Chola Salvation by Estella Gonzalez

Author:Estella Gonzalez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arte Público Press
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Carefully, Merced stripped off her uniform and hung it over the chair. The chilanga would kill her if she saw her working in a wrinkled or ripped dress. Worse, she would probably dock her pay to have it pressed just like that one time she docked Javi after his mother forgot to iron his fancy suit covered with brass buttons and satin trim.

“Amá has to get up a half hour early just to finish ironing this chingadera,” Javi told her once after one of the chilanga’s lectures. “Pobrecita.”

Luckily for her and Alma, they wore the same brown-gold potato sack with the plastic buttons every day. Merced looked over at her flat uniform as the old man split her legs open and entered her. Of course, fucking the old man was nothing like when she was with Leandro. For him, she took her time caressing his face, kissing him. How she loved to look into his eyes and trace the outline of his lips, stopping at the mole dancing above his upper lip. Afterwards, if there was time, she would refry some beans with the left-over bacon grease and make him some fresh flour tortillas with lard.

“Just like my grandmother’s,” he would say, sopping up the last of the beans with a fluffy, warm tortilla. Then Leandro would laugh and talk about Los Angeles.

“Everybody from El Paso is moving there,” he’d say. “There’s work in the shipyards. I’ll go ahead and as soon as I find a place, I’ll send for you and the girls.”

Leandro neither sent word nor money. Merced had to come up with a way to support her daughters. She considered herself lucky to have met a young soldier five years ago, a Bliss man hungry for love. And then it came to her one day as she worked her rags and cursed under her breath. If she could make ten dollars in a morning off these rich gabachos, then her daughters should be making fifty a night.

“No se rajen,” she told them one morning while they each ate the last of the beans and corn tortillas in the cold kitchen. “You’re big girls now, grandototas.”

“Ay, Mamá,” Norma started, “it’s too early for this.”

But when Merced narrowed her eyes and stepped toward her, Norma stopped.

“You’re not even pulling in half of what you’re worth in the cabaret,” whispered Merced as she scraped the last handful of beans out of the olla into Alma’s bowl. “With the war over, many of those soldados have a lot of money saved up. You should sleep so you can look fresh for them tonight.”

Norma blinked her mascara-smeared eyes. “I’m too hungry to sleep.”

Before she could dip her spoon into her bowl, Merced had emptied part of her beans into Alma’s bowl. “Comételos,” Merced told Alma. “You’re going to need your energy tonight.”

Norma nodded. The smell of cigarettes and beer danced around her as she shook her thick gold hair, trying to wake up a little. “Today you’ll need the brandy too.”

“Sí,” Merced sighed as she opened the kitchen sink cupboard and pulled out a half-filled pint bottle.

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