“No.” I was completely bewildered. “You need money; you can’t afford to work in a sweatshop. What were you doing there?”
“Oh, if you are this stupid how did you ever go to a big university?” She waved her hands wildly. “How can I believe you can find my daughter? I wasn’t working, I mean, I was working, but I was supervising, he was paying me to supervise, to make sure people stay at the machines, don’t steal nothing, don’t take long breaks, everything that—that I hate!”
Maybe I was too stupid to find Josie, but not so stupid that I asked her why she did it, not a woman who’d been feeding six mouths on twenty-six thousand a year. Instead, I asked how long it had been going on.
“Only two days. We started two days before the fire. The day you came to the factory because of the sabotage, Mr. Zamar called me in, he was very angry because I was bringing a detective to the plant. ‘But the sabotage, Mr. Zamar,’ I said, ‘those rats, the glue, and then some chavo around this morning trying to do something bad again,’ and he said, like this—” She broke off to imitate Zamar sitting with his head buried in his hands, “He said, ‘Rose, I know all about it, a detective, she will only get the plant closed down.’ And then the next day, he came and offered me this job, this supervising job, and he said if I take it it’s five hundred fifty dollars extra a week, if I don’t want it he fires me for bringing you to the factory. Only the pastor, he can’t know. Mr. Zamar knows I go to church, he knows how much my faith means to me, but he knows how much my children mean to me, and he catches me between these two sharp thorns, the thorn of my love for Jesus, the thorn of my family, what am I to do? God help me, I took the work, and then I am truly punished because two days later the plant burns; Mr. Zamar is killed. I only thank God that it happened early, before me and the workers arrived. I thank God for the warning, that He didn’t kill me in the fire on the spot, that I have a chance to repent, but why must my children suffer as well?”
I stared at her in dawning horror. “You mean the pastor set fire to the building because Zamar was running a sweatshop?”
She clapped a hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t say that. But when he found out about the sweatshop, he was very, very angry.”
Andrés had threatened Zamar that if he sent his business out of Chicago, the pastor would see he had no business left to protect. Was Andrés such a megalomaniac that he thought he really was God on the South Side? My head was reeling, and I couldn’t even find the strength to sit up straight.
I finally went to a smaller question, something I could manage. “Where did the people come from, the ones in the midnight factory?”
“Everywhere, but mostly Guatemala and Mexico. Me, I speak Spanish; I grew up in Waco, but my family was from Mexico, so Mr. Zamar, he knew I could talk to them. But the worst thing, the worst thing is, they owe money to a jefe, and Zamar, he actually turned to a jefe to get workers in his factory. Never did I think I would be doing such a thing, translating for him with that kind of mierda.”
Jefes, heads, they’re go-betweens, fixers, who charge illegal immigrants exorbitant fees to smuggle them into the country. No poor immigrant can afford a thousand dollars for a trip across the border, complete with fake green card and social security number, so the jefes “lend” them the money. When they get here, the jefes sell people to companies looking for cheap labor. The jefes pocket most of the wages, doling out just enough for room and board. It’s a system of slavery, really, because it’s almost impossible ever to buy your way out of one of these contracts. I could imagine Pastor Andrés would be furious with any local business who bought people’s work like that.
“This Freddy, he isn’t a jefe, is he?” I blurted out.
“Freddy Pacheco? He is too lazy,” she said scornfully. “A jefe may be evil, but he works hard; he has to.”
Rose and I sat silent after that. She seemed relieved to have finally gotten her story off her mind: her face was brighter, more animated, than it had been since before the fire at the factory. I felt duller—as if I really were too stupid even to go to college, let alone find her daughter.
On the screen in front of me, Spiderman was easily tying up the villain who had been trying to rob the local bank, or maybe it was the local banker trying to rob his customers, but, either way, Spiderman hadn’t even broken a sweat. Not only that, it had taken him less than half an hour to identify the villain and track him down. I desperately needed some superpowers, although even ordinary human powers would do right now.
The baby, which had slept through our talk, began to fuss. Rose sat up and said she was going to the kitchen to heat a bottle, she’d bring me a cup of coffee.