Jun 2011
I had purchased the tickets home ten days in advance to force myself to get back to reality and civilization. My hands were weak from the constant shoveling; my liver the same. Each hour that had passed underneath that sun seemed like a punishment from God himself; a hot whipping sensation that singed the back of my hair and left permanent burn marks streaked across my back. There was no way I would ever forget the constant ridicule and insult from the other workers as I clumsily painted instant concrete on bricks which would soon be a house I would never see. The struggles of the white man seemed to bring a pleasure to the mexican work force that I would never understand which I was both jealous and disgusted by.
Lemino came over gripping a pick axe, large and the color of of a recently picked coconut. "Hey white boy, you need some water?" He threw me a muddied water bottle in a puddle of my sweat. "Thanks Lem. I can barely lift my ******* head in this heat, how do you do it?" Lemino looked up at the sun. "I don't know man." He lifted his finger to the noon hanging sun and said, "Sometimes I just think of the Sun as my woman and I never take no **** from Her so why's that any different." He took a sip of his own water and walked off, his back completely dry and cracked with a mix of mud and concrete.
Jesus, I thought. For someone like that and someone like me to be working on the same house made me wonder why I had ever been brought here in the first place. How did I get here? Why had I been punished so for my work in school, my excellent obedience with peers and with the community? I was not a religious man but I grew up in the land of the free and the brave, how had it come to this? I drank the entire bottle of water throwing it on the sizzling grey brown ground.
"Hey white boy!," screamed a voice from the rooftop. "Throw that **** away or I'll beat the **** out of you when the day is done." ******. I knew someone would see me during any act of comfort or clumsiness. The mexican hyenas chuckled as I stalked guiltily over to empty water bottle. The ten or twelve workers, all shirtless and brown, stood chuckling down on me like some horrific Greek chorus secretly whispering and planning my doomed fate either at a late night discoteca or some run down bar down by the water. Oh lord, how cometh taunt me so?
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Lemino came over gripping a pick axe, large and the color of of a recently picked coconut. "Hey white boy, you need some water?" He threw me a muddied water bottle in a puddle of my sweat. "Thanks Lem. I can barely lift my ******* head in this heat, how do you do it?" Lemino looked up at the sun. "I don't know man." He lifted his finger to the noon hanging sun and said, "Sometimes I just think of the Sun as my woman and I never take no **** from Her so why's that any different." He took a sip of his own water and walked off, his back completely dry and cracked with a mix of mud and concrete.
Jesus, I thought. For someone like that and someone like me to be working on the same house made me wonder why I had ever been brought here in the first place. How did I get here? Why had I been punished so for my work in school, my excellent obedience with peers and with the community? I was not a religious man but I grew up in the land of the free and the brave, how had it come to this? I drank the entire bottle of water throwing it on the sizzling grey brown ground.
"Hey white boy!," screamed a voice from the rooftop. "Throw that **** away or I'll beat the **** out of you when the day is done." ******. I knew someone would see me during any act of comfort or clumsiness. The mexican hyenas chuckled as I stalked guiltily over to empty water bottle. The ten or twelve workers, all shirtless and brown, stood chuckling down on me like some horrific Greek chorus secretly whispering and planning my doomed fate either at a late night discoteca or some run down bar down by the water. Oh lord, how cometh taunt me so?
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