Everything We Never Had: List 4

Women are rare enough in their community that the mestizas will marry successful men who can bolster the reputation and pockets of their brides’ families.

It forces him to bury again his quiet resentments.

He will never be one of those carefree students sauntering to class.

More likely his fate would be found with the other old-timers: bachelors with broken backs and faded souls.

“So we never realize our collective power and they can continue to exploit us.”

Instead he hefts his sack onto the scale, waits for the weight to be recorded, empties it carefully into the crate, and walks back toward his tree.

“Day after day after day. Year after year after year. We break our backs sowing and tending and harvesting—yet we reap nothing. Nothing. Remember that, comrades. Look at your empty hands each night, each year, and remember that.”

“That’s it?” he asks, standing at the cusp of his first off-season.

Since he’s been unable to save more than a few dollars, he cannot afford to send anything home yet.

Everything the workers share—the dilapidated cabin or bunkhouse, oil lanterns, oil that lit the lanterns, food, water, tin cups that double as bowls, seeds to plant their own little gardens between their shacks, thread they use to mend their clothes, shovels they use to dig their outhouses and bury their garbage and their dead.

Those costs—along with anything else the growers can quantify—are inflated, then subtracted from their wages at the end of each job.

On Sunday, while men like Mang Carlos attend mass and the less pious head to the farm to bet on pall’ot, Francisco and Lorenzo pile into a jalopy with the others for their weekly trip to Sunset Beach.

But the salty air is balmy; the wind, calm; the tide, high; and the waves, low.

To their left: the bluffs, carpeted with ice plants and dotted with windswept acacias, eucalyptus, palms.

Enzo wanders away, feigning sudden interest in the bonsai trees on the other side of the store as Kyle follows.

He doesn’t want to sound like the whiny, privileged American he probably is.

At Dr. Mendoza’s suggestion, he’d put a lot of thought and time over the years into intentionally arranging the space until it felt as though it restored his soul—like the chair by his window with the bamboo palm where he used to sit and listen to music as he journaled or read.

Refugees who have been forced to flee their homes and have lost everything, everyone, because of their corrupt governments’ wars or because of natural disasters exacerbated by climate change thanks to exploitative corporations.

His dad raises his eyebrow, a reluctant invitation to continue with caution.

“I know you’re not used to sharing your space since you’re an only child, Enzo. And I know you’ve grown up with this selfish Western attitude that teaches that the elderly are nothing but an inconvenience. But in the East, they’re respected. They’re family. They’re the reason we’re here. We honor them, and when they need us, we take care of them. We talked about this already: utang na loob.”

Adults. Nothing if not reliable in their hypocrisy.

People complain about the closing of movie theaters, bars, gyms, museums, parks, and other businesses deemed “nonessential.”

Yet, on the inside, the buzzing in Enzo’s mind has become relentless, the murder hornets swarming.

Chris and Julia have always emphasized the importance of paying attention to what’s happening in the world, about the moral responsibility to help those in need and to change unjust systems however and wherever one can.

Dr. Mendoza starts to say something, but the connection glitches.