Part I in a II part series.

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I came home from school to find a skinny middle-aged Mexican man in the patio tearing it apart. He was knocking the windows out and suddenly there was more light streaming in to the kitchen through the glass sliding doors. He wore a dirty white t-shirt, blue jeans and a work boots. It was easy to tell he did a lot of work in the sun because of his tan.

The skinny Mexican man in my back yard was Juan, a Mexican day laborer, or jornalero, my mom had picked up at the Home Depot in La Puente when she went to get some hardware. Soon enough, the patio destruction project was complete, our backyard was now bigger and my mom got more light in her beloved kitchen.

Juan didn't go away though. He stuck around for several years and became a great friend of the family. He continued to be a day laborer, but he would stop by our house a few times a month to check in. He'd help out with any handiwork around the house, but never gardening since my Pap� Chepe is very particular about who he lets do the yard work. He'd come over on Sundays to shower, wash some of his clothes and watch a game of f�tbol. I learned new words from Juan, like "ch�ntaro" and "gabacho." He'd recount stories of shady white folks who has hired him to do some work but didn't pay him enough.

My mom was the closest to Juan, but even she didn't know where he lived. He would never let her take him to the place where he slept. My mom suspected that it was an old abandoned car somewhere. Juan grew to trust my parents. He gave them money to deposit in their bank accounts, sometimes as much as three of four thousand dollars.

We, the kids, liked Juan because he was funny. He'd crack all kinds of jokes and was such a contrast to my pretty serious dad. Oh yeah, he also gave us our domingo, or allowance every Sunday. Because of Juan, we had a greater appreciation for f�tbol and we got to practice our Spanish.

As I got older, Juan stopped coming around for months at a time. He would send letters. They were easy to identify in their red and blue air mail envelopes. The return address never said Juan, because that wasn't his real name. He would return to Guadalajara (I think) to be with his daughter, the only family he had. Then, he'd come back to work, de mojado.

Every once in a while, we'd see him again, and he'd come back to our house on the street named after coffee. He'd tell us how his daughter and her child were doing. The last I heard about Juan was that he had returned to Guadalajara and was starting to have health problems.

To be continued...

Me siento: empowered
Escuchando: "black magic woman" by santana

M�s reciente:
Searches - 09.16.05
the big move - 07.29.05
mother and daughter: a comparative analysis - 07.28.05
jardineros y dom�sticas - 07.27.05
tough question - 07.25.05

antes // despu�s