Authors: Debra Burroughs
It was important they kept shoes on their feet as long as possible. If they wore out the soles of their shoes before they outgrew them, they stuffed cardboard in the bottoms if the outsides were still in decent condition. This helped them to keep shoes on their feet a little longer.
When Eva was about eleven or twelve years old, near the end of the war, the Christmas season was approaching. There were never any presents from Santa for Eva or her brothers and sister, like the other kids at school received, because Carlos couldn’t find work in the winter.
But there was one particular Christmas that they did have a tree. Eva’s school gave the “classroom trees” to needy families, and that year her family got one. The decorations had all been stripped off first, but at least the school workers did leave the tinsel on. So, Eva and her brothers happily added decorations they made from paper and colored macaroni.
Another Christmas, Eva and her family received surprise gifts from firemen and strangers. Late one night, right before Christmas, a big red fire truck stopped in front of their house. The family had already gone to bed. There was a sharp knock at their front door.
The door was close to where Eva slept on her little mat on the floor, and the knocking woke her up. Mama and Carlos came out of their room and the boys sat up in their big old brass bed.
Eva opened the door and was surprised by a tall, muscular fireman wearing his uniform. He had a big box of books in his arms.
“
Merry Christmas, little lady,” he said. “Can we come in?”
Eva was speechless. She looked at Mama, who nodded yes. Eva looked back at the fireman and nodded to him. She backed up out of the way and let him by. Then another fireman brought in a large box of used toys right behind him. They set their boxes down and went out for another load.
“
We’ll be right back,” the first fireman told Carlos and Sofía in a deep voice. The kids were quietly watching with wide eyes. This time the firemen brought in a couple of boxes of food.
“
Gracias, gracias,” Mama kept saying. Carlos just watched in disbelief. That year the Gonzalez family had a good Christmas.
A few years later, shortly after the war, a service club in Hollister started a new Christmas tradition for the town. Every December, on a Saturday before Christmas, the club arranged for all the children in town to go to the movies for free. Eva and the older brothers were allowed to go.
The movie theater showed westerns and cartoons to entertain the kids. It was a very special time, children of all kinds sitting side by side in the darkened theater, laughing and enjoying themselves. That day, there was no skin color, there were no rich kids or poor kids. They were just kids enjoying a fun afternoon at the movies.
After the movies and cartoons were over, volunteers stood at the doors and handed each child a bag filled with hard candy, unshelled walnuts, an orange and an apple. Eva and her brothers always appreciated those gifts and took them home to share with the younger children and with Mama.
Eva was twelve when the war ended. It was 1944. She was in the sixth grade, and her younger brothers attended the same elementary school as she did. They learned how cruel children can be to one another. Too often students were rude and unkind to them, calling them all sorts of demeaning names and making fun of them because they were poor Mexicans who wore hand-me-down clothes and tattered shoe. Over the years, as Eva’s brothers got older, though, they stuck together and then no one dared to pick on them.
The next year, Eva went to junior high school. The morning of her first day of school, she got up early to get ready for school and catch the bus. Mama had made her a slip from a used flour sack and bought her two new dresses and a pair of shoes for school. Sofía was good at squirreling away money if there was any extra.
“
The bus will be here soon, Mama. I need to take a lunch with me,” Eva reminded her.
“
Don’t worry, niña, I’m taking care of it.” Mama packed her a lunch made of two tortillas from breakfast that she smeared with cold refried beans left over from dinner the night before. She rolled them up like burritos, wrapped them in a cloth and tied a string around them. That was lunch.
On the first day at her junior high, Eva was both nervous and excited for a new school. She didn’t know what to expect. When she walked into class, she immediately felt out of place. Most of her classmates were from middle-class white families. They wore crisp, new clothes and brought their lunches in brown paper bags or brightly-colored metal lunch boxes with pictures on them. But not her.
She was a poor Latina among a classroom of more affluent white students. She spoke with an accent, her skin was darker, and her clothes were not nearly as nice as theirs. Because of these differences, she sensed them staring at her, heard them whispering as she passed by them. She would hear them giggling behind her back and assumed they were laughing at her. As if being beaten down by Carlos at home was not enough, she had to fight against being seen as worthless at school, too.
Eva was a little surprised there were no other Mexican children in her class. Her mama told her she thought it was probably because most of the Mexican families made their kids work the fields with them after the fifth or sixth grade. They needed the income and didn’t think their children needed any more education.
But, having her children get as much education as possible was important to Sofía. She knew it was their only way out of their poverty. She pushed hard to get Carlos to let the children stay in school, at her peril sometimes, and Eva appreciated it.
When class was dismissed for lunch that first day, Eva watched the girls in pretty pastel sweaters with shiny black patent-leather shoes sit at tables outside with their friends. She watched as they took their sandwiches out of their lunchboxes, their neatly-made sandwiches on sliced white bread with layers of delicious-looking meats and cheeses, slathered with creamy white mayonnaise in the middle and crisp green lettuce leaves.
She looked down at her cloth-covered cold bean burritos and felt ashamed. She didn’t dare let anyone see. She slyly inched her way over to a large bush on the perimeter of the lunch area, looked around to make sure no one saw her, and quickly crouched down on the other side of the bush to eat her lunch in secret. She felt small and poor. After that, during lunchtime, she walked to nearby Piedmont Park to eat lunch alone.
Eva had been having lunch alone for a couple of weeks when a boy in her class noticed her walking off by herself. He followed her.
“
Eva!” he called out, when he had almost caught up with her. She spun around in surprise at hearing someone calling her name.
“
Alex?” She recognized him from her class, with his dark wavy hair and chestnut brown eyes.
“
Where you goin’?”
“
Um…I was walking to the park to eat lunch.”
“
Can I come with you?” he asked.
“
I guess so.”
They reached the park bench where Eva usually ate her lunch and sat down. Eva didn’t really want to show Alex her cloth-covered burritos, but she had no way of hiding them now. He opened his crumpled brown paper bag and pulled out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread and an orange.
“
What do you got?” he asked.
“
Just some bean burritos,” Eva replied, trying to hide her embarrassment.
“
I’ll swap you half of my sandwich for one of your burritos.”
“
You want a cold bean burrito?”
“
Sure. I like Mexican food.”
“
Why?”
“ ’
Cause I’m one-fourth Mexican,” he said proudly. “My dad’s mom is Mexican. I don’t get to see my grandma much, she lives in Arizona. But when we do visit her, she makes fresh tortillas and tamales and all kinds of good stuff.”
“
Okay, then. Here you go.” Eva handed Alex one of her burritos and took half of his sandwich. “I’ve never eaten sliced white bread before,” she remarked. “It tastes…well…fluffy.”
“
Fluffy, huh?” Alex chuckled.
“
Yeah, fluffy. Don’t laugh.”
“
Sorry. I just never heard that before. I guess it’s a girl thing.”
“
So you’re part Mexican?”
“
Yep,” Alex answered, with his mouth full of burrito.
“
What else are you?” Eva asked.
He swallowed before he answered her. “Mostly Italian, with a smidge of Irish,” he replied with a big grin on his face, proud of his heritage.
“
Do you want to come and have lunch here again tomorrow?” Eva asked.
“
No, I better not. My friends’ll miss me and start askin’ questions. Then they’ll make fun of me for havin’ lunch with a girl.”
“
I get it,” Eva said, feeling a little disappointed. She thought maybe she had been too forward, pushed too hard too fast. But she was just so anxious to have a friend.
“
I’m not makin’ any promises,” Alex told her, “but, I wouldn’t mind doin’ this again sometime. Just not tomorrow.” Then he took another bit of his burrito.
They sat on the bench for awhile and enjoyed their lunches, talking about school and a little more about their families. Eva was careful not to share very much about hers.
After school, Eva rode the bus home in silent contemplation. She stared out the window all the way home, pondering her future, seeing possibilities dancing around in her head. She felt a strong yearning deep inside to find a way to escape this wretched life. She had seen a better life, the life that the other girls in her class were living. She just knew there had to a better life out there for her, too. Hope began welling up within her – hope and determination.
I‘m sure I don’t have to live this terrible life my mama has, she told herself. I’m just sure I don’t. When I grow up, I’m going to have a good job and a good life. If those other girls can do it, I can do it, too.
The school bus came to a squeaky stop in front of her little old house, and the bus driver pushed the lever to open the doors. Eva quickly got off the bus and ran up to her shabby front door. She pushed it open and was ready to get to work. She changed out of her school clothes and put on her old, worn work clothes. It was time to take care of the babies and help Mama start supper. Life for her was still the same on the outside, but today she got a glimpse of a better life and things changed for her on the inside.
Over the next few years, that seed of hope took root in Eva’s heart and began to grow. She worked hard on her schoolwork and did well in her classes. Alex continued to meet her at the park for the occasional lunch swap until Alex moved away. His father took a job in another town. Eva was heartbroken to lose her friend. She hoped he would write to her, but he never did.
Eva’s junior high years would be over in a couple of months, and she looked forward to going to high school. Her bus drove past Hollister High every day on the way home. As she stared out the window at the school each day, she dreamed of the possibilities that lay before her once she graduated from it.
When she finished junior high, there was only one more summer of farm work standing between her and starting school at Hollister High. Or so she thought.
* * * *
As Eva’s brothers got older, near junior high age, and were able to work full days, Carlos moved the family to the farm labor camps for the summers. The camps were near Tres Pinos, about fifteen or so miles outside of Hollister. The shacks at these labor camps were just one large room and a small area for cooking and serving meals, no refrigerator and no stove. Cooking was done on a camp stove, and there was a sink and a small work table for preparing the meals. The place had virtually no furniture except a beat-up little dresser. There was no table to eat at and no chairs to sit on, only rough wooden boxes to rest on at meal time.
Carlos always brought a mattress for himself and Sofía to sleep on, and he brought bedding for the rest of the family to sleep on the floor. The make-shift showers and restrooms were in a communal building at one corner of the camp, which made it pretty inconvenient for everyone when they wanted to shower after a long, hot day working in the fields and orchards.
The Gonzalez family stayed all summer at the labor camps, usually working in the fields first, then picking prunes and ending with picking walnuts in the fall. Eva and her siblings were always at least two weeks late returning to school. They tried hard to catch up with their classes, but it was tough.
Eva looked forward to getting through the summer and entering high school. It was the summer of her fifteen birthday. It was 1947. At supper one evening in late July, with the family sitting around on the wooden crates, she was talking to her brother, Eduardo, about what classes she was hoping to take in high school when they returned to Hollister.
“
Forget it. You’re not going to high school,” Carlos said, very matter-of-factly. This was the first Eva had heard of this.
“
What do you mean? I
have
to go,” she pleaded. Her heart was set on it. She knew her future depended on it.