The Tortilla Curtain

AFTER AMéRICA CLIMBED UP OUT OF the canyon to offer herself at the labor exchange--futilely, as it turned out--she insisted on going again. Cándido was against it. Vehemently. The day before, he'd waited through the slow-crawling morning till the sun stood directly overhead--twelve noon, the hour at which the labor exchange closed down for the day--and then he'd waited another hour, and another, torn by worry and suspicion. If she'd somehow managed to get work she might not be back till dark, and that was almost worse than if she hadn't, what with the worry--and worse still, the shame. He kept picturing her in some rich man's house, down on her knees scrubbing one of those tiled kitchens with a refrigerator the size of a meat locker and one of those dark-faced ovens that boil water in sixty seconds, and the rich man watching her ass as it waved in the air and trembled with the hard push of her shoulders. Finally--and it must have been three in the afternoon--she appeared, a dark speck creeping over the sun-bleached rocks, and in her hand one of those thin plastic market bags the _gringos__ use once and throw away. Cándido had to squint to see her against the pain that filmed his eyes. “Where were you?” he demanded when she was close enough to hear him. And then, in a weaker voice, a voice of apology and release: “Did you get work?”
    No smile. That gave him his answer. But she did hand him the bag as an offering and kneel down on the blanket to kiss the good side of his face like a dutiful wife. In the bag: two overripe tomatoes, half a dozen hard greenish oranges and a turnip, stained black with earth. He sucked the sour oranges and ate a stew made from the turnip and tomatoes. He didn't ask her where she'd gotten them.
    And now she wanted to go again. It was the same ritual as the day before: slipping up from the blanket like a thief, pulling the one good dress over her head, combing out her hair by the stream. It was dark still. The night clung to them like a second skin. No bird had even begun to breathe. “Where are you going?” he croaked.
    Two words, out of the darkness, and they cut him to the quick: “To work.”
    He sat up and railed while she built a fire and made him coffee and some rice pap with sugar to ease the pain of his chewing, and he told her his fears, outlined the wickedness of the _gabacho__ world and the perfidy of his fellow _braceros__ at the labor exchange, tried to work the kind of apprehension into her heart that would make her stay here with him, where it was safe, but she wouldn't listen. Or rather, she listened--“I'm afraid,” she told him, “afraid of this place and the people in it, afraid to walk out on the street”--but it had no effect. He forbade her to go. Roared out his rage till his indented cheekbone was on fire, got up on unsteady legs and threatened her with his balled-up fist, but it did no good. She hung her head. Wouldn't look him in the eye. “Someone has to go,” she whispered. “In a day or two you'll be better, but now you couldn't even get up the trail, let alone work--and that's _if__ there's work.”
    What could he say? She was gone.
    And then the day began and the boredom set in, boredom that almost made him glad of the pain in his face, his hip, his arm--at least it was something, at least it was a distraction. He looked round the little clearing by the stream, and the leaves, the rocks, the spill of the slope above him and even the sun in the sky seemed unchanging, eternal, as dead as a photograph. For all its beauty, the place was a jail cell and he was a prisoner, incarcerated in his thoughts. But even a prisoner had something to read, a radio maybe, a place to sit and take a contemplative crap, work--they made license plates here in _Gringolandia,__ they broke rocks, but at least they did something.
    He dozed, woke, dozed again. And every time he looked up at the sun it was in the same place in the sky, fixed there as if time had stood still. America was out there. Anything could happen to her. How could he rest, how could he have a moment's peace with that specter before him?
    América. The thought of her brought her face back to him, her wide innocent face, the face of a child still, with the eyes that bled into you and the soft lisping breath of a voice that was like the first voice you'd ever heard. He'd known her since she was a little girl, four years old, the youngest sister of his wife, Resurrección. She was a flower girl at the