Payback

26

After she found the doors to the restaurant where she worked gated and chained, Calvina Agnese spent the morning walking through the city, trying at other restaurants to see if they might have a similar job. She was still stunned by what had happened and all that she had heard. Calvina was not a naive girl, but it seemed impossible that her beloved boss had been a bankrupt and gambler.

And a thief. For he had killed himself without paying her the week’s salary he owed. It was the same as taking money from her pocket.

Early in the afternoon, discouraged and tired, she went home. Her mother took the news better than Calvina had feared: she only cried, not shouting or demanding to know what role Calvina had played in her employer’s demise.

Losing the job meant immediate difficulty for the family. Calvina promised her mother that she would find a new one soon. Her mother tried vainly to stanch her tears and finally succeeded in smiling for her, but Calvina could tell that she was not optimistic. Calvina’s fourteen-year-old brother had been laid off from a job with one of the markets a year before and, though he had tried to find another, had not yet managed to do so. Her mother made a few soles a week doing piecework for a clothing manufacturer; Calvina volunteered that she would ask for work there herself. While this was unlikely, her mother nodded enthusiastically and said it was a very good idea.

To take her mind off what had happened, Calvina filled a bucket and began washing the kitchen floor, her hands circling in the steady rhythm she would have used at the restaurant. The floor there was stone and here it was linoleum, but the familiar motion felt reassuring, and she moved on to their bathroom and then the hallway and bedrooms.

With each room, some of the comfort melted away. Her thoughts returned to Señor DeCura. She thought of the priest who would say his mass — if this was even allowed. Was it allowed? Could a man who took his own life be buried in the church?

Calvina’s thoughts grew darker still. She filled her bucket again and began washing the hall outside their apartment, hoping the sense of relief would return. Eventually she realized it would not, but the task had assumed an importance of its own, and she continued to work her way down the hall past the other apartments here, carrying her bucket back and forth several times for fresh water.

She was near the stairway when her cousin Rosa arrived home. Two years older than Calvina, Rosa worked as a cleaner at a small office building on the other side of the city. Ordinarily, she came home well after dark, and Calvina looked up with surprise when she heard Rosa’s familiar steps on the stairs.

“You’re home?” said Rosa.

“My boss, Senor DeCura—” She began crying, unable to continue.

Rosa knelt next to her on the wet floor and wrapped her arm around her. After a while, Calvina told her cousin what had happened, punctuating the story with soft moans that she would never be able to find a job again. Rosa comforted her, assuring her that something would be found.

“Finding that job was so difficult,” Calvina complained. “So impossible.”

“You should come to the United States with me.”

“When? When are you planning this?”

“Within a few days.” And Rosa explained that she had been let go more than three weeks before. She had kept it a secret from her family, making plans instead to go north.

“Where can you get the money for the trip?” asked Calvina.

“There are ways to make money,” said Rosa.

Calvina froze. Her face must have turned white, for instantly her cousin reassured her that no sin was involved.

“I’m sure you could do it as well,” added Rosa.

“What would I do?”

“You carry things. They pay for your flight and give you documents.”

“It must be dangerous.”

“Not so.”

“What would you do in the North?” asked Calvina, already considering the offer.

“There are many things to do. Clean rich people’s homes, care for their children — the pay is ten times for a week what you make in a month in Lima.”

“Could I stay a year?”

“A year? The rest of your life.”

“I would work very hard.” Calvina felt a rush of hope. She could become a person such as Señor DeCura.

Except that she would not fall victim to temptation as he had.

“How?” she asked her cousin.

Rosa put her finger to her lips. “I will explain later. Don’t tell them. The old women will worry. But we will take a trip first, arrange everything, then leave. I will help you, Calvina.”

“Thank you,” she said.