Woman in Black (10 page)

The factory was a godsend to the community in many ways, Concepción thought. It provided much-needed jobs that, in some cases, made the difference between starving and being able to put food on the table. Yet she sometimes saw it as more of a curse than a blessing, one that had them yoked like oxen to a plow that was putting far more money into the pockets of the rich Americana who owned it than into theirs. Seeing it in the distance, a sprawling cinder-block building, its corrugated roof glowing like a griddle in the red glow of the rising sun, she found herself slowing, her load growing a little heavier with each step.

She prayed that today would bring relief from the
jefe
's constant riding. For the past month, ever since production had been brought to a near standstill for several crucial weeks by a faulty piece of equipment, the boss, Señor Perez, and his foreman had been on the workers like fleas on a dog. They were given no breaks, except twice a day to use the lavatory. Lunchtime had been reduced to a mere fifteen minutes. And illness was no longer an excuse for missing a day's work. Last week, when Ana Saucedo had complained of pains in her arms and chest, she'd been sent home and told not to return.

But if there was grumbling among the ranks, no one had dared to voice a complaint. They were all too afraid of losing their jobs. It was hard work, yes, but it was work, and the wages were decent compared to the pittance they would have eked out elsewhere. And if the rich Americana who employed them, known to them simply as the Señora, had yet to show her face, her largesse was well-known. Weren't they reminded of it daily by Señor Perez? He seldom missed an opportunity to tout the efficiency of their modern equipment and their “unheard-of” wages, which he claimed were absurdly generous compared to those at other manufacturing plants. All this while he cracked the whip and docked the pay of anyone reckless enough to sneak off for a quick smoke or an unauthorized visit to the lavatory.

They arrived just as the air horn let out an ear-splitting blast, announcing the start of their shift. They were punching their time cards when Ida Morales, a plump older woman who made it her business to know everyone else's, sidled up to Milagros. “What, no baby yet? Someone should tell that husband of yours he'd do better filling his wife's belly than getting rich up North,” she teased, patting Milagros's flat stomach.

“I'll tell him myself when I see him. Which will be soon,” replied Milagros with a carefree toss of her head. Concepción knew, though, from the color blooming in her daughter's cheeks, that she'd taken the old busybody's comment to heart. No one was more eager for a child than Milagros. It was just one more thing she'd had to defer.

“The sooner, the better. A wife without a husband to look after her is a recipe for trouble. Look what happened to poor Maria Salazar.” Ida clucked her tongue at the fate of the unfortunate Maria, who'd taken up with another man while her husband was up North looking for work. By the time he'd returned home, Maria had been heavy with a child that wasn't his. Some had said that it was a blessing she'd lost the baby at birth.

Concepción brushed past Ida, suddenly in a hurry to get to her station. Talk of losing babies always seemed to her a bad omen, and she protectively made the sign of the cross.

Bent over her sewing machine, she quickly settled into a rhythm. If the work had one advantage, it was that it was unchanging, hour upon hour of stitching the exact same seam on the exact same length of cloth, one after another, the ceaseless rhythm allowing her mind to drift. Even the noise of a hundred sewing machines whirring simultaneously at a deafening pitch, punctuated by the mechanical thump and whuff of the steam presses, became tolerable after a while. She ceased to notice, too, the closeness of the air, swarming with particles of dust and fabric, and the bits of thread stuck to every part of her. (When she was an old woman, long retired, Concepción didn't doubt, she'd still be plucking stray threads from her hair and clothing.)

It came as a jolt to her senses when the noontime whistle sounded. She and Milagros took their lunch outdoors with the others, seated cross-legged on the grass feasting on the
sopas
and
pollo tinga
that she'd brought from home. Just as greedily, Concepción drank in the open air, which, even with the sun high in the sky, was like a cool mountain breeze compared to the stifling atmosphere indoors. Before she knew it, it was time to head back to her station. Concepción rose with a sigh, brushing crumbs from her lap.

She was six hours into her ten-hour shift when she caught the first whiff of smoke. At first she took little notice of it. Probably just Candelaria Esperanza sneaking a cigarette, she thought. Candelaria had been reprimanded twice before for the same offense. But the odor quickly intensified, turning acrid, and when she looked up from her sewing, she saw that the air was hazy with smoke. Concepción dropped the cloth she was stitching and leaped to her feet in alarm.

Just then, she heard a shrill voice cry, “Fire!”

The factory erupted in chaos. Workers cried out in panic as each person scrambled for the nearest exit. Concepción strained to catch a glimpse of Milagros amid the thickening smoke, but all she could see was a writhing mass of limbs. She stumbled off in the direction of Milagros's station, coughing from the smoke that filled her lungs and calling out her daughter's name until she was hoarse.

Amid the frantic cries of those around her, she could hear the sound of fists hammering futilely against the exit doors. Ever since the step-up in production, the
jefe
had kept them chained shut during work hours to prevent slackers from slipping outside for unauthorized breaks. In all the confusion, no one had thought to unlock them.

Concepción was gripped with a paralyzing panic. They were all going to die, trapped in here like rats! But a part of her, the part that had refused to give up in the wake of all the tragedies she'd endured thus far—the deaths of both her parents, the stillborn babies before Milagros, and the betrayals by her husband and Angel—came to the fore now, commanding her sharply to remain calm. If she succumbed to panic, she might very well die. And she would be of no use to her daughter dead.

Without stopping to think, she snatched a half-sewn pillowcase from a basket on the floor. Holding it over her nose and mouth to filter out the worst of the smoke, she forged on in search of her daughter. But even with a layer of protection, each breath was a searing attack on her lungs. Worse was the panic clawing inside her like a caged beast. It was all she could do to stay focused on her goal of finding her daughter and, if need be, guiding her to safety. For Milagros, she would have headed straight into the flames of hell.

And hell was where she appeared to be right now. Amid the ever-thickening smoke, she could now see flames leaping, orange tongues licking greedily at the piled-up scraps of fabric around her. As she stumbled blindly about, her eyes burning and the tiny hairs on her arms crackling with the heat, the cool voice of reason in her head instructed her to get down on her hands and knees. Then she was crawling over the concrete floor, where the smoke wasn't quite so dense. She negotiated her way through a thicket of table legs and the iron pedestal of a steam press, as big around as a tree trunk. Dimly through the smoke, she could see the people gathered by the nearest exit, men and women bawling like frightened cattle as they kicked and pounded in an effort to batter down the door. A chair sailed by overhead, and she heard the shattering of glass as a window gave way. But the windows were all secured from the outside by wire mesh, so it was to no avail: The desperate move only succeeded in letting in a gust of air that sent the flames ever higher.

Concepción gasped for breath, fearing for her own life now. Long ago, after burying the last of her stillborn babies—a little boy—she had imagined that she would welcome death. At the time, she'd had nothing to live for but a husband who'd stagger home from bars only to impregnate her with yet another baby that wouldn't survive to draw its first breath. But that had been before Milagros. The day she'd become a mother to a perfect, healthy child, she'd begun to see death as the enemy. The one time Concepción had been seriously ill, after a cut on her foot had become badly infected, she'd had but one thought in her head:
Who will raise my daughter if I die?
And that alone had been enough to send her crawling from her sickbed, gritting her teeth from the pain as she'd hobbled off to see to her child.

Now she sent up a prayer—
Ayudame, Dios!
—that she would find Milagros among those clamoring at the exit. For it seemed that hope wasn't lost after all. Amid all the shouting, she heard the rattle of a chain, followed by the sound of metal scraping over concrete as the door was shoved open.

At that moment, she faded from consciousness. In some distant recess of her mind, she was dimly aware of a hand roughly grabbing her by the arm and dragging her across the floor. The next thing she knew, she was outside, lying on the ground, staring up at the sky and gulping in fresh air. Her eyes and lungs burned, and the flesh on one side of her body was scraped raw. All around her, people in similar states of dishevelment and confusion lay sprawled on the ash-strewn grass. Others wandered aimlessly about, their eyes staring whitely from soot-grimed faces as they watched the factory, and their livelihoods, go up in flames.

Concepción ran from one person to the next, crying hoarsely, “Have you seen my daughter?”

No one had seen Milagros.

No one knew where she was.

At last she came across the
jefe
, looking on in dull-eyed disbelief as the whole rear section of the building collapsed in a shower of sparks. Señor Perez didn't look so puffed up with self-importance now; he looked more like a wet rooster, with his oily hair in strings and sweat pasting his khaki shirt to his fat belly.

Concepción seized his arm. “Did everyone get out?”

Woodenly, he shook his head in response. “
Espero que sí
.” I hope so. The words only heightened her fear. He didn't have to add that anyone still inside would have perished by now.

Still, she clung to the hope that Milagros was alive. Maybe she was wandering about in a daze somewhere nearby. Concepción prayed to God that it was so as she hurried off to continue her search.

But the God to whom she'd prayed wasn't the God of mercy, as it turned out. He was the same heartless God who had taken all her other children. Once the fire was under control and a head count taken, it was determined that all the workers had made it to safety. All but one. By the time the body was recovered, it was barely recognizable as human remains.

Immediately after the funeral, Concepción took to her bed. Her days became a dark tunnel through which she passed without any sense of time or purpose. Concerned neighbors brought food, for which she had no appetite. They lit candles, which burned unheeded. She neglected to bathe, and the glossy black hair in which she'd once taken pride grew dull and matted. One day, she happened to glance in the mirror and was startled to see a stranger looking back at her—a crazy lady, a
bruja
. She attempted to draw a comb through her hair, but it was too tangled. So she took a pair of scissors and hacked it all off instead.

Dios, why didn't you take me instead?
she cried inwardly.

In time, the grieving mother began to wonder if the reason she was still alive was because God wasn't done with her yet. Perhaps He had a purpose for her. It wasn't until Señor Perez came to call one day that she discovered what that purpose was.

She looked at the
jefe
seated across from her, his hair slicked back and his fleshy fingers splayed over his knees. It might have been the heat causing him to perspire, but for some reason he appeared nervous, as though he found her presence unsettling. And why wouldn't he? She herself would have run from anyone who looked as she did. She was a wraith, alive only in the corporeal sense, her hair, what was left of it, sticking out in clumps and her sunken eyes like two nails pounded into her death mask of a face.

The
jefe
handed her an envelope. Inside was a thick sheaf of bills. “The Señora wants you to know how very sorry she is for your loss, as are we all.” He was quick to add, “And though she is under no obligation to do so, she was good enough to insist on my giving you this, to cover the cost of the funeral as well as any lost wages.”

For a long moment, Concepción merely sat there staring wordlessly at the envelope full of bills before she passed it back to Perez. “Tell her she can keep her money,” she said with contempt. “I don't want it.”

Perez appeared at a loss. He'd clearly never encountered anyone who'd refused such a large sum of money. “Now,
señora
, let's not be hasty. It may be some time before you're able to return to work, and in the meantime you'll need—”

“I don't need anything from you or the Señora,” she cut him off.

He licked his lips nervously. “I assure you, the Señora is only acting out of the goodness of her heart,” he insisted, addressing Concepción as if she were a willful child he was attempting to reason with. “But if you need more than this, perhaps I can—”

“This isn't about money.”

Something in her expression must have told him it wasn't just the talk of a woman too unhinged by grief to know what was good for her, because she heard the wariness in his voice as he inquired, with false solicitude, “What
is
it you want, then?”

She looked him hard in the eye. “Justice.”

Seeing that this unfortunate matter wasn't going to be settled easily, Perez began to sweat in earnest. “You don't know what you're saying. You're beside yourself. Perhaps I should come back another time, when we can talk about this more sensibly.”

He got up as if to leave but was instantly brought to a halt when she commanded sharply, “
Sientate!
We will talk now.” She might appear crazy, but in fact, she was thinking clearly for the first time in weeks. “You can start by explaining why there has been no investigation.”