She Had No Choice

by Debra Burroughs

  Eva was twelve when the war ended. It was 1944. She was in the sixth grade, and her younger brothers attended the same elementary school as she did. They learned how cruel children can be to one another. Too often students were rude and unkind to them, calling them all sorts of demeaning names and making fun of them because they were poor Mexicans who wore hand-me-down clothes and tattered shoe. Over the years, as Eva’s brothers got older, though, they stuck together and then no one dared to pick on them.

  The next year, Eva went to junior high school. The morning of her first day of school, she got up early to get ready for school and catch the bus. Mama had made her a slip from a used flour sack and bought her two new dresses and a pair of shoes for school. Sofía was good at squirreling away money if there was any extra.

  “The bus will be here soon, Mama. I need to take a lunch with me,” Eva reminded her.

  “Don’t worry, niña, I’m taking care of it.” Mama packed her a lunch made of two tortillas from breakfast that she smeared with cold refried beans left over from dinner the night before. She rolled them up like burritos, wrapped them in a cloth and tied a string around them. That was lunch.

  On the first day at her junior high, Eva was both nervous and excited for a new school. She didn’t know what to expect. When she walked into class, she immediately felt out of place. Most of her classmates were from middle-class white families. They wore crisp, new clothes and brought their lunches in brown paper bags or brightly-colored metal lunch boxes with pictures on them. But not her.

  She was a poor Latina among a classroom of more affluent white students. She spoke with an accent, her skin was darker, and her clothes were not nearly as nice as theirs. Because of these differences, she sensed them staring at her, heard them whispering as she passed by them. She would hear them giggling behind her back and assumed they were laughing at her. As if being beaten down by Carlos at home was not enough, she had to fight against being seen as worthless at school, too.

  Eva was a little surprised there were no other Mexican children in her class. Her mama told her she thought it was probably because most of the Mexican families made their kids work the fields with them after the fifth or sixth grade. They needed the income and didn’t think their children needed any more education.

  But, having her children get as much education as possible was important to Sofía. She knew it was their only way out of their poverty. She pushed hard to get Carlos to let the children stay in school, at her peril sometimes, and Eva appreciated it.

  When class was dismissed for lunch that first day, Eva watched the girls in pretty pastel sweaters with shiny black patent-leather shoes sit at tables outside with their friends. She watched as they took their sandwiches out of their lunchboxes, their neatly-made sandwiches on sliced white bread with layers of delicious-looking meats and cheeses, slathered with creamy white mayonnaise in the middle and crisp green lettuce leaves.

  She looked down at her cloth-covered cold bean burritos and felt ashamed. She didn’t dare let anyone see. She slyly inched her way over to a large bush on the perimeter of the lunch area, looked around to make sure no one saw her, and quickly crouched down on the other side of the bush to eat her lunch in secret. She felt small and poor. After that, during lunchtime, she walked to nearby Piedmont Park to eat lunch alone.

  Eva had been having lunch alone for a couple of weeks when a boy in her class noticed her walking off by herself. He followed her.

  “Eva!” he called out, when he had almost caught up with her. She spun around in surprise at hearing someone calling her name.

  “Alex?” She recognized him from her class, with his dark wavy hair and chestnut brown eyes.

  “Where you goin’?”

  “Um…I was walking to the park to eat lunch.”

  “Can I come with you?” he asked.

  “I guess so.”

  They reached the park bench where Eva usually ate her lunch and sat down. Eva didn’t really want to show Alex her cloth-covered burritos, but she had no way of hiding them now. He opened his crumpled brown paper bag and pulled out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread and an orange.

  “What do you got?” he asked.

  “Just some bean burritos,” Eva replied, trying to hide her embarrassment.

  “I’ll swap you half of my sandwich for one of your burritos.”

  “You want a cold bean burrito?”

  “Sure. I like Mexican food.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause I’m one-fourth Mexican,” he said proudly. “My dad’s mom is Mexican. I don’t get to see my grandma much, she lives in Arizona. But when we do visit her, she makes fresh tortillas and tamales and all kinds of good stuff.”

  “Okay, then. Here you go.” Eva handed Alex one of her burritos and took half of his sandwich. “I’ve never eaten sliced white bread before,” she remarked. “It tastes…well…fluffy.”

  “Fluffy, huh?” Alex chuckled.

  “Yeah, fluffy. Don’t laugh.”

  “Sorry. I just never heard that before. I guess it’s a girl thing.”

  “So you’re part Mexican?”

  “Yep,” Alex answered, with his mouth full of burrito.

  “What else are you?” Eva asked.

  He swallowed before he answered her. “Mostly Italian, with a smidge of Irish,” he replied with a big grin on his face, proud of his heritage.

  “Do you want to come and have lunch here again tomorrow?” Eva asked.

  “No, I better not. My friends’ll miss me and start askin’ questions. Then they’ll make fun of me for havin’ lunch with a girl.”

  “I get it,” Eva said, feeling a little disappointed. She thought maybe she had been too forward, pushed too hard too fast. But she was just so anxious to have a friend.

  “I’m not makin’ any promises,” Alex told her, “but, I wouldn’t mind doin’ this again sometime. Just not tomorrow.” Then he took another bit of his burrito.

  They sat on the bench for awhile and enjoyed their lunches, talking about school and a little more about their families. Eva was careful not to share very much about hers.

  After school, Eva rode the bus home in silent contemplation. She stared out the window all the way home, pondering her future, seeing possibilities dancing around in her head. She felt a strong yearning deep inside to find a way to escape this wretched life. She had seen a better life, the life that the other girls in her class were living. She just knew there had to a better life out there for her, too. Hope began welling up within her – hope and determination.

  I‘m sure I don’t have to live this terrible life my mama has, she told herself. I’m just sure I don’t. When I grow up, I’m going to have a good job and a good life. If those other girls can do it, I can do it, too.

  The school bus came to a squeaky stop in front of her little old house, and the bus driver pushed the lever to open the doors. Eva quickly got off the bus and ran up to her shabby front door. She pushed it open and was ready to get to work. She changed out of her school clothes and put on her old, worn work clothes. It was time to take care of the babies and help Mama start supper. Life for her was still the same on the outside, but today she got a glimpse of a better life and things changed for her on the inside.

  Over the next few years, that seed of hope took root in Eva’s heart and began to grow. She worked hard on her schoolwork and did well in her classes. Alex continued to meet her at the park for the occasional lunch swap until Alex moved away. His father took a job in another town. Eva was heartbroken to lose her friend. She hoped he would write to her, but he never did.

  Eva’s junior high years would be over in a couple of months, and she looked forward to going to high school. Her bus drove past Hollister High every day on the way home. As she stared out the window at the school each day, she dreamed of the possibilities that lay before her once she graduated from it.

  When she finished junior high, there was only one more summer of farm work standing between her and
starting school at Hollister High. Or so she thought.

  * * * *

  As Eva’s brothers got older, near junior high age, and were able to work full days, Carlos moved the family to the farm labor camps for the summers. The camps were near Tres Pinos, about fifteen or so miles outside of Hollister. The shacks at these labor camps were just one large room and a small area for cooking and serving meals, no refrigerator and no stove. Cooking was done on a camp stove, and there was a sink and a small work table for preparing the meals. The place had virtually no furniture except a beat-up little dresser. There was no table to eat at and no chairs to sit on, only rough wooden boxes to rest on at meal time.

  Carlos always brought a mattress for himself and Sofía to sleep on, and he brought bedding for the rest of the family to sleep on the floor. The make-shift showers and restrooms were in a communal building at one corner of the camp, which made it pretty inconvenient for everyone when they wanted to shower after a long, hot day working in the fields and orchards.

  The Gonzalez family stayed all summer at the labor camps, usually working in the fields first, then picking prunes and ending with picking walnuts in the fall. Eva and her siblings were always at least two weeks late returning to school. They tried hard to catch up with their classes, but it was tough.

  Eva looked forward to getting through the summer and entering high school. It was the summer of her fifteen birthday. It was 1947. At supper one evening in late July, with the family sitting around on the wooden crates, she was talking to her brother, Eduardo, about what classes she was hoping to take in high school when they returned to Hollister.

  “Forget it. You’re not going to high school,” Carlos said, very matter-of-factly. This was the first Eva had heard of this.

  “What do you mean? I have to go,” she pleaded. Her heart was set on it. She knew her future depended on it.

  “You’ve had enough school, muchacha. We need you in the fields. You need to help support this family!” Carlos answered in his usual gruff manner. His face was now wrinkled and weathered from the years he spent drinking and working in the sun, and his hair was beginning to gray.

  “No, I need to go to school,” Eva implored him.

  “Silencio! That’s enough! I said no!” he yelled as he leaned forward and raised the back of his calloused hand to her as a warning to stop pressing the issue.

  Eva sat in stony silence during the rest of the meal and helped Mama clean the dishes when they were finished. She just had to go to high school, she told herself.

  With just an eighth-grade education, she knew she would never escape this cycle of poverty. Eva was determined to find a way to go to high school. Summer would be over soon, so she didn’t have much time.

  On a sweltering Saturday afternoon near the end of August, after picking prunes from early morning, she and her brothers were given a break during the hottest part of the day. She took that opportunity to walk a mile or so from their camp to the tiny grocery store on a dusty country road.

  She had taken a little white envelope from her mother’s well-worn chest of drawers and a scrap of brown paper torn from an old bag. She scrawled a short note on the paper that said, “Please help me go to high school. My father Carlos says I have been to school enough, but I want to go to high school. I live at 57 Tres Pinos Rd., Tres Pinos – Eva Gonzalez.”

  She folded the paper and gently laid it in the envelope. She licked the flap of the envelope with hope and anticipation and wrote her return address on it. She didn’t know where to send the envelope, so she simply wrote “School Superintendent, Hollister, California.”

  Eva had been clutching a shiny copper penny in her sweaty hand to pay for the stamp. She opened her hand and looked at the penny for a moment, remembering back to when she had found it and how she had a strange sensation deep inside that this penny could someday change her future.

  A month or so before, she had gone to town for cooking supplies with Mama. The penny had been lying on the sidewalk. Eva noticed several young white girls, about nine or ten years old, in crisply-ironed summer dresses step right over the shiny copper coin.

  What’s a penny to them? she thought. It seemed to her that they got whatever they wanted. Why would they ever stoop down to pick up an insignificant penny? They probably get a big allowance, she thought to herself. Once they were past, Eva stepped in and quickly scooped it up. She felt that one day she would need it. As it turned out, this was the day.

  She walked up to the small counter, crowded with displays of cigarettes, candies and an old cash register. The elderly, gray-haired storekeeper had seen this petite teenager in the store a handful of times, usually with a younger brother or sister on her hip. He had gentle blue eyes and always treated her kindly, often wondering what kind of future this bright young girl would have in this poor farming community. Leaning on the counter and peering over his wire-rimmed glasses, he looked at her inquisitively.

  “Can I help you, señorita?”

  She held out her hand and displayed the precious coin that she hoped could change her life.

  “One stamp, señor, por favor. I mean, please.”

  He handed her the stamp as she requested. She licked it with excitement and affixed it carefully to her envelope. She walked over to the mailbox in the front corner of the little store, closed her eyes, whispered a quick prayer, and dropped it in the box. It was in God’s hands now.

  Early one evening, almost two weeks later, a large black sedan pulled up near their row of shacks, and two men in black suits and hats got out of the car. A large man emerged from the driver’s side and then a tall, thin man got out of the passenger side. Eva heard the car pull up from inside the shack. She quickly tiptoed across the room and peeked out the corner of the window from behind the dingy curtains.

  Five or six young children in tattered hand-me-downs were playing out front. They stopped their play and stared in awe at the shiny new car and the looming white men in black suits. This was a sight these little Mexican children were not used to seeing.

  “Do you know where we can find Carlos Gonzalez?” the tall man asked the children. The children spoke some English, because they were learning it in school, and some of them recognized the name. One boy pointed up the dirt driveway.

  Carlos was standing with a few of the other field workers, drinking beer and talking. He turned toward the children when he heard his name. He knew enough English to know the men in suits were asking for him.

  Carlos sheepishly walked toward the two white men, afraid he was in trouble for mistreating his children. The men looked to him like they could be from social services.

  “I’m Carlos Gonzalez.”

  “Mr. Gonzalez,” the big man said sternly, “I have been notified that your daughter, Eva, did not start high school last week. You, Mr. Gonzalez,” pointing a large, fat finger at Carlos, “could get in a lot of trouble if she doesn’t get herself to school on Monday morning. Comprende? Do you understand?”

  “Sí, but I didn’t know,” Carlos feigned, shrugging his shoulders, acting innocent. “I make sure she is there.” He was glad that was all they wanted.

  “See that you do, Mr. Gonzalez. We don’t want to have to come back here again.”

  And with that, the two men in black suits climbed back into their car and slowly drove away, leaving a trailing cloud of dust. Eva’s heart leapt in her chest as she turned away from the window and tried to take in the enormity of what she had just heard.

  “Gracias a Diós!” is all she could say quietly to herself. She wanted to shout it out loud, at the top of her lungs. But, for fear of what would happen, she kept this exciting turn of events to herself.

  Eva’s future had been changed.

  Chapter 13: Carlos’s Mean Trick

  It was summer, 1948. There was a lot of work to be done in the fields, picking tomatoes, harvesting onions, and picking apricots in the orchard. Carlos had decided to move the family to the farm camp near Tres Pinos for more than just the summer.
He had found a farmer to hire him on his large farm to work full time, and he gave them another rundown, old house to live in. At least, this one was a little larger than the last.

  Carlos thought moving the family to the farm was a great idea because then it would be easy to have the older kids help him work the farm on the weekends and school breaks, not just the summers. This meant the children would be working more, would be isolated, and they would have to ride the school bus from Tres Pinos to Hollister when school resumed in the fall.

  It was August, which was an especially hot part of the summer. Eva had just turned sixteen. She and some of the older brothers had worked hard all week in the fields. Carlos told them he would take them to the movie theater in Hollister on Saturday because they had worked so hard and brought a good week’s pay into the house.

  “Really? Are you really going to take them to the movies, Carlos?” Mama asked.

  Mama was surprised by the offer, but she was glad to see her older children would have a break from the work for awhile. She wanted them to simply be happy kids, if only for a few hours.

  “I said I was, didn’t I?” Carlos replied, acting irritated that she questioned him.

  Eva and her brothers spent the morning getting ready and looking forward to going to town for some fun. It wasn’t often they were allowed to spend the family’s hard-earned money on such “foolishness”, as Carlos would say. Of course, he never described his drinking as “foolishness”, but he thought there was no need for the kids to spend money on anything fun. However, for some unknown reason, he offered to reward them for their hard work.

  The movies started at noon on Saturday, and they would be showing some news reels and cartoons before the double feature. Eva and the boys excitedly looked forward to this day off.

  About eleven o’clock on Saturday morning, they piled into Carlos’s pickup truck, with Eva and Carlos in the cab and the five brothers in the back. Mama stayed home to watch the younger children. It was about half an hour’s ride to Hollister from Tres Pinos.