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You saw a lot of things where I came from. I
saw people beaten and rapes. The police couldn’t be trusted. You wanted to
help, but you couldn’t help too much. You couldn’t really close your
eyes either and it took away something inside so you didn’t want to talk.
I was a good person, average as I thought most people were, good, and I thought
about what had happened all the time, about what I did, about what I had seen.
It came to my mind in the flash of someone’s smile or laugh. All things
pleasant were tainted with these images. I thought it made me small that it had
happened and I never forgot about it. I never forgot about it also because my
father disappeared once and he never came back and I knew that he was in the
prisons somewhere or dead. I doubted he ever found what the others I heard talk
about in the north because it was a lie. I knew that at least. The greatest
American was a bootlegger who got himself killed by a jealous husband. I knew
that and that was what happened. Cortes was also the greatest Mexican
anthropologist.
I wanted to work because worked shaped a man, I thought. I
didn’t mind working hard at all, working early and hard because it was not
early like it was when I was a boy. I worked inside to wash the dishes and
sometimes waited on people or fix drinks but I would rather wash or do some
cooking. I used to work very hard in the open fields from where I was from but
then there were no stories to hear. At those times, the quiet was preferred,
but after, I liked working inside to hear voices of others and their stories. I
always thought that when I was tired of working on the inside I would go
outside again.
When I used to work outside my village, I tilled the soil
and planted beans. The sun beat down hard upon my back and I liked it. I
didn’t hear anyone speak often because we were very far apart, but I heard
them swinging their arms or stretching. I worked alone, but sometimes I liked
to hear someone else speak on nothing in particular. So, I washed dishes and I
worked with Mexicans and Americans and some complained about the money or the
work, but work made you something and I didn’t mind working hard. My
father told me that whatever job you did, just do it better than someone else
might. I thought my father told me that.
“Hey, there Gary. How are you
today?”
“Good.” I shrugged. “Good.” It was just
the two us in the kitchen. Though Evelina was the manager of the grill, she
always helped wait on tables, more tables than any of the other girls. The
grill was part of the hotel, but it was independently owned and one day Evelina
was going to own it. She had her own dreams and could be aggressive if she
needed to be. I knew it even if she didn’t.