Who the Hell Is Rosie Méndez?
Barbara Mujica
The first time I walked into the mess hall, I felt like a ham sandwich. They all leered at me, mouths watering as if they wanted to take a bite. Soldiers are supposed to show self-control. They gave us a lecture about it during training. Soldiers are supposed to be poker-faced, detached. Apparently, these guys didn’t get the memo though, because their mouths were watering like starving Iraqi dogs that had just caught the whiff of meat. Not American dogs, because over here dogs get fed. Over there they wander through the streets, hoping some GI left a piece of jerky in the garbage. That’s the way these guys were looking at me: like a morsel they couldn’t wait to get their paws on.
“Hey, sugar,” one of them called. “Come sit by me!”
“Come over here, darlin’!”
“Come on, Rosie, there’s a place at my table!”
I looked around to see if I could spot another woman, but there were no free seats near any of my girlfriends. I put down my tray at the end of a table by the food line. A couple of guys snickered. A huge black man smiled and waved at me. He had a scar on his cheek and the name Kavanagh written in black letters across his pocket.
“Hey, sweetheart!” yelled Kavanagh. “Let’s go dancing tonight!”
I laughed. We all knew that the rest of the day we’d be in combat training, then sports, then dinner, then meetings with our teams.
“Right,” I said. “I’ll wear my evening gown and a tiara!”
I smiled and looked down at my meatloaf. I knew the bantering and teasing were just part of the game. They warned us in training that you just had to go along with it. If you were standoffish, the guys would make your life miserable. If you were flirty, they’d think you were easy. I didn’t like it though. I didn’t like feeling as though they were all ready to devour me. It reminded me of what had happened before. I joined the Army to get away from all that, but I was beginning to think that the base wasn’t that different from Boyle Heights.
***
The house in Boyle Heights was nicer than the one in San Teófanes. Back in El Salvador, we had only two rooms—a bedroom and a kind of all-purpose space that served as a kitchen, a living room, and everything else. There was no plumbing. We used an outhouse. But living conditions weren’t the reason we left. We left because of the violence, the marauding FMLA soldiers—leftist guerrillas—who barged into yards and stole your only cow, your only cooking pan, and whatever else you had.
On the morning they kicked in our door, I was playing in the bedroom with a plastic doll my mother had bought for me at Don Tello’s, the only store in San Teófanes. I was four years old. It’s a good thing I was in the house and not in the yard. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened? Mamá shoved me under the bed so they wouldn’t see me. She was trembling and crying and trying to get away, but five or six men encircled her. From under the bed I could see their black boots and smell their oily, tobacco-saturated bodies. I saw one of the soldiers get very close to Mamá and pull up her skirt, but that’s all I saw because I closed my eyes, slid back against the wall, and made myself into a ball. Mamá let out the most horrible, bloodcurdling scream I’d ever heard, a scream as sharp as an ax. Then she was quiet. When I crept out from under the bed, she was lying on the floor, blood oozing from her mouth and ear. Her eyes were as swollen as Tío José’s goiter, and angry bruises blackened her shoulders and arms. One of the soldiers had stuffed her panties into her mouth. I felt my saliva turn to vinegar.
When my father came back from the fields, I ran to him, sobbing.
“Papá,” I spluttered. “They’ve hurt Mami.”
He found her crumbled on a chair, pressing a compress against her engorged lip. He stood there staring at her a long while, his jaw tight, his eyes squinty. Suddenly, he threw his canteen on the ground. It exploded like a bomb.
“Puta!” he screamed. “You whore!”
“No, Papá, no!” I tried to grab his hand, but he pushed me away with such force that I landed on the ground.
“How did you let them touch you, you whore! You probably loved it!”
“Alberto,” Mami sobbed. “No…”
“This only happens because women want it, Verónica!”
Papá raised his hand behind his head, like my brother Paco when he was getting ready to pitch a baseball. When he brought it down on the side of Mami’s head, the thud threw me back onto the floor. It sounded like a clap of thunder. Mami’s ear was bleeding again.
“I’m not living with some whore,” he snarled. He spat at her and tramped out the door. It was the last time I ever saw him.
Jaime and Paco got back from school around lunchtime.
“Mami!” wailed Paco. “What happened?” He was only seven, and all he could do was sit on the floor and bawl.
Jaime, who was eleven, knew what had happened. “They raped her,” he said with chilling indifference. He was only a child, but he already had the hardened features of an adult, and he knew what a man could do to a woman.
That was the first time I ever heard the word rape. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I vowed I’d never let it happen to me.
That night we went to Tío José’s house. Mami’s older brother was a soft-spoken, clear-thinking man, a widower who had raised seven children on his own after his wife had died of cancer. All three of his daughters lived in Los Angeles, and one of them—Luci, the youngest—had managed to go to a vocational school and now worked as a dental assistant.
“You have to leave here,” said Tío José. “The soldiers will be back, and so will Alberto.”
“But where will we go? I have no money.” Mami touched her lip gingerly. I could tell it was still hurting her.
“North like everybody else. You can stay with Luci in Los Angeles until you get settled.”
Almost half the village of San Teófanes had already left for the United States. They sold their pigs, their kitchen utensils, their wheelbarrows, and their shoes—whatever they had—to put cash together for the trip. But Mami didn’t have that kind of time. She had to raise money immediately. Who knew when Alberto or the soldiers might reappear?
“For the four of you, it will be at least eight hundred dollars,” Tío José mused. “I can give you three hundred. I’ve been saving.” He looked down at his hands, which made his goiter swell up like a bullfrog’s.
Mami’s cheeks were moist. “I couldn’t accept your money,” she whispered.
“Take it, Vero. I’ve been saving up to go myself, but I’m too old. I want you to go. For the sake of the children. Let them make something of themselves, like Luci.”
Luci was his pride and joy, the educated daughter who had a good job.
“Stay here tonight,” said Tío José. “Tomorrow we’ll find a solution.”
Don Tello had made a fortune working with coyotes to smuggle Salvadorans into the United States, and within a week he’d managed to get us on a truck that would take us through Guatemala to the Mexican border. From there we began the harrowing journey through Chiapas and Oaxaca, where border guards and bandits demanding money intercepted us at every turn. When at last we got to Texas, we divided into groups. The coyote stuffed Mami, the boys, and me into the hidden compartment of a car. The police searched the vehicle, but somehow we made it across to El Paso. From there we caught a bus to Los Angeles, where Cousin Luci met us at the terminal and took us to her house in her car. Her very own car. A Hyundai. Of all the marvelous things Cousin Luci possessed, the one that fascinated me the most was the car. Even then, I loved engines.
Mamá took the usual jobs—hotel maid, dishwasher, babysitter. When she learned enough English, she sold tickets in a movie theater and shampooed ladies’ hair in a beauty shop. Eventually she paid off her loan from Don Tello and rented a little house in Boyle Heights. Now we had running water, flush toilets, regular phone service, and a TV, just like Cousin Luci. We even had our own little garden where we could plant vegetables and a porch where we could sit and listen to the corridos from the bar across the street.
But to tell the truth, it wasn’t really that different from San Teófanes. Instead of FMLA soldiers, there were gangs. Instead of guerrillas, there were drug dealers. Gunfire in the night, just like back home. Screams and pleas, wailing and funerals and dead children, just like back home. Blood on the street. Tears and more tears. We came to Boyle Heights to get away from San Teófanes, and I joined the Army to get away from Boyle Heights.
I was fourteen when I made the decision to leave. That afternoon I was in the kitchen stuffing pupusas with ground pork. A pupusa is a kind of tortilla made of thick corn dough, and you can fill it with almost anything. The pork was frying on a low flame, and the aroma of chili, cilantro, and cumin filled the kitchen. Suddenly, I heard someone come in through the front door. I thought it must be Jaime. My oldest brother was not following in Cousin Luci’s footsteps, as Mamá had hoped. He was twenty-one already, but he hadn’t finished school and still didn’t have a regular job. He seemed to be staggering in a windstorm, propelled by gusts and thrusts, with no focus or control.
“Jaime?” I called from the kitchen. I stepped toward the door, a spatula in my hand.
He wasn’t alone. He was with two other young men—one heavyset and dark, with a thin mustache and a heavy gold chain around his neck, the other slimmer and fair-skinned, with long hair tied back in a messy ponytail. They were arguing.
Jaime turned and saw me. “Get out of here!” he snapped.
Obviously, I’d interrupted something. I ducked back into the kitchen and started cutting yucca into thick, round slices. Afterward I would prepare a curtido of cabbage, onions, and carrots to spoon on top. Mamá wouldn’t be home from her job at the beauty shop until about eight, but I’d have dinner ready way before then. Paco had to eat as soon as he got home from school because he was in a band and had a rehearsal that night.
The men were screaming in the next room. “You gotta pay!” “You’ll get your money! Wait a few days!” “Now, motherfucker!” “Two more days, man!” “You gotta pay!” “I will! I promise!” “Now, motherfucker! You gotta pay now!”
I was scared somebody was going to pull a gun. Maybe I should call the police, I thought, but I knew my brother would kill me if I did. We had green cards; it wasn’t that. But if the police came and arrested any of them for dealing drugs, that would be an act of treachery Jaime would never forgive. I looked down at the knife in my hand and began to tremble. Instinctively, I hid it in a drawer under a pot holder.
“You don’t got the money, then give us back the stuff!” one of the men howled.
“I don’t have it,” pleaded Jaime. “But I’ll get the money.”
“Give us something else! That TV set, for example.”
“I can’t! It’s my mother’s.”
“Aw, it’s his mommy’s. I don’t want that piece of crap anyhow. What else you got that’s worth something?”
All of a sudden the guy with the long hair burst into the kitchen. “Hey! Who the hell is this?” he yelled to the other thug. “How about it, Jaime, want to give us your little sister?”
Jaime stood staring at him, as if drunk.
“Hey, little girl,” hissed the blond guy. He came closer. I could see the enlarged pores on his nose and smell the weed on his breath.
“Well, Jaime?”
I expected Jaime to jump the guy, to pummel him with his fists, to grab a cutting board and smash it over his head. Instead, he just stood in the doorway, staring. The big, mustached man pushed past him into the kitchen.
My blood was turning to needles in my veins. I regretted having put away the knife. The blond guy grabbed my wrist. His grip was like a vise. I winced.
“How about it, Jaime?”
But Jaime just shrugged and left the room.
I struggled to kick the guy in the shins, but the other one came around behind me and grabbed me in a choke hold. They pushed me down, and my head felt as though it were shattering as it hit the floor. One held me fast while the other thrust himself into me. Then they changed places. I don’t know how many times they did it. It was as though I was dead.
When I opened my eyes, they were gone. Paco was kneeling beside me, sobbing.
“Oh, God,” he cried. “First Mami and now you. Please don’t die, Rosie. Please wake up.” He kissed my hand over and over. “Please, little sister. Please wake up.”
I struggled for breath and squeezed his wrist. Finally I whispered, “I’m okay, Paquito. I’m going to be okay.”
“Are you in pain?”
Of course I was in pain, but more than pain what I felt was rage. Rage at the thugs. Rage at Jaime. Rage at God for making men the way they are.
Not all men, of course. Paco was different. He picked me up and carried me to my room. Then he put me in bed.
“I’m getting out of here,” I spluttered. “Out of this house. Out of this neighborhood.”
“Not yet, little sister. You have to grow up first. You have to finish school.” How could Paco be so good when Jaime was so useless? I wondered. Paco was all set to enroll in college after high school. He was going to study computer technology and make something of himself like Cousin Luci.
“You’re a good student, Rosie,” he pressed on. “Your English is great. Don’t give it all up.”
“I just want to leave,” I moaned.
When Mamá came home and saw me, she crumpled onto the sofa and sobbed. Then she went into the kitchen, found the knife, and finished preparing the yucca. She didn’t call the police, even though the television set was missing.
I did finish high school, but the day after graduation, I went down to the recruiting office and enlisted. The Army seemed like the surest way to get out of town, and anyway, I didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to be a mechanic, and the recruitment officer said there was a training program for mechanics opening up. Once I got on base though, they convinced me to sign up for laundry specialist. That means washerwoman. I didn’t argue. I was just glad they took me.
***
I had no idea what it would be like to be one of two hundred women on a base of forty-five hundred soldiers.
“Hey, Méndez!” called Kavanagh from the other end of the lunch table. He knew my name because it was written on my left breast pocket, just like everyone else’s. “You like to mambo?”
“I bet she can really wiggle her ass!” said the guy sitting next to him.
“Don’t be crude,” snapped Kavanagh.
The laundry was boring. Every time I had a spare moment, I ran to the garage, where the mechanics were servicing the trucks. I hung around and watched. Before long I knew what a glow plug was and the difference between an oil cooler hose and a water hose. I asked questions. I learned how to install a Haldex air dryer on a 5-ton truck and how to rebuild a 25-amp generator.
“Hey, girl,” one of the sergeants snapped at me. “You’re not supposed to be here. Get lost.”
I turned to leave.
“I’m talking to you, girl!”
“Yes, I’m going.”
“Yes, Sergeant Brenner!”
“Yes, Sergeant Brenner, I’m going.”
But whenever I could, I snuck back. I was fascinated with trucks.
One day Kavanagh stuck his head out from under a huge cargo vehicle.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said with a grin. “You looking for me?”
“You crazy, Kavanagh? I didn’t even know you worked over here.”
“Jim Kavanagh, Master Mechanic, at your service. Stick around, baby. I’ll teach you a few things.” He made his voice sound sexy, but I knew he was teasing.
“You know,” I overheard him say to Brenner one day just as I was coming into the garage, “Rosie Méndez has a real head for this stuff. Maybe you could get her transferred over here.”
“Who the hell is Rosie Méndez?”
“She’s that pretty little black-haired Latina. They’ve got her over there washing bedsheets, but maybe you could talk to someone about a transfer.”
After the sergeant left, I went into the shop. “I heard what you told Brenner,” I said to Jim. “That was real nice of you.”
A couple of days later, as I was leaving the laundry, Brenner called me over.
“Listen, Méndez,” he said. “I hear you want to be a mechanic. Maybe I could talk to somebody about getting you into a training program.”
I couldn’t believe my good luck. “That would be wonderful!” I gasped.
“You’ll have to meet with the job counselor and fill out an application. If you’ve got time, I’ll walk you over to the office.”
About halfway down the corridor, Brenner pushed open the door to the stairwell.
“I thought it was down at the end of the hall,” I said.
“Yeah, it is, but I just want to explain something to you before we get there.” He grabbed my arm and yanked me through the door.
My senses were suddenly on full alert. The stairwell was empty. If he tried something and I screamed, he’d gag me. The hideous memory of Mamá lying on the floor with her panties stuffed into her mouth flickered in my brain.
“Don’t get all fidgety,” he said softly. “I just want to talk to you.” His veins bulged under the skin of his milky-white forehead. He was still clutching my arm.
“I want to go to the job office.”
He tried to make his voice sound soothing. “You have to understand, Rosie, we already have enough mechanics. In the Army, you have to work where we need you, which may not be exactly where you want to go.”
“But you said I could apply to be reassigned.”
“Well, the job counselor is a friend of mine. I could talk to him. But, of course, you’d have to be nice to me.”
“What do you mean?” I knew what he meant.
He let go of my arm and suddenly shoved me face-first against the wall. He covered my mouth with one hand and grabbed my breast with the other. Then he began to work his fingers into my shirt.
The old rage surged through my body. I stomped backward on his boot and wrenched myself free. He lunged toward me, and I took advantage of the thrust of his body to propel him further off balance. As he struggled to steady himself, I rammed against him with the full weight of my body. Nothing fancy. Just stuff I’d learned in boot camp. He stumbled and went plunging headlong down the stairs.
“You want to know who the hell Rosie Méndez is?” I called after him. “I’m Rosie Méndez.”
In the job counselor’s office, I filled out an application. By the time I deployed to Iraq in 2004, I was a trained mechanic. At my base in Balad, they assigned me to the team in charge of cargo trucks.
“Hey, sugar,” one of them called. “Come sit by me!”
“Come over here, darlin’!”
“Come on, Rosie, there’s a place at my table!”
I looked around to see if I could spot another woman, but there were no free seats near any of my girlfriends. I put down my tray at the end of a table by the food line. A couple of guys snickered. A huge black man smiled and waved at me. He had a scar on his cheek and the name Kavanagh written in black letters across his pocket.
“Hey, sweetheart!” yelled Kavanagh. “Let’s go dancing tonight!”
I laughed. We all knew that the rest of the day we’d be in combat training, then sports, then dinner, then meetings with our teams.
“Right,” I said. “I’ll wear my evening gown and a tiara!”
I smiled and looked down at my meatloaf. I knew the bantering and teasing were just part of the game. They warned us in training that you just had to go along with it. If you were standoffish, the guys would make your life miserable. If you were flirty, they’d think you were easy. I didn’t like it though. I didn’t like feeling as though they were all ready to devour me. It reminded me of what had happened before. I joined the Army to get away from all that, but I was beginning to think that the base wasn’t that different from Boyle Heights.
***
The house in Boyle Heights was nicer than the one in San Teófanes. Back in El Salvador, we had only two rooms—a bedroom and a kind of all-purpose space that served as a kitchen, a living room, and everything else. There was no plumbing. We used an outhouse. But living conditions weren’t the reason we left. We left because of the violence, the marauding FMLA soldiers—leftist guerrillas—who barged into yards and stole your only cow, your only cooking pan, and whatever else you had.
On the morning they kicked in our door, I was playing in the bedroom with a plastic doll my mother had bought for me at Don Tello’s, the only store in San Teófanes. I was four years old. It’s a good thing I was in the house and not in the yard. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened? Mamá shoved me under the bed so they wouldn’t see me. She was trembling and crying and trying to get away, but five or six men encircled her. From under the bed I could see their black boots and smell their oily, tobacco-saturated bodies. I saw one of the soldiers get very close to Mamá and pull up her skirt, but that’s all I saw because I closed my eyes, slid back against the wall, and made myself into a ball. Mamá let out the most horrible, bloodcurdling scream I’d ever heard, a scream as sharp as an ax. Then she was quiet. When I crept out from under the bed, she was lying on the floor, blood oozing from her mouth and ear. Her eyes were as swollen as Tío José’s goiter, and angry bruises blackened her shoulders and arms. One of the soldiers had stuffed her panties into her mouth. I felt my saliva turn to vinegar.
When my father came back from the fields, I ran to him, sobbing.
“Papá,” I spluttered. “They’ve hurt Mami.”
He found her crumbled on a chair, pressing a compress against her engorged lip. He stood there staring at her a long while, his jaw tight, his eyes squinty. Suddenly, he threw his canteen on the ground. It exploded like a bomb.
“Puta!” he screamed. “You whore!”
“No, Papá, no!” I tried to grab his hand, but he pushed me away with such force that I landed on the ground.
“How did you let them touch you, you whore! You probably loved it!”
“Alberto,” Mami sobbed. “No…”
“This only happens because women want it, Verónica!”
Papá raised his hand behind his head, like my brother Paco when he was getting ready to pitch a baseball. When he brought it down on the side of Mami’s head, the thud threw me back onto the floor. It sounded like a clap of thunder. Mami’s ear was bleeding again.
“I’m not living with some whore,” he snarled. He spat at her and tramped out the door. It was the last time I ever saw him.
Jaime and Paco got back from school around lunchtime.
“Mami!” wailed Paco. “What happened?” He was only seven, and all he could do was sit on the floor and bawl.
Jaime, who was eleven, knew what had happened. “They raped her,” he said with chilling indifference. He was only a child, but he already had the hardened features of an adult, and he knew what a man could do to a woman.
That was the first time I ever heard the word rape. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I vowed I’d never let it happen to me.
That night we went to Tío José’s house. Mami’s older brother was a soft-spoken, clear-thinking man, a widower who had raised seven children on his own after his wife had died of cancer. All three of his daughters lived in Los Angeles, and one of them—Luci, the youngest—had managed to go to a vocational school and now worked as a dental assistant.
“You have to leave here,” said Tío José. “The soldiers will be back, and so will Alberto.”
“But where will we go? I have no money.” Mami touched her lip gingerly. I could tell it was still hurting her.
“North like everybody else. You can stay with Luci in Los Angeles until you get settled.”
Almost half the village of San Teófanes had already left for the United States. They sold their pigs, their kitchen utensils, their wheelbarrows, and their shoes—whatever they had—to put cash together for the trip. But Mami didn’t have that kind of time. She had to raise money immediately. Who knew when Alberto or the soldiers might reappear?
“For the four of you, it will be at least eight hundred dollars,” Tío José mused. “I can give you three hundred. I’ve been saving.” He looked down at his hands, which made his goiter swell up like a bullfrog’s.
Mami’s cheeks were moist. “I couldn’t accept your money,” she whispered.
“Take it, Vero. I’ve been saving up to go myself, but I’m too old. I want you to go. For the sake of the children. Let them make something of themselves, like Luci.”
Luci was his pride and joy, the educated daughter who had a good job.
“Stay here tonight,” said Tío José. “Tomorrow we’ll find a solution.”
Don Tello had made a fortune working with coyotes to smuggle Salvadorans into the United States, and within a week he’d managed to get us on a truck that would take us through Guatemala to the Mexican border. From there we began the harrowing journey through Chiapas and Oaxaca, where border guards and bandits demanding money intercepted us at every turn. When at last we got to Texas, we divided into groups. The coyote stuffed Mami, the boys, and me into the hidden compartment of a car. The police searched the vehicle, but somehow we made it across to El Paso. From there we caught a bus to Los Angeles, where Cousin Luci met us at the terminal and took us to her house in her car. Her very own car. A Hyundai. Of all the marvelous things Cousin Luci possessed, the one that fascinated me the most was the car. Even then, I loved engines.
Mamá took the usual jobs—hotel maid, dishwasher, babysitter. When she learned enough English, she sold tickets in a movie theater and shampooed ladies’ hair in a beauty shop. Eventually she paid off her loan from Don Tello and rented a little house in Boyle Heights. Now we had running water, flush toilets, regular phone service, and a TV, just like Cousin Luci. We even had our own little garden where we could plant vegetables and a porch where we could sit and listen to the corridos from the bar across the street.
But to tell the truth, it wasn’t really that different from San Teófanes. Instead of FMLA soldiers, there were gangs. Instead of guerrillas, there were drug dealers. Gunfire in the night, just like back home. Screams and pleas, wailing and funerals and dead children, just like back home. Blood on the street. Tears and more tears. We came to Boyle Heights to get away from San Teófanes, and I joined the Army to get away from Boyle Heights.
I was fourteen when I made the decision to leave. That afternoon I was in the kitchen stuffing pupusas with ground pork. A pupusa is a kind of tortilla made of thick corn dough, and you can fill it with almost anything. The pork was frying on a low flame, and the aroma of chili, cilantro, and cumin filled the kitchen. Suddenly, I heard someone come in through the front door. I thought it must be Jaime. My oldest brother was not following in Cousin Luci’s footsteps, as Mamá had hoped. He was twenty-one already, but he hadn’t finished school and still didn’t have a regular job. He seemed to be staggering in a windstorm, propelled by gusts and thrusts, with no focus or control.
“Jaime?” I called from the kitchen. I stepped toward the door, a spatula in my hand.
He wasn’t alone. He was with two other young men—one heavyset and dark, with a thin mustache and a heavy gold chain around his neck, the other slimmer and fair-skinned, with long hair tied back in a messy ponytail. They were arguing.
Jaime turned and saw me. “Get out of here!” he snapped.
Obviously, I’d interrupted something. I ducked back into the kitchen and started cutting yucca into thick, round slices. Afterward I would prepare a curtido of cabbage, onions, and carrots to spoon on top. Mamá wouldn’t be home from her job at the beauty shop until about eight, but I’d have dinner ready way before then. Paco had to eat as soon as he got home from school because he was in a band and had a rehearsal that night.
The men were screaming in the next room. “You gotta pay!” “You’ll get your money! Wait a few days!” “Now, motherfucker!” “Two more days, man!” “You gotta pay!” “I will! I promise!” “Now, motherfucker! You gotta pay now!”
I was scared somebody was going to pull a gun. Maybe I should call the police, I thought, but I knew my brother would kill me if I did. We had green cards; it wasn’t that. But if the police came and arrested any of them for dealing drugs, that would be an act of treachery Jaime would never forgive. I looked down at the knife in my hand and began to tremble. Instinctively, I hid it in a drawer under a pot holder.
“You don’t got the money, then give us back the stuff!” one of the men howled.
“I don’t have it,” pleaded Jaime. “But I’ll get the money.”
“Give us something else! That TV set, for example.”
“I can’t! It’s my mother’s.”
“Aw, it’s his mommy’s. I don’t want that piece of crap anyhow. What else you got that’s worth something?”
All of a sudden the guy with the long hair burst into the kitchen. “Hey! Who the hell is this?” he yelled to the other thug. “How about it, Jaime, want to give us your little sister?”
Jaime stood staring at him, as if drunk.
“Hey, little girl,” hissed the blond guy. He came closer. I could see the enlarged pores on his nose and smell the weed on his breath.
“Well, Jaime?”
I expected Jaime to jump the guy, to pummel him with his fists, to grab a cutting board and smash it over his head. Instead, he just stood in the doorway, staring. The big, mustached man pushed past him into the kitchen.
My blood was turning to needles in my veins. I regretted having put away the knife. The blond guy grabbed my wrist. His grip was like a vise. I winced.
“How about it, Jaime?”
But Jaime just shrugged and left the room.
I struggled to kick the guy in the shins, but the other one came around behind me and grabbed me in a choke hold. They pushed me down, and my head felt as though it were shattering as it hit the floor. One held me fast while the other thrust himself into me. Then they changed places. I don’t know how many times they did it. It was as though I was dead.
When I opened my eyes, they were gone. Paco was kneeling beside me, sobbing.
“Oh, God,” he cried. “First Mami and now you. Please don’t die, Rosie. Please wake up.” He kissed my hand over and over. “Please, little sister. Please wake up.”
I struggled for breath and squeezed his wrist. Finally I whispered, “I’m okay, Paquito. I’m going to be okay.”
“Are you in pain?”
Of course I was in pain, but more than pain what I felt was rage. Rage at the thugs. Rage at Jaime. Rage at God for making men the way they are.
Not all men, of course. Paco was different. He picked me up and carried me to my room. Then he put me in bed.
“I’m getting out of here,” I spluttered. “Out of this house. Out of this neighborhood.”
“Not yet, little sister. You have to grow up first. You have to finish school.” How could Paco be so good when Jaime was so useless? I wondered. Paco was all set to enroll in college after high school. He was going to study computer technology and make something of himself like Cousin Luci.
“You’re a good student, Rosie,” he pressed on. “Your English is great. Don’t give it all up.”
“I just want to leave,” I moaned.
When Mamá came home and saw me, she crumpled onto the sofa and sobbed. Then she went into the kitchen, found the knife, and finished preparing the yucca. She didn’t call the police, even though the television set was missing.
I did finish high school, but the day after graduation, I went down to the recruiting office and enlisted. The Army seemed like the surest way to get out of town, and anyway, I didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to be a mechanic, and the recruitment officer said there was a training program for mechanics opening up. Once I got on base though, they convinced me to sign up for laundry specialist. That means washerwoman. I didn’t argue. I was just glad they took me.
***
I had no idea what it would be like to be one of two hundred women on a base of forty-five hundred soldiers.
“Hey, Méndez!” called Kavanagh from the other end of the lunch table. He knew my name because it was written on my left breast pocket, just like everyone else’s. “You like to mambo?”
“I bet she can really wiggle her ass!” said the guy sitting next to him.
“Don’t be crude,” snapped Kavanagh.
The laundry was boring. Every time I had a spare moment, I ran to the garage, where the mechanics were servicing the trucks. I hung around and watched. Before long I knew what a glow plug was and the difference between an oil cooler hose and a water hose. I asked questions. I learned how to install a Haldex air dryer on a 5-ton truck and how to rebuild a 25-amp generator.
“Hey, girl,” one of the sergeants snapped at me. “You’re not supposed to be here. Get lost.”
I turned to leave.
“I’m talking to you, girl!”
“Yes, I’m going.”
“Yes, Sergeant Brenner!”
“Yes, Sergeant Brenner, I’m going.”
But whenever I could, I snuck back. I was fascinated with trucks.
One day Kavanagh stuck his head out from under a huge cargo vehicle.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said with a grin. “You looking for me?”
“You crazy, Kavanagh? I didn’t even know you worked over here.”
“Jim Kavanagh, Master Mechanic, at your service. Stick around, baby. I’ll teach you a few things.” He made his voice sound sexy, but I knew he was teasing.
“You know,” I overheard him say to Brenner one day just as I was coming into the garage, “Rosie Méndez has a real head for this stuff. Maybe you could get her transferred over here.”
“Who the hell is Rosie Méndez?”
“She’s that pretty little black-haired Latina. They’ve got her over there washing bedsheets, but maybe you could talk to someone about a transfer.”
After the sergeant left, I went into the shop. “I heard what you told Brenner,” I said to Jim. “That was real nice of you.”
A couple of days later, as I was leaving the laundry, Brenner called me over.
“Listen, Méndez,” he said. “I hear you want to be a mechanic. Maybe I could talk to somebody about getting you into a training program.”
I couldn’t believe my good luck. “That would be wonderful!” I gasped.
“You’ll have to meet with the job counselor and fill out an application. If you’ve got time, I’ll walk you over to the office.”
About halfway down the corridor, Brenner pushed open the door to the stairwell.
“I thought it was down at the end of the hall,” I said.
“Yeah, it is, but I just want to explain something to you before we get there.” He grabbed my arm and yanked me through the door.
My senses were suddenly on full alert. The stairwell was empty. If he tried something and I screamed, he’d gag me. The hideous memory of Mamá lying on the floor with her panties stuffed into her mouth flickered in my brain.
“Don’t get all fidgety,” he said softly. “I just want to talk to you.” His veins bulged under the skin of his milky-white forehead. He was still clutching my arm.
“I want to go to the job office.”
He tried to make his voice sound soothing. “You have to understand, Rosie, we already have enough mechanics. In the Army, you have to work where we need you, which may not be exactly where you want to go.”
“But you said I could apply to be reassigned.”
“Well, the job counselor is a friend of mine. I could talk to him. But, of course, you’d have to be nice to me.”
“What do you mean?” I knew what he meant.
He let go of my arm and suddenly shoved me face-first against the wall. He covered my mouth with one hand and grabbed my breast with the other. Then he began to work his fingers into my shirt.
The old rage surged through my body. I stomped backward on his boot and wrenched myself free. He lunged toward me, and I took advantage of the thrust of his body to propel him further off balance. As he struggled to steady himself, I rammed against him with the full weight of my body. Nothing fancy. Just stuff I’d learned in boot camp. He stumbled and went plunging headlong down the stairs.
“You want to know who the hell Rosie Méndez is?” I called after him. “I’m Rosie Méndez.”
In the job counselor’s office, I filled out an application. By the time I deployed to Iraq in 2004, I was a trained mechanic. At my base in Balad, they assigned me to the team in charge of cargo trucks.
Working notes
When my son came back from his second tour in Iraq, where he served as a Marine infantry commander, I was so relieved and grateful that I wanted to do something to serve the men and women who had served our country. I became an advocate for veterans at Georgetown University, where I teach Spanish literature, and then faculty adviser to the newly formed Georgetown University Student Veterans Association. I noticed immediately that the women veterans were often excluded at meetings. The men would stand around and banter, while the women—usually not more than one or two—would sit off the side in silence. However, soon the women began to form their own group, and it has been particularly informative and exciting (not to mention fun!) to attend their get-togethers and have them over to my house for dinner. These women are amazing! In the military, they were fighter pilots, engineers, carpenters, navigators, military police, mechanics, and computer experts. And they are truly radicals. They have made inroads into what was once considered a man’s world, showing that women are capable of performing countless jobs once closed to them. They have learned to stand up for themselves in the face of bullying and threats. They have become tough. When we get together informally, they tell stories of commanders’ efforts to relegate them to menial jobs—doing laundry or mopping floors—and to abuse them sexually. Although many praise their male colleagues as mentors, most say they had to fight for respect. One young woman from El Salvador, the character upon which Rosie is based, tells of having endured several rapes in her native country only to face more sexual violence in the Army—until she realized that the defense strategies she had learned in boot camp could have immediate practical application.
About the author
Bárbara Mujica is a novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her novel Frida, based on the life of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, was an international bestseller that appeared in seventeen languages. Sister Teresa, based on the life of Saint Teresa de Avila, has been adapted for the stage by Coco Blignaut of the Actor’s Studio in Los Angeles. The play opened in November 2013. Her latest novel, I Am Venus, won a Maryland Writers’ Association prize in the category Historical Fiction. Among Mujica’s other prizes are the E. L. Doctorow International Fiction Award, the Pangolin Prize, the Theodore Christian Hoepfer Award for short fiction, and the Trailblazers Award from Dialogue on Diversity. This year her story, “Jason’s Cap,” won first prize in the Maryland Writers’ Association national fiction competition. Last spring she was presented the President’s Medal at Georgetown University for her work on behalf of student veterans.