The Tortilla Curtain

sleep in, a real bed. God, what I wouldn't give for a bed--just for one night.”
    “You're not going with me.”
    “Yes I am.”
    “You're not.”
    “You can't stop me--what are you going to do, hit me again? Huh? Big man? I don't hear you?”
    “If that's what it takes.”
    She saw the bed, the shower, a _taqueria__ maybe. “You can't leave me here, not anymore. Those men... What if they come back?”
    There was a long silence, and she knew they were both thinking about that inadmissible day and what she couldn't tell him and how he knew it in his heart and how it shamed him. If they lived together a hundred years she could never bring that up to him, never go further than she just had. Still, how could he argue with the fact of that? This was no safe haven, this was the wild woods.
    _“Indita,”__ he said, “you've got to understand--it's ten miles each way, and I'll be on the streets, maybe getting work, maybe finding someplace for us, someplace to camp closer in to the city. You're safe here. Nobody would come up this far.” He'd been looking her in the face, but now he dropped his eyes and turned away again. “It's the trail that's dangerous,” he murmured, “just stay off the trail.”
    _Indita.__ She hated it when he called her that: his little Indian. He passed it off as an endearment, but it was a subtle dig at her, a criticism of her looks, her Indian blood, and it made her feel small and insignificant, though she knew she was one of the beauties of Tepoztlán, celebrated for her figure, her shining hair, her deep luminous eyes and her smile that all the boys said was like some rich dessert they could eat with a spoon, bite by bite. But his skin was lighter and he had the little hook in his nose that his family had inherited from the _conquistadores,__ though his stepmother was black as a cane cutter and his father didn't seem to mind. _Indita.__ She sprang up suddenly and flung the _novela__ into the water, _splash,__ and he was wet again. “I won't stay here,” she said, and her voice rose in her throat till it shattered, “not one more day.”
    In the morning--it was early, three a. m. maybe, she couldn't tell--she folded bean paste, _chiles__ and slivers of cheese into corn _tortillas__ and wrapped them up in newspaper for the trip out of the canyon. They'd agreed to leave their things behind, just in case and because they'd attract less attention without them, and to try their luck overnight at least. Cándido had even promised they'd find a room for the night, with a shower and maybe even a TV, if it wasn't too dear. América worked by the glow of the coals and the tinfoil light of the moon that hung like an ornament just over the lip of the gorge. She was giddy with excitement, like a girl waking early on her saint's day. Things would work out. Their luck was bound to improve. And even if it didn't, she was ready for a change, any change.
    Cándido unearthed the peanut butter jar; removed twenty dollars and shoved it deep into his pocket; then he flared up the fire with a handful of kindling and had her sew the remaining three hundred dollars into the cuff of his trousers. She pulled on her maternity dress--the pink one with the big green flowers that Cándido had bought her--tucked the _burritos__ into her string purse and made them coffee and salted _tortillas__ for breakfast. Then they started up the hill.
    There was almost no traffic at all at this hour, and that was a pleasant surprise. Darkness clung to the hills, and yet it was mild and the air smelled of the jasmine that trailed from the retaining walls out front of the houses along the road. They walked in silence for an hour, the occasional car stunning them with its headlights before the night crept back in. Things rustled in the brush at the side of the road--mice, she supposed--and twice they heard coyotes howling off in the hills. The moon got bigger as it dipped behind them and America never let the weight of the baby bother her, or its kicks either. She was out of the canyon, away from the spit of sand and that ugly wrecked hulk of a car, and that was all that mattered.
    When they reached the top and the San Fernando Valley opened up beneath them like an enormous glittering fan, she had to stop and catch her breath. “Come on,” Cándido urged, leaning over her as she sat there in a patch of stiff grass, “there's no time to rest.” But she'd overestimated herself, and now she felt it: a pregnant woman grown soft