It was because of that book that I decided to take your class. I signed up right away when they announced that a writer was going to teach a class in the inmate rehabilitation program and that enrollment was open. I did it not because I imagined I could learn how to write — that seemed like an impossible dream, a dream I hadn’t even dreamed — the truth is that I signed up because I wanted to meet a writer in person, just to see what a writer was in real life. Maybe you’d look like Jordan Hess, or better yet, like Andre Agassi. I have to tell you I was quite surprised when I did meet you, so tall, so scrawny, so pale, with the little lightning bolt on your forehead, your cute freckles, and those short-sleeved Lacoste shirts and canvas sneakers you wore, those light-colored pants that would have fallen off if not for the tight belt. It looked like you had been dressed by your momma or come directly from the campus of a very expensive university, or from an old-fashioned tennis court. I grew concerned because this was no place for you, buried in this dark world, breathing this rotten air. It seemed as if you had come from very far away, and you looked clean and innocent, always freshly showered, but as if someone had sent you here by mistake. You even told us yourself, not that first class but the fourth or fifth class, that white prisoners had three to four times the suicide rate of blacks or Latinos, because the whites weren’t used to such harsh conditions. Of course, you could come and go as you pleased, you’d be in the prison for your classes a few hours every night; but even so, coming into this place is not something everyone can take. Soon after, I began to look forward to your classes, and it was much easier to put up with that face of a seminarian freshly shaved and shirts the color of baby chicks, although sometimes baby blue, and sometimes white, but always the alligator brand. It had even become a running joke among us, taking bets before class on the color of your shirt that day. I always bet yellow, and almost always won. But the most intriguing thing was that lightning-bolt scar; you must have taken some motherfucking whack on the head to get such a scar, which I thought was a mark of intelligence. Someone with a lightning-bolt scar is one of two things: Harry Potter or some brainiac, which is what I thought when I first saw you, even though another inmate, old Ismaela Ayé, a superstitious witch, had spread the rumor that the scar meant you had the gift of prophecy. And it might be so, who knows, it doesn’t seem like such an off-the-wall theory, but I still prefer mine because I just don’t get along with Ayé the witch. Others said it wasn’t a lightning bolt but the letter Z, like the mark of El Zorro. As you will see, everyone had a theory.
The marketing investigation company gave me a job right away. It was my first interview after having become free. That wasn’t so long ago, but it feels like prehistoric times or some earlier life. They noticed my good disposition and strong work ethic right away. Also, I was bilingual and the consumer survey business was made up of both Latinos and gringos. In the actual field, I had to deal with all types of people: blacks, Latinos, whites, Quakers, Protestants, evangelicals, Jews, hippies. Even Catholic priests. They probably hired me just because I was bilingual, but I made it a point to prove to them I was a good worker and that everything I did was done right, door-to-door surveys, focus groups, pantry checks. And don’t think it was easy; forcing your way into people’s houses and asking them questions about their personal habits required both talent and guts. It’s always risky because you’re out on the streets and the streets are the streets. In the bad neighborhoods, you get robbed, and in the good neighborhoods, doors get slammed in your face. You rely on your coworkers for everything, the only ones who defend you and stand up for you. Anyone who goes off on her own is as good as dead, vulnerable to any kind of assault. My coworkers pretended to be the musketeers, all for one and one for all, and as I said before, it’s a job for warriors, in which you have to earn the respect of others. You have to be forceful to break down the resistance and then quick and wily as a fox to find the psychological give-and-take that will grant you access. You also learn to be tolerant and take everything as it comes and respond properly to all those who say I can’t, or to come back later, or right now I don’t have any time, or not really in the mood, or get the hell out of here.
Mr. Rose, one time you said that I was intelligent. We were coming out of class when you said it. It was quite a surprise. No one had ever said that to me. I had been told that I was a good worker, that I was sharp, that I was pretty. But intelligent, never. I kept hearing the word all that afternoon, all that week, and to this very day. I like knowing that inside of me I have this little machine called intelligence, and that mine is working well, that it’s well oiled. I tell you things about my job as a market surveyor so that you know that this job was like the schooling that awoke an intelligence in me that perhaps had been dormant. Others begin their careers after they finish college, but I didn’t even graduate from high school. I was schooled as a market surveyor, house by house. And I was the best one on the team — well, one of the best. But what I did so well at work, I did not know how to do in the rest of my life. I haven’t been quite as smart about living as I have been about working. At work, everything was about precision and efficiency, while in my life everything has been about daydreaming, longing, and confusion.
You have to have a pretty strong stomach to be a market surveyor, I can assure you, because sometimes the inside of a house is a disgusting mess, and you also have develop a talent for looking away, because there are some weird things hidden in some houses that could cause you quite a shock. One time, I was at a front door talking with the man who had opened it, and after a few words I realized a woman was moving around in the house behind him. At first glance, I didn’t notice anything, but the second time the woman crossed my field of vision, I saw that her hands were bound in wire. Wire tight on her flesh. Can you imagine? I backed away terrified and went to the nearest police station, where they said that this wasn’t their problem and that they couldn’t do anything. At that time, I had just begun at the job and wasn’t aware of the rules, so my coworkers took me aside and read me the riot act: “Look, María Paz, sear this into your brain, rule number one, never ever for any reason call the police. No matter what happens.” My job was not to make accusations, they told me, or to be a snoop for the authorities. “If you ever have a problem you call us, but don’t even think about the police.” Anyways, that was an unusual case; you’re not usually going to be seeing poor women bound with wire.