Breaking Through (5 page)

"Sure," she responded. "See ya."

The next day when I saw Peggy at school, she avoided me, even outside of class. She did not walk home after school. When I saw her mother waiting in the car, I waved
to her, but she looked the other way. I could not understand why. The following day I cornered Peggy in the hallway and asked her why she was avoiding me. She walked away and refused to talk to me. I was hurt and puzzled.

Roberto and I continued going to the dances at the Vets, but they were not fun anymore. Peggy had stopped going, and more and more boys began drinking and picking fights. We were afraid of getting in trouble, so we stopped attending as often as before. We did not stop listening to music, however. At home we danced with each other or with the mop or broom to keep in shape. Instead of the Vets, we sometimes went to the movie theater. Watching American movies was different for Roberto and me. We did not go to American movies before because Papá did not understand English. Sometimes on rainy days when we did not work, our family went to watch Mexican cowboy movies. They were Papá's favorite. They reminded him of his childhood and living in the countryside, where horses were the only means of transportation. I enjoyed American movies because they helped me improve my English and gave me something to talk about with my classmates.

We knew our family would return from Mexico sometime in early April, but we did not know exactly what day. In the evenings we rushed home after work, hoping to see them. Each time we found an empty house we were disappointed, but hopeful and excited that the next day would be it. We wanted to surprise them when they came home, so we frequented the public dump on early Saturday evenings to look for discarded paint and linoleum to brighten the inside of our house. We painted the kitchen and replaced the worn-out linoleum with new pieces of different colors and shapes, making the floor look like a quilt. In his wood-shop class, Roberto made a cupboard with a planter on top and filled it with plastic flowers. He placed it against the end of the kitchen sink, dividing the kitchen and dining area. Before going to
school every morning, we made sure that the house was perfectly clean.

The long-awaited day finally arrived. It was early Sunday evening. Roberto and I were doing our homework at the kitchen table when we heard the dogs barking. We jumped up and ran out the door. A yellow cab came around the corner and parked in front. All four doors of the cab flew open like the petals of a flower. I went around the front of the car to the other side, where Papá and Mamá stood with open arms. I felt like a child running to them. I did not know whom to hug first. Papá gave me a kiss on the forehead, the first kiss he had ever given me. Trampita, Rorra, and Torito jumped up and down and ran around Papá, Mamá, Roberto, and me, in a circle, laughing hysterically, touching our legs and bumping into one another. The cab driver stood leaning against the rear bumper, waiting for Papá to pay him. Roberto and I unloaded the cardboard boxes from the trunk and ran into the house, anxious to show Papá and Mamá what we had done.

"It's beautiful,
mijo
!" Mamá said, looking all around at the brightly painted kitchen, the colorful floor, and the cupboard with plastic flowers.

"This must have been expensive," Papá said, running his hands across the wood.

"I didn't buy it. I made it at school," Roberto responded proudly.

"So they teach you this at school? That's good,
mijo.
Maybe you'll be a carpenter."

"Like Saint Joseph," Mamá said. "I'd like that."

"Tell us about Mexico," Roberto said, trying to draw the attention away from himself.

"We will in a minute," Mamá answered, "but first, we have a surprise for you." She kneeled and opened one of the cardboard boxes and pulled out a small statue of the
Santo Niño de Atocha.
"This is for you, Roberto."

My brother was awed and speechless. He grabbed the statue firmly with both hands, making sure not to drop it. He examined it from top to bottom and side to side.

"Thank you, Mamá," he said, teary-eyed.

"He cured you when you were sick," Roberto said, turning to Torito and handing him the statue.

"I know," Torito said, reaching out to hold it.

"It was a miracle," I said, remembering how Mamá had made Torito an outfit just like the one the Holy Child Jesus wore in a picture prayer card Papá carried in his wallet. We all prayed to the
Santo Niño
until my brother got well.

"And for you, Panchito, we got you this new bust of Jesus Christ to replace the one that's chipped," she said. "It's smaller, but nicer."

I took it carefully and gave Mamá a hug. The ceramic piece was the suffering face of Christ wearing a crown of thorns made from sharp nails. Blood dripped from his
forehead and his sad eyes looked upward in prayer. It made me feel sad.

After we told them about school and work, Papá began to tell us about their stay in Mexico. "We had some ups and downs," Papá said, lighting up a Camel cigarette. "It was hard on your
tía
Chana. She and her family don't have much, but they made us feel at home. With the money you sent us, we helped out with groceries, but it was rough at times."

"If it hadn't been for you boys, I don't know what we would have done," Mamá said. She sighed and continued. "But the kids had a good time, except for Trampita..."

"I was hit by a bus," Trampita blurted out.

"He wasn't paying attention," Papá said, giving him a stern look for interrupting. "He was playing ball with his cousins out in the street. Luckily, he was not seriously hurt, but it scared us." Trampita grinned and shrugged his shoulders sheepishly.

"Papá has some more good news!" Mamá said excitedly. "Remember how Papá suffered from back pain? Well, you tell them,
viejo.
"

Papá chuckled and stood up straight. "See, my back is much better." He sat down and continued. "I am cured. A
curandera
took care of me. She discovered I had been hexed."

"Really?" I said, recalling Doña María, a
curandera
in Tent City who tried to cure Torito when he was sick.
There was something about her that made me nervous.

"How did she find out?" Roberto asked.

"I went to her hut in the outskirts of Tlaquepaque. It was like the garage we lived in in Selma. It had a dirt floor and no electricity. Behind it was a corral where she raised chickens and pigs. In one corner of the hut was a small table covered in black cloth. In the opposite corner was an altar with the
Virgen de Guadalupe.
It was surrounded with small, lit candles, pieces of clothing, wreaths, dried flowers, burning incense, and holy cards. We sat at the table facing each other and drank bitter tea that made me sleepy. She then had me strip to my waist and lie facedown on a straw mat. She massaged my back with raw eggs and chanted in Huichol. I understood one or two words because your grandmother used to speak it. I fell into a deep sleep. When I woke up, I was soaked in sweat and my face was in the middle of a thick pool of blood, covered with mucus. It had a foul smell, like dead flesh. She told me I had vomited it during my sleep."

"Maybe she put it there while you were asleep," I said.

"Sounds like you don't believe me,
mijo,
but it's true." Papá sounded annoyed.

"I bet the devil had something to do with it," Roberto said. "When you were very sick in Corcoran, Papá, I saw the devil in the glass of water you kept next to your bed."

"I thought the glass of water was to keep evil spirits away," I said.

"You don't believe I saw the devil?" Roberto said, raising his voice and making a face at me.

"I am not sure," I answered hesitantly. "Maybe you imagined it. Besides, how do we know he really exists?"

"You'd better believe, or else..."

"Don't say it," Mamá interrupted. "The point is Papá is feeling better, and we should thank God for it."

We continued late into the night, catching up on all the things we had done during the time we were apart. That night, before I went to bed, I prayed and thanked God our family was back together again. I placed the bust of Jesus Christ underneath my pillow and fell asleep.

I was happy to be with my family again, but unhappy that I had to return to the fields. Now that Papá felt better, he started working for Ito again. I did too. I took the bus home after school and joined Papá picking strawberries. I got paid for picking, but not for helping my brother clean Main Street School.

I missed being with Roberto. While I worked, I daydreamed about going to the Vets dances and played rock 'n' roll tunes in my head. Most of the time, I studied things I needed to learn for school. I wrote the information in a small notepad, which I carried in my shirt pocket, and memorized it while I picked.

Weekends were special. Roberto joined Papá and me in the fields, and, during our half-hour lunch break, Roberto and I listened to Papá and the
braceros
tell stories about Mexico. One time Papá told us how he had joined the
Cristero Revolt in 1926, when he was sixteen, and had been wounded in the knee and thrown in jail for six months. "See the scar?" he said with pride, pulling up his left pant leg. "The bullet is still there. Feel it." I placed my finger on the jagged mark. "Put pressure on it,
mijo.
" I felt a hard piece of lead, the size of a marble, swim inside Papá's knee as he rotated his leg. "Those were tough times," he went on. "You could smell death in the air. The fields were irrigated with blood and men hung from trees like rotting fruit." After he finished telling the story, he turned on the car radio to listen to Mexican music. I changed the channel to rock 'n' roll, and Papá got upset. He said it was junk and changed it back.

Papá often talked about becoming a strawberry sharecropper and not having to work for someone else. So when Papá found out that a rancher was looking for sharecroppers, he felt torn. He felt a certain loyalty to Ito because he had sponsored us when we applied for our visas. He knew that without Ito's help, we could not have come back legally as quickly as we did. He went back and forth, trying to decide what to do. Joe García, one of our neighbors, who had served in World War II, insisted that Papá form a partnership with him, taking care of six acres, three acres each, of newly planted strawberries in a parcel of land located between Santa Maria and Guadalupe. Papá was finally convinced. He decided to continue working for Ito six days a week, except Sundays, and to be a sharecropper.

Sharecropping was not easy. The rancher provided the land and plants, but the sharecroppers were responsible for everything else. We had the hands to work the land, but not the equipment. Papá and Joe García borrowed money from a savings and loan company to buy a small tractor, tools, wood to build a shed to store them, and an outhouse. Papá also bought on credit a 1953 Buick to replace the
Carcachita.
Roberto drove the Buick to school and work. Papá and Mamá drove an old DeSoto that Mr. Donovan, a rancher, had given them in exchange for some work Papá had done for him.

The three acres consumed all our resources and time. Papá worked for Ito from seven in the morning until five-thirty in the afternoon. He would come home, have a quick supper, and head out with Trampita and me to our three acres, where we worked until dusk. Papá tilled the soil with the tractor while Trampita and I pulled out weeds. We dug them out with a hand shovel, making sure not to damage the delicate plants. At times the ground was so hard that we had to dig the shovel into the ground with both hands, pushing in with the weight of our bodies. There were hundreds of
coquitos,
weeds that had a small brown nut at the end of their roots. We had to dig out the nut, otherwise the weed would sprout again. Some patches were so dense with weeds that strawberry plants struggled to survive.

Once we cleared the weeds, we broke mud clods with
short hoes and shovels. At times it seemed like a losing battle. Every time Papá tilled the furrows, more mud clods bubbled up, leaving the ground coarse and uneven again. We pounded the furrows with shovel blades and hoes, trying to break down the soil. The ground was as stubborn as the weeds. Papá cursed and clenched his teeth each time he plowed. Drops of sweat dribbled down his nose. Trampita and I tired quickly, but we kept on going. We did not want to disappoint Papá. We worked until dark and then went home exhausted.

Sundays, Roberto and the rest of my family went to work. Torito took care of Rubén and Rorra while Mamá joined the rest of us in our battle with the weeds and mud clods. On Saturday nights Roberto and I did not go out. We stayed home to study. During that time, I barely kept up with my schoolwork. My social studies and English classes suffered, and so did my math. I sat in the fifth seat for three weeks in a row.

But when we saw tiny white flowers sprouting from a few plants, we felt our work had paid off. The white petals fell to the ground like snowflakes, leaving a small green bulb, which turned into a strawberry within days. Like children looking for Easter eggs, we searched for strawberries hidden between the leaves. We picked them gently, trying not to bruise them, and placed them in a cardboard crate anchored on a small wooden cart shaped like a horse, which we pushed in front of us as we picked on our knees.

We were disappointed when we came across several plants that had not grown at all. They had no flowers or fruit. As time went by they dried up and died. Other plants began to turn brown, leaving brown patches throughout the field. Joe and other sharecroppers went to see the rancher to tell him what was happening. The rancher examined a few plants and said he thought a blight had infested the plants. He hired a chemical company to fumigate the fields.

The day the chemical company came, Roberto and I missed school to help with the fumigation. We covered the field with huge sheets of white plastic and sealed the edges with dirt. After the wind died down, a chemical gas was pumped in through a hose from a metal tank loaded on the bed of a large truck. Roberto and I walked around the field with shovels, making sure the plastic sheets were completely sealed. We used flashlights to find our way. As the night wore on, I had a hard time keeping my eyes open. I felt like lying down and going to sleep, but Roberto and Papá did not let me. "
Ándale,
Panchito," Roberto yelled out, banging his shovel on the ground. "You can sleep tomorrow when we go home." The fog blew in from the coast and blanketed the fields. To help me keep awake, I imagined myself being stranded on an island and seeking help. I turned my flashlight off and on, hoping to be seen and rescued. The light splintered against the thick gray mist. Roberto went along with the
game. He did the same with his flashlight from across the field. By dawn, we were exhausted. Papá's face was as white as the plastic. He was stooped over and had a hard time straightening up. My arms and legs felt like lead. Roberto and I went straight to bed at six o'clock that morning. Papá left to pick strawberries for Ito.