Reaching Out (7 page)

"We're in deep trouble," Smokey said, glancing at his wristwatch and pacing up and down.

"We sure are." I craned to spot a bus. No luck. Only cars
and trucks drove by once in a while. We decided to hitchhike down El Camino. Since he was easier to see, Smokey followed behind me as we walked backwards, holding out our hands with the thumb up. When no cars were in sight, we jogged. The faster we ran, the wetter we got. Every time we saw two headlights approaching us, we would get our hopes up. Finally a red sports car passed us, slowed down, and stopped. Smokey and I raced to it, looking like two wet, shaggy stray dogs. The driver rolled down the window and asked, "Where are you guys headed?"

"The University of Santa Clara," Smokey and I said in unison.

"Get in. I'm headed that way."

We crammed in, shivering and wiping the rain from our faces. "So, you're at Santa Clara ... You guys don't have many girls there; too bad. I'm at Stanford," he added. I did not know anything about Stanford, but he sounded like he was boasting. He was stocky with short blond hair and small, plump hands. "I'm on my way to a party at San Jose State. The girls are more fun there than at Stanford," He continued talking and looking straight ahead, not giving Smokey or me a chance to say anything. His superiority bothered me. He came to a screeching halt at the entrance to Santa Clara, "Here you are." We hurriedly climbed out and thanked him. The ride lasted a few minutes, but it seemed like an hour. I was glad to be back and on time for room check.

At the end of my long and stressful freshman year, I was thankful for many things. I had learned a lot, made new friends, and had received A grades in English and Spanish, Bs in Military Science, and C-pluses and Cs in my other courses, with an overall B average. However, I was not satisfied and was determined to do better my second year. And now I was going home.

I had not seen my family since Christmas, so I was excited to spend time with them that summer. I returned to Bonetti Ranch having gained knowledge as well as weight. I left for college weighing 129 pounds and returned home thirty pounds heavier.

"What happened to you!" Trampita exclaimed. "Did someone mistake you for a tire and blow you up?"

"It's all muscle." I flexed my forearm.

"Sure, Panchito. You mean love handles." He grabbed both sides of my waist and gave me a light punch in the stomach. Torito, Rorra, and Rubén, who had grown some, laughed hysterically and took turns hugging me.

"Welcome home,
mijo,
" my mother said, caressing my face. "Your cheeks are so..."

"Chubby?" Trampita chimed in.

"No seas
malcriado, mijo,
" my mother said. Don't be impolite. "Rosy," she said, completing her sentence.

From the corner of my eye, I saw my father sitting on the front steps to our barrack. He had been watching us and smoking. He caught my eye and feigned a smile, I felt a cold chill run down my spine. "He's not well, mijo," my mother whispered. Her eyes welled up. I went up to him, knelt down, and hugged him.

"
¿Cómo estás
, Panchito?" he asked, after flipping his cigarette butt to the side. His voice was weak. His feeble body seemed to disappear in his baggy and faded clothes.

"I am fine, Papá. It's good to be home."

"Is it?" he asked, straining to stand up.

I did not respond. I knew how he felt about my leaving home. He did not like for our family to be apart. It upset him to see Roberto leave our home when he got married, and he was saddened when I went away to college.

"Why don't we all go in and have dinner," my mother said. "I cooked Panchito's favorite meal,
carne de puerco
con
chile, fijoles,
and fresh flour tortillas."

"I missed your cooking, Mamá." The cooking at the university was too bland.

As we sat at the table I noticed that the linoleum floor, which we had put together with scraps of different colors and
shapes we had found in the city dump, was worn out. The cupboard, which divided the kitchen and dining area, was broken. Roberto had made it in his high school wood shop class, and he had built a planter on top and filled it with plastic flowers. The artificial plants were now gone. At supper, my mother, brothers, and sister asked me endless questions about college, just like they had at Christmastime. Again, I told them about Smokey, my classes, and my professors. My father was silent and distant. As he shifted his body, trying to find a comfortable position, he dropped his fork. No sooner had it hit the floor than he asked for someone to pick it up.

"
No hay naiden que lo recoja?
" he said. Is there no one to pick it up? Torito, who was sitting next to him, quickly reached down to get it.

Seeing this as an opportunity to engage my father in our conversation, I said, "Papá, did you know that the word
riaiden
should really be
nadie?
This is what my Spanish professor told me."

"
¡Qué diablos!
" my father shouted angrily. "Are you correcting me?"

I was shocked and speechless. Time seemed to stand still.

"Are you mute?" my father asked impatiently, glaring at me.

"No, Papá. I was just..."

"So, now you think you're better than us because you are going to college?" he interrupted me. "No
faltaba más
...!"
That's all I needed. He pushed his plate away.

"I am sorry, Papa. I didn't mean to disrespect you," I said nervously.

My mother signaled for me to be quiet and said, tenderly, "Is your food cold, Viejo? Do you want me to heat it up?"

"No," my father said, calming down.

I was anxious to leave the table and for the evening to end. "Tomorrow I start work at dawn," I said, rubbing my hands under the table. "I'd better unpack and get to bed early." My father glanced at me and gave me a slight grin. I sighed in relief. He then motioned for me to give him a hand in getting up.

"My back is killing me," he said, bracing himself on my shoulders. I walked him to his bedroom and helped him get into bed. My mother came in with a glass of water and two aspirin pills, which she handed to him. After he took them, he placed the half-empty glass underneath the bed because he believed it kept away evil spirits.

"This is your home, Panchito," he said softly.

"I know," I said, glancing at the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe, hanging on the wall above his bed.

That evening, while my brothers and sister did their homework at the kitchen table, I took a walk around the ranch. The sun was just beginning to disappear.

Bonetti Ranch, like my family and me, had both changed and stayed the same. The dilapidated army barracks that Bonetti, the owner of the ranch, bought after the Second
World War and rented to migrant farm workers remained the same. Looking like victims of the war themselves, the dwellings had broken windows, parts of walls missing, and large holes in the roofs. Weeds invaded the old, rusty pieces of farm machinery scattered throughout the ranch. The potholes in the dirt path that circled the front of the barracks were larger and deeper. Bony and mangy stray dogs roamed the ranch, scavenging for food from the three large oil barrels that now served as garbage cans for the residents. The paint on the outside of our barrack, which was about thirty feet wide by sixty feet long (our family lived in half of the building, which was partitioned into two bedrooms and a kitchen), was cracked and chipped, and the front screen door was torn. Our outside toilet, which we shared with our neighbors, leaned to one side. The shed on the side of our house, where we took baths in a round aluminum tub, was in need of repair, and the water was oily and foul-smelling, like rotten eggs.

As the coastal fog rolled in and covered the valley like a large gray sheet, I felt chilly and went back inside and got ready for bed. My mother, father, and sister slept in one room. My three younger brothers, Trampita, Torito, and Rubén, slept in the second room in a twin bed next to mine, which I had shared with Roberto before he got married.

The next day, and for the rest of the summer, I worked again for the Santa Maria Window Cleaners, the janitorial company that employed me during high school. It was the
same company that Trampita worked for after I left for college so he could continue helping to support our family. That summer Trampita and Torito picked strawberries for Ito, the Japanese sharecropper. As usual, my old job was routine and tedious. In the early morning, every day, I cleaned the Western Union before it opened at seven, and Betty's Fabrics. I then helped Mike Nevel, the owner of the company, clean houses—doing windows, washing walls, stripping and waxing floors. In the afternoons, I worked alone, cleaning and scraping paint off windows, appliances, and tile counters in the newly built apartments near Hancock College. In the evenings I cleaned the gas company on Main Street and, late at night twice a week, the Standard Oil Company. I worked seventy hours each week, and the money I earned helped my family make ends meet.

Unfortunately, I had little time to spend at home. As time went by, though, I did not mind this too much because of my father. His dark moods, which worsened every day, were quickly dominating our lives. He regularly complained about everything and criticized everyone, especially my mother. Often he stayed in bed all day and refused to shave, eat, or talk to anyone. At times, he locked himself in a storage shed that was in the middle of the ranch where Bonetti kept building supplies. None of us felt relaxed or happy around him, but we continued praying for him and being respectful. When I had free time, I visited my brother and his wife and their baby daughter, Jackie, who lived in a one-room
apartment in town, Roberto worked as a janitor for the Santa Maria Unified School District during the week and cleaned commercial offices on weekends.

One evening when I got home from work, a week before I was to return to college, my mother told me that my father had gone to the storage shed again that morning and refused to come out. "Go get him,
mijo.
Maybe he'll listen to you," my mother said, tearing up.

"I'll try," I put my arm around her. She then took two bananas and a handful of Fig Newton cookies and filled a glass with milk and placed them on large plate and handed it to me.

"See if he'll take this. He hasn't eaten all day." My father liked eating bananas and milk products because he said they eased his stomach pain.

When my mother hurriedly opened the front door to our house for me, I stood on the front steps for a few seconds until my eyes adjusted to the darkness. I walked carefully, holding the plate with both hands, until I got to the storage shed. I set the plate down on the ground and placed my ear against the front door. I could not hear anything. My heart was racing. I knocked lightly. No answer. I knocked again more forcefully.

"
¿Quién es...?
" I heard my father ask wearily.

"It's me, Panchito. I've got something for you to eat." I waited and waited for a response. I then heard moaning and boards rattling.

"Papá, are you okay?" The door creaked open slightly and a dim light went on inside. I pushed the door wide open and went in. My father was struggling to lie down on a makeshift bed he had made out of old plywood boards. He was as pale as a white sheet and had dark circles under his eyes and disheveled hair.

"I am very tired," he said, reaching out to touch me, I bent over and held his hand. I then helped him sir up with his back leaning against the wall.

"You have to eat." I brought in the plate, placed it by his side, and peeled one banana and handed it to him. He chewed slowly, staring into Space. After he finished eating, I persuaded him to come back in the house. My mother, anxiously waiting for us at the door of our barrack, helped me put him into bed.

"
Pobrecito, qué lástima me da verlo sufrir,
" she said, crying. It hurts me to see him suffering.

"I know," I said, gently placing my arm around her shoulder. I felt a deep sadness. My father had changed so much from the time we first crossed the border.

I never expected to meet him. I had cleaned his office every day after school during my four years of high school and never once did I see him. His office was on the first floor, in the rear of the gas company, a large building with a main office that connected to a back structure two stories high. I feather-dusted the desks and Venetian blinds, emptied and washed the ashtrays, dust-mopped the floors, and emptied the wastebaskets throughout the building. I always did his office last because it was the cleanest and most private. I often wondered whether or not he used it, because everything in it always remained the same. He had his own entrance off a corridor that ran the length of the building. His door had a framed beveled-glass window with his name, ROBERT E. EASTON, in black letters. Entering his office was like going back in time. It had a musty odor and every piece of furniture was old and made of dark wood. The top of his large desk, which sat in the middle of the office, had inlayed gold-color banding around it, and on it were neat piles of yellowish papers and file folders, a small brass lamp with a
porcelain shade, and a black rotary phone. His bookshelves were packed with leather-bound books and ledgers. In the corner, behind the door, was a coat rack, and above it hung a black-and-white aerial picture of Santa Maria Valley taken in the 1940s. After I finished cleaning his office, I would sit at his desk and do my homework, because I had no place to study at home. Sitting there, I often wondered who this man was and if I would ever actually meet him.

And here I was, cleaning his office again in the evenings, five days a week, during the summer vacation at the end of my freshman year in college, but still there was no sight of him. Then one Friday evening, Mike Nevel, the owner of the Santa Maria Window Cleaners, asked me to help him strip and wax the floors of a commercial building and postpone cleaning the back building of the gas company until the following day. On Saturday morning, after cleaning the Western Union and Betty's Fabrics, I went to the gas company, picked up the cleaning cart from the janitors' room, and began cleaning the offices on the first floor. As I dust-mopped the corridor, an elderly, thin man with wire-rimmed glasses appeared. He was dressed in a dark navy pinstriped suit and vest, a starched white shirt, a bow tie, and a black felt hat. In his right hand, he carried a walking cane. This
must be
him, I thought, trying to hide my excitement.