Short Story

100

Cesar Chavez Adult School

Ana Garza G’z

1.

The building is spacious and tiled, echoing

in Spanish in shuffling feet, in backpacks slung
from the shoulders to the floor. It is fitting tribute
to the man whose face is in the little display case
by the door. Its there, the faded photograph
of Chavez and the campesina in the field clothes,
indistinguishable from the other images
of men and women who sacrificed
even their children for lo que se puede.

She stands beside him,

face and hands the color of her gente, of the soil, 

of the patina of mestizo blood. She rests

an arm around him, her eyes and smile the picture
of conviction. “That woman is a scab.”

Both my parents laugh from the shock of seeing

her there, the one who turned
on her God to become a “Hallelujah,” on her gente
for a steady paycheck and the pride of three good meals.
“She turned early,”
my parents say, “crossed
that picket line

before the strike.” They talk quietly

in the lobby, gazing deep into her
face, remembering they’d had her friendship after all of it,
“But a body who can turn like that . . .”

They shake their heads.

They step away.

101

2.

That night they asked their friends

if they remembered. I remembered,
though I was not yet two when he went hungry
that first time, and that year

and the years that followed scattered over me like shards.

When he was buried, my sister called

to talk. “You should have
gone,” she said to me over the phone.
“Lines of children waved
white handkerchiefs behind school fences.
Workers walked in head rags,
and Jerry Brown weaved
in and out with elbows and Excuse me’s.”

When she saw the photograph, my mother said,

“Forty dollars a week. Your father went for the novelty;
I went for the money. Without it,
I would have stayed home.”

When I remembered, I heard

a tall man berbering in the park
next to someone too weak to stand. The street and grape fields

burned sulfur yellow as the sun, and all around

me, silhouettes stood patterned
like the shirts the women cut to wrap
around their heads. Then a second man spoke
words till all the men around us clapped.

“You should have gone,” my sister said.

“Jesse Jackson and reporters touched their faces
up beside the actors in their folding chairs. The priest said,
‘Ashes to ashes’ over the simple
coffin, so we crossed ourselves"

But Ma said they’d given out
the money only the first and second weeks. After that,

she and Pa ate beans and marched and asked the others

who had money for the driving back.

102

GARZA G’Z

And in the shabby town

where we played, the street beyond
the fence in the dusk stretched
out into the fields till pickup trucks rose 

like smoke from the vineyard tops.

We screamed and ran
to tell the grownups, and men’s shadows reached
from the boxes behind the cabs, their arms
growing into rifles.

“You should have gone,” my sister said.

“People prayed the rosary in groups, or they sang,
or they walked up to each other and talked
quietly, like they didn’t see each other
at the store every day of their lives,
but it was special, somber.”

“Then we’d march,” my mother said,

“at the farms, with flags and signs and chants

and silence, lots of silence, till the scabs rolled in

on trucks, and then the shouting flared:

‘Go on then. You’re dogs

to these people,’ we’d say,

‘drinking from mud puddles, pissing in dirt, squatting

in their money while they dust you in poison.’”

And sometimes we would run suddenly.

Once it was from a hall broken up

by long tables, where I hoped

we’d eat, through a door, past a church bell on the sidewalk,

Ma pressing us against Pa’s calves and jabbing

with hands and knees for us to drop

behind a station wagon, where he left us,

and we waited

for the car to come

before Ma’s body shook too

hard to keep us hidden.

1. What is this poem about?

2. Who is Jesse Jackson?

3. Who is Jerry Brown?

4. How is Jesse Jackson relevant to Cesar Chavez's Huelgas?

5. How does the title relate to the poem?

6. From whose perspective is this poem written?