Lupita Mañana: Chapters 7–9

He laughed triumphantly.

All about them was silence, an eerie, dead silence.

Lupita could hear her brother’s labored, quick breathing. He was as nervous as she was.

Lupita remembered the name Salvador had bestowed upon her in Tijuana.

“Sí,” replied Lupita, crestfallen that they were so far from their destination, but relieved by the friendliness of this pocho.

The yellow house was sparsely furnished, but to Lupita, it seemed very fine. Each of the two bedrooms contained two single beds, a chair, a chest of drawers, and a clothes closet.

There she had helped out now and then, but now she had fifteen bedrooms on the second floor of the motel to clean by herself! Floors to vacuum, bathrooms to scour, furniture to dust, and twenty-five beds to change.

She waited, worried, on the veranda overlooking the street.

“He writes a letter and puts cash into the envelope. Then he seals it, registers it at the post office, and mails it.”

Lupita stared gravely at him, then looked about her at the busy, noisy kitchen. “I will not write her of the money we must pay for cards in order to work here. I will not tell her how we were robbed in Mexico or about the coyote or about the old man who was murdered..."

He did not like the idea of buying a cheap shirt. He liked handsome things, things that had luster and color.

Sí, there was Latin music in Señor Rodrigo’s café, but it was so soft she had to strain her ears to hear it. Concha said that was how the gringos like their music, almost inaudible, as if their ears were very tender.

Sí, there was Latin music in Señor Rodrigo’s café, but it was so soft she had to strain her ears to hear it. Concha said that was how the gringos like their music, almost inaudible, as if their ears were very tender.

On Wednesday, Linda took Lupita to the shoe store next door and helped her buy a much-needed pair of white shoes with sturdy crepe soles.

Señor Rodrigo came slowly back toward the kitchen, looking at the ground.
Lupita and Salvador stood up and intercepted the café owner.

But they must buy food for the journey; more crackers and canned beans and perhaps some cheese too. Most certainly they would need canteens for water.

A half hour later, when she spied the enormous elevated interchange loom up ahead of them, she gasped and put one hand to the side of her face.

That first day they slept under a small bridge in the suburbs of Riverside. The bridge spanned a dry gully, which sheltered them as they slept.

At daybreak, Salvador found a large concrete culvert, part of a drainage system, for them to crawl into.

Lupita’s sleep was fitful. She kept awakening to think of the climb they would soon have to make through the mountains and of the desert that lay on the other side.

The attendant paid no heed to them; he was occupied with a gringo car that drove in at the same moment.

She looked over her shoulder and saw miles of soft, gray-white sand. If they tried to drive the pickup behind the rock, it would get mired in the sand.

Ping. A bullet struck the top of the boulder and ricocheted off.

For several minutes the two gringos shot at the boulder, guffawing in the distance.

The place they found some distance down the road was an abandoned prospector’s cabin.

It was an ugly little building without a front door, set in a landscape of distant, gray-brown mountains and flat, white-gray basins.

Lupita understood the word wetback. Concha had explained that it came from the wet backs of Mexicans who stealthily crossed the Rio Grande.

They didn’t find another gully, but Salvador did see an old, abandoned car off the road. He slept in the front of it on the white-with-dust upholstery, and Lupita on the back seat.

Stumbling along behind Salvador, Lupita told herself that she must keep putting one foot in front of the other. All she could see were her own feet, plodding along as she counted “Uno, dos, uno, dos.”

As the girl came abreast of them, Salvador took off his hat and said in Spanish, “Linda mujer, pretty lady, por favor, can you tell me where to find the house of Señora Consuelo García de Ruiz?”

The houses were small and drab, constructed of gray concrete blocks.

“Aunt Consuelo?” Salvador asked tentatively.

Lupita’s eyes searched his face, haggard with fatigue.

Lupita raised her eyebrows at her brother’s insolent tone.

“Silencio!” Salvador hissed. He didn’t care for this man’s good opinion, and he resented her attempt to impress him.