T. Boyle - The Tortilla Curtain

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 wall-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.