hut. They crowded onto two beds and a slim mattress jammed each night into the aisle between the beds. To fit, everyone slept head to foot. MarÃa Isabel shared one of the beds with three other women.
When she was ten, MarÃa Isabel ran to catch a delivery truck. âFirewood!â she yelled out to a neighbor, Ãngela Emérita Nuñez, offering to get some for her.
After that, each morning MarÃa Isabel asked if Ãngela had a chore for her. Ãngela liked the sweet, loving girl with coils of hair who always smiled. She admired the fact that she was a hard worker and a fighter, a girl who thrived when her own twin died a month after birth.
âMira,â
MarÃa Isabel says, â
yo por pereza no me muero del hambre.
I will never die out of laziness.â MarÃa Isabel fed and bathed Ãngelaâs daughter, helped make tortillas and mop the red-and-gray tile floors. MarÃa Isabel often ate at Ãngelaâs. Eventually, MarÃa Isabel spent many nights a week at Ãngelaâs roomier house, where she had to share a bed with only one other person, Ãngelaâs daughter.
MarÃa Isabel graduated from the sixth grade. Her mother proudly hung MarÃa Isabelâs graduation certificate on the wall of the hut. A good student, she hadnât even asked her mother about going on to junior high. âHow would she speak of that? We had no chance to send a child to school that long,â says Eva, who never went to school a day and began selling bread from a basket perched on her head when she was twelve.
At sixteen, a fight forced MarÃa Isabel to move again. The spat was with an older cousin, who thought MarÃa Isabel was showing interest in her boyfriend. Eva scolded her daughter. MarÃa Isabel decided to move across town with her aunt Gloria, who lived next door to Enriqueâs maternal grandmother. MarÃa Isabel would help Gloria with a small food store she ran out of the front room of her house. To Eva, her daughterâs departure was a relief. The family was eating, but not well. Eva was thankful that Gloria had lightened her load.
Gloriaâs house is modest. The windows have no panes, just wooden shutters. But to MarÃa Isabel, Gloriaâs two-bedroom home is wonderful. She and Gloriaâs daughter have a bedroom to themselves. Besides, Gloria is more easygoing about letting MarÃa Isabel go out at night to an occasional dance or party, or to the annual county fair. Eva wouldnât hear of such a thing, fearful the neighbors would gossip about her daughterâs morals.
A cousin promises to take MarÃa Isabel to a talk about birth control. MarÃa Isabel wants to prevent a pregnancy. Enrique desperately wants to get MarÃa Isabel pregnant. If they have a child together, surely MarÃa Isabel wonât abandon him. So many people have abandoned him.
Near where Enrique lives is a neighborhood called El Infiernito, Little Hell. Some homes there are teepees, stitched together from rags. It is controlled by a street gang, the Mara Salvatrucha. Some members were U.S. residents, living in Los Angeles until 1996, when a federal law began requiring judges to deport them if they committed serious crimes. Now they are active throughout much of Central America and Mexico. Here in El Infiernito, they carry
chimbas,
guns fashioned from plumbing pipes, and they drink
charamila,
diluted rubbing alcohol. They ride the buses, robbing passengers. Sometimes they assault people as they are leaving church after Mass.
Enrique and a friend, José del Carmen Bustamante, sixteen, venture into El Infiernito to buy marijuana. It is dangerous. On one occasion, José, a timid, quiet teenager, is threatened by a man who wraps a chain around his neck. The boys never linger. They take their joints partway up a hill to a billiard hall, where they sit outside smoking and listening to the music that drifts through the open doors.
With them are two other friends. Both have
When she was ten, MarÃa Isabel ran to catch a delivery truck. âFirewood!â she yelled out to a neighbor, Ãngela Emérita Nuñez, offering to get some for her.
After that, each morning MarÃa Isabel asked if Ãngela had a chore for her. Ãngela liked the sweet, loving girl with coils of hair who always smiled. She admired the fact that she was a hard worker and a fighter, a girl who thrived when her own twin died a month after birth.
âMira,â
MarÃa Isabel says, â
yo por pereza no me muero del hambre.
I will never die out of laziness.â MarÃa Isabel fed and bathed Ãngelaâs daughter, helped make tortillas and mop the red-and-gray tile floors. MarÃa Isabel often ate at Ãngelaâs. Eventually, MarÃa Isabel spent many nights a week at Ãngelaâs roomier house, where she had to share a bed with only one other person, Ãngelaâs daughter.
MarÃa Isabel graduated from the sixth grade. Her mother proudly hung MarÃa Isabelâs graduation certificate on the wall of the hut. A good student, she hadnât even asked her mother about going on to junior high. âHow would she speak of that? We had no chance to send a child to school that long,â says Eva, who never went to school a day and began selling bread from a basket perched on her head when she was twelve.
At sixteen, a fight forced MarÃa Isabel to move again. The spat was with an older cousin, who thought MarÃa Isabel was showing interest in her boyfriend. Eva scolded her daughter. MarÃa Isabel decided to move across town with her aunt Gloria, who lived next door to Enriqueâs maternal grandmother. MarÃa Isabel would help Gloria with a small food store she ran out of the front room of her house. To Eva, her daughterâs departure was a relief. The family was eating, but not well. Eva was thankful that Gloria had lightened her load.
Gloriaâs house is modest. The windows have no panes, just wooden shutters. But to MarÃa Isabel, Gloriaâs two-bedroom home is wonderful. She and Gloriaâs daughter have a bedroom to themselves. Besides, Gloria is more easygoing about letting MarÃa Isabel go out at night to an occasional dance or party, or to the annual county fair. Eva wouldnât hear of such a thing, fearful the neighbors would gossip about her daughterâs morals.
A cousin promises to take MarÃa Isabel to a talk about birth control. MarÃa Isabel wants to prevent a pregnancy. Enrique desperately wants to get MarÃa Isabel pregnant. If they have a child together, surely MarÃa Isabel wonât abandon him. So many people have abandoned him.
Near where Enrique lives is a neighborhood called El Infiernito, Little Hell. Some homes there are teepees, stitched together from rags. It is controlled by a street gang, the Mara Salvatrucha. Some members were U.S. residents, living in Los Angeles until 1996, when a federal law began requiring judges to deport them if they committed serious crimes. Now they are active throughout much of Central America and Mexico. Here in El Infiernito, they carry
chimbas,
guns fashioned from plumbing pipes, and they drink
charamila,
diluted rubbing alcohol. They ride the buses, robbing passengers. Sometimes they assault people as they are leaving church after Mass.
Enrique and a friend, José del Carmen Bustamante, sixteen, venture into El Infiernito to buy marijuana. It is dangerous. On one occasion, José, a timid, quiet teenager, is threatened by a man who wraps a chain around his neck. The boys never linger. They take their joints partway up a hill to a billiard hall, where they sit outside smoking and listening to the music that drifts through the open doors.
With them are two other friends. Both have
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