In the Midst of Winter

Galileo explained to Evelyn that he had found redemption in the Lord and a family in his brothers and sisters in faith. “I led the life of a sinner until I went to the church and there the Holy Spirit descended on me. That was nine years ago.” Evelyn found it hard to believe that such a meek man could have done a great deal of sinning. According to Galileo, a bolt from the heavens threw him to the floor during a religious service and as he writhed in a trance Satan was driven out of his body while the enthusiastic congregation sang and prayed for him at the tops of their lungs. Ever since then, his life had taken a new direction, he said. He had met Miriam, who shouted a lot but was a good woman who helped keep him on a righteous path. God had given him two children. The Almighty was like family to him, and he spoke to him like son to father; it was enough for him to ask for something with all his heart for it to be granted. He had made public witness of his faith and been baptized by immersion in a local swimming pool. He was hoping Evelyn would do the same, but she kept postponing the moment out of loyalty to Father Benito and her grandmother, who would be offended if she changed religion.

The harmony that reigned among the trailer’s inhabitants was endangered during the rare visits made by Doreen, Galileo’s daughter born of a fleeting youthful romance with an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who lived by smuggling and fortune-telling. Miriam said that not only had Doreen inherited her mother’s knack for hoodwinking fools but she was an addict who went about enveloped in a fateful dark cloud that made everything she touched turn to dog shit. Although twenty-six, she looked fifty, and had never done an honest day’s work in her life but boasted of handling vast amounts of money. No one dared ask where she got it from—they suspected her methods were unlawful—but apparently the cash slipped through her fingers as quickly as it had come. This meant she often came to her father to demand a loan without any intention of ever paying it back. Miriam loathed her and Galileo was afraid of her. In her presence he squirmed like a worm and gave her whatever he could, which was always less than what she wanted. Miriam did not have the courage to stand up to her either, saying Doreen had bad blood, without specifying what she meant by that, and looking down on her because she was black. Nothing in Doreen’s appearance seemed capable of inspiring fear: she was skinny, wasted, with rat’s eyes and yellow teeth and fingernails, permanently hunched due to her weak bones. Yet she gave off a frightening, barely contained rage, like a pressure cooker about to explode. Miriam ordered her daughter to stay off that woman’s radar; nothing good could come from her.

Her mother’s warning was unnecessary, because Evelyn found it impossible even to breathe whenever Doreen came near. Out in the yard the dog would begin to howl a warning several minutes before she appeared. This alerted Evelyn to the fact she should make herself scarce, but she did not always manage to do so in time. Doreen would catch her: “Where are you going so fast, you stuttering retard?” She was the only one who insulted Evelyn in this way: all the others had become accustomed to figuring out the meaning of Evelyn’s stumbling sentences before she finished them. Galileo Leon was quick to give his daughter money so that she would leave, and each time he begged her to accompany him to church, even if only once. He still lived in hope that the Holy Spirit would graciously descend to save her from herself, as it had done with him.



MORE THAN TWO YEARS went by without Evelyn’s receiving the notification from the court that she had been informed about at the detention center. Miriam lived in fear of the mail, although she thought that by now her daughter’s file had probably gotten lost in the dusty recesses of the immigration service and she would be able to live without documents for the rest of her days without being bothered. Evelyn had finished her last year at high school and had graduated in her cap and gown like all the rest of her class, without anyone asking to see any proof of who she was.

The recent economic crisis had stirred up old resentments against Latinos in the United States. Thousands of Americans, swindled by finance companies and banks, lost their houses or jobs and made immigrants their scapegoats. “I’d like to see an American of whatever color work for the little they pay us,” Miriam used to say. She earned less than the legal minimum wage and had increased her hours to cover her household expenses, because prices always rose while wages stayed the same. At night, Evelyn went with her and two other women to clean offices. A formidable team, they would arrive in a Honda Accord with their cleaning equipment and a transistor radio to listen to evangelical preachers and Mexican songs. They made a point of working together to protect themselves from any nocturnal danger: attacks in the street or sexual harassment in the locked buildings. They earned themselves a reputation as Amazons one night when they used their brooms and buckets to give a hiding to an office worker who had stayed on late and tried to take advantage of Evelyn in a restroom. The security guard, another Latino, turned a deaf ear to the noises for a while, and by the time he eventually intervened, the Don Juan looked as if he had been hit by a truck. Even so, he did not report his assailants to the police, preferring to accept his humiliation in silence.

Miriam and Evelyn worked side by side. They shared the domestic chores, the rearing of the smaller children, looking after the parrot and the dog, doing the shopping and the rest of the daily tasks, and yet they lacked the easy intimacy of mother and daughter; they seemed always to be on a visit with each other. Miriam did not know how to treat her silent daughter oscillating between ignoring her and showing her affection through gifts. Evelyn was a lonely soul and had made no friends either at school or in church. Miriam thought no boy would be interested in her, because she still looked like an underfed urchin. Many immigrants arrived with their bones poking out but within a few months that changed due to a diet of mainly fast food. Evelyn though was uninterested in food by nature. She detested fat and sugar, and missed her grandmother’s beans. Miriam was unaware that Evelyn froze whenever anyone came within a yard of her; the trauma of her rape was seared in her memory and body. She associated physical contact with violence, blood, and above all with her brother Andres and his slit throat. Her mother knew what had happened, but no one had told her the full details and Evelyn could never bring herself to talk about it. She was content to be left alone, because it saved her the effort of speaking.