Esperanza Rising (18 page)

Esperanza had grown so accustomed to the strikers' chanting while she packed asparagus that the moment it stopped, she looked up from her work as if something was wrong.

“Hortensia, do you hear that?”

“What?”

“The silence. There is no more yelling.”

The other women on the line looked at each other. They couldn't see the street from where they stood so they moved to the other end of the shed, cautiously looking out to where the strikers usually stood.

In the distance, a caravan of gray buses and police cars headed fast toward the shed, dust flying in their wakes.

“Immigration!” said Josefina. “It is a sweep.”

The picket signs lay on the ground, discarded, and like a mass of marbles that had already been hit, the strikers scattered into the fields and toward the boxcars on the tracks, anywhere they could hide. The buses and cars screeched to a stop and immigration officials and police carrying clubs jumped out and ran after them.

The women in the packing shed huddled together, protected by the company's guard.

“What about us?” said Esperanza, her eyes riveted on the guards who caught the strikers and shoved them back toward the buses. They would surely come into the shed next with so many Mexicans working here. Her fingers desperately clenched Hortensia's arm. “I cannot leave Mama.”

Hortensia heard the panic in her voice. “No, no, Esperanza. They are not here for us. The growers need the workers. That is why the company guards us.”

Several immigration officials accompanied by police began searching the platform, turning over boxes and dumping out field bins. Hortensia was right. They ignored the workers in their stained aprons, their hands still holding the green asparagus. Finding no strikers on the dock, they jumped back down and hurried to where a crowd was being loaded onto the buses.

“¡Americana! ¡Americana!”
yelled one woman and she began to unfold some papers. One of the officials took the papers from her hand and tore them into pieces. “Get on the bus,” he ordered.

“What will they do with them?” asked Esperanza.

“They will take them to Los Angeles, and put them on the train to El Paso, Texas, and then to Mexico,” said Josefina.

“But some of them are citizens,” said Esperanza.

“It doesn't matter. They are causing problems for the government. They are talking about forming a farm workers' union and the government and the growers don't like that.”

“What about their families? How will they know?”

“Word gets out. It is sad. They leave the buses parked at the station until late at night with those they captured on board. Families don't want to be separated from their loved ones and usually go with them. That is the idea. They call it a voluntary deportation. But it is not much of a choice.”

Two immigration officials positioned themselves in front of the shed. The others left on the buses. Esperanza and the other women watched the despondent faces in the windows disappear.

Slowly, the women reassembled on the line and began to pack again. It had all lasted only a few minutes.

“What happens now?” asked Esperanza.

“
La Migra
will keep their eyes open for any strikers that might be back,” said Josefina, nodding toward the two men stationed nearby. “And we go back to work and feel thankful it is not us on that bus.”

Esperanza took a deep breath and went back to her spot. She was relieved, but still imagined the anguish of the strikers. Troubled thoughts stayed in her mind. Something seemed very wrong about sending people away from their own “free country” because they had spoken their minds.

She noticed she needed more bands to wrap around the asparagus bundles and walked to the back of the dock to get them. Within a maze of tall crates, she searched for the thick rubber bands. Some of the boxes had been tossed over by the immigration officials and as she bent down to set one straight, she sucked in her breath, startled by what was in front of her.

Marta was huddled in a corner, holding her finger to her lips, her eyes begging for help. She whispered, “Please, Esperanza. Don't tell. I can't get caught. I must take care of my mother.”

Esperanza stood frozen for a moment, remembering Marta's meanness that first day in the truck. If she helped her and someone found out, Esperanza would be on the next bus herself. She couldn't risk it and started to say no. But then she thought about Marta and her mother holding hands, and couldn't imagine them being separated from each other. And besides, they were both citizens. They had every right to be here.

She turned around and headed back to where the others were working. No one paid any attention to her. They were all busy talking about the sweep. She picked up a bundle of asparagus, several burlap sacks from a stack, and a dirty apron that someone had left on a hook. She quietly wandered back to Marta's hiding place. “
La Migra
is still out front,” she said in a hushed voice. “They will probably leave in an hour when the shed closes.” She handed the apron and the asparagus to Marta. “When you leave, put on the apron and carry the asparagus so you'll look like a worker, just in case anyone stops you.”

“Gracias,”
whispered Marta. “I'm sorry I misjudged you.”

“Shhh,” said Esperanza, repositioning the crates and draping the burlap sacks across their tops so Marta couldn't be seen.

“Esperanza,” called Josefina, “where are you? We need the rubber bands.”

Esperanza stuck her head around the corner and saw Josefina with her hands on her hips, waiting. “Coming,” she called. She grabbed a bundle of bands and went back to work as if nothing had happened.

Esperanza lay in bed that night and listened to the others in the front room talk about the sweeps and the deportations.

“They went to every major grower and put hundreds of strikers on the buses,” said Juan.

“Some say they did it to create more jobs for those coming from the east,” said Josefina. “We are lucky the company needs us right now. If they didn't, we could be next.”

“We have been loyal to the company and the company will be loyal to us!” said Alfonso.

“I'm just glad it's over,” said Hortensia.

“It is not over,” said Miguel. “In time, they will be back, especially if they have families here. They will reorganize and they will be stronger. There will come a time when we will have to decide all over again whether to join them or not.”

Esperanza tried to go to sleep but the day spun in her mind. She was glad she had kept working and thankful that her camp had voted not to strike, but she knew that under different circumstances, it could have been her on that bus. And then what would Mama have done? Her thoughts jumped back and forth. Some of those people did not deserve their fate today. How was it that the United States could send people to Mexico who had never even lived there?

She couldn't stop thinking about Marta. It didn't matter if Esperanza agreed with her cause or not. No one should have to be separated from her family. Had Marta made her way back to the strikers' farm without getting caught? Had she found her mother?

For some reason, Esperanza had to know.

The next morning, she begged Miguel to drive by the farm.

The field was still surrounded by the chain-link fence, but no one was protecting the entrance this time. All the evidence of people she had seen before was there, but not one person was to be seen. Laundry waved on the clothesline. Plates with rice and beans sat on crates and swarmed with busy flies. Shoes were lined up in front of tents, as if waiting for someone to step into them. The breeze picked up loose newspapers and floated them across the field. It was quiet and desolate, except for the goat still tied to the tree, bleating for freedom.

“Immigration has been here, too,” said Miguel. He got out of the truck, walked over to the tree, and untied the goat.

Esperanza looked out over the field that used to be crawling with people who thought they could change things — who were trying to get the attention of the growers and the government to make conditions better for themselves and for her, too.

More than anything, Esperanza hoped that Marta and her mother were together, but now there would be no way for her to find out. Maybe Marta's aunt would hear, eventually.

Something colorful caught her eye. Dangling from a tree branch were the remnants of the little donkey
piñata
that she had given the children, its tissue streamers fluttering in the breeze. It had been beaten with a stick, its insides torn out.

N
ow, along with her prayers for Abuelita and Mama, Esperanza prayed for Marta and her mother at the washtub grotto. Papa's roses, although still short and squat, had promising tight buds, but they weren't the only flowers there. She often found that someone had put a posy of sweet alyssum in front of the statue, or a single iris, or had draped a honeysuckle vine over the top of the tub. Lately, she had seen Isabel there every evening after dinner, kneeling on the hard ground.

“Isabel, are you saying a novena?” asked Esperanza when she found her at the statue, yet again one night. “It seems you have been praying for at least nine days.”

Isabel got up from her dedication and looked up at Esperanza. “I might be Queen of the May. In two weeks, on May Day, there is a festival at my school and a dance around a pole with colored ribbons. The teacher will choose the best girl student in the third grade to be queen. And right now, I am the only one who has straight As.”

“Then it might be you!” said Esperanza.

“My friends told me that it is usually one of the English speakers that is chosen. The ones who wear nicer dresses. So I'm going to pray every day.”

Esperanza thought about all the beautiful dresses she had outgrown in Mexico. How she wished she could have passed them on to Isabel. Esperanza began to worry that she would be disappointed. “Well, even if you are not the queen, you will still be a beautiful dancer, right?”

“Oh, but Esperanza. I want so much to be the queen! I want to be
la reina,
like you.”

She laughed. “But regardless, you will always be our queen.”

Esperanza left her there, devoutly praying, and went into the cabin.

“Has a Mexican girl ever been chosen Queen of the May?” she asked Josefina.

Josefina's face took on a disappointed look and she silently shook her head no. “I have asked. They always find a way to choose a blonde, blue-eyed queen.”

“But that's not right,” said Esperanza. “Especially if it is based on grades.”

“There is always a reason. That is the way it is,” said Josefina. “Melina told me that last year the Japanese girl had the best marks in the third grade and still they did not choose her.”

“Then what is the point of basing it on marks?” asked Esperanza, knowing there was no answer to her question. Her heart already ached for Isabel.