The Tortilla Curtain

one on the stairs, no one overhead. The Buddha on the table gave her his look of inscrutable wisdom.
    Three Buddhas later, she had to give it up. She couldn't take it a second longer--no one could. She rinsed her hands again and the relief flooded over her. Then, steeling herself, she went to the door, eased it open and peered up the stairs to where a larger, more formal-looking door gave onto the floor above. She hesitated a moment, gazing into the penumbral depths of the garage. The car was there, the car that cost more than her entire village could make in a year, and there was a refrigerator too, a washer and dryer, all sorts of things. Tennis rackets. Sticks for that game they play on the ice. Birdcages, bicycles, chairs, beds, tables, a pair of sawhorses, cardboard boxes of every shape and size, tools, old clothes and stacks of newspapers, all of it amassed on the garage floor like the treasure of some ancient potentate.
    She mounted the stairs on silent feet, her heart pounding. How would she ask for gloves? In pantomime? What if the big man got dirty with her? Wasn't she asking for it by coming into his house all alone? She hesitated again, on the landing at the top of the stairs, and then she forced herself to knock. Her knock was soft, apologetic, barely a whisper of the knuckles against the wood. No one answered it. She knocked again, a bit more forcefully. Still nothing. She didn't know what to do--she couldn't work without those gloves. She'd cripple herself, dissolve the skin from her bones...
    She tried the doorknob.
    It was open. “Alo?” she called, her face pressed to the crack of the door. _“¿Alguien está aquí?”__ But what was it they said in those old movies on television that used to crack up all the girls in the village? _Yoo-hoo__, wasn't that it? She gave it a try. “Yoo-hoo!” she called; and it sounded as ridiculous on her lips as on any actress's.
    She waited a moment and tried it again. “Alo? Yoo-hoo?”
    There was the sound of movement, heavy footsteps on the floor, and the fat man shuffled into view. He was wearing a pair of wire-rim spectacles that seemed to pinch his face, and house slippers on his feet. He looked puzzled--or irritated. The white lips glared out from the nest of his beard.
    “Escuse, pleese,” America said, half-shielded by the door. She was on the landing still, not daring to enter the house. She held up her hands. _“Guantes.__ Pleese. _Para las manos.”__
    The _patrón__ had stopped ten paces from the door. He looked bewildered, as if he'd never seen her before. He said something in English, something with the lift of a question to it, but his tone wasn't friendly, not at all.
    She tried again, in dumb show this time, rubbing her hands together and making the motions of pulling on a pair of imaginary gloves.
    Then he understood. Or seemed to. He came forward in two propulsive strides, took hold of her right wrist and examined her hand as if it were something he'd found stuck to the bottom of his shoe. Then he dropped it with a curse--flung it way from him--turned his back on her and stalked out of the room.
    She stood there waiting, her eyes on the floor. Had he understood? Did he care? Had he gone to get her the gloves or was he ignoring her--after all, what should he care if the flesh rotted off her bones? He'd laid his big presumptuous paw in her lap and she'd shrunk from it--what use did he have for her? She wanted to turn and dash back down the stairs, wanted to hide herself among the Buddhas--or better yet, in the bathroom--but she stood her ground. When it came down to it, she'd rather starve than dip her hands in that solution for even one second more, she would.
    But then she heard the heavy footfall again, the vase on the little table by the door trembling with the solidity of it, and the _patrón__ came round the corner, moving quickly, top-heavy and tottering on his feet. The little glasses were gone. In his hand, a pair of yellow plastic gloves. He thrust them at her impatiently, said something in his cacophonous blast of a voice--thank you, goodbye, I'm sorry; she couldn't tell what--and then he slammed the door shut on her.
    The day sank into her veins like an elixir and she worked in a delirium of fumes, scrubbing statue after statue, her aching hands sealed away from the corrosive in the slim plastic envelope of the gloves. Her eyes watered, her throat was raw, but she concentrated on her work and the substantiality of the