The Tortilla Curtain

sympathy in his eyes. He didn't know her from anybody, and yet he cared, she could see that.
    “Doesn't anyone in these big houses need a stove cleaned or a floor mopped? Doesn't that ever happen?”
    All the men were watching her. Traffic--amazing traffic--whined past on the canyon road, forty, fifty miles an hour, bumper-to-bumper, with barely room to breathe in between. Candelario Pérez gave her a long look. “We'll see, daughter, we'll see,” he said, and then he showed her where to sit, pointing to the corner she'd occupied now for three hours and more.
    She was bored. She was frightened. What if she didn't get work--not today, not ever? What would they eat? What would her baby do for clothes, shelter, nourishment? And this place--wasn't it the perfect spot for _La Migra__ to come in their puke-green trucks and tan shirts and demand documents, _la tarjeta verde,__ a birth certificate, driver's license, social security card? What was stopping them? It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. As each car pulled into the lot and two or three men gathered round it, she held her breath in hope and fear, wanting work, desperately wanting it, yet mortally afraid of the bland white faces of the men staring out from behind the windshield. What, exactly, did they want? What were the rules? Were they from Immigration? Were they perverts, rapists, murderers? Or were they good people, decent rich people who needed help with a baby, with laundry, with the pots and pans and the ironing?
    As it turned out, it didn't matter. She sat there from dawn till noon and she didn't get work. At eleven or so--she had no way of telling the time exactly--a big _gringa__ with wild dead-metal hair and eyes the color of a Coke bottle came up the canyon road with a strange jerking gait, passed through the open-air building like a zombie and threw herself down in the dirt beside América. It was hot already--ninety, at least--and yet the woman was dressed in the heavy brocade you might find on a sofa in a house of easy virtue, and she wore a shawl of the same material around her shoulders. When she got close, América could see the thin wire loop that punctured her right nostril.
    “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