The Woman in Oil Fields Read Online Free Page A

turn into a truck. Want to see?”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œI don’t like her,” Kate said.
    â€œYou don’t know her.”
    â€œWhen are you gonna live with us?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œI’ll help you clean your room,” Kate said.
    â€œThank you, sweetie. I appreciate that.” I kissed her cheek.
    â€œGeorge?”
    â€œYes, Kate?”
    â€œThis lady?”
    â€œHer name is. Jean.”
    â€œShe’s like a grandmother, isn’t she?”
    â€œWhat has your mother been telling you?”
    â€œShe says she’s about a hundred and fifty years old.”
    â€œNot yet.”
    Kate sat on her foot. “Does she really have wrinkles on her butt?”
    ______
    Late one night three plainclothesmen arrested two Salvadoran women at Casa Romero and charged them with selling amphetamines.
    â€œThey were diet pills,” Kelly told me afterward. “Laxatives. It’s a war of nerves. They’re trying to crack us bit by bit. They’ve subpoenaed our files.”
    â€œYou’ve got nothing to hide.”
    â€œHarry, one of the volunteers here at the house …”
    â€œWhat?” I said.
    â€œHe made a couple of border runs.”
    â€œJesus. Illegals?”
    She nodded.
    â€œYou told me –”
    â€œI know, but these were desperate people.”
    â€œHow many trips did he make?”
    â€œThree.”
    â€œThe INS’ll have a field day.”
    â€œI’ll need you to babysit from time to time, but I think we’d better cool it, George, until things blow over. I don’t want you getting mixed up in all this.”
    â€œKelly –”
    â€œI mean it.”
    She was always firm when it came to her plans. I knew I couldn’t change her mind. I’d miss spending afternoons at the Casa. The place looked like a take-out barbecue joint – had, in fact, been a restaurant. A Pepsi-Cola bottle cap painted on the side of the house was starting to peel, smoky in the shade of four white oaks. Red cedar picnic tables sat in the front yard next to a gravel drive. Newspapers and old fliers, wrapped in rubber bands, nestled in the high, wet grass. It was homey.
    One day at the shelter I’d talked to a thin Latin woman with dark scars on her arms. “Who did this to you?” I said.
    â€œThe Guardia Civil in San Salvador.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œThey took my husband. I was passing his picture around in church.”
    The beige hall carpet smelled of cat pee and vomit. Wallpaper hung in strips, an old-fashioned dial telephone sat on a cardboard box in the corner.
    I pulled a notebook out of my pocket. The woman rocked back and forth on the floor. “Tell me,” I said.
    â€œThe men in masks, they force you to worship their whips, their fists. They give them names,” she said. “‘The Enforcer,’ ‘The Lollipop.’” She rubbed her arms. “After many beatings these words are the only ones left in your head. Your own name has been taken away from you. You’ve betrayed the names of your family and friends. Water hurts, light hurts, clothing hurts. But the hardest pain is not when they hit you. It’s when they make you stand for many hours.” She squeezed her legs. “Alone, in a room. You begin to hate your feet.”
    Water trickled through a pipe inside the wall. “The body – its own enemy?” I scribbled. I recalled, as a kid, painting the fireplugs at my father’s refinery: the soreness that stayed for weeks in my back and arms, the weight of sitting and walking.
    Insults to the body .
    The woman closed her eyes. The hatred and suspicions that characterize put-downs had begun to hit too close to home. I thanked her for speaking to me.
    ______
    I followed Kelly’s wishes and stayed away from the Casa. Most days I worked at the press or just drove around. One afternoon I went to the Shamrock Six, Houston’s