[Associate Editor, Britt Bustos: "This short story maps the harrowing experience of a Puerto-Rican immigrant girl and her fast-paced and exploitative work life in American sweat shops. Through her labor, pain, and homesickness, she dreams for a reintegration of her past home and her present situation, eventually learning the value of sacrifice and the expectations of dreams."]

1941 

 

Fita was the only person who knew about Paloma going to the States. Paloma ate the secret, stuffed it in her taut belly and refused to tell Mami, Papi or Luisa. Fita knew because Fita was special. Fita was there when Paloma’s Mami spit and wept and hit Paloma fierce. Fita, she who was not family, was her closest family. 

Paloma told Fita several hours before she snuck from her home in Guayanilla to the jitney and roared on to Ponce. She walked the long length of earth-packed road from her green-painted casa, stilted and strong, to Fita’s place, a one-room bohio made of scraps of double-reed wood. Fita was waiting for her in her regal glory. Her waist-length black curls lifted and fell in the hot winds. A hibiscus-dotted scarlet dress, the one Paloma had sewn for her, hung loosely from her enormous frame. Her skin, the color of fresh soil, gleamed. 

“Mi amor, mi Palomita,” she sighed, and Paloma ran up and hugged her tightly, so long that Fita carefully removed her arms. 

“¿Qué te sucede? Estás muy pálido, mija,” she said, her eyes scanning the nineteen-year-old. “That hug felt like it was talking to me, saying goodbye.” 

“Let’s go inside,” Paloma offered and took Fita’s hand, and Fita gestured for her to sit down at the table in the corner of the dark cave of a room. 

Fita, always cooking, had food for Paloma. There were surullitos and barriguitas de vieja today. She set the food down in front of Paloma and smiled. Paloma picked up the surullito and took a polite bite. 

“Tell me what’s going on,” Fita said, grabbing a fritter and munching on it slowly. 

“I’m leaving to America tonight. I’m not coming back to Guayanilla,” Paloma said, her voice a straight line. 

Fita’s eyes stretched. “Ay bendito! You mean I’ll never see you again? After tonight?” 

She got up from the table, paced the room, her huge hips tipping back and forth as she moved. “I simply can’t believe it.” 

Paloma strengthened her insides, told herself she was fine, all would be well. She had been preparing for this conversation for months, and regardless of what her beloved Fita said, she would not budge. 

“Mira, I just have to go, Fita. It feels like lightning spreading throughout my body whenever I think about what I have to do. Everything in me is saying go. Arturo left. So will I.” Arturo was the Costas’ son, he was in his mid-twenties and also a fieldhand. Arturo’s family was warm, tight-knit and kindly and they also lived in the only brick house in all of Guayanilla. Although they had money, Arturo’s dream was to go to the States, so his family supported him and gave him all of their earnings so he would have a soft place to fall. She heard he was a chef in Brooklyn and living the American Dream. She wanted to live like him. 

Fita frowned. “Why do you want to extract Puerto Rican from you? You have Puerto Rican sangre. It sizzles in you stronger than your lightning.” 

“Fita,” Paloma said. “I’m tired of sewing dresses to put food on the table knowing there won’t be any money the next week. I’m tired of seeing Papi bent over sugarcane, and the roughness of his hands. I’m tired of Mami’s nastiness because she’s unsatisfied. If I go, I can see what it’s like, send money back after I make it, bring the family along. This is my new dream.” 

Fita smacked her lips. “You think they will like you there? You’re just a negrita with no money. Do you see how they treat Negroes in that country? As a dark girl, they will destroy you. Rather here, we love you. You are amongst your own.” 

“I know. I know it will painful.” 

“You don’t,” Fita cut Paloma off. “You know nothing about the States.” 

Paloma sat back in her chair, and for the first time in six months, for the first time after all the time she’d spent saving money and stuffing it in a black spot in her closet for one thing—the ticket, the ticket—for the first time, she trembled. She trusted Fita with her life, and now Fita didn’t trust her to survive on her own. 

“My love,” Fita said, softening. “I may have never been to America pero cuando tú ibas yo venía.” 

“How can you ever really know a place if you’ve never been there?” 

Fita opened her mouth and closed it. She reached over and stroked Paloma’s face. Halfway through the action, she retracted her hand, surprised. She must have seen Paloma’s eyes, steel-hard. 

“You really plan to leave?” she said, in a small voice. “Si, mi amor,” Paloma said. 

Fita let out a breath and fell down in her chair. “You should tell your mother.” “No,” Paloma said. “I won’t tell anyone. I’ve already made my decision.” 

A long silence stretched between the two. Finally, Fita reached over and embraced Paloma tightly. “If even I can’t stop you, you won’t be moved. Remember this though: Puerto Rico is a prayer. It is sangre. It is your earth. If you go to the States, you will be changed. And you will never, ever find a place more beautiful than this island.” 

Paloma swallowed and hugged Fita back with all of her strength. She wanted to transfer all of her heavy love into Fita’s enormous body. “I know.” 

* 

Back at home, Luisa was outside drying clothes on the line. She was pinning an ivory blouse to el tendedero when Mami emerged from the front door of the bohio, holding a chicken for tonight’s meal by the neck. It wiggled and writhed under her grasp. 

“Luisa!” she screamed. “They aren’t washed! The clothes aren’t washed!” Luisa, fifteen, brown and mouse-like, shrunk small. “Mami, I’m doing my best.” “No, you aren’t,” she said sharply and snatched the clothes down with her free hand and threw them to the grassy floor. She pulled down all of the wilted skirts and Papi’s straight-backed shirts to the ground, and they both watched the clothes absorb mud. Luisa, little and meek, could do nothing but fall to her knees and cry. Mami turned away from her and walked back over to the porch. She snapped the chicken’s neck and the pollo died. 

All this, Paloma watched with half-raised eyes. She knew her family, she gazed at the stilted casa her father had constructed, its lovely verdant walls and sturdy roof. It had two palms that bent their arms and brushed the tip-top of the home. It was only one-room too, like Fita’s. Still, Papi was proud of it, and even Paloma had to admit she was always in awe of how her father could build anything—birdhouses for the warblers, outhouses, wooden cars—and then hack cane all day in the fields. 

Still, she would start again. She would start. 

* 

The moon seared the window in Paloma’s room. She climbed silently out of the bed that she and Luisa shared. She kept her feet quiet as she opened the door and left. She tramped the foot-beaten roads to the meeting spot by downtown, by the iglesia, where Paco would pick her up and take her to Ponce. She successfully left; she knew her Mami and Papi would not hear her and once she was outside, relief lay over her like a blanket. 

Soy libre, soy libre, soy libre, she chanted to herself. The coqui frogs, rain-wet and singing, bleated. 

Paco, a ruddy-faced, balding man, was always there for Paloma. She’d taken care of his children when he and his wife were sick, and he was forever indebted to her. He was also the only person she knew with a car. He said he wanted to live vicariously through Paloma, so he agreed to drive her to Ponce. As he packed her things into the trunk of his Buick, she looked back at the road that led to her little casa, to Fita’s bohio. She was really leaving. This was really it. She wouldn’t be able to hug Fita or take Luisa to the sea or listen to her Mami and Papi’s elaborate stories. Still, the lightning in her bones, it told her, get in the car, Palomita. Go. Vamos. 

The twenty-minute drive to Ponce was swift and easy. Paloma and Pico shared a fast goodbye, and Pico beamed at Paloma as she got out of the car. 

“I’ll tell your familia when I come back. I’ll take their anger.” “Mil gracias,” she said. “I’ll miss you.” 

“Yo tambien,” he said and smoothed the coils of her hair. “Cuidate, mija. Be safe.” 

She separated from him and strode with all of her confidence to the airport’s dark window. She didn’t look back. 

 

The flight was packed with Puerto Ricans, who were shivering with excitement or fear—Paloma couldn’t tell—or talking fast. Most of them were in family clusters. Paloma wondered if she was the only one alone. Paloma only knew that she would meet a woman in a Brooklyn apartment and she would give her work. 

They switched flights in San Juan. The rest of the journey was long and exhausting, but Paloma was sharp-eyed the entire time. She was ready. When the plane landed at LaGuardia, the Puerto Ricans clapped. Paloma didn’t. She reached up and felt wetness streaming from her eyes and she didn’t know why it was there. 

*** 

Brooklyn was funky, eager and dust-lined, but it smelled fresh to Paloma. When Palomita exited her taxi and stepped onto Flushing Avenue, Graham and Broadway, she gawked at the billboards sitting atop brownstones that advertised Imperial liquor, Swift’s ice cream, and Old Overholt whiskey. The signs glared down at her, and she swallowed. She leapt when she heard the rushing clang of the trolleys. People pushed past, a white woman hissed at her and mumbled under her breath, “These Negroes just stand in the middle of the street.” Paloma only understood Negro, and if Paloma had not been so overwhelmed by the dark streets, she would have noted that this was the first time anyone had ever called her a Negro. Paloma stepped off to the side and shuffled down the street, looking desperately for Dean Street between Carlton and Sixth Avenues where Fredericka lived, the Puerto Rican woman who would get her a job at a nearby sewing factory. 

After walking far too long and realizing her taxi had dropped her off a long distance away, she finally found the right apartment. It was black with soot, and she had to climb up five stories to get to Fredericka’s door. When she finally arrived, she knocked, her heart banging around with every tap on the wood. Fredericka answered. She had a long face and a nose that would properly be called a snout. 

Her eyes were small and beady, and there was no joy nor warmth in her face. She glared at Paloma and looked her up and down. 

“You are Paloma Hernandez?” she said in English. Paloma was surprised she didn’t use Spanish with her, and the lack of the ability to fully communicate terrified Paloma. 

“Si, Señora,” she said. She tried, in broken English. “I am here to help you.” “Good,” she said and pushed her inside. “Mr. Randall needs one more person, and I told him you were coming.” 

“When do I start?” she asked in Spanish, her English running out fast. “Tomorrow,” Fredericka said in English. “Obviously.” 

“Si, Señora,” Paloma said. She scanned the apartment. It was roughly the size of her casa, not expansive or huge nor equipped with a modern kitchen as she had dreamed. A wire-framed bed was pushed to the left and facing a small white armoire, a stack of pots and pans and a tiny stack of beat-up books. There was barely enough room for the two women to sleep in the place. As if reading her mind, Fredericka said, 

“You’ll sleep on the floor. I have a blanket.” 

Paloma was a little bit taken aback but accepted the conditions. Normally she slept next to Luisa, but she was a guest and Fredericka was doing this favor for her. 

“Si, Señora,” was all Paloma could say. 

 

Fredericka left Paloma at home so she could go back to work down the street, and Paloma sat inside the apartment, thinking, thinking. About the loss of her family. About the excitement of her first day working for the sewing factory tomorrow. About Fita’s disappointed face and how her mother, Luisa, and Papi would react when they realized she was gone. 

That night Fredericka came home and shared few words with her about her day. They barely spoke over bacalao, and soon Paloma was on the hard floor, a thin blanket barely covering her small body. Fredericka didn’t have an extra pillow. Phantom pains throbbed and bit Paloma deeply. She missed the sound of the coquis crying, her mother’s snoring in the night, her Papi waking Mami up to tell her to stop making noises. She missed Luisa’s nighttime jokes. She thought about how if she was in Guayanilla she would walk that path from her house to Fita’s the next morning. She thought about the coquis again, and how their eyes would poke out in the night and follow her as they sang. She wondered, wondered if, when she left, they were crying a blessing to her or a warning. 

** 

Paloma’s first days in the factory were treacherous. She was paid better than in Puerto Rico, twenty cents more, but she was sewing twenty leather coats a day in a sweat-thick room with rows of other multicolored women, their shoulders bowed down. She worked fast and grew exhausted quickly. Mr. Randall, who was in charge of the women, spit orders in English, and she didn’t understand them. In Puerto Rico, she had hours, sometimes days between each dress she worked on. She would go and visit Fita on her lunch break. Money was always tight, but the atmosphere was pleasant, and she could start a conversation with anyone in town and they’d oblige her. Sometimes, she’d go to the sea with Papi when he got off the cane fields, and they’d chat about dreams and futures. Here, the women didn’t talk to her; most of them couldn’t speak with her because they were speaking a different language. Here, when she got off work, she went back to see Fredericka, who was also bone-tired and not in the mood for conversing. As the days, then weeks, went by, the lightning that kept Paloma moving toward the United States started to diminish. She ached for Fita, Papi, and Luisa. She even missed her mother. 

She adored autumn though. Autumn in New York was majestic, magic-sprinkled; the hot-reds and blazing oranges that floated from oaks and planetrees were arresting to Paloma. She had never seen trees so beautiful. In fact, she was looking out the window at the factory, thinking about strolling in Central Park, when her finger slipped under the needle of the sewing machine, and she watched the top of her finger jump off. Then there was gushing blood, and she heard a woman’s voice and some kind of screaming, but it took a few moments to realize that voice was hers. The women yelled and ran to her, and one of them tried to use some of the fabric lying around to stop the bleeding. Another woman rushed over and tried to find the piece of her finger so the doctors could possibly reattach it. Paloma sat there, dazed. She watched that piece of herself fall off so easily. She heard Mr. Randall’s screaming; he didn’t like that the women used his fabrics to stop the blood, and she felt Mr. Randall catch her, near angrily, as she fell to the ground. 

* 

The top of her finger could not be replaced. Mr. Randall brought her to the hospital, and they bandaged her hand and sent her off in the middle of the night without a little piece of her finger. Paloma didn’t work for three days, which was enough for her to barely be able to pay Fredericka at the end of the week. Mr. Randall wasn’t particularly fond of Paloma to begin with; he thought she was like all the immigrants, beneath him, but his favor with her dropped dramatically after the incident. November came, and Paloma, who at this point was fighting undulations of well-contained depression, had saved and saved. She realized she still didn’t have enough to buy a coat for herself and still pay Fredericka for rent. You should have paid better attention, Mr. Randall said when she told him. This is completely your fault, he insisted. 

Further dejected, Paloma decided at that point to possibly give up. Did she really want this life? Did the money matter? She couldn’t buy the stunning, sheer coats she made every day; she couldn’t even buy a flimsy one, and Fredericka didn’t have the money to get her one either. This wasn’t the America she dreamed of. If she continued like this, she’d die in the sweatshops. Where would she go? She couldn’t go back to Puerto Rico; she didn’t even have the money for another ticket. What should she do? She mulled over these things every day while she worked on coats for rich pendejos. 

One evening, Fredericka saw Paloma lying on the floor, under her single sheet, weeping. She shook her shoulder and said, “Go see Arturo at his restaurant. Go to your people. You can’t make it here if you can’t be around your own. They will never cure you of what you feel right now, but they will be enough to keep you going.” Paloma wiped her eyes. Arturo. When she first arrived, she had far too much pride to talk to him, that Arturo with his brick house. She wanted his brick house, not to talk to the man with one. Still, Fredericka was right. She needed her people. 

She couldn’t do it alone. 

* 

Arturo’s place was called El Coqui, named after Puerto Rico’s little frog. It was cramped, supremely small, and surprisingly only a few blocks away from Paloma’s place. The sign EL COQUI was yellow-bright and proud, and when Paloma opened the door, shivering in an auburn dress and no coat, she could smell sofrito, rich and fuming from the doors. Arturo was up front. He was short, trigueño, and had a flap of hair pressed to the side of his head. He had a handsome smile, as when he grinned, she immediately thought “Oh, he is handsome,” and his dimples caught her too. He strode out from the front of the counter, readying his welcoming speech, when he locked with Paloma’s eyes. 

“Palomita,” he whispered. “You’re here.” 

Seeing him, and hearing his Guayanilla accent, brought Fita, Luisa, and Mami back. It brought Papi back, flanked against the ocean. She opened her mouth to say something else, but she simply wept. 

Arturo came up to her and rubbed her shoulder. “Yo sé, yo sé,” he said. “It’s not easy.” 

She wiped her face quickly. She didn’t want him to see her tears. “I’m sorry.” “Cry, little dove,” he said. “I cry for what I’ve lost every day.” 

She let out at breath and licked her lips, straightened her back. “I would like some arroz con habichuelas y bistec.” 

Arturo grinned. “Perfecto. Coming up.” 

Arturo disappeared, and Paloma sank back into her seat. She inhaled the scents of sofrito permeating throughout the small space. She gazed at a framed picture of the Puerto Rican flag on her left and a mural of El Morro drawn on the walls to her right. The colors were vibrant and bright, showing off all of the muddy browns of the fortress and cutting blues of the ocean behind it. 

When the food was ready, Arturo sat it in front of her, smiling. There was nobody else in the restaurant, so he sat down with her. He only spoke to her in Spanish. 

“So?” his hand drifted down to the stub of her thumb. “How’s America for you?” Paloma rubbed her nose and took a bite of the arroz. It was heavenly, the smooth taste of the yellow rice merged beautifully with the well-seasoned bistec. “It’s complicated. I make more money, but I can’t tell if America is trying to gobble me up and spit me out. I miss Puerto Rico.” 

Arturo nodded. “That’s very common to feel that way.” His eyes swept her thin, shivering body as she scooped forkfuls of yellow rice into her mouth. 

“You don’t have a coat in this cold,” he said. “But Fredericka says you make coats.” 

Paloma looked down, embarrassed. “That’s just life, I suppose.” 

“I’ll buy you one,” Arturo said. “I’ve saved enough money that I can do that for you.” 

Paloma’s insides warmed with joy, but she stopped herself from taking that happiness too far. She didn’t need a Prince Charming. She could do this herself. 

“Maybe you can,” she said. “I’ll let you know.” 

Arturo blew air out of his nose and laughed. “You’re a spirited one, aren’t you? That’s what I remember from Guayanilla. You had this fire in your eyes. That’s why I don’t worry about you here.” 

Paloma’s eyes widened. “Really?” 

“You need a lot of spirit and drive to survive in this country. You have that.” “Yes,” Paloma said, rubbing the smooth part of her thumb where her nail used 

to be. “I suppose I do.” 

She suddenly felt stronger. As if she could go back to the factory and sew three more coats. She could do this. She could do it herself. She tasted the arroz. Oh, but why do it alone when you can be so close to Your People? 

“There’s a Spanish dance night on Thursday. A Bible group on Tuesday. Only Puerto Ricans. I’ll give you the information. I think you should come. We bring back the island together, and we also forge ahead in this new place, never forgetting our roots.” 

Paloma nodded. She thought of Fita, who was so concerned with Paloma losing her Boricua center. She didn’t want to lose her face, her skin, her language either. She suddenly felt an overwhelming warmth for Arturo; it was near uncontrollable. She loved seeing his wheat-colored face and eating his home-food and feeling as if she were herself again. 

She stood up and sat in the seat next to Arturo. She leaned her head against his shoulder, and he let her. He reached a hand up and stroked her hair. 

“You’ll be fine,” he said in Spanish. “Trust me. America changes you, completely. That’s true. But you can survive.” 

“There is something I should do. I should have done it a long time ago,” Paloma said. She knew the next thing she must do. She would do it on the sidewalk at the phone booth right after she finished her food and absorbed all the wonderful warmth of this small man. She would return to see this man, every day if she had to. She would always keep working for her own money, on her own, no matter what happened between them, if anything. But first she would make that call. 

Arturo smiled at her, knowing That Thing She Must Do. “When you call your family, tell them I said hi. Tell Fita I said hi too. Tell them that we’re making it. Tell them we’ll send back anything they need. Tell them we love them.” 

“Yes,” Paloma said, feeling unrooted, herself, free, terrified, tired, new. “I will.”