T. Boyle - The Tortilla Curtain

The traffic was thinning on the road now and fewer cars were pulling in and out of the lot. His tormentors-the _gabachos__ young and old-had shoved into their cars and driven off without so much as a backward glance for him. He was about to give it up and cross the road to the labor exchange and look hopelessly round the empty lot there and then maybe head back down the road to where the path cut into the brush and shout out her name for every living thing in the canyon to hear, when a Mercedes sedan pulled up in front of the grocery and America stepped out of it.

He watched her slim legs emerge first, then her bare arms and empty hands, the pale flowered dress, the screen of her hair, and he was elated and devastated at the same time: she'd got work, but he hadn't. They would have money to eat, but he hadn't earned it. No: a seventeen-year-old village girl had earned it, and at what price? And what did that make him? He crouched there in the bushes and tried to read her face, but it was locked up like a strongbox, and the man with her, the _rico,__ was like some exotic animal dimly viewed through the dark integument of the windshield. She slammed the door, looked about her indecisively for a moment as the car wheeled away in a little blossom of exhaust, and then she squared her shoulders, crossed the lot and disappeared into the market.

Cándido brushed down his clothes, made good and certain that no one was looking his way, and ambled out of the bushes as if he'd just come back from a stroll around the block. He kept his head down, avoiding eye contact with the _gringos__ he passed nd out goas he crossed the lot and ducked into the grocery. After a week and a half of living on so little that his stomach had shrunk and his pants were down around his hips, the effect of all that abundance was devastating. There was no smell of food here, no hint of the rich stew of odors you'd find in a Mexican market-these people sanitized their groceries just as they sanitized their kitchens and toilets and drove the life from everything, imprisoning their produce in jars and cans and plastic pouches, wrapping their meat and even their fish in cellophane-and yet still the sight and proximity of all those comestibles made his knees go weak again.

Candy, there was a rack of candy right by the door, something sweet and immediate to feed the hunger. Little cakes and things, Twinkies and Ho-Ho's. And there, there were the fruits and vegetables lit up as on an altar, the fat ripeness of tomatoes, mangoes, watermelon, corn in its husk, roasting ears that would sweeten on the grill. He swallowed involuntarily. Looked right and then left. He didn't see America. She must be down one of the aisles pushing a basket. He tried to look nonchalant as he passed by the checkers and entered the vast cornucopia of the place.

Food in sacks for pets, for dogs and cats and parakeets, seltzer water in clear bottles, cans of vegetables and fruit: God in Heaven, he was hungry. He found América poised in front of one of the refrigerated displays, her back to him, and he felt shy suddenly, mortified, the unwanted guest sitting down at the starving man's table. She was selecting a carton of eggs-_huevos con chorizo, huevos rancheros, huevos hervidos con pan tostado-__flicking the hair out of her face with an unconscious gesture as she pried open the box to check for fractured shells. He loved her in that moment more than he ever had, and he forgot the Mercedes and the rich man and the _gabachos__ in the parking lot assailing him like a pack of dogs, and he thought of stew and _tortillas__ and the way he would surprise her with their new camp and the firewood all stacked and ready. Things would work out, they would. “América,” he croaked.

The face she turned to him was joyful, proud, radiant-she'd earned money, her first money ever, and they were going to eat on it, stuff themselves, feast till their stomachs swelled and their tongues went thick in their throats-but her eyes, her eyes dodged away from his, and he saw the traces there of some shame or sorrow that screamed out at him in warning. “What's the matter?” he demanded, and the shadowy form of that rich man in the Mercedes rose up before him. “Are you all right?”

She bowed her head. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out three clean fresh newly minted bills, two tens and a five, and her smile came back. “I worked all day,” she said, “and there's more work tomorrow, scrubbing Buddhas.”

“What? Scrubbing what?”

The _gabachos__ were watching them now, from every corner of the market, darting glances at them as they hustled by with their quick strides and dry-cleaned clothes, little baskets clutched to their chests, staring at a poor man and his wife as if they were diseased, as if they were assassins plotting a murder. America didn't answer him. She laid the eggs in the cart, on the little wire rack some _gabacho__ genius had designed for them, and looked up at him with widening eyes. “But you're here,” she said. “I mean, you're walking. You made it up out of the canyon.”

He shrugged. Felt his face tighten in its twisted mask. “I was worried.”

Her smile bloomed and she fell into his arms and he hugged her tight and to hell with every _gringo__ in the world, he thought. And then they shopped-the discount _tortillas,__ the pound of _hamburguesa__ meat, the eggs, the sacks of rice and beans, the coffee and the powdered milk, and before long they were walking back down the road in the hush of the falling night, the shared sweetness of a chocolate bar with almonds seeping into the secret recesses of their mouths.__

The light held for them till they reached the bottom of the trail, and then it thickened into darkness. Cándido clutched his wife's hand as they groped along the streambed, a plastic sack of groceries dangling from the crook of his bad arm. He was breathing hard, aching all over, but he felt buoyant and hopeful for the first time since the accident. He was mending and he would go up the hill to the labor exchange in the morning, America had earned money today and she would earn more tomorrow, they would fill their stomachs and lie on the blanket in their hut and make love hidden away from the world. They would eat the sardines with the white bread first, while the fire settled and the _hamburguesa__ meat snapped and hissed in the bottom of the pot, and then they would dip into the hot grease with their tortillas to take the edge off their hunger, and the meat would form the foundation of the stew till at eleven or maybe even twelve midnight they would pour steaming cups of it from the pot. All that.

He was able to find his way with his fingers, the night like pitch, moonless and with that ugly yellow urban sky clamped like a lid over their heads. The stream soughed through the rocks, something pounded its wings in the dark and flapped through the trees. He suppressed his fear of rattlesnakes and went on, trying to erase the memory of the thick coiled whiplash of a thing he'd encountered somewhere along here last month and the _mala suerte__ that hung over the killing, skinning and roasting of it. And where was its mate? Its mother? Its mother's mother? He tried not to think about it.

When they came to the pool he told America she was going to have to take her clothes off and she giggled and leaned into him, brushing her lips against his cheek. He could just make out the pale hovering presence of her face against the absence of her hair and clothes. The water was black, the trees were black, the walls of the canyon black as some deep place inside a man or woman, beneath the skin and bones and all the rest. He felt strangely excited. The crickets chirred. The trees whispered.

Cándido stripped, balled up his clothes and stuffed them in the plastic sack with the eggs. His wife was there, right there against him, and he helped her off with her dress in the dark and then he pulled her to him and tasted the chocolate on her lips. “Take your shoes off too,” he warned, running a hand down her leg to her ankle and back up again. “It's not deep, but the bottom's slippery.”