Short Story by Denise A. Otte
I sat at the table peeling potatoes for the 'papas fritas' while she washed the potatoes in the sink. The afternoon sun was casting my shadow upon the opposite wall of the tiny kitchen. My shadow blended in with the dirt and stains on the faded, floral wallpaper, so that it was hard to tell were the shadow ended and the stains began. When she finished scrubbing each potato, she handed it to me. I had a bowl of cold water in front me on the table and I put the potatoes into it when they were peeled to prevent them from turning brown. I looked down at the stained and torn jeans I was wearing and noticed a folded piece of newspaper that was jammed underneath one of the table legs to balance it. I worried silently that this might not keep the table steady and my bowl would topple off the table. I had a potato in my left hand and a peeler in the other. I sat on a rickety chair with the seat padding ripped out. This too had uneven legs and the chair tottered from side to side as I peeled. I had an old, metal barrel with a trash bag inside of it propped on top of an empty crate between my legs. I leaned over the barrel as I peeled, so the peelings would fall into the make-shift trash can. As I leaned forward my long, dark hair fell in front of me blocking my view of my hands as I peeled, and I almost peeled my thumb. I had to stop peeling to push the hair back from my face. I glanced out of the corner of my eye to the woman at the sink. She was a small framed woman with a tan, weathered face. She wore a faded, floral dress and had her black and gray streaked hair tied up in a bun with a rubber band. She worked quickly with older, more experienced hands and I struggled to keep her pace. It took much longer for me to peel the papas then it did for her to wash them, so I had a pile of potatoes waiting for me to catch up.
She handed me another potato. I reached for it, but when she let go the potato fell between my slippery, wet hands to the floor. I picked it up, hopping that she hadn't noticed my clumsiness. All I needed was more nasty words from her. She never raised her voice to me, but she was full of insults. Many of them whispered under her breath in Spanish, as if I couldn't hear her and couldn't understand her meaning.
Since my arrival in America last night she had already criticized me twice for choosing to speak English, instead of our native tongue. While growing up in Mexico, my father had stressed to me the importance of speaking English as well as Spanish and we spoke both languages in our home. He often said to me, “Soledad, English is the language of success,” and since I was finally here on American soil, I wanted to speak only English. This seemed to irritate Socorro.
Luckily, she hadn’t noticed that I dropped the papa. Picking the potato up from the hard, dirt floor of the tiny kitchen, I realized that the potato would need to be washed again. I would have to tell Socorro of my mistake. Silently, I got up from the table and walked to the sink. I showed her the dirty potato and motioned toward the stream of water. To my surprise, she didn't scold or taunt me. She didn't say a word. She just scowled at me and washed it. When she handed it back to me, I could feel the coldness of the potato from the tap water she used to wash it. I wondered to myself why she used cold water. My mother always used warm water for washing the potatoes.
"Why do you use cold water on the potatoes?" I asked in English. "My mother always washes them in warm."
"Well, your mother isn't here, is she, and we don't have the luxury of warm, running water here," she snarled in Spanish. She almost always spoke Spanish, but I could tell that her English was good. As she glanced at me over her shoulder, she added, "No, your mama is probably at home in her own kitchen in Mexico. She was never here in the coyote's kitchen, but she sends you here, yes?"
"She had no choice," I explained. "She became ill and my father was already here in America working to send us money every month. My Mama will pass away soon and I had to come here to live with my Papi. How else could I get here?" I asked. "I understand. This was a very difficult decision for my parents."
"No. Mija, tu no comprende! You don’t understand anything and neither do your foolish parents," she exhaled shortly through her nose with such force that I could see her nostrils flare. Making a "huhm" sound, she whispered "Tonto" under her breath at me, as she tossed the scrubbing pad into the sink.
"I am not silly! Don’t call me ‘Tonto.’ My name is Soledad!" I shouted at her, louder than I had intended, but my anger was welling up inside of me. “What right did she have to judge my family?” I thought to myself. “She is nothing!”
She glared at me. “You need to show respect and not raise your voice. If you speak this way to a true coyote, he will kill you. We are not playing house. These people mean business. We are their business," Socorro explained and for once she sounded almost kind, like a mother giving stern, but sound advice.
"No." I said curtly. "You are their business. You are their slave. I don't work for them. I am only here for another day. My father has the money. He just got a good factory job. He will pay the coyotes for smuggling me into America and then I will go live with him." The anger inside of me grew. I could feel my breathing had become more rapid and my skin began to heat up. My voice began to quiver, but I kept it low as she had warned me. "You, Socorro,” I spat at her through gritted teeth, “are the one no one wants. No one will ever pay to free you."
She turned toward me and stood directly in front of me, her shoulders straightened and her eyes met mine. She glared down at me with an intensity that sent a chill through me and, instinctively, I took one step back. She smirked and shook her head. “Don’t challenge me, child,” she said to me in Spanish, our eyes still locked. “I was head-strong, just like you in my youth and I already know everything that you will ever learn in your whole life. I am not another chicken, like you. I choose to work here because I am needed here. No one needs to pay to free me. I can go anytime I want to leave. Now, get to work on those potatoes. You are too slow. I had a donkey in Mexico that peeled papas faster with his teeth! And if I were you,” she warned as she motioned with her head toward the door, “I wouldn’t speak too loudly of my father’s good factory job. Do you see those two guards outside smoking and laughing on the porch? They report everything they see and hear to the coyotes. In general, Mija, don’t speak too loud. We don’t want to bring attention from the neighbors, either, or they will call ‘La Migra’.”
I didn’t say a word to her. “What could I say?” I thought to myself. I turned my attention back to the potatoes and sat working in silence, struggling to catch up with her. As we peeled, the tension in the room began to slowly subside. I looked down at the pile of potatoes waiting for me and realized that there were a lot of potatoes peeled. In an effort to alleviate the tension between us, I said to Socorro, “We eat good tonight,” in a falsely light-hearted tone. “This will be a nice filling meal for the six of us.”
“Huhm,” said Socorro again.
“Huhm, that is her favorite word,” I thought to myself, but I didn’t dare say it. Cautiously, I added, “I’m so hungry, I could eat it all myself. Last night when I arrived with that elderly couple, Roberto gave us the leftover papas fritas from last night’s dinner and I haven’t had anything since.”
As if she hadn’t heard me, she said. “We are expecting two coyotes and their chickens to arrive tonight,” Socorro said flatly, as she gestured toward my pile of potatoes.
“How many chickens…I mean…people in each group?” I asked.
“Who knows, two or three, maybe ten or twenty,” she explained. “And one of the coyotes is Pedro. He is notorious for bringing in very large groups. He smuggles them inside specially made compartments under the floor boards of semi trucks. Stacks them on top of each other like a deck of cards. One time he brought in over twenty-five chickens in one truck load. He made some big money from that shipment, but do you think any of us got a bigger cut, no!”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” I exclaimed, “Smuggling people in a truck like that!”
“Yes, Mija, many times the chickens don’t make it. On that run, he had six chickens die of suffocation and asphyxiation, but he just tossed them into a ditch and told their family that they didn’t show up at his station. He always blames mistakes on the coyotes before him. That’s why even the other coyotes don’t like Pedro much, but he makes more money than all of them combined.”
I looked down again at the wobbly table and the potatoes waiting for me. “Socorro,” I said feeling sick to my stomach and hungry at the same time, “this isn’t nearly enough potatoes to feed twenty people.”
“Don’t you worry, Tonto,” she said sarcastically. “Most of them will be too sick from the fumes and lack of air to eat anything anyway.”
I closed my eyes and silently brought my finger tips to my forehead, down to my heart and then across my chest from shoulder to shoulder in prayer. “Dear God,” I whispered. “I pray my father can pay tomorrow.”
“You’d better pray that Pedro doesn’t find out about your father’s new factory job or he’ll double your price,” said Socorro, as she finished cleaning the last of the potatoes. “Finish up quickly, Tonto, and help me find some type of bedding for the new chickens.”
I considered telling her again that my name was not “Tonto,” and I was not silly, but I knew she would never call me anything else, so I finished peeling the potatoes and cleaned the kitchen as quickly as possible. When I finished, I went to search for Socorro.
I found her with Senora Ramirez and her daughter Rosa. They were tying together burlap sacks and stuffing them with dead grass from the yard. They had been smuggled into the country like me. Socorro had told me earlier that the Ramirez’ have been here for three weeks, waiting for their family to raise enough money to free them. When she saw me standing at the doorway, Socorro shook her head and pursed her lips. Then she pointed at the burlap bags and snapped, “Get to work” then she added. “The real mattress you slept on last night will belong to Pedro tonight.”
“Perhaps he will share it with her instead of Rosa,” said Senora Ramirez to Socorro in Spanish and with a smirk in my direction, she added, “Pedro will like her. She is young and very pretty.” Looking me in the eye, she lifted her eyebrows, slightly tilted her head and said, “The coyotes are nicer, if you pet them, my dear. We will get our price cut in half because of Rosa. I am sure of it.”
“She won’t be here long enough to worry about that. She leaves tomorrow and good riddance to her,” said Socorro, right in front of me. “She has been quite useless since she got here, like teats on a warthog.” The women laughed as Senora Ramirez made clucking noises with her tongue and shook her finger at me. She was a large, stout woman with a sour face and a sour smell. She looked at everything with distain, including her daughter and I hadn’t heard her say one kind word to anyone since my arrival.
I sat down on the floor of the bedroom between Senora Ramirez and Rosa. The walls of the room were faded and stained, like the walls of the kitchen, but this one had old, striped wallpaper which was peeling in several places. I sat with my legs crossed in front of me and glanced around the room. I noticed another guard sitting on the floor in the hallway just outside the room. He was cleaning his pistol. All of the guards liked to sit around cleaning their pistols. I lowered my head to make eye contact with Rosa, who appeared to be my age and wore a dress made of the same material as her mother’s dress. I gave Rosa a pleading half-grin, but she turned away from me.
“How old are you?” I asked her.
“Don’t speak English to her, Tonto” growled Senora Ramirez in Spanish. “As a matter of fact, don’t speak to my daughter at all,” she said. I turned to Rosa. She acted as if nothing had been said about her and continued to stuff the burlap sacks. I uncrossed my legs, which were now beginning to ache and I continued to work as well. Longer shadows were now being cast against the back wall of the bedroom. It was getting dark, so the four of us began to work faster.
The darkness fell quickly and shrouded us in an uneasy secrecy. The house had no electricity, so we lit candles and lanterns to see as we continued to stuff more mattresses. We carefully kept the candles away from the grass and burlap. Just then we heard muffled noises coming from the back door. Socorro suddenly leaped to her feet and ran down the hallway to unlock the door. Rosa and I ran after her with the guard and Senora Ramirez close behind. All at once a freezing, cold gust of wind swept inside the house as Socorro swung open the door. It made the already cool air inside the house instantly feel like shards of ice cutting into my skin. The coldness literally hurt. I hadn’t recovered from the sudden, biting cold when the stench hit me full force. My stomach flip flopped as I automatically doubled over and the back of my throat clenched shut to keep the sparse amount of food I had inside of me down. The horrid smell of urine, vomit and gasoline filled the kitchen. People began to flood into the tiny room. Socorro lit the pilot light of the gas oven and opened the oven door. I was sure that she was trying to get some warmth into the room and into these poor people. Men, women and children dragged themselves inside, most of them crumpling to the floor against the walls as soon as they entered the house. Later in my life, I will look back to this moment and recall that this is how the walls had become so stained.
I sat stunned, gazing around the room. There was an old man sitting alone in the corner talking to himself and rocking his torso back and forth. A middle aged woman knelt beside him spitting up blood into my make-shift barrel trashcan. I searched the room until I saw Socorro in the hallway between the kitchen and the living room. She was on the floor bending over the body of a small boy with what looked like an oxygen mask over his face. A young woman cradled his head in her lap. Her eyes were closed as her tears streamed down her face like a waterfall. She clutched a Rosary in her hands and twisted, pulled and crushed it so hard, I was sure the beads were about to break. In Spanish she recited, “Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee…Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now and in the hour of our death.” She repeated this prayer again and again between her sobs. Somehow I heard her pleads to the Lord, in spite of the other muffled noises in the kitchen. I slowly and cautiously made my way through the crowd in the kitchen toward the woman. By the time I knelt by Socorro’s side, she was already lifting the mask off of the boy’s face and to my relief, he was breathing and conscious. Suddenly, the young woman grabbed Socorro’s hand and brought it to her lips. In Spanish she gushed, “Thank God for you! You must be our guardian angel. Gracias, Senora.” The boy coughed and choked again and before I could move a muscle, he turned and vomited in my lap. Dazed and shocked, Socorro and I instinctively turned our faces toward one another and then I noticed the grin beginning to form at the corners of her mouth. We shared a silent smile and then she hustled me back into the kitchen to wipe down my clothes with a wet towel.
The initial wave of activity in the house was starting to die down and everyone seemed to be settling in for the night. Senora Ramirez and Rosa had already served the ‘papas fritas’ to those who were able to eat. I surveyed the scene slowly. Socorro was now tending to the woman who was spitting up blood. She was guiding the woman into the bathroom. Senora Ramirez, Rosa and some of the guards began herding people into the back bedrooms and handing out the burlap mattresses. I was still standing by the sink trying to clean the vomit stains from my jeans when the back door opened again. The cold air swirled around the kitchen and a large man with dirty clothes and a rifle slung across his back sauntered into the room. He had thick, black hair and a worn, leathered face. His eyes were wide-set and he had several deep wrinkles around his mouth and across his forehead. “Frown lines,” my mother had called them. He wore an emotionless expression and he smelled of sweat and gasoline. As he turned to me, he asked, “Where is Socorro?”
I swallowed hard and my heart began to beat harder in my chest. “I…um, she’s…uh… she’s in the living room,” I answered. The man looked me up and down and then his gaze settled upon my young breasts which were not quite fully developed. His stare frightened me. My stomach sank and my heart pounded. Instinctively, I hunched my shoulders inward, lowered my head and crossed my arms in front of my chest. The man made a small, grunting sound at me and then walked away.
I waited awhile before I followed him. I wondered why he had asked for Socorro so quickly and wondered if he might hurt her. I was worried about her and I was afraid of this man, whom I assumed to be Pedro.
I walked down the hallway as quietly as possible. I heard muffled voices coming from the living room and suddenly I was struck with the memory of spying on my parents when I was a little girl. Many nights I watched from my hiding place as they talked and laughed and told each other about their day. It had been a long time since my parents and I had lived together in the same house because my father had gone to America for work. As I crept closer to the living room, following Pedro, I realized that I would never again be in the same house with my parents. When I heard Socorro’s voice, it reminded me that I would probably never hear my mother’s voice again either and a sadness filled my heart unexpectedly. Socorro’s voice seemed to grow louder as I came to the end of the hallway. My memories of home faded away as I realized that Socorro and the man were talking. They were talking about me.
“What did you find out about her family today?” interrogated the man in an accusing tone of voice. His voice was deep and resonant. He spoke quietly and with self-control. “How much do you think they can pay?”
“Pedro,” Socorro began. “Her mother is dying in Mexico and her father is a field worker. How much did you tell him for her delivery?” Socorro asked.
“So, that is Pedro,” I thought to myself. As he spoke, the hairs on the back of my neck prickled and stood upright.
“I told him $1200 American dollars for her transportation and one night’s lodging. His deadline is tomorrow. I had Marco call him today. The man says he has the money, but do you think we can squeeze him for more?” Pedro asked.
“No,” said Socorro too quickly. Her voice flew up an octave and she sounded almost like a girl herself. She cleared her throat, took a deep breath and then continued, more calmly, “I think you’d be wasting your time with this one, Pedro. Better to keep squeezing Franco Ramirez for his wife and daughter. He must be getting desperate after so long. He will definitely pay more for them.”
Pedro groaned as he leaned back on the torn, old sofa. There were so many rips in the upholstery that it was hard to visualize the original pattern. “I don’t know. Maybe we’ve squeezed all we can with that one and besides I’m getting tired of that Ramirez girl,” he said as he signaled for Socorro to remove his boots. I had crawled to the end of the wall and was shielded from view by a collapsing old recliner. In this spot I could get little glimpses of the scene and hear every word. Socorro knelt down in front of Pedro and untied his big, dirt covered boot. She tugged at the boot a few times before it came off his foot. When the boot was freed, a horrid stench like rotting meat and sweat assaulted my nostrils from across the room. The odor lingered in the air. “Whoa, woman!” he said gruffly as he kicked at her. He missed her face by only fractions of an inch. “My feet are sore and I don’t need you pulling my leg off!” he spat at her. He put his rancid, foul feet up on the coffee table and said casually, “I like that new girl in the kitchen. I want her tonight. Bring her to me later.”
All at once I felt the room grow colder and everything began to spin around me. I rested my head against the wall. My blood seemed to be half frozen as it pumped through my body. Colder, I felt colder still. My heart began to beat violently in my chest and a shiver shook my whole body. “Did he mean…yes, I’m sure that’s what he meant…” My palms began to sweat and my skin felt clammy. I felt cold and hot at the same time and tears began to sting my eyes. She will tell him, “NO!” I knew she would. I sat waiting, willing, pleading Socorro to tell him “No, you can’t have her! I won’t let you touch her,” but she didn’t.
“Lo siento, Mi amore,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt your foot,” she apologized.
I couldn’t believe my ears. She apologized! She had not defended me and she had referred to him as her love! “Who could love such a man?” I screamed in my head. “She must be out of her mind,” I thought, but as I silently watched her frantic efforts to make him comfortable, I began to see that she did not act like a woman in love, but rather, like a nervous servant. This was not love, my parents sitting and talking together, that was love. I then recalled the words Senora Ramirez had used earlier this evening, “the coyotes are nicer if you pet them” and I began to understand Socorro’s behavior, but I still wasn’t sure if she intended to deliver me to the monster later in the night. Did she expect me to appease the coyote as well?
Socorro’s voice lifted me out of my thoughts and I heard her say, “you don’t want to keep that annoying little girl. She is stupid, useless and disrespectful. She rarely does what she is told to do and when she does, she makes a mess of it. You should’ve seen how many papas she dropped today and she dropped a dish too. She is full of fight and her clumsiness will cost you money, Pedro,” she explained too earnestly. Shaking a finger at Pedro, she told him in a stern voice, “You should send her home tomorrow as planned.”
Pedro sat forward on the couch and eyed Socorro closely. His eyebrows furled and his scowl returned. I began to worry that he was angry at her for being so bold with him. I could tell that Socorro was worried too because she leaned away from him and brought her legs up underneath herself into a squatting position in case she needed to run. Pedro slowly lifted his hand toward her face, grabbed her by the chin and pulled her face closer to his own. He glared deeply into her eyes. His angry expression eased. Then suddenly, he bellowed a hearty laugh. “You are jealous that I want to keep her,” he said with a smug, satisfied grin. “Aren’t you, woman? I suppose you want me to stay with you tonight, don’t you?” he taunted her. “Very well, I will keep you company tonight. You don’t have to make excuses to get rid of the girl. Now, go get my whiskey. I need a drink.”
I watched him intently, as my heart pounded heavily in my ears. I thought maybe I had misunderstood what he had said. The realization that I would be safe tonight was just beginning to sink into my brain, when I noticed Socorro’s feet on the floor beside me. She had walked around the corner on her way to the kitchen to get Pedro’s whiskey and found me crouched halfway behind the wall and the recliner. She moved further down the hall so Pedro would not see her and signaled for me to follow her. Silently, I did as I was told and followed her into the kitchen.
“I…I…you saved me…” I didn’t know what to say. My mind was reeling. A million thoughts crashed together in my mind and my eyes began to well with tears. “Socorro…” I said breathlessly, “I…”
“Don’t do this, Mija,” she answered in Spanish. “I don’t like all this drama. I do whatever I have to do to survive in this place…because I belong here, but you don’t belong here and so you need to go home tomorrow with your father. I will see to it. Now, go quietly to find a piece of burlap and get some sleep. You will need your strength.”
She bent down and removed the grate off the bottom of the refrigerator and grabbed the bottle of whiskey that was hidden inside. She walked past me down the hall. Just before she turned the corner into the living room, she stopped and looked back at me. We stood silently for a moment, staring at each other, but before she turned away again, I quietly whispered the words in Spanish, “Gracias, Senora.”
Contributor’s Note: My name is Denise Otte and I am currently a case manager at a prison that houses primarily immigration inmates. This employment background gives birth to most of my story ideas. I am currently an on-line student at Cerro Coso and although I've been writing short stories since I was a teenager, this is the first story that I have ever completed. In the past, I never finished my stories because there was always something missing when I read them over. They seemed flat, lacking character and depth. Sometimes there were fundamental errors in the plot or I simply lost interest because the story never came alive for me. This began to change after I enrolled in the English C141 course Creative Writing: Fiction and Poetry here at Cerro Coso. The teaching and the reading assignments showed me how to liven up my stories and make them believable and more vivid. It also helped to have a deadline. I found that I work much better under pressure. Now that I know I can actually complete a story, I plan to finish all those other half-told tales that are saved in my
computer.
