Fiction: Leah Griesmann

Leah Griesmann (Fiction 2005) has received grants and residencies from the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the DAAD (Berlin), and the Center for Steinbeck Studies. Her fiction has recently appeared in The Weekly Rumpus, Union Station, The Boiler, The Cortland Review, and PEN Center USA’s The Rattling Wall.

 

THE SLAVE

Three-thousand-dollars? It seemed exorbitant, even for a work of, what was it, Meso-American era Nahuatl pottery? But Curt knew Aztec art and she was not going to tell him how to spend his own money, not when they had two modest pensions coming in and had already cut their living costs two-thirds by moving to Puerto Escondido. But there was always a price to pay, that money they’d saved on taxes, car expenses, housing, entertainment, medicine and food now funneled into her animals and Curt’s ancient art.

Tlacotin—a slave, he had said, explaining that in Aztec culture slaves were treated better, that they could buy their freedom, their designation as slaves not determined by birth or race, but by circumstance. Of course, she wanted to argue, if they could afford to buy their freedom, they would hardly be slaves, and if they couldn’t they were no better off than slaves everywhere, but she didn’t want to dampen Curt’s obvious joy at the dealer’s rare find.

The Tlacotin was eight inches tall, of rust-colored clay, a primitive figure with a prominent nose, slanted eyes, long hair, and an abstract form that suggested a body. And yet, as she stared at that large head, the stooped frame bearing a round basket more than half its own size, it occurred to her such a totem didn’t exactly tell of good fortune—not like the big-bellied Buddhas, red-eared cats or lucky bamboo trees—no, an icon like that was an omen.

This is why it didn’t shock her as much as it might have when several weeks later as they were returning from their monthly pilgrimage to Wal-Mart; frozen sea bass, Lender’s bagels, Wheat Thins, Oreos, Rice Chex, granola bars, Diet Dr. Pepper and blocks of cheddar cheese in tow, to find their gardener Rigoberto’s son Antonio in the living room bouncing his soccer ball. He was bouncing it over and over, the sliding glass door open, Rigoberto yelling at him from the yard to stop and she said, it’s all right, we’ll give him some Oreos and some Wheat Thins, he loves them, and he bounced the ball softly one last time out of his father’s sight, the ball sailing just over his shoulder, hitting the Tlacotin and knocking it to the floor where it shattered.

In the wake of the crash there was silence. Then a holler from Rigoberto who dropped the hose and came running. The Wheat Thins still on the plate, the ball bouncing several times out the door, Rigoberto’s yelling, and the boy’s deep inhale and sob. Curt was there within seconds, his face stiff as the Aztec masks that hung on the wall across from his pottery.

A few minutes later when the yelling had stopped, Antonio sat stuffing his mouth with Oreos though his eyes were still red, and Rigoberto stood in the yard talking to Curt. “How much? How much?”

There was infinite calculation in the look Curt gave her. She was pondering Rigoberto’s weekly wages, who as their gardener and housekeeper earned forty pesos an hour, four dollars U.S., a generous salary by Mexican standards.

“It’s a lot, Rigoberto,” Curt finally said and she nodded approval.

“How much?”

“No, no.” She couldn’t help jumping in. “It’s too much, Rigoberto. We need to leave it alone. We’ll figure it out.”

Rigoberto was growing more tense, the muscles in his neck protruding, his voice husky. He said, and even with her imperfect Spanish, she understood, “In our family, we pay our debts. You tell me how much and he will work for it.”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” Curt said.

Unhappily, Rigoberto went back to the gardening. Antonio finished his plate of cookies and fell asleep watching TV. When Rigoberto was done he yelled for Antonio and drove off in his truck.

*

That night when Rigoberto had left, the calculations began. “You can’t possibly tell him how much it cost,” she said.

“But we have to tell him that it cost something,” Curt said, and she suggested a compromise of three hundred dollars.

Curt shook his head, suffering most from the loss of his beloved sculpture, though the sum of money was not a small one—four times their house payment each month. At the time of the purchase the cash was no object to Curt, who was thrilled when the dealer accepted his bid on the rare Tlacotin. But this was exactly why it was so hard to come up with a figure that would minimize the amount he had actually paid, be reasonable for Rigoberto, and lessen his loss, because after all, Curt’s three-thousand-dollar sculpture was gone.

“Maybe five-hundred?” she said, but Curt shook his head.

“It’s still too much for them.”

“I don’t like this. I don’t want the boy working for us. It’s child labor.”

“Not here. And it’s obviously a matter of pride with Rigoberto. We need to let them think they’ve paid off their debt.”

“I don’t like this at all. We should tell them it was one hundred.”

“God damn it,” Curt said. “That sculpture was one of a kind.”

*

It was settled the next day that the sum would be two hundred dollars. Rigoberto and Curt went back and forth about what the boy should be credited for his work, and it was Rigoberto who suggested his son earn half what he earned. At that rate Antonio would have to work a hundred hours to pay off the debt. A list was made of the chores he could do—sweeping, raking, folding laundry, watering the lawns, potting plants, and any help that his father required.

Twice a week when he had finished his own work in the mornings, Rigoberto returned in the afternoon with Antonio after school. It wasn’t easy to come up with tasks for the boy and she didn’t like watching him work in the sun. She would have been satisfied to see him eat cookies in front of the TV but Rigoberto would not have it. He made certain Antonio spent all his time working though it meant staying more unpaid hours to supervise.

Curt, who usually spent his afternoons watching football or taking a nap found the boy an intrusion. He’d go up to his room when they came, not capable of relaxing when he and his father were working. He grew unhappier by the day for the loss of his sculpture, substantial enough to put him off ancient art for some time, and confessed a nagging resentment for bearing the brunt of the cost as well as the disturbance from Antonio’s labor. “I wish we could call it all off,” he said more than once.

*

The morning of the third week into the arrangement she escaped the house to walk on the beach. Bottlenose dolphins were diving just beyond where the shore broke, the sun thread through clouds in the clear morning sky. A man in sombrero was riding a horse to the hotels a few miles up to sell his crafts to the tourists.

Antonio was on his twenty-third hour of work, and at the rate he was going they would suffer several more months of his labor. They had told Rigoberto that morning that they were satisfied that the debt had been paid, but he had grown angry, raising his voice despite Curt’s reassurance.

“One hundred hours. That was the agreement.”

“Rigoberto, he’s only a child,” she broke in, in the hopes that a woman’s perspective might alter his view. “If he’s going to do work we’d rather see him do school work.”

“If you do not let my son work, then I will work for him.”

“You’re already working for us.”

“I will work at the rate of my son, half of what you pay me until his hours have been completed.”

“Rigoberto—“

“I insist,” he had said.

*

She and Curt didn’t like Rigoberto working for them at half-pay, but as the weeks went by they found themselves giving him tasks they would never have asked him to do—caulking tile, maintaining the sewer, and fumigating for cockroaches. Rigoberto was changing too—his earlier friendliness replaced by resentment, which hardly seemed fair seeing as he had insisted upon the arrangement. She hated the tension that arose between them, the animosity in his face, but found that she could enjoy ordering him around, watching the sweat drip from his brow as he cleared out the brush where they thought they might put in a pool.

At the completion of the hundred hours Rigoberto failed to show up for work. She wanted to walk up the beach to his house, to pay him twice what he’d earned for Antonio’s labor, but Curt said to leave him alone.

Curt took over the tasks Rigoberto had done—maintaining the road, watering the lawn, cutting the weeds, and trimming the brush. He’d come in the house dripping with sweat and she’d ask him to rest, but he’d wave her off. He had soured on Mexico, insults crept in whenever he spoke of it, the culture was backwards and hopeless, no wonder the Aztecs were conquered.

Several days after Rigoberto quit, a young man came by the house and said he would work for twenty pesos an hour, half as much as Rigoberto had earned, as much as they were paying Antonio, but Curt turned him down. Until his statue was paid for he insisted on doing the gardening, the road, the lawn, and even the breaking of ground for the pool. It was endless really, the work to be done on a poorly built house on three acres. Curt spoke of his pride in the work, but to her it seemed just the opposite. The locals resented Curt now, an old gringo who could easily pay for the work but insisted on keeping it all for himself.

One day she came back from Wal-Mart with their usual bounty of bagels, baked goods, and cheese, and was stunned by the sight of dolphins close to the shore. She abandoned the groceries and ran to the beach entranced by their diving bodies. She followed them for a quarter-mile, stopping as a familiar soccer ball passed and she saw Antonio playing with friends in front of his house. She turned to head back just as the man on horseback called out, for it must have been a slow day with the tourists.

“Hello, Senora, do you want some Mexican crafts?”

“No, thank you,” she said, but in the pushy way of vendors he had already unfurled his blanket. Annoyed, she took a quick look in the hopes of brushing him off without fuss, and noticed among the dusty pile of clay turtles and dolphins six Tlacotins. Eight inches tall, of rust-colored clay, they were primitive figures with large noses and long hair, the same impossible baskets fixed to their backs.

“Senora, you like?”

As the ball bounced past, she stared at the clay Tlacotins, identical to the one that had crashed on their floor. Antonio was running barefoot towards the shore, and next to him was Rigoberto, who caught her eye and looked down at the sculptures before turning away.

“Senora, you like? Cheap for you.”

Finally she held up both of her hands, said, “No, no,” and the vendor wrapped his goods in his blanket, got on his horse, and rode off.

Back at the house Curt was struggling to cross their lawn, an enormous bag of cement on his back, bent over and stooped from the weight.

She spent her next weeks watching dolphins, attending her Spanish lessons, and doing her volunteer work with stray dogs. She avoided Curt, whom she came home to find laboring in the yard or asleep in exhaustion. Obsessed with his debt, he rebuffed the art dealer’s calls saying once he finished his work he’d be free. Each day when he was done with the weeding, the digging, the lugging of dirt, he calculated his work at the rate he had paid Rigoberto. He’d become a curmudgeon, complaining about everything except for his labor, which he vowed to continue until he had worked off the nearly three thousand dollars still owed him. It was a shame to do work they could pay someone else to, but as he’d said, hefting another bag of cement on his back, that was the price that you paid for a true Tlacotin.

—

“The Slave” was originally published in J Journal: New Writing on Justice.