Esperanza Rising (15 page)

Esperanza bundled in all the clothing that she could put on, old wool pants, a sweater, a ragged jacket, a wool cap, and thick gloves over thin gloves, all borrowed from friends in the camp. Hortensia had shown her how to heat a brick in the oven and bundle it in newspaper, and she hugged it to her body to keep warm as they rode on the truck.

Since the driver could only see a few yards ahead, the truck rumbled slowly on the dirt roads. They passed miles of naked grapevines, stripped of their harvest and bereft of their leaves. Fading into the mist, the brown and twisted trunks looked frigid and lonely.

The truck stopped at the big packing shed. It was really one long building with different open-air sections, as long as six train cars. The railroad tracks ran along one side, and docks for trucks ran along the other. Esperanza had heard Mama and the others talk about the sheds. How they were busy with people; women standing at long tables, packing the fruit; trucks coming and going with their loads fresh from the fields; and workers stocking the train cars that would later be hooked to a locomotive to take the fruit all over the United States.

But cutting potato eyes was different. Since nothing was being packed, there wasn't the usual activity. Only twenty or so women gathered in the cavernous shed, sitting in a circle on upturned crates, protected from the wind by only a few stacks of empty boxes.

The Mexican supervisor took their names. With all the clothing they were wearing, he barely looked at their faces. Josefina had told Esperanza that if she was a good worker, the bosses would not concern themselves with her age, so she knew she would have to work hard.

Esperanza copied everything that Hortensia and Josefina did. When the women put the hot bricks between their feet to keep them warm while they worked, so did she. When they took off their outer gloves and worked in thin cotton ones, she did the same. Everyone had a metal bin sitting behind them. The field-workers brought cold potatoes and filled up their bins. Hortensia took a potato and then, with a sharp knife, she cut it into chunks around the dimples. She tapped her knife on one of the dimples. “That is an eye,” she whispered to Esperanza. “Leave two eyes in every piece so there will be two chances for it to take root.” Then she dropped the chunks into a burlap sack. When the sack was full, the field-workers took it away.

“Where do they take them?” she asked Hortensia.

“To the fields. They plant the eye pieces and then the potatoes grow.”

Esperanza picked up a knife. Now she knew where potatoes came from.

The women began chatting. Some knew each other from camp. And one of them was Marta's aunt.

“Is there any more talk of striking?” asked Josefina.

“Things are quiet now, but they are still organizing,” said Marta's aunt. “There is talk of striking in the spring when it is time to pick. We are afraid there will be problems. If they refuse to work, they will lose their cabins in the migrant camps. And then where will they live? Or worse, they will all be sent back to Mexico.”

“How can they send all of them back?” asked Hortensia.

“Repatriation,” said Marta's aunt. “
La Migra
— the immigration authorities — round up people who cause problems and check their papers. If they are not in order, or if they do not happen to have their papers with them, the immigration officials send them back to Mexico. We have heard that they have sent people whose families have lived here for generations, those who are citizens and have never even been to Mexico.”

Esperanza remembered the train at the border and the people being herded on to it. She had been thankful for the papers that Abuelita's sisters had arranged.

Marta's aunt said, “There is also some talk about harming Mexicans who continue to work.”

The other women sitting around the circle pretended to concentrate on their potatoes, but Esperanza noticed worried glances and raised eyebrows.

Then Hortensia cleared her throat and said, “Are you saying that if we continue to work during the spring, your niece and her friends might harm us?”

“We are praying that does not happen. My husband says we will not join them. We have too many mouths to feed. And he has told Marta she cannot stay with us. We can't risk being asked to leave the camp or losing our jobs because of our niece.”

Heads nodded in sympathy and the circle was silent, except for the sounds of the knives cutting the crisp potatoes.

“Is anyone going to Mexico for
La Navidad?
” asked another woman, wisely changing the subject. Esperanza kept cutting the potato eyes but listened carefully, hoping someone would be going to Aguascalientes for Christmas. But no one seemed to be traveling anywhere near there.

A worker refilled Esperanza's metal bin with another load of cold potatoes. The rumbling noise brought her thoughts back to what Marta's aunt had said. If it was true that the strikers would threaten people who kept working, they might try and stop her, too. Esperanza thought of Mama in the hospital and Abuelita in Mexico and how much depended on her being able to work. If she was lucky enough to have a job in the spring, no one was going to get in her way.

A few nights before Christmas, Esperanza helped Isabel make a yarn doll for Silvia while the others went to a camp meeting. Ever since Esperanza had taught Isabel how to make the dolls, it seemed there was a new one born each day, and
monas
of every color now sat in a line on their pillows.

“Silvia will be so surprised,” said Isabel. “She has never had a doll before.”

“We'll make some clothes for it, too,” said Esperanza.

“What was Christmas like at El Rancho de las Rosas?” Isabel never tired of Esperanza's stories about her previous life.

Esperanza stared up at the ceiling, searching her memories. “Mama decorated with Advent wreaths and candles. Papa set up the nativity on a bed of moss in the front hall. And Hortensia cooked for days. There were
empanadas
filled with meat and sweet raisin
tamales
. You would have loved how Abuelita decorated her gifts. She used dried grapevines and flowers, instead of ribbons. On Christmas Eve, the house was always filled with laughter and people calling out, ‘
Feliz Navidad
.' Later, we went to the
catedral
and sat with hundreds of people and held candles during midnight mass. Then we came home in the middle of the night, still smelling of incense from the church, and drank warm
atole de chocolate
, and opened our gifts.”

Isabel sucked in her breath and gushed, “What kind of gifts?”

“I … I can't remember,” said Esperanza, braiding the yarn doll's legs. “All I remember is being happy.” Then she looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. One of the table legs was uneven and had to be propped by a piece of wood so it wouldn't wiggle. The walls were patched and peeling. The floor was wood plank and splintery and no matter how much she swept, it never looked clean. The dishes were chipped and the blankets frayed and no amount of beating could remove their musty smell. Her other life seemed like a story she had read in a book a long time ago,
un cuento de hadas,
a fairy tale. She could see the illustrations in her mind: the Sierra Madre, El Rancho de las Rosas, and a carefree young girl running through the vineyard. But now, sitting in this cabin, the story seemed as if it were about some other girl, someone Esperanza didn't know anymore.

“What do you want for Christmas this year?” asked Isabel.

“I want Mama to get well. I want more work. And …” She stared at her hands and took a deep breath. After three weeks of potato eyes, they were dried and cracked from the starch that had soaked through her gloves. “… I want soft hands. What do you want, Isabel?”

Isabel looked at her with her big doe eyes and said, “That's easy. I want anything!”

Esperanza nodded and smiled. Admiring the completed doll, she handed it to Isabel, whose eyes, as usual, were excited.

They went to bed, Isabel in her cot, and Esperanza in the bed that she and Mama had slept in. She turned toward the wall, yearning for the holidays of her past, and repeated what was becoming a nightly ritual of silent tears. She didn't think anyone ever knew that she cried herself to sleep, until she felt Isabel patting her back.

“Esperanza, don't cry again. We will sleep with you, if you want.”

We? She turned toward Isabel, who was holding the family of yarn dolls.

Esperanza couldn't help but smile and lift the covers. Isabel slid in beside her, arranging the dolls between them.

Esperanza stared into the dark. Isabel had nothing, but she also had everything. Esperanza wanted what she had. She wanted so few worries that something as simple as a yarn doll would make her happy.

On Christmas Day Esperanza walked up the front steps of the hospital while Alfonso waited in the truck. A couple passed her carrying gifts wrapped in shiny paper. A woman hurried by, carrying a poinsettia plant and wearing a beautiful red wool coat with a rhinestone Christmas tree pinned to the lapel. Esperanza's eyes riveted on the coat and the jewelry. She wished she could give Mama a warm red coat and a pin that sparkled. She thought of the gift she had in her pocket. It was nothing more than a small smooth stone that she had found in the fields while weeding potatoes.

The doctor had moved Mama to a ward for people with long-term illnesses. There were only four other people on the floor and the patients were spread out, their occupied beds scattered among the rows of bare mattresses in the long room. Mama slept and didn't wake even to say hello. Nevertheless, Esperanza sat next to her, crocheted a few rows on the blanket and told Mama about the sheds and Isabel and the strikers. She told her that Lupe and Pepe could almost walk now. And that Miguel thought that Papa's roses showed signs of growth.

Mama didn't wake to say good-bye either. Esperanza tucked the blanket around her, hoping that the color from the blanket would slowly seep into Mama's cheeks.

She put the stone on the night table and kissed Mama good-bye.

“Don't worry. I will take care of everything. I will be
la patrona
for the family now.”

E
speranza's breath made smoky vapors in front of her face as she waited for the truck to take her to tie grapevines. She shifted from foot to foot and clapped her gloved hands together and wondered what was so new about the New Year. It already seemed old, with the same routines. She worked during the week. She helped Hortensia cook dinner in the late afternoons. In the evenings she helped Josefina with the babies and Isabel with her homework. She went to see Mama on Saturdays and Sundays.

She huddled in the field near a smudge pot to keep warm and mentally counted the money she would need to bring Abuelita here. Every other week, with the small amounts she saved, she bought a money order from the market and put it in her valise. She figured that if she kept working until peaches, she would have enough for Abuelita's travel. Her problem then would be how to reach Abuelita.