Breaking Through (3 page)

"Not fast enough," I said. We unpacked our boxes and went to bed. Neither one of us slept well that night.

The next morning Roberto and I woke up to the rattling sound of the alarm clock. I turned it off and listened to the silence of dawn. The sounds of Papá's coughing, the rattle of his aspirin bottle, and the rolling of Mamá's twelve-inch lead pipe as she pressed dough to make tortillas were absent. So too were the smells of
chorizo
and scrambled eggs. I missed Mamá's gentle tapping on my shoulders and tugging of the blanket to wake me up. In the distance I heard the barking of dogs. Every morning they circled the large, empty oil barrels that served as garbage cans. As I got dressed, I heard farm workers warming their car engines before leaving to look for work picking carrots or thinning lettuce.

What I did not miss that morning was emptying the bedpan, which had been one of my regular chores. Papá, Mamá, and my younger brothers and sister used it, but
Roberto and I did not. I hated taking out the Folgers coffee can and emptying it in the outhouse every morning before I went to school. I felt embarrassed to be seen by our neighbors, especially the girls. Every day, I tried to convince Mamá that one of my younger brothers, Trampita or Torito, should take over that task, but she did not agree. Holding the bedpan behind me, I would poke my head out the front door to make sure the coast was clear. I would rush to the outhouse, holding the bedpan steady and trying to chase away a pack of hungry dogs that followed me. Don Pancho, one of our neighbors, knew how much I disliked emptying the bedpan and teased me whenever I ran into him. One morning he was coming out of the outhouse as I carried the Folgers coffee can. "What do you have there, Panchito?" he said, smirking.

"Your coffee and
pan dulce,
" I shot back angrily. He was taken by surprise as much as I was. He told Papá, who scolded me for being disrespectful. But Don Pancho never made fun of me again.

Alone in the barrack, Roberto and I took care of regular chores. We made our bed, swept and mopped the floor, and fixed breakfast. My brother washed the dishes and I dried them and put them away. We left the house sparkling clean, just as we did every morning before heading off for school.

Roberto dropped me off at El Camino Junior High School on his way to Santa Maria High School. I was
excited to be back at school, but nervous. How far behind in my classes would I be? What would my teachers and classmates say to me? My teachers, Mr. Ken Milo and Miss Ehlis, must have known how I felt because they did not ask me any questions. They seemed happy to see me back. My classmates acted as if I had never left. I figured my teachers must have said something about it to them or they simply forgot. I felt lucky, but anxious, expecting one of them to ask or to say something at any moment. No one asked, but in case they did, I had an answer. I would tell them that the Border Patrol officer had made a mistake thinking I was here illegally, that once I proved to him I was born in Colton, California, he let me back in.

Roberto was late picking me up from school that afternoon. I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw him. He looked troubled.

"I lost my job at Main Street School," he said, teary-eyed.

"What do you mean?" I asked in a panic.

"Mr. Sims was angry with me because I missed so many weeks from work. He said he didn't know where I was, so he hired someone else."

"Didn't you tell him what happened?" I asked.

"Of course not!" he snapped. "I couldn't tell him. When I got the job I said I was an American citizen." He rested his head on the steering wheel, gripping it with both
hands. His knuckles turned white. "This means we'll have to go back to the fields." My heart fell to my stomach.

"Again!" I exclaimed, clenching my teeth. My shoulders felt heavier than ever.

For the next two weeks, Roberto and I worked picking carrots and thinning lettuce after school and on weekends when it did not rain. We thinned lettuce using a short hoe. When our backs hurt from stooping over, we thinned on our knees. To ease the pain, we took turns lying flat on our stomachs in the furrows and pressing down on each other's backs with our hands. Working together all day, Saturday and Sunday, Roberto and I managed to finish an acre, for which we were paid sixteen dollars.

Picking carrots was easier than thinning lettuce, but a lot messier. The ground was usually muddy, so our shoes and pants got soaked in mud. We worked on our knees, pulling the carrots out of the ground after they were loosened by a tractor-plow. We topped off the leaves by hand and dumped the carrots in a bucket until it was full. We then emptied the bucket into a burlap sack. We got paid fifteen cents a sack.

During that time we never had carrots or lettuce with our meals. Since neither of us knew how to cook, baloney sandwiches replaced Mamá's delicious
taquitos.
At supper-time, the hand can opener quickly became our best friend. Almost every day we ate canned ravioli with either canned peas or canned corn. Other times we had chicken noodle
soup. For dessert we had a peanut butter and jam sandwich or vanilla ice cream. For breakfast we had scrambled eggs or Cream of Wheat with globs of butter and sugar.

Roberto gave up eating baloney sandwiches when he got a part-time job working at noon at Velva's Freeze, a hamburger and ice cream store located on Broadway, a few blocks from the high school. During the lunch hour on school days, he walked to Velva's Freeze and helped serve ice cream cones. He got paid a dollar an hour and had a hamburger with french fries and a Coke every day.

Mary O'Neill, the owner of Velva's Freeze, was a childless widow in her late fifties. She was short and thin. Her wrinkly, pale skin blended with her short gray hair, and her dark blue eyes sparkled when she talked. Everything she wore was white, including her shoes. The only colors on her were the ketchup and mustard stains on her apron. She liked my brother, and when she found out that he and I were living alone, she invited us to dinner on Saturday. We were to meet her at five-thirty at the ice cream store.

That Saturday afternoon Roberto and I stopped picking carrots at four o'clock and went home to get ready. We were excited and a bit anxious about eating in a restaurant for the first time. I tried to imagine what it would be like. We heated water in a large pot and poured it into a large aluminum tub. We took a bath in the shed, which was attached to the side of our barrack. Papá built it with
discarded wood from the city dump. We used Fab laundry detergent to wash our hair because soap and shampoo were too mild to cut the sulfur and oil in the water. We dressed in our best clothes and arrived at Velva's Freeze on time.

"I am so glad you're joining me," Mary said. "Have you been to the Far Western in Guadalupe?"

"We've been to Guadalupe, but not the Far Western," Roberto responded.

"Good! We'll go there," she said enthusiastically. "They're famous for their steaks."

A steak dinner sounded a lot better than canned ravioli. The Far Western restaurant was about nine miles from downtown Santa Maria. It was dimly lit and had dark brown wooden tables and chairs that were thick and heavy. In the middle of one of the dark-paneled walls hung a stuffed moose head with long antlers. I heard deep voices and the clinking of glasses coming from another room. "It's the bar," Mary said, noticing how I was craning to see what it was. "You can't go there—you're too young." She chuckled and lit a cigarette. The waiter, dressed as a cowboy, brought us the menu. I glanced through it, noticing the high prices and a long list of different kinds of steak. I always thought steak was steak.

"What kind of steak do you like?" Mary asked, putting down her menu. Roberto had a blank look on his face. She waited for an answer. I hated her patience at that
moment. I expected her to tell us. At home we had no choices; we ate whatever Mamá cooked.

Breaking the long silence, I finally said: "I'll have whatever you have."

"I am going to have New York steak," she answered.

"Me too," I said quickly.

"Good. What about you, Roberto?"

My brother's face turned red. He glanced at me from the corner of his eye, brought the menu up to his face, and said: "I'll have the same."

"And to drink?" she asked.

"Just water, please," Roberto answered.

"Me too," I said.

"Well, I am going to have a glass of red wine. It goes well with steak," she said. I did not quite understand why red wine and steak went together. Then I noticed that Mary placed one hand on her lap and the other on the table. Papá and Mamá taught us to always have both hands on the table. Roberto must have noticed it too, because he kept changing his mind. One minute he would have both hands on the table, the next minute only one. He finally settled on one, just like Mary. I figured it was the right thing to do, so I did the same. The next thing that caught my attention was that Mary's napkin had disappeared. Roberto's napkin and mine were still on the table. At home we did not have napkins. After taking a
sip of wine, Mary lifted her napkin and wiped the corners of her mouth, and then her napkin again disappeared underneath the table. I thought she had dropped it. I pretended to drop mine. As I leaned down to pick it up, I saw Mary's napkin was on her lap. I placed mine on my lap and kicked Roberto under the table at the same time so that he would notice. He caught my signal and placed his napkin on his lap too. During the rest of the meal, Roberto and I did exactly what Mary did. I figured she must have noticed what we were doing because she did things very slowly, giving us time to follow. Roberto and I did not enjoy our meal, but we had a good time being with Mary.

Roberto and I continued going to school and working in the fields after school and on weekends. We missed our family and worried about not being able to send them money to help them out. We were barely making ends meet ourselves. But things were about to change.

One day after school, Roberto came to pick me up at El Camino Junior High as usual. I heard the screeching of tires as he turned the corner and came to a halt.
Something must be wrong,
I thought.
Why is he in such a hurry? I hope it's not bad news from Mexico.
When I saw him beaming, his two large front teeth more visible than ever, I was relieved. "Guess what, Panchito?" he said, out of breath. Before I had a chance to ask, he blurted out, "I got my job back! I'll start Monday."

"At Main Street School?"

"Yes! Mr. Sims offered me the job back. He told me that the man who replaced me didn't work out. He was fired. I feel bad for him, but it's great for us, Panchito. It's my ticket out of the fields and to more money."

I was happy, but sad too. It meant that I would have to work in the fields after school by myself. My brother noticed my excitement disappear. "You can help me like before," he said, putting his arm around me. "And, who knows, maybe I can get you a job there too. Come on, cheer up!" That evening we celebrated with extra helpings of ravioli and vanilla ice cream.

We picked carrots that weekend. All day Sunday at work I could hardly wait for the day to end. I savored the thought of helping Roberto clean Main Street School and not having to work in the fields any longer after school. I glanced over at Roberto, who was emptying his bucket into a sack. He towered above the long row of full sacks lined up behind him. The gray clouds sailed above us, breaking up into smaller ones, leaving little openings of blue sky.

Starting that following Monday, Roberto and I spent more time at school and work than at home. Roberto picked me up after school, and we drove directly to Main Street School to clean it. We headed down to the basement of the main building to the janitor's room to get the cleaning cart. Roberto had keys to every room and building. He carried them on a key chain attached to the
side of his belt. The keys clanged as he walked, and the more noise they made, the more he stuck out his chest and lifted his chin. We worked like clockwork. While Roberto cleared off and dusted the tables, I emptied the trash. Then I placed the chairs on the tables to clear the floor for him to sweep with a dust mop. After he swept, he placed the chairs back in their place while I cleaned the blackboards. We cleaned the boys and girls bathrooms last. At nine o'clock we went home, ate dinner, finished our homework, and went to bed. On Saturdays and Sundays we continued working in the fields, picking carrots and thinning lettuce.

At the end of every two weeks, Roberto got a check from the Santa Maria school district, which he cashed to buy groceries and other necessities. Any leftover money he hid underneath our mattress and later sent to our family in Mexico in care of our
tía
Chana, Papá's older sister, with whom our family was staying in Tlaquepaque, a suburb of Guadalajara.

One evening when we got home after work, we discovered that someone had broken in our house and stolen our cash. That month we could not send money to our parents. From that day on, Roberto hid the cash inside a chipped ceramic bust of Jesus Christ that we had found in the public dump.

Every time Roberto and I went home in the evenings to an empty house, I felt lonely. Sometimes I imagined hearing the laughter and bickering of my brothers and sister. I longed for the smell and taste of home cooking, especially flour tortillas,
frijoles de la olla,
and
carne con chile.
I missed seeing Papá's eyes water when he listened to Mexican music on the radio and hearing him repeat stories about Mexico when he was young. I even missed his bad moods and his constant complaints about his back pain and headaches. I buried my head in my schoolbooks. I wanted to keep on learning and to escape the loneliness I felt for my family.

At school I felt alone most of the time, but I did get some attention from my classmates because I did well in math. Mr. Milo arranged our desks according to how well we did on math tests. The student with the highest score
had the honor of sitting in the front seat, first row. A few times I took the first seat, but most of the time I sat in the second one. Marjorie Ito, the daughter of the Japanese sharecropper for whom we picked strawberries, almost always took first place. My classmates called me "hotshot" and teased me because I worked hard. I did not mind it. I knew they were being friendly. Besides, I wanted to be accepted and, most of all, respected. Papá insisted on our being respectful and respected. "If you respect others, they will respect you," he often said.