“How you doing?” the woman said. “I'm Mary. Llama Mary.”
“Me _llamo América,”__ América returned. _“¿Habla usted espanol?”__
Mary grinned. Her teeth were enormous, like cow's teeth, more yellow than white. _“Poco,”__ she said. Little. “No work today, huh? You know, work, ere qnow, wor_trabaja.”__
Work. Was this woman offering her work? America's heart began to race, but then she caught herself. She didn't look like a housewife, this woman, not the kind América knew from the North American films and TV. She looked dirty, and she had the sad smell of poverty about her.
“I'm looking too,” the woman said, and she punched a thumb into her own chest for emphasis. “Me. I work-_trabaja__. Clean house, paint, odd jobs-_comprendo__? Sometimes get, sometimes no. You _sabe?”__
America didn't _sabe.__ Nor did she understand. Was this woman trying to tell her that she, a _gringa__ in her own country, was looking for the same work as América? It couldn't be. It was a fantasy. Crazy.
But Mary persisted. She made wiping motions with her hands, cleaned an imaginary window, even making little squeaking sounds to imitate the pressure of the rag and the release of the ammonia, and she dipped her imaginary rag into an imaginary bucket until America got the idea: she was a _criada,__ a maid, a cleaning lady, here in her own country, and as fantastic as it seemed, she was competing for the same nonexistent jobs America was.
Well, it was a shock-like seeing that gabacho with the long hair in Venice, begging on the streets. America felt all the hope crumple in her. And then the _gringa__-Mary-was digging around inside her clothes as if she were scratching fleas or something, actually squirming in the dirt. But it wasn't a flea she came up with, it was a bottle. Pint-size. She took a long swallow and laughed, then offered it to America. No, America gestured, shaking her head, and she was thinking: _Have I sunk to this, a good student and a good girl who always respected her parents and did as she was told, sitting here penniless in the dirt with a common drunk?__ “Escuse, pleese,” she said, and got up to seek out Candelario Pérez again to see if there was anything for her.
She couldn't find him. It was too late. By arrangement with the local citizens, the labor exchange closed down at noon-they might have been liberal and motivated by a spirit of common humanity and charity, but they didn't want a perpetual encampment of the unemployed, out of luck and foreign in their midst. Twelve o'clock came and you went home, unless you were lucky enough to have found a job for the day, and then you went home when the boss told you to go. They were very strict about camping in the ravine or in the brush along the road-not only the _gringos,__ but men like Candelario Pérez, who knew that one encampment could ruin it for them all. There was nothing to stop the _gringos__ from tearing down this building and calling in the cops and the hard-faced men from the INS. America knew nothing of this, and that was a small mercy. She did know that it was noon, and that the gathering was breaking up voluntarily.
She walked aimlessly round the lot. Cars went by on the canyon road, but fewer of them now, and at greater intervals. There was a gas station, a secondhand-clothing store; across the street, the post office, and then the little shopping center where the _paisano__ from Italy had his store. The men were staring at her openly now, and their stares were harder, hungrier. Most of them were here alone, separated from their families-and their wives-for months at a time, sometimes years. They were starving, and she was fresh meat.
The image spooked her, and she started off down the road, conscious of their eyes drilling into her. All the warmth she'd felt earlier, the familiarity, the brother- and sisterhood, was gone suddenly, and all she could think of, looming nightmarishly, was the faces of those animals at the border-_Mexican__ animals-the ones who'd come out of the night to attack her and Cándido as they crossed over. Mexicans. Her own people. And when the light hit them their faces showed nothing-no respect, no mercy, nothing.
America had been terrified to begin with-what she and Cándido were doing was illegal, and she'd never done anything illegal in her life. Crouching there beside the corrugated iron fence, her mouth dry and heart racing, she waited through the long night till the _coyote__ gave the word, and then she and Cándido and half a dozen others were running for their lives on the hard-baked earth of another country. Two-thirds of their savings had gone to this man, this _coyote,__ this emissary between the two worlds, and he was either incompetent or he betrayed them. One minute he was there, hustling them through a gap in the fence, and the next minute he was gone, leaving them in a clump of bushes at the bottom of a ravine in a darkness so absolute it was like being thrust into the bottom of a well.
And then the animals jumped them. Just like that. A gang of them, armed with knives, baseball bats, a pistol. And how did they know that she and Cándido would be there beneath that particular bush-and at the ungodly hour of four a. m.? There were six or seven of them. They pinned Cándido down and cut the pockets from his trousers, and then, in that hot subterranean darkness, they went for her. A knife was in her face, their hands were all over her, and they jerked the clothes from her as if they were skinning a rabbit. Cándido cried out and they clubbed him; she screamed, and they laughed. But then, just as the first one loosened his belt, taking his time, enjoying it, the helicopter came with its lights and suddenly it was bright day and the vermin were scattering and Cándido had her and the wash of the propellers threw the dirt against her bare skin like a thousand hot needles. “Run!” Cándido screamed. “Run!” And she ran, naked, her feet sliced by the rocks and the stabbing talons of the desert plants, but she couldn't outrun a helicopter.
That was the most humiliating night of her life. She was herded along with a hundred other people toward a line of Border Patrol jeeps and she stood there naked and bleeding, every eye on her, until someone gave her a blanket to cover herself. Twenty minutes later she was back on the other side of the fence.
Bitter reflections. She continued down the road, thinking to duck off onto one of the hilly side streets to her right, as she'd done yesterday. There were backyard gardens there, fruit trees, tomatoes and peppers and squash. She didn't mean to steal. She knew it was wrong. And she'd never stolen a thing in her life.
Until yesterday.
The voices echoed through the confined space of the ravine as if it were a public bath, high-pitched with excitement, almost squealing: “Hey, took-didn't I tell you?”
“What-you find something?”
“What the fuck you think that is-a fucking fireplace-and look, a fucking blanket!”
Cándido crouched there behind the rocks, afraid to breathe, trembling as uncontrollably as if he'd suddenly been plunged into an ice bath, and all he could think of was America. He'd been caught three times before-once in L. A., once in Arizona, and then with America just over the Tijuana fence-and the fear of that took his breath away and turned his stomach over yet again. It wasn't himself he was afraid for, it was her. For him it was nothing. A pain in the ass, sure, a bus ride to the border, his meager possessions scattered to the winds-but how would he get back to his wife? A hundred and eighty miles and no money, not a cent. There might be a beating. The _gabachos__ could be brutal-big men with little blond mustaches and hatuit qhes and e in their eyes-but usually they were just bored, just going through the motions. A beating he could take-even now, even with his face and his arm and the shit pouring out of him-but it was América he trembled for.