I was happy to be with my family again, but unhappy that I had to return to the fields. Now that Papá felt better, he started working for Ito again. I did too. I took the bus home after school and joined Papá picking strawberries. I got paid for picking, but not for helping my brother clean Main Street School.
I missed being with Roberto. While I worked, I daydreamed about going to the Vets dances and played rock ’n’ roll tunes in my head. Most of the time, I studied things I needed to learn for school. I wrote the information in a small notepad, which I carried in my shirt pocket, and memorized it while I picked.
Weekends were special. Roberto joined Papá and me in the fields, and, during our half-hour lunch break, Roberto and I listened to Papá and the braceros tell stories about Mexico. One time Papá told us how he had joined the Cristero Revolt in 1926, when he was sixteen, and had been wounded in the knee and thrown in jail for six months. “See the scar?” he said with pride, pulling up his left pant leg. “The bullet is still there. Feel it.” I placed my finger on the jagged mark. “Put pressure on it, mijo.” I felt a hard piece of lead, the size of a marble, swim inside Papá’s knee as he rotated his leg. “Those were tough times,” he went on. “You could smell death in the air. The fields were irrigated with blood and men hung from trees like rotting fruit.” After he finished telling the story, he turned on the car radio to listen to Mexican music. I changed the channel to rock ’n’ roll, and Papá got upset. He said it was junk and changed it back.
Papá often talked about becoming a strawberry sharecropper and not having to work for someone else. So when Papá found out that a rancher was looking for sharecroppers, he felt torn. He felt a certain loyalty to Ito because he had sponsored us when we applied for our visas. He knew that without Ito’s help, we could not have come back legally as quickly as we did. He went back and forth, trying to decide what to do. Joe García, one of our neighbors, who had served in World War II, insisted that Papá form a partnership with him, taking care of six acres, three acres each, of newly planted strawberries in a parcel of land located between Santa Maria and Guadalupe. Papá was finally convinced. He decided to continue working for Ito six days a week, except Sundays, and to be a sharecropper.
Sharecropping was not easy. The rancher provided the land and plants, but the sharecroppers were responsible for everything else. We had the hands to work the land, but not the equipment. Papá and Joe García borrowed money from a savings and loan company to buy a small tractor, tools, wood to build a shed to store them, and an outhouse. Papá also bought on credit a 1953 Buick to replace the Carcachita. Roberto drove the Buick to school and work. Papá and Mamá drove an old DeSoto that Mr. Donovan, a rancher, had given them in exchange for some work Papá had done for him.
The three acres consumed all our resources and time. Papá worked for Ito from seven in the morning until five-thirty in the afternoon. He would come home, have a quick supper, and head out with Trampita and me to our three acres, where we worked until dusk. Papá tilled the soil with the tractor while Trampita and I pulled out weeds. We dug them out with a hand shovel, making sure not to damage the delicate plants. At times the ground was so hard that we had to dig the shovel into the ground with both hands, pushing in with the weight of our bodies. There were hundreds of coquitos, weeds that had a small brown nut at the end of their roots. We had to dig out the nut, otherwise the weed would sprout again. Some patches were so dense with weeds that strawberry plants struggled to survive.
Once we cleared the weeds, we broke mud clods with short hoes and shovels. At times it seemed like a losing battle. Every time Papá tilled the furrows, more mud clods bubbled up, leaving the ground coarse and uneven again. We pounded the furrows with shovel blades and hoes, trying to break down the soil. The ground was as stubborn as the weeds. Papá cursed and clenched his teeth each time he plowed. Drops of sweat dribbled down his nose. Trampita and I tired quickly, but we kept on going. We did not want to disappoint Papá. We worked until dark and then went home exhausted.
Sundays, Roberto and the rest of my family went to work. Torito took care of Rubén and Rorra while Mamá joined the rest of us in our battle with the weeds and mud clods. On Saturday nights Roberto and I did not go out. We stayed home to study. During that time, I barely kept up with my schoolwork. My social studies and English classes suffered, and so did my math. I sat in the fifth seat for three weeks in a row.
But when we saw tiny white flowers sprouting from a few plants, we felt our work had paid off. The white petals fell to the ground like snowflakes, leaving a small green bulb, which turned into a strawberry within days. Like children looking for Easter eggs, we searched for strawberries hidden between the leaves. We picked them gently, trying not to bruise them, and placed them in a cardboard crate anchored on a small wooden cart shaped like a horse, which we pushed in front of us as we picked on our knees.
We were disappointed when we came across several plants that had not grown at all. They had no flowers or fruit. As time went by they dried up and died. Other plants began to turn brown, leaving brown patches throughout the field. Joe and other sharecroppers went to see the rancher to tell him what was happening. The rancher examined a few plants and said he thought a blight had infested the plants. He hired a chemical company to fumigate the fields.
The day the chemical company came, Roberto and I missed school to help with the fumigation. We covered the field with huge sheets of white plastic and sealed the edges with dirt. After the wind died down, a chemical gas was pumped in through a hose from a metal tank loaded on the bed of a large truck. Roberto and I walked around the field with shovels, making sure the plastic sheets were completely sealed. We used flashlights to find our way. As the night wore on, I had a hard time keeping my eyes open. I felt like lying down and going to sleep, but Roberto and Papá did not let me. “Ándale, Panchito,” Roberto yelled out, banging his shovel on the ground. “You can sleep tomorrow when we go home.” The fog blew in from the coast and blanketed the fields. To help me keep awake, I imagined myself being stranded on an island and seeking help. I turned my flashlight off and on, hoping to be seen and rescued. The light splintered against the thick gray mist. Roberto went along with the game. He did the same with his flashlight from across the field. By dawn, we were exhausted. Papá’s face was as white as the plastic. He was stooped over and had a hard time straightening up. My arms and legs felt like lead. Roberto and I went straight to bed at six o’clock that morning. Papá left to pick strawberries for Ito.
Papá was sure the fumigation had taken care of the problem. He pulled out the dead plants and replaced them with new ones. Every day he examined the dying plants to look for new growth. When he did not see any change, he checked with other sharecroppers: their plants were dying too. The green fields were again covered with dark brown patches. The rancher had the soil tested and found out that the chemicals used to prepare it had been too strong; they had killed the plants.
From that day on, Papá’s spirit began to die too. His moods changed from day to day. He began to complain about his back and got angry about everything and everyone, especially Mamá. At times, there was nothing she did that pleased him. He complained to her about work, the kids, the food, the noise, the neighbors. After work, he would throw his black lunch pail on the table, go in his room, and not say a word to anyone. He listened to Mexican music on the radio, smoked, and consumed more aspirin than food. He began to lose weight. “We must be cursed,” he said angrily one day after supper. Like Papá, I felt angry and wondered if he was right.
Papá’s black mood spilled over into our social life. He did not like Roberto and me to leave the house except for work.
One Saturday night Roberto and I asked his permission to go out.“Where do you want to go?” he asked, looking up at the ceiling. Roberto and I waited for the other to respond. “Where!” he said impatiently.
“To the Vets, Papá,” Roberto finally said, looking scared.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a hall where they have dances,” I said, figuring it was my turn to answer.
Papá kept staring into space. Roberto and I stood in front of him with our hands folded in front of us, waiting for a response. There was a long and painful silence. Why do we have to go through this torture every time we want to go out? I asked myself. I glanced at Roberto and rolled my eyes.
“Well, are you going to let us go?” I said impatiently. Roberto glanced at me with terror in his eyes and nudged me with his elbow. I knew I had crossed the line.
“I don’t like your tone of voice, Pancho. Who do you think you are?” Papá shot back angrily, clenching his teeth and giving me a penetrating look that sent chills up my spine. I lowered my head. My legs began to shake.
“Look at me when I am talking to you!” he said angrily. His words pierced like needles. Mamá must have been listening, because she walked in and broke my silence.
“Let them go, viejo. They are good kids; they’ve never gotten into trouble, even when they lived by themselves,” she said softly.
Papá relaxed his jaw and lit a cigarette. “Fine. Roberto can go, but not you, Pancho. You stay home,” he said firmly. His eyes were on fire. “And don’t you ever talk to me in that tone of voice again, understood?”
“Yes,” I responded. My voice cracked. Roberto gave me another nudge. “I am sorry,” I added politely.
“No one disrespects me, especially my children,” he said. “Be home by midnight. And take the two empty bottles and fill them with water at the gas station on your way back.”
I helped Roberto load the two five-gallon bottles that we used for getting our drinking water into the trunk of his car.
“You have to be more patient with Papá,” Roberto said.
“I know he’s sick, but I am tired of his ugly moods.”
“But talking back gets you nowhere,” he said. “See, now you can’t go with me to the Vets.”
“I know,” I said sadly.
The bottles rattled in the back of the trunk as my brother left without me. I went back into the house feeling furious with Papá and myself.