Alien Encounter
By Julia Van Develder
Nov02
I’m looking for a desk. I’m planning to leave my job of eighteen years and launch a business, so I need a desk for the home office I’m envisioning. I don’t want to spend a ton of money because I don’t have a ton of money. Plus I’m trying to learn how to think like a businessperson, which in this case means “buy cheap.”
I find a pretty cool desk on Ebay—one with “I know what I’m doing” written all over it—and it’s cheap, so I bid on it, and I win. “You got a steal,” the owner emails me. $163.99. Oak. L-shaped. Custom made. The only problem is that it’s in New Jersey and it’s “pick up only.” I figure I’ll go down on the weekend in my little Subaru Forester and pick it up. But I see now that it’s too big, so I’ll have to rent a UHaul. And “no weekends,” says the guy who sold it to me--somebody named “Jules”--and btw, bring some help because Jules has a bad back.
I don’t have any help. I’m divorced, my kids are grown, and my friends work for a living. So now my big bargain of a desk is going to cost me a UHaul and a hired hand and a day off work. This kind of thing is always happening to me. When am I ever going to learn?
I call my handyman. He can’t come that day, but his brother-in-law who’s got a little farm north of here has a Mexican guy that he can’t really keep in full-time work, so he’ll see if I can borrow him. He pays him ten bucks an hour, but whatever I want to pay him is fine. The only problem is he doesn’t speak English. No problem, I tell him. I speak Spanish, sort of. I lived in Mexico for a few years when I was a kid. Perfect, he says, the guy is a hard worker.
I don’t ask, but I assume he’s undocumented. My handyman is an ex-Marine and a staunch Republican, but he’s got five or six mouths to feed and is struggling to make ends meet, so I assume he’s pragmatic when it comes to credentials. On the day, he arrives with Fernando at my house at 9:00am. My dog charges ferociously into the yard. He’s all talk, but Fernando has no way of knowing that. He tries to look unafraid. I grab the dog and hold out my hand to shake. His face registers surprise that I speak Spanish. He’s a small man—maybe five-one. He’s wearing new sneakers, jeans, a zip-up hoodie, and a baseball cap. He looks to be in his thirties, but it’s hard to tell.
I’ve already picked up the UHaul, so we’re off. The desk is in Lyndhurst, two hours away. I’m happy for the chance to practice my Spanish, but a little embarrassed by how challenging it is to say anything that’s the slightest bit complicated.
I stick to the slow lane because I’m not a great driver and I don’t like driving trucks. I begin to explain this, but I can’t remember the word for “truck.” “Camioneta,” he tells me. He says he doesn’t know how to drive. He could learn, everyone can learn, more or less, he says, but he’s illegal, and he doesn’t want to risk getting in an accident and encountering the police.
I ask about his home. He’s from a small village in the state of Pueblo, very poor, but tranquil. He has a wife and two kids, a two-year-old and a four-year-old, a boy and a girl. I ask how long it’s been since he’s seen them. He says that this time, he’s been here almost a year. He arrived last June. He’s hoping to stay one more year and save enough money to go home and build a little house.
I launch into a tirade against my government’s border policy. He disagrees with me very politely. He says that maybe my government is right to crack down on illegals. He says that there are a lot of bad people who come over and make trouble, drug traffickers, pimps. He doesn’t blame my government. His government, on the other hand, he has no respect for. It doesn’t matter which party is in power, all they want is to keep all the money for themselves. They do nothing to help the people. A few people are very very rich, and everyone else is poor. And all the police are corrupt. If you go to Mexico City, which he does sometimes to visit family, the police stop you on the street for no reason. They want a bribe just to leave you alone. On the highways, it’s the same. At least in this country, he says, the government tries to help people.
We argue back and forth about whose government is worse. I tell him that his government may be more corrupt, but mine is just plain silly. My government is getting ready to build a huge wall between his country and mine, a wall that will cost billions of dollars, to stop illegals from coming in. Why don’t they take that money and build businesses in Mexico to employ people? People cross over because they’re desperate for work. You want them to stop? Give them work!
We cross the Poughkeepsie bridge, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge. I tell him Roosevelt was a great president. I don’t know the words for “The Depression” or “financial collapse,” but I tell him that when the people were very poor, Roosevelt created jobs for people to build things--post offices, bridges. My explanation is garbled, but he understands that I am trying to say something that matters to me. “He was a good man,” he offers. Yes, a very good man.
I ask him about how he got here. He looks away, out the window. “Es muy duro, senora. Suffri much.” It is very hard, ma’am. I suffered a lot. He waited at the border for three months. The first two times he tried to cross, he was caught and sent back. Life at the border is hard. There are so many people there, trying to cross, and the shopkeepers take advantage. Everything is expensive—even food. Once during the three months he had to go home because he ran out of money for food. The third time, luck was with him. He had to pay the coyote three thousand dollars--three thousand dollars, ma’am! There were fifteen in his group. They crossed near Nogales—two days and two nights in the desert.
Was he afraid? Yes, of course. It’s dangerous—there are poisonous snakes. Was he afraid of bandits? There are bandits, but the path that he took is protected by the drug traffickers. The coyote pays the drug traffickers, and they allow the coyote and his group to pass through. So many people are crossing, so many groups. You sit down to rest, he says, and another group passes you. You don’t bring anything with you—nothing. They’ll steal your hat off your head.
He tells me again that he suffered to get here, and this suffering is visible in his eyes. His demeanor hasn’t changed--he delivers this sentence deadpan. But his eyes are pools of pain. He’s remembering something so demoralizing that I can barely imagine it.
He tells me about the times he came before, the eight years he spent in California, working for a Mexican American who treated his workers much worse than the Americans Fernando has worked for. The guy is very very rich. He has three huge farms, acres and acres. He buys expensive cars for all his kids. He goes on vacation to Europe. The guy makes his living on government contracts, reforesting large tracts of land. He gets paid a dollar for every seedling he plants, but he pays the workers only a nickel a plant. You wear a kind of belt around your middle with all the seedlings in it, and you practically have to run, planting them as fast as you can.
Fernando had an accident while he was working for that guy--a chainsaw kicked back and caught him in the face. His cheek was hanging off, blood everywhere. The guy took him to a plastic surgeon who sewed it back on; he gave Fernando a few days off work, but then he had to go back to the field with his face still in bandages. The plastic surgeon wanted him to come back for a second treatment so it wouldn’t look so ugly. But his boss didn’t want to pay for it, so the surgeon said he’d do it for free. Fixed him up almost good as new. You can hardly tell. And that boss was Mexican, ma’am—Mexican.
When we get to Lyndhurst, Jules is waiting for us with the desk in two pieces on a dolly. The three of us manage to lift it and slide it into the van. It is quite heavy. I worry about how Fernando and I will manage to get it out of the van and through the yard and up the stairs to my house.
And that, two hours later, proves to be impossible. I call my handyman for backup, and he calls his brother-in-law who sends his stepson Jake--big strong kid, perfectly smart, but deaf-mute. The three of us manage to get the desk as far as the entryway, but it’s about an inch too wide for the opening.
I go get tools, and the three of us figure out how to take the desk apart. It’s not a simple matter of a few screws. The top is attached in mysterious ways, but one by one we ferret them out. Jake communicates with us on a handheld device, I respond with pencil and paper. “Wow, you type so fast!” I write. He beams—“A lot of practice, chatting with my friends, college.”
It’s an odd scenario---three people with radically different communication skills solving a problem together. But it’s not a Tower of Babel--we find a way. We each have something to contribute here, and in these few moments, the playing field is level; we’re equals. When the last screw comes out and the top comes off, we are jubilant. Jake pounds Fernando on the back, Fernando gives him the thumbs up. Mission accomplished.
I pay them well, more than I had planned, more than I should if I ever want to learn to think like a businessperson. For days after, as I walk around my house, I see it as it must look to Fernando--rich, extravagant. I think about Jake--so many strikes against him, but facing life cheerfully. Has he ever been bitter? There must have been moments. I don’t believe it’s possible to go through the public education system with a disability like that emotionally unscathed.
As for me, I want to help Fernando. The least I can do is give him work and pay him well. The next weekend I hire him to help me reseed my lawn...and two weeks later to rebuild a stone wall...and after that to paint my porch. But the place he’s living at is about an hour away, and I have to pick him up and take him back and think up things for him to do, and it basically eats my Saturday. So the next time I go to pick him up, and he’s not there, I’m relieved. I can stop now. He let me down, so the next time he calls looking for work, I can make an excuse without feeling too guilty.
But I am guilty. I am no better than the government I railed against. It is extraordinarily difficult to stay present to the suffering of others for very long without feeling overwhelmed and powerless and ashamed, without finding a way to blame them for your failure of compassion.