Lupita Mañana: Chapters 1–3

Lupita moved warily toward the cart, noticing the mound of dirty sheets and used towels in the canvas hamper on one side and the array of neatly folded clean linen, bottles, and cans of cleanser below.

Lupita moved warily toward the cart, noticing the mound of dirty sheets and used towels in the canvas hamper on one side and the array of neatly folded clean linen, bottles, and cans of cleanser below.

The Torres’ home was an old, pink-painted adobe building, which Lupita’s father had enlarged with corrugated iron panels.

The Torres’ home was an old, pink-painted adobe building, which Lupita’s father had enlarged with corrugated iron panels.

All three looked solemn, frightened, and bewildered.

There came a torrent of gasping, choked weeping but no words save for, “Hernando, Hernando!”

The black-clad neighbor put her hand on Lupita’s shoulder.

Lupita looked up at the woman, who was gazing at her out of mournful eyes.

Her face streaked with tears, Lupita looked down at her baby brother, who had stopped crying the instant she had taken him and who was now sucking his thumb. What did he know of the tragedy that had befallen them?

Now that he’d quit school he roved about with a group of boys his own age, smoked cigarettes they gave him, and talked of automobiles and motorcycles, though no one owned one.

His friends and neighbors could have come to pay their last respects and for nine nights in a row say the rosary for him.

Lupita touched the little silver cross on its chain around her neck. It was her most precious possession, a gift from her father at her confirmation.

Uncle Antonio, who had arrived earlier, stayed to speak to Mamá, and in a few minutes the young priest to whom Salvador had been dispatched came in.

Lupita was sent out to put the younger ones to bed, first taking them out to the privy behind the house, then undressing them, and finally getting them into the big, old, sagging bed the three of them shared.

Salvador had taken notice of several girls in town but slender, big-eyed Dorotea Ortega was the one he’d claimed as his sweetheart. She’d even given him a gift, a knife with the words “I die for love” inscribed on its blade.

Salvador’s face was sullen as he took the food.

After all, she had crossed into the United States twenty years before, and she had married a pocho, a man of Mexican descent born in the United States. He was a yanqui citizen, and by marrying him, she had become one too.

As she worked around the house that morning, Lupita thought about her aunt in the United States and wished they could ask her for money. But that was just a fancy and best forgotten.

Her mother, exhausted with grief, slept later than Lupita had ever known her to do, so Lupita tended to the baby and her younger brother and sisters.

Seemingly they had forgotten how to play.

“I will go see old Ortega now.” He looked very hard at his sister as if to reaffirm that he had no need of her company on this male business.

She watched the road closely so as not to step on any garbage strewn along the way and also to see if she might find anything useful for her family.

Many people would know of their father’s death by now, and she didn’t want anyone to catch her eye and offer condolences.

La Estrella lay in her accustomed place at the muelle, the wharf that ran out into the harbor.

Even though it was just a fishing boat, not a charter boat that took tourists for marlin, Captain Ortega kept it well.

It didn’t have a patched hull or old battered house doors like so many fishermen’s boats.

Suddenly she saw Paco Ortega get up off a coil of rope on the boat’s prow.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if the Ortegas bewitched Papá,” he said angrily.

Angry, scornful laughter burst from Salvador. “Mañana, mañana, mañana. Always it will be better tomorrow,” he shouted at a shocked Lupita.

Wizened Uncle Antonio with the drooping mustache said, “Lupita, your Mamá and I talked this morning while you and Salvador were at Captain Ortega’s boat..."

“I could sell lottery tickets,” she cried out. “I could get some piglets and raise them to sell, and I could keep hens for the eggs they will lay. I could sell oysters with you from your cart, Uncle Antonio. Perhaps I can even embroider for a shop. I can do many things.”

“How do we get to the United States?” Lupita asked frantically.

He’d had time to ponder their forthcoming trip, and he’d decided he would rather go alone or, better yet, invite some friend to go along with him.

He hit Salvador in the face with his fist, caught him before he could fall, spun him around, and pinioned his arms behind his back.

“Estupidos, stupid ones,” he sneered at Salvador and Lupita. “You’ll never get across the border. You’ll starve to death in Tijuana.”