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Joyce Kiefer | Un Temblor MaloI keep telling Hank that God is punishing me because I’m such a terrible son, that I’m the reason that we live in tents now and eat that shit from the Red Cross. The earth tried to swallow me but instead it swallowed the houses of our foreman and his children and of the man who owns the farmacia. It even swallowed the house where the priest lives.I know in my heart that this happened because I decided not to go back to my village—to be with my mamacita who’s sick and says she misses me.
Hank is a gringo and doesn’t know what a good son is supposed to do. He says he left his family for good and will never go home. He tells me his parents and sisters are poor and live on a farm and eat something awful called grits three times a day. His family is like mine, he says, but “Hombre, you’ve got to forget about them and think of yourself.” I tell him it’s a sin to do that, not to honor your father and mother. He says, “We don’t make enough money for a Saturday night in Gilroy and still you keep sending a few dollars home every week.” Stupido, he calls me, and laughs. “If you’re not going to spend your money, save it for making a life of your own.”
Sometimes he points to my picture of you, La Virgen de Guadalupe, that I taped over my bunk and says Mexicans still worship idols.
Forgive me, Virgen, because Hank made me think life could be different than what it is meant to be. Forgive me for loving the cool fog and the taste of the strawberries and for staying on to dig them up when I should have gone home. I should never have come to Watsonville. Every night since the earthquake they call “Loma Prieta” – do they know it means “dark hill,” “black ridge” – I have this dream: I turn my back on my mama. She thinks I’m dead. And even though she calls my name so sweet, “Blas, Blas,” I can’t turn around. I can’t move at all.
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