The Tequila Worm

by Viola Canales

  I spent the next five hours walking into every business on Main Street, even the dress shops, and filling out applications.

  But when I started back home, I dragged my feet. I probably wouldn’t get a single call. I had absolutely no experience, and the unemployment rate in McAllen was one of the highest in the nation. But if I didn’t make the four hundred dollars, I wouldn’t be able to go to Saint Luke’s.

  As I crossed the 18th Street canal and then the railroad tracks, I heard machines. I looked up and saw that I was near the two packing sheds four blocks from my house.

  I had always seen and known about the packing sheds, but I had never given them much thought. All I knew was that they were open and busy during the summer picking season. This was when we’d get knocks on the front screen door and find young boys selling bags and bunches of carrots, onions, bell peppers, cantaloupes, cucumbers— whatever extra fruit or vegetables were being cleaned and packed in the packing sheds that day. The rest was boxed, loaded, and shipped on the railroad that ran right in front of the sheds.

  I walked to the packing shed and up the wooden stairs. Inside I saw a whole army of well-dressed Mexicans working. Men were operating noisy machines that dumped loads and loads of green cucumbers on a moving conveyor belt. A row of women stood on wooden pallets by the moving belt and tossed the cucumbers into large wooden bins. Another row of women stood on the other side of the belt and packed the cucumbers into white cardboard boxes. Young boys worked at one end of the shed making boxes. Forklifts moved full boxes to the far end of the shed, near the railroad tracks.

  How well dressed the workers were: the women wore nice dresses and makeup; the men, good shirts and trousers—even though the shed was dank and dirty, its floors were completely covered with water, and the greasy machines ground away incessantly.

  As I stood staring, a man wearing a white hat and shirt and crisp blue jeans walked up to me. He squinted. “Are you looking for a job?”

  “Yes!”

  He led me to his tiny office and told me to fill out a slip of paper. “Good. You can start working this minute.”

  The man took me, stunned, to where the women stood in front of the moving conveyor belt. Hundreds upon hundreds of cucumbers kept moving on it. The man said, “Stand on the pallet, just like the women. Your job is to sort the cucumbers into large, medium, and small, by tossing them into one of the three bins on the other side of the belt. Toss the large ones into the first bin, the medium into the second, and the smallest into the third. The women on the other side will pack them into boxes.”

  I now stood on the wooden pallet, working at my very first job. I didn’t feel grown-up and proud, as I thought I would, but completely overwhelmed and panicky, for the cucumbers moved down the conveyor belt like a furious green river. And they all seemed to be about the same size.

  As I stood before the rushing river, I quickly glanced at the women to my right and to my left. They looked like wild windmills, tossing cucumbers left and right. Slowly, I started to pick and throw one cucumber and then another, still confused about the sizes.

  After thirty minutes and then a whole hour, I was tired, and the cucumbers just kept coming faster and faster. When I looked down at the wet floor underneath the pallet, I noticed that the women on each side of me were wearing pumps. How could they manage to stand here all day?

  During a ten-minute break, the belt stopped and the women got together and talked. Some of the men went out to smoke. I found a pay phone and called home.

  “Papa, I found a job! I’m working at the packing shed down the street—the big one.”

  “Ay, mi’ja, that’s really hard work. Come home. I’ll find a way to raise the money,” Papa said.

  “No, Papa, please. I want to earn the money myself.”

  “You’re too much like me, mi’ja. That’s not always a good thing. Come home. Relax. Spend the summer with Lucy and Berta. Go visit the school.”

  “I’d rather work, Papa. We have a late shipment, so I’ll be late tonight.”

  I worked until ten o’clock that night. When Papa came to pick me up, I was dizzy and could hardly feel my legs. I climbed into the car and sank into the seat. “Papa, the Mexican workers are all dressed up as if going to church, even though it’s so dark and dirty and noisy in there. And we all stand on wooden pallets because the floor is completely covered with water.”

  The next day Papa came to get me at midnight. Mama was still up when we arrived home, but I was so exhausted that I didn’t eat the dinner she’d warmed up for me. I just fell into bed, wearing the wet jeans and T-shirt I’d worn all day.

  The days and then the weeks all seemed to blur together into a haze. All I knew was that I’d somehow gotten through the ten- or twelve-hour days. But I also knew that the cucumbers were making me crazy. I dreamed about cucumbers: walls of them falling on top of me as they sprouted faces and screamed at me.

  Then they started to attack me during the day. I caught myself squeezing Papa’s tube of hair gel onto my toothbrush, or putting the coffeepot inside the refrigerator, and seeing green cucumbers everywhere. I saw them on walls, on faces, even in the sky.

  After a month, I stood there at my post, shifting from one foot to the other and doing my best to sort, when the man with the white hat appeared next to me and said loudly, “If you don’t work much, much faster, I’ll have to let you go.”

  He walked back to his tiny office, and the woman to my right leaned over. “Don’t worry,” she said in Spanish. “He always does this—picks on somebody or other, thinking this will just scare everybody into working even harder.” I smiled but kept my eyes on my flying hands. Faster! Faster!

  At the ten-minute break, I asked her, “How long have you been working here?”

  “Five years,” she said. “I come from a little village in Mexico, near the border.”

  I so wanted to ask why she and the others dressed up to come work in this wet and dirty place, but I didn’t.

  By my last month at the packing shed, I knew I hated cucumbers above anything else in the whole world, and vowed to never, ever eat another one.

  But that last month of my first job, I also received my first proposal. I was sitting on the steps during a break, trying to bring my stiff legs back to life, when a young man in a nice pair of black trousers and a long-sleeved white shirt walked up to me. I knew he drove a forklift. He smiled at me and then bowed his head politely. He said, “My name is Miguel. And I think you’re really pretty.” He paused, cleared his throat, and asked, “Would you be interested in marrying me?”

  I shot up and squinted, bewildered. He smiled and repeated, “Would you be interested in marrying me?” This time less shyly. I looked down at my faded wet jeans and my torn sneakers.

  “I don’t even know you.”

  He shook his head. “The picking season is almost over, and I’m afraid I’ll never see you again. That’s why I’m proposing to you now, before I have to go back to Mexico.”

  “I’m just fourteen and haven’t even thought of marriage. . . . Actually, I’m going away to school.”

  “What is your name?”

  Just then the break ended—the conveyor belt started moving again—and we returned to our jobs.

  I tossed cucumber after cucumber into bins, and I thought I finally understood why they all dressed up in their best. I needed—not just wanted—more than this.

  When I got home that night, I sat down at the kitchen table.

  “I made your favorite dish,” Mama said. “Cheese enchiladas!”

  “I know, Mama, but I’m just not hungry.” I laughed and told her about my first marriage proposal.

  “That’s sad, Sofia.” Mama shook her head. “And things are only getting crazier. Young people used to meet in plazas, at dances, at church, under the safe eyes of the community. But now everything is changing so fast. I just heard La Plaza hotel is putting a pool in the courtyard where your papa and I met.

  “And I’m especially worried
about Lucy, now that you’re going away. Things will really get crazy by the time she grows up.”

  I nodded. For the first time ever, I detected a sense of fear in Mama, that even her web of comadres was no match against these changes. And maybe, I thought, going away to school might help me help her someday.

  The CaniCuLa

  IT was Sunday, August first, my birthday. And best of all, I didn’t have to go to the packing shed today.

  We had all just returned from Sunday Mass. Papa was on the porch carving something with his knife. “Mi’ja, I’ll barbecue some fajitas for your birthday dinner tonight. Invite Berta over.”

  I called Berta.

  “Sofia? Aren’t you boiling? And it’s only ten in the morning!” I laughed, thinking that I was simply so happy not to be working with those crazy cucumbers that I hadn’t even noticed the heat.

  “How about we drive around in my car, in the air-conditioning?”

  “Great!”

  Mama walked into the kitchen and started opening all the drawers, then the cupboards.

  “What are you looking for?” I said.

  “The keys to the cedar chest,” she said, opening the stove.

  “You’re looking in the stove?”

  “It’s the canicula,” she said as she opened the refrigerator door.

  “The what?”

  “The canicula.”

  “What’s that?” I’d heard the word before.

  “The forty days between July fourteenth and August twenty-fourth, which are the hottest days of the year and when the cotton gets picked.”

  “But what does that have to do with losing your keys?”

  “Everything, mi’ja, because the craziest things happen during the canicula. But to this day, I still don’t know whether the canicula makes people crazy so they do crazy things, or whether it makes things crazy to make them crazy.”

  “Mama, now, that’s crazy,” I said.

  “See, the canicula is getting to you, too! Your eyes are rolling like a loca’s.” Lucy and I started helping her look for the keys, sweat dripping down our faces. “Mama, what do you want from the chest?” I asked.

  “That’s a secret!” she said, and then she and Lucy started laughing.

  The air conditioner in Papa’s Ford had broken down on Monday. He had taken it to the garage, left it there for four hours, and then picked it up. It broke down the very next day. He took it back and they told him that it was the radiator now. They fixed that. But when it broke down for the third time, the garage manager blamed it on the canicula, saying that these dog days were killing cars like crazy. I worried whether Papa’s Ford would even make it all the way to Austin and back when it finally came time to take me to school.

  I kept looking for Mama’s keys while Lucy left to buy pan dulce at the panadería.

  She came home with a big bag. She opened it, peered inside, and then frowned.

  “What!” she said, taking out gingerbread cochinito after cochinito.

  “Why did you buy so many pigs?” I said.

  “That’s the thing. I didn’t even pick one. I picked everyone’s favorite pan dulce. And look here, fifteen cochinitos !”

  “The canicula!” Mama said. “Don’t even bother going back to exchange them.”

  After Berta found Mama’s keys under a carton of eggs on top of the refrigerator, we dropped Mama off at the abuelitos ’ even hotter house, and then Berta, Lucy, and I kept driving around, just to keep cool.

  I pointed to a temperature sign flashing 114 degrees. We drove two blocks and I pointed to another, flashing 118 degrees.

  “Two blocks and there’s a difference of four whole degrees. Is that crazy or what?” I said, now rubbing my eyes and thinking of the green fields at Saint Luke’s.

  “Do you want to keep driving around or do you want to go to Wal-Mart?” asked Berta as she turned the corner.

  “Wal-Mart? We went there last night!”

  “Sofia, you know people here don’t go to Wal-Mart to buy things. It’s an extension of their homes, but with cool air and colorful things to see. And that’s where the comadres have started going to meet and talk. Like you go to the library for books, they go to Wal-Mart.”

  “Yeah!” agreed Lucy, suddenly poking her head between Berta and me.

  “Well, I’ll tell you both what I want. Pull over and let me drive.”

  “You don’t even have a driver’s license.”

  “Berta, Papa taught me everything. Now, come on. It’s my birthday.” She shook her head and then pulled over. We switched sides.

  Papa had taught me to drive his Ford, but that was a standard. This would be my first try at an automatic. But I had been studying Berta, and it looked like a piece of cake—with only two pedals and just shifting from park to drive, and sometimes reverse. A piece of cake!

  I turned the ignition on, shifted to D, and then kicked off.

  “Not bad,” said Berta.

  I headed toward the high school, feeling a little sad that I’d never get to go there. Was it smart to be passing up graduating with my class, my friends? What if I did crash and burn at Saint Luke’s? Was it crazy to take the plunge into an unknown world? Was I being a mule?

  Berta started laughing.

  “What are you laughing at?” I said as we passed McHi and then the purple and gold water tower with the fierce McHi bulldog painted on it.

  “The other day Beto told me about how he used to drive his friends around in that old car of his. And when it was over a hundred degrees outside, right when he caught sight of McHi, he’d give a sharp whistle and everyone would roll up their windows.”

  “Why?”

  “So that people would think they were so cool with the air-conditioner on.”

  “That jalopy that jerked and cracked like a firecracker?”

  “The very same one. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “Beto told me he thinks you’re pretty!” Lucy started making kissing sounds.

  “God ! I’m so glad I’m getting away from here and especially from you two locas!” I said as I headed down Twenty-third Street toward the church. We could see waves of heat rising up from the hot asphalt like smoke.

  “Do you remember your idea, Sofia, of wetting towels and draping them over our legs to keep cool at night?” Berta said.

  “Remember? Lucy and I still do it. And now that we’re comadres, Berta, we have to get some of those paper fans that are stapled to those wooden sticks that the doctor uses to choke you, and start fanning ourselves as we gossip and gossip,” I said, driving past Navarro School, where Berta and I had gone as kids.

  “Can I do that too?” asked Lucy, her head still between Berta and me.

  I was going to say something funny or sarcastic, but then I caught a glimpse of Lucy’s big bright eyes and realized that she was serious. “Do what?”

  “Be a comadre with you and Berta?” I looked at Berta and winked.

  “Of course,” I said, smiling. “And your new comadres have a surprise for you.”

  “What?” Lucy said. She almost climbed into the front with us. Berta looked at me, wondering.

  I pulled the car into the church parking grounds and turned it off. I leaned over and whispered into Berta’s ear. She smiled. I pulled my seat back. I gently felt the pedals.

  “Lucy, come sit with me. You’re going to help me drive Berta around.” Lucy beamed. As we went around the church’s parking lot for the tenth time, with Lucy at the helm, she lit up more and more.

  “She drives way better than you!” Berta said.

  Then Berta went back to driving, but now with our new comadre Lucy sitting between us. Something so simple as letting Lucy steer meant the whole world to her. I had to remember to jot that down in the notebook Tía Petra had given me.

  “Hey,” said Lucy, “will you and Berta help me plan my quinceañeara?”

  “You’re barely ten!” I said.

  “Hooray, Lucy!” said Berta. “It’s never to
o early to start. Of course I’ll help you. And here’s some important advice: forget getting any help from Sofia on this. She’s great at bugs, books, soccer, and crazy things, but—”

  “But I want Sofia to be my maid of honor,” Lucy said.

  “Whatever you want. Do you have a boyfriend too?” I said.

  “Maybe I can get Noe to be my boyfriend.” Berta and I started laughing.

  “Okay,” I said, “you work on that. And while I’m away at school, I want you to spend time with your comadre planning , and be sure to write me about it.”

  “Okay. Can we make our quinceañera dresses, just like you and Berta made your school dresses?”

  “Sure, sure, whatever you want,” I said, kissing Lucy’s forehead.

  “Sofia, when are you planning to pack? You leave soon!” said Berta.

  I sighed. “I know. I know.” The thought of packing scared me. I just didn’t feel ready to go.

  When we finally returned to the abuelitos’ house, we found Mama and Abuelita sitting at the big round kitchen table drinking hot coffee and admiring a blue ceramic whale. “It’s for the Christmas nacimiento this year,” Abuelita said. “And Sofia, you will be the Christmas madrina.” It was too hot to pay attention.

  “Mama, how can you stand this heat?” I said, opening the freezer door and sticking my head inside. “Do you think it’ll ever rain?”

  “As a child,” Mama said, “I’d stand saints on their heads to try making it rain. But the best thing for keeping cool was getting my father to buy a big block of ice at the ice store. I used the metal ice scraper we bought in Mexico to go back and forth, back and forth on the ice block until I got enough shaved ice for ten raspas. For syrup, I used an extra-sweet pitcher of red hibiscus water.”

  We kissed the abuelitos good-bye, got back into Berta’s car, and headed to the raspa stand on Twenty-third Street.

  As we sat outside the stand at a lime green table under a bright blue tarp, the sun slowly began to set. The rainbow raspa felt cool and refreshing on my tongue.

  “Girls, the canicula isn’t really that bad, and it’s only for forty days,” Mama said. “And sitting here, eating an ice-cold raspa, watching the sun set, is actually rather nice, especially compared to what the canicula meant when I was your age.