Águilas, I told him, not really caring.
Licey, he boomed. The only real team on the Island.
That was the same voice he used to tell me to swab a toilet or scrub an oven. I didn’t like him then; he was too arrogant and too loud and I took to humming when I heard him discussing fees with the owners of the houses. But at least he didn’t try to rape you like many of the other bosses. At least there was that. He kept his eyes and his hands mostly to himself. He had other plans, important plans, he told us, and just watching him you could believe it.
My first months were housecleaning and listening to Ramón argue. My first months were taking long walks through the city and waiting for Sunday to call my mother. During the day I stood in front of mirrors in those great houses and told myself that I’d done well and afterward I would come home and fold up in front of the small television we crowded around and I believed this was enough.
I met Ana Iris after Ramón’s business failed. Not enough ricos around here, he said without discouragement. Some friends set up the meeting and I met her at the fish market. Ana Iris was cutting and preparing fish as we spoke. I thought she was a boricua, but later she told me she was half boricua and half dominicana. The best of the Caribbean and the worst, she said. She had fast, accurate hands and her fillets were not ragged as were some of the others on the bed of crushed ice. Can you work at a hospital? she wanted to know.
I can do anything, I said.
There’ll be blood.
If you can do that, I can work in a hospital.
She was the one who took the first pictures that I mailed home, weak fotos of me grinning, well dressed and uncertain. One in front of the McDonald’s, because I knew my mother would appreciate how American it was. Another one in a bookstore. I’m pretending to read, even though the book is in English. My hair is pinned up and the skin behind my ears looks pale and underused. I’m so skinny I look sick. The best picture is of me in front of a building at the university. There are no students but hundreds of metal folding chairs have been arranged in front of the building for an event and I’m facing those chairs and they’re facing me and in the light my hands are startling on the blue fabric of my dress.
—
THREE NIGHTS A WEEK we look at houses. The houses are in terrible condition; they are homes for ghosts and for cockroaches and for us, los hispanos. Even so, few people will sell to us. They treat us well enough in person but in the end we never hear from them, and the next time Ramón drives by other people are living there, usually blanquitos, tending the lawn that should have been ours, scaring crows out of our mulberry trees. Today a grandfather, with red tints in his gray hair, tells us he likes us. He served in our country during the Guerra Civil. Nice people, he says. Beautiful people. The house is not entirely a ruin and we’re both nervous. Ramón stalks about like a cat searching for a place to whelp. He steps into closets and bangs against walls and spends close to five minutes running his finger around the basement’s wet seams. He smells the air for a hint of mold. In the bathroom I flush the toilet while he holds his hand under the full torrent of the shower. We both search the kitchen cabinets for roaches. In the next room the grandfather calls our references and laughs at something somebody has said.
He hangs up and says something to Ramón that I don’t understand. With these people I cannot even rely on their voices. The blancos will call your mother a puta in the same voice they greet you with. I wait without hoping until Ramón leans close and tells me it looks good.
That’s wonderful, I say, still sure Ramón will change his mind. He trusts very little. Out in the car he starts in, certain the old man is trying to trick him.
Why? Did you see anything wrong?
They make it look good. That’s part of the trick. You watch, in two weeks the roof will start falling in.
Won’t he fix it?
He says he will, but would you trust an old man like that? I’m surprised that viejo can still get around.
We say nothing more. He screws his head down into his shoulders and the cords in his neck pop out. I know he will yell if I talk. He stops at the house, the tires sliding on the snow.
Do you work tonight? I ask.
Of course I do.
He settles back into the Buick, tired. The windshield is streaked and sooty and the margins that the wipers cannot reach have a crust of dirt on them. We watch two kids pound a third with snowballs and I feel Ramón sadden and I know he’s thinking about his son and right then I want to put my arm around him, tell him it will be fine.
Will you be coming by?
Depends on how the work goes.
OK, I say.
My housemates trade phony smiles over the greasy tablecloth when I tell them about the house. Sounds like you’re going to be bien cómoda, Marisol says.