T. Boyle - The Tortilla Curtain

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, the 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…