For Love of the Dollar by J.M. Servin

Author:J.M. Servin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781944700393
Publisher: The Unnamed Press
Published: 2017-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

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I was watching a movie starring Bette Davis when she knocked on the door. It was a Sunday at dusk. In all honesty, like many people surrounding me, I didn’t know how to explain what had made me move thousands of miles from the place where I was born. Days had passed during which I wouldn’t leave my room except for cigarettes. I hadn’t tasted a drop of alcohol for nearly a month. Dry as a stale dinner roll. But when I went out for a stroll I felt the typical anguish and dizziness associated with a hangover.

I had tried to take advantage of time by correcting drafts and writing new things after three years of having given up. I was bent on trying my luck by sending chronicles to Mexican magazines and newspapers. Writing helped me find time for myself. I was trying to organize my reflections on some of the time I had spent living in the States. My daily fantasies consisted of a lot of money and little work. With my savings, I would open up a bar in Mexico City, one that was like a circus filled with people I had recruited from the streets. My younger brother, Ricardo, would manage the joint, and I would dedicate my time to writing during the day and drinking during the night in that bar of my delirium.

To put it plainly, during the first year of my arrival in the States, I had spent time boxed up like some demented dude who sees and hears but understands nothing. I wanted to return to Mexico and I had plenty of reproaches and excuses to do so, but whenever I earned a hundred bucks after twelve hours of working, I pissed it all away feeling patriotic. I had never earned so much elsewhere for a day’s work. During the autumn of my second year living there, I enrolled in an evening class to learn English in a public school for adults filled with day laborers and students who couldn’t pass their courses. The successful ones would earn a certificate as specialists in some blue-collar skill that would land them a position with the city or as a low-earning worker in an industrial field. I ended up attending only a few classes in literature. We read stories and novellas, and we wrote short reviews. The class curriculum had no other goal than to make us literate.

My behavior hadn’t changed since I was living in Mexico: I couldn’t seem to save money; I spent almost all of it, and I held on to receipts and ticket stubs to look for better jobs. That’s how I had always been. I lived hand to mouth. Maybe that’s why I was always scared.

I opened the door and saw Rose’s angular face. She was making gestures and chattering, trying to make me feel happy as if during an intermission. I had let her know ever since we first met that I preferred to be left alone, but she loved to insist.

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