T. Boyle - The Tortilla Curtain

When she heard the news-“They closed down the labor exchange,” Cándido told her, his eyes defiant, spoiling for a fight-America had to struggle to keep a neutral face. She felt relief, joy, a surge of hope like nothing she'd experienced since the night she lay in bed at her father's house waiting for Cándido to tap at the window and take her away to the North. Finally, she thought, letting the breath escape her in a long exhalation that Cándido would have taken for grief. She kept her features rigid, let the hair fall across her face. Cándido was bitter, angry, ready to erupt. He was worried too, she could see that, and for a moment she felt the uncertainty take hold of her and she was scared. But then it came back to her: there was no choice now, no doubt but that they were going to have to leave this prison of trees, this dirt heap where she'd been robbed and hurt and brutalized, where the days crept by like the eternal years. She had no love for this place. Insects bit her. The ground was hard. Every time she wanted a cup of coffee she had to gather twigs and start a fire. What kind of life was that? She'd have been better off in Morelos, in her father's house, waiting on him like a servant till she was an old maid dried up like a fig.

“We'll have to leave,” she murmured, and the city she knew-alien, terrifying, a place where blacks roamed the streets and _gabachos__ sat on the sidewalk and begged-gave way to the city she dreamed of. There would be shops, streets lined with trees, running water, toilets, a shower: They had three hundred and twenty dollars-maybe they could share a place with another couple, somebody like themselves, Tepoztecos or Cuernavacans, pool their resources, live like a big family. No matter how small the place, no matter how dirty it was, with rats and cockroaches and gunshots outside the windows, it had to be better than this. All this time Cándido had been stalling because he was afraid-they couldn't go yet, they needed more money, have patience, _mi vida,__ have patience-but now he could stall no longer.

“Not yet,” he said.

Not yet? She wanted to jump up and shout in his face, pummel him with her fists. Was he crazy? Did he intend to live down here like a caveman for the rest of his life? She controlled herself, sat there in the sand hunched over the _novela__ she'd read so many times she could recite it from memory, and waited. He was like her father, just like him: immovable, stubborn, the big boss. There was no use in arguing.

Cándido sat at the edge of the pool in his undershorts, his skin glistening with beads of water. He'd just come back from above, just stepped out of the pool and thrown himself down beside her with his momentous announcement. It was the hottest hour of the day. Everything was still. America could feel the sweat under her arms and down below, where she itched, itched constantly, though at least her pee no longer burned. “Tomorrow morning I'm going to walk up the canyon,” he said, “early, while it's still dark, before _La Migra__ comes nosing around the post office and the labor exchange. I'm going to keep my eyes open-I was thinking of Canoga Park maybe-and see if I can find anything.”

“An apartment?”

“Apartment? What's the matter with you?” His voice jumped up the register. “You know we can't afford an apartment-how many times do I have to tell you?” He turned to look at her. His eyes were dangerous. “Sometimes I just can't believe you,” he said.

“Maybe a motel,” she said, “-just for a night. We could take a shower, ten showers, shower all night. This water's dirty, filthy, full of scum and bugs. It stinks. My hair smells like an old dog.”

Cándido looked away. He said nothing.

“And a bed to sleep in, a real bed. God, what I wouldn't give for a bed-just for one night.”

“You're not going with me.”

“Yes I am.”

“You're not.”

“You can't stop me-what are you going to do, hit me again? Huh? Big man? I don't hear you?”

“If that's what it takes.”

She saw the bed, the shower, a _taqueria__ maybe. “You can't leave me here, not anymore. Those men… What if they come back?”

There was a long silence, and she knew they were both thinking about that inadmissible day and what she couldn't tell him and how he knew it in his heart and how it shamed him. If they lived together a hundred years she could never bring that up to him, never go further than she just had. Still, how could he argue with the fact of that? This was no safe haven, this was the wild woods.

_“Indita,”__ he said, “you've got to understand-it's ten miles each way, and I'll be on the streets, maybe getting work, maybe finding someplace for us, someplace to camp closer in to the city. You're safe here. Nobody would come up this far.” He'd been looking her in the face, but now he dropped his eyes and turned away again. “It's the trail that's dangerous,” he murmured, “just stay off the trail.”

_Indita.__ She hated it when he called her that: his little Indian. He passed it off as an endearment, but it was a subtle dig at her, a criticism of her looks, her Indian blood, and it made her feel small and insignificant, though she knew she was one of the beauties of Tepoztlán, celebrated for her figure, her shining hair, her deep luminous eyes and her smile that all the boys said was like some rich dessert they could eat with a spoon, bite by bite. But his skin was lighter and he had the little hook in his nose that his family had inherited from the _conquistadores,__ though his stepmother was black as a cane cutter and his father didn't seem to mind. _Indita.__ She sprang up suddenly and flung the _novela__ into the water, _splash,__ and he was wet again. “I won't stay here,” she said, and her voice rose in her throat till it shattered, “not one more day.”

In the morning-it was early, three a. m. maybe, she couldn't tell-she folded bean paste, _chiles__ and slivers of cheese into corn _tortillas__ and wrapped them up in newspaper for the trip out of the canyon. They'd agreed to leave their things behind, just in case and because they'd attract less attention without them, and to try their luck overnight at least. Cándido had even promised they'd find a room for the night, with a shower and maybe even a TV, if it wasn't too dear. América worked by the glow of the coals and the tinfoil light of the moon that hung like an ornament just over the lip of the gorge. She was giddy with excitement, like a girl waking early on her saint's day. Things would work out. Their luck was bound to improve. And even if it didn't, she was ready for a change, any change.

Cándido unearthed the peanut butter jar; removed twenty dollars and shoved it deep into his pocket; then he flared up the fire with a handful of kindling and had her sew the remaining three hundred dollars into the cuff of his trousers. She pulled on her maternity dress-the pink one with the big green flowers that Cándido had bought her-tucked the _burritos__ into her string purse and made them coffee and salted _tortillas__ for breakfast. Then they started up the hill.

There was almost no traffic at all at this hour, and that was a pleasant surprise. Darkness clung to the hills, and yet it was mild and the air smelled of the jasmine that trailed from the retaining walls out front of the houses along the road. They walked in silence for an hour, the occasional car stunning them with its headlights before the night crept back in. Things rustled in the brush at the side of the road-mice, she supposed-and twice they heard coyotes howling off in the hills. The moon got bigger as it dipped behind them and America never let the weight of the baby bother her, or its kicks either. She was out of the canyon, away from the spit of sand and that ugly wrecked hulk of a car, and that was all that mattered.