “¿Alguien está aquí?” But what was it they said in those old movies on television that used to crack up all the girls in the village? Yoo-hoo , wasn’t that it? She gave it a try. “Yoo-hoo!” she called; and it sounded as ridiculous on her lips as on any actress’s.
She waited a moment and tried it again. “Alo? Yoo-hoo?”
There was the sound of movement, heavy footsteps on the floor, and the fat man shuffled into view. He was wearing a pair of wire-rim spectacles that seemed to pinch his face, and house slippers on his feet. He looked puzzled—or irritated. The white lips glared out from the nest of his beard.
“Escuse, pleese,” America said, half-shielded by the door. She was on the landing still, not daring to enter the house. She held up her hands. “Guantes. Pleese. Para las manos.”
The patrón had stopped ten paces from the door. He looked bewildered, as if he’d never seen her before. He said something in English, something with the lift of a question to it, but his tone wasn’t friendly, not at all.
She tried again, in dumb show this time, rubbing her hands together and making the motions of pulling on a pair of imaginary gloves.
Then he understood. Or seemed to. He came forward in two propulsive strides, took hold of her right wrist and examined her hand as if it were something he’d found stuck to the bottom of his shoe. Then he dropped it with a curse—flung it way from him—turned his back on her and stalked out of the room.
She stood there waiting, her eyes on the floor. Had he understood? Did he care? Had he gone to get her the gloves or was he ignoring her—after all, what should he care if the flesh rotted off her bones? He’d laid his big presumptuous paw in her lap and she’d shrunk from it—what use did he have for her? She wanted to turn and dash back down the stairs, wanted to hide herself among the Buddhas—or better yet, in the bathroom—but she stood her ground. When it came down to it, she’d rather starve than dip her hands in that solution for even one second more, she would.
But then she heard the heavy footfall again, the vase on the little table by the door trembling with the solidity of it, and the patrón came round the corner, moving quickly, top-heavy and tottering on his feet. The little glasses were gone. In his hand, a pair of yellow plastic gloves. He thrust them at her impatiently, said something in his cacophonous blast of a voice—thank you, goodbye, I’m sorry; she couldn’t tell what—and then he slammed the door shut on her.
The day sank into her veins like an elixir and she worked in a delirium of fumes, scrubbing statue after statue, her aching hands sealed away from the corrosive in the slim plastic envelope of the gloves. Her eyes watered, her throat was raw, but she concentrated on her work and the substantiality of the twenty-five dollars the patrón would give her, trying not to think about the ride back and what it would be like sitting next to him in the car. She pictured the cocido she and Cándido had made from yesterday’s profits, visualizing each chunk of meat, the chiles, the beans, the onions—and the tortillas and cheese and hard-cooked eggs that went with it—all of it carefully wrapped in the plastic bags from the store and secreted beneath a rock in a cool spot she’d dug out in the wet sand of the streambed. But what if an animal got to it? What did they have here in the North? El mapache, the short-nosed cousin of the coatimundi, a furtive, resourceful animal. Still, the stone was heavy and she’d wrapped the food as tightly as she could. No: it was more likely that the ants would discover it—they could get into anything, insidious, like so many moving grains of sand—and she saw a line of them as thick as her wrist pouring in and out of the pot as she scrubbed one of a thousand blackened Buddhas. The vision made her hungry and she removed the gloves a moment to devour the dry crackers and slivers of cheese she’d brought along, and then she dashed across the room to wet her mouth under the faucet and relieve herself, flushing quickly this time and darting back to the table before the roar of the rushing water had subsided.
She worked hard, worked without stint for the rest of the day, fighting back tears and lightheadedness to prove her worth, to show the patrón that all by herself she could transform as many Buddhas as both she and Mary had been able to the day before. He would notice and he would thank her and ask her back the next day and the next, and he would know that she was worth more than the kind of girl who would have lifted his hand from her lap and pressed it to her breasts. But when he finally reappeared—at six by the sunburst clock on the wa
ll—he didn’t seem to notice. He just nodded his head impatiently and turned to trundle heavily to the car while the garage door rose beyond him as if by levitation.
He didn’t put his hand in her lap. He didn’t turn on the radio. When they swung into the lot at the market, he pulled out his wallet, shifting his weight with a grunt, extracted a twenty and a five and turned his blue-eyed gaze to the horizon as she fumbled with the door handle and let herself out. The door slammed, the engine gave a growl, and he was gone.
She didn’t see Cándido anywhere. The parking lot was full of white people hurrying in and out of the market with brown plastic bags tucked under their arms, and the labor exchange across the street was deserted. She felt a sharp letdown—this was where they’d agreed to meet—and for a long moment she just stood there in the middle of the lot, looking round her numbly. And then it occurred to her that Cándido must have gotten work. Of course. Where else would he be? A feeling like joy took hold of her, but it wasn’t joy exactly or joy without limit—she wouldn’t feel that until she had a roof over her head. But if Cándido had work they’d have enough money to eat for a week, two weeks maybe, and if they could both find a job—even every second day—they could start saving for an apartment.
For now, though, there was nothing to do but wait. She crossed the lot, clutching the bills in her hand, and found an inconspicuous perch on a tree stump at the corner of the building. From here she could watch the lot for Cándido and stay out of the way—all those gringos made her nervous. Every time a car swung into the lot she felt her heart seize. She couldn’t help thinking of La Migra and those tense silent men in the tan uniforms who’d ministered over the worst night of her life, the night she’d been stripped naked in front of all those people, though Cándido assured her they wouldn’t find her here. The chances were small. Minuscule. But she didn’t like chances, any chances, and she shrank into the vegetation and waited.