Erudita's Blog

Just in case you were wondering, this is where I am today, just right here.

My husband lost his job. No that is not right, he chose not to go back to it. It is funny, we knew the restaurant was closing and were preparing for starvation mode. I tried not to think about it too much, something I advise others to do when they are facing crises they have no control over. It gave us an odd freedom I think. He and I would suddenly look at one another and smile, grasp hands, feel that sudden surge of love. I found myself searching his face. I don’t see many traces of the young man I married. But I love what his face has grown into. I would think about how hard things were going to become very, very soon.

Being poor is hard. It eats away at people. Sometimes I like to pretend. I try to look at it through romantic eyes, but there is very little romantic about poverty. Since we married we have never not been poor. But Armando has always worked. He has worked seven days a week quite literally our entire marriage. Seven days a week and a day off if I gave birth to a child, but then back again the next daywith no one asking more than whether the child was varon or mujercita. Seven days a week unless he irritated El Jefe and then sent home a day as punishment – such punishment. We used to giggle in glee – right up to the moment I had to hurry off to my own job, for El Jefe is smart enough never to give him a day off that I would also be at home. It began to feel planned. Was it planned? I don’t know but we felt conspired against.

I pulled up to the house Friday after work. El Jefe had his truck there, under the shade of the neighbor’s pine, across the street from our house. How very like him , to make sure my husband would walk across to him. I lifted the boys down from the car, watching out of the corner of my eye. Nothing to do but go into the house. But wait, I ran inside and brought out OtterPops for the boys and sat with them, shushing them in spite of the fact that no matter what I would not be able to hear what they were saying, watching the out-of-earshot conversation. My husband squatting below the window of the truck, sunshine seperating him out from the shaded vehicle. El Jefe talked and Armando nodded, endlessly nodding.

Finally Armando straightens his back and stands, waiting a respectful moment for the truck to pull away and then walks slowly to me. I trundle the boys inside with a promise of television and then hurry back out to hear what he has to say. We face one another and I search his face. It is a tired face. He is young but he has lost that softness. Is this defeat I am looking at? This weariness frightens me. He begins to talk but he talks in circles saying what it is not, saying what it makes him think of, saying what he would have felt had it been different. I am used to his talking in circles and I nod my encouragement as he turns more and more tightly inward and toward the subject.

And this is what it is. The restaurant is not closing. They only did it to run out the last man who was trying to make a start for himself. They let him put his money in, let him work for three months, three months of grinding, round the clock work, let him make improvements and begin to feel that the place was his own. And then they let him go saying that the restaurant would close. And now El Jefe comes to park across from our house, comes bearing his good news, comes not to ask if Armando would like to continue working but comes telling him his hours.

He will work every day, as always. He will work sixteen hours three days a week and four days he will work only eight hours, or perhaps another hour or two with no pay. El Jefe says all this minus the fact that they will sometimes keep him an extra hour without pay and then El Jefe drives away, San Luis Potosi emblazoned across his back window.

My husband spins out this information slowly and concentrically and I begin to understand; all is not lost. We will not suffere the abysmal poverty I have feared. We will eat more than beans and rice at dinner and OtterPops when the children beg for sugar. We will go to the doctor when we are sick and buy glasses once a year and they will be budget glasses but we won’t care, and we will never have an excess but all will be well. And I am smiling. I am smiling and once again there is balance and reason to life. I am smiling, but he is not. His face is old and tired and he looks at me, penetratingly. And I begin to realize that he is not happy, not happy at all.

I do not talk, and he does not talk and we are quiet together. I know now what he is asking me without really asking me. He takes my hands in his. My hands are pale and age spotted, my fingers swollen and thickening with age. His hands are young and strong and he has a burn from the grill, a burn in a daily ritual of grease burns from frying tacos. I cannot do it he says, It is too much to bear. My legs are tired from standing, my arms are tired from grating 40 lb. blocks of cheese, my back is tired from being bent. I am 32 years old and I am a tired old man. His words are soft and lispy, his accent heavy.

I consider our relative ages, my 44 to his 32. I think about “for better or for worse” and the fact that he loves me with a consuming love in spite of the fact that my age, my looks, my figure are definitely heading into the “for worse” category. I think about how tired he is day after day. My job is not so physically exhausting as his; it is instead poverty that wears me out, the never having enough. I picture myself working the hours he is required to work and I know I could not do it. He has worked like this for eight years. If it were me I know I could not do it.

I think of my sons wearing brand new jeans from Target, jeans with tags on them and no holes in the knees, of birthday parties we would throw, of new glasses this year, of driving to book club because I have plenty of gas money, of underwear with good elastic, of taking friends out occasionally for lunch. There will be none of this. I think of all of these things and I sigh. I know what he needs me to say. I sigh and I turn to him, and I smile. It is not forced or difficult but easy and genuine. He squeezes my hand and he sighs and all of him is smiling in return. He pulls me close and holds me painfully tight.

The boys are bickering from the screen door and the moment is done. We go inside. I do not know what tomorrow holds. I know that it will not be enough, and yet somehow it will have to be enough. I am not young and I have no foolish hopes of living on sunshine and love. I worry that we will be worn away by worries and hardship. I worry we will turn on one another like ravening wolves. But tomorrow isn’t here yet and I really believe in “for better or worse”.

Armando searches through my old cd’s and slips in a disc. As I start the beans warming, I hear the first notes of I‘ve Got You Babe. I sometimes think I have greatly underestimated my husband’s grasp of English. I think I have sometimes underestimated my husband. “They say we’re young and we don’t know, won’t find out unti-i-il we grow” I sing out from the kitchen. “Well I don’t know if all that’s true, but you’ve got me and baby I’ve got you.” He sings in reply. And this is where we are today, stuck between poverty and love, leaving “for better” behind and walking towards “for worse”. I guess this is where we find out what we are made of.