Perro

I Speak Spanish from the Tops of Pyramids

Miguel speaks Spanish and I speak Spanish and Miguel has no idea I do. He lays block while I bring block and still he has no idea, calling me a ‘perro.’ He laughs and jokes with the other migrant workers.

But I speak Spanish from the tops of pyramids and they have no idea I do. I am the only child of a Mayan woman and Spaniard man from centuries ago and sweat like an Egyptian slave building these pyramids that are really basements for houses, four bedrooms strong and sturdy and developed.

I speak Spanish from the tops of pyramids because speaking it here could get me killed. I saw Miguel open up a bag of mortar yesterday with a switchblade. Men don’t just come around one of those. And I breathed in the dust of concrete mix that was pulled from the mixer by winds of the pharaoh, the same that blew the day he died before the times of Christ.

Mother taught me to forgive. Senora Smith taught me Spanish. But Miguel taught me to speak Spanish from the tops of pyramids because some days when we’ve finished a basement and my muscles gyrate from the shock of the day and the day is still young, we go home early. Unless it’s between noon and one and then we start another pyramid. The Mexicans start a fire under the unfelled trees at the perimeter of the lot using empty mortar bags, and drink beer. I clean the site of scaffolding and planks and unused buckets of concrete, sixty pounds strong.

To be honest, I don’t speak Spanish from the tops of pyramids. But imagine myself on the wall of the day’s work done shouting at Miguel and calling him worse than he ever called me. He follows me into the pit of the basement with pebbles for drainage and pebbles to kick at him and he pulls “Senorita,” his switch, from his back pocket. I imagine the day when the student becomes the teacher.

The above short story was my first published story, running in Hobart online in 2008. It speaks about my experience as a mason tender doing construction as a kid for a couple summers. I worked six day work weeks, twelve hour days, with those migrant workers. There was always a kind of animosity between us, but towards the end of the summer, after one of them called me a dog in Spanish, I spoke up and spoke Spanish. Everything I had learned from high school. Something special happened. There was a certain amount of respect I earned from them then. Carlos would joke, flexing his biceps and arms like Hulk Hogan in the middle of the afternoon sun.

“Muscles.”

“Yes, músculos,” I’d shout from across the job site.

I had taken the job, no kept the job, for the way it changed my body. My father would say he wanted it for me to give me a level head. I wanted it so that I would never have to be afraid of another person again. He let me have my first glass of wine with him after my first couple days. I was a hundred and ninety pounds at the end of high school. After summer, I was two-hundred twenty-five pounds. My body fat had to have been low, I’m not sure how low, but it literally changed my body those three months, carrying cinder blocks and concrete buckets.

A close friend remarked when we went to the movies one evening after my first day on the job.

“They just had you carrying blocks of concrete??”

“Yes,” I replied. “I carried them all day in the mud from one side of the site to a pallet across from the basement.”

Sometimes, I think they simply left the blocks there to test us that day. There was another high school grad my age. We both were exhausted. But by the end of that first day, we could carry two or more twelve inch block wearing canvas gloves. The first you snuck your forearm through one of two holes. The second you gripped tight in the corner of one of those holes. Repeat for the other arm. Walk twenty yards this way. Drop them off. Shake inside.

Anyways, my friend looked at me, up and down, someone I don’t even know in life anymore, and asked why I was walking the way I was as we entered the theatre.

“My body is changing. I can feel it. My entire core, bones and muscles, ache and feel like they’ve been shattered.”

“Well, you’re walking like a neanderthal,” he laughed.

My head did hang kind of low going to the movies that night. Just give it some more time, I told myself. By August, my body had reconstructed in so many ways. For once, I was strong.