Under The Feet Of Jesus

In this section, it becomes increasingly clear that the labor Estrella and her family perform is not only poorly paid and unappreciated, but actually dangerous. More specifically, the pesticides sprayed on the crops the piscadores harvest sickens Alejo, and it’s implied to have caused the deaths of both Perfecto and Mercedes’s child and Mercedes herself. It’s in this context that Alejo’s discussion of oil and tar pits becomes important. As Alejo explains to Estrella, the oil that is eventually used to fuel cars originally comes from the remains of prehistoric animals and plants; in other words, modern American society relies heavily on death for its survival. This is especially true of the economic system that Estrella and Alejo are part of, since the movement of migrant workers from place to place is made possible in large part thanks to gasoline. This helps explain why, when Alejo is caught under the spray of the crop-duster, Viramontes describes the moment in terms of tar “squeezing his chest and crushing his ribs”; like the oil that powers cars and trucks, the migrant workers themselves are treated as expendable fuel (78).

Estrella’s resistance to tearing down the barn just because it’s “used up” is in part resistance to this system of exploitation (75). It also stems from the fact that Estrella views the barn as a kind of sanctuary she can retreat to (if only mentally) while working:

She closed her eyes and pulled in the memory of the cool bar, its hard-packed clay floor where she had gathered straw to sit, her knees to her chin. The swallows ticked their claws against the slope of the roof, the breeze wheezing between the planks like wind blowing over the mouth of a crater (53-54).

The image of wind “blowing over the mouth of a crater” is especially interesting, because it foreshadows the later image of Estrella blowing across the mouth of the soda bottle (and teaching Alejo to do the same). This suggests that part of what makes the barn a source of strength and comfort also exists inside Estrella, and is perhaps related to her physicality and developing sexuality. More specifically, the novel suggests that Estrella’s ability to find joy and pleasure in the moment is an asset for someone leading the kind of life she does—one that can change quickly and unpredictably.

Nevertheless, Estrella’s sensuality is a source of some anxiety for her more traditional mother. There’s an eclipse the night Estrella shares the bottle of soda with Alejo, and Petra warns her daughter that being out during the event could cause her to have a child born with a cleft palate. Although the novel as a whole suggests that these kinds of birth defects are the result of pesticide poisoning, Viramontes is concerned with the ways in which coming of age as a girl presents unique challenges. In particular, pregnancy is a major preoccupation in the novel, both because it is a financial burden and because it is often viewed as the fault of the woman; Perfecto, for instance, remembers how Mercedes “buried her head in shame at her failure” when she told him she’d become pregnant (80). In some ways, the bodies of the female migrant workers are therefore doubly vulnerable—not only to the side effects of their labor, but also to the side effects of their relationships with men.

Despite all of this, however, Viramontes ultimately presents Estrella as the most capable of leading her family going forward. Although Perfecto is currently fulfilling the traditional role as male head of household, the fact that he is considering leaving means that he is not someone the family can truly rely on. Perhaps even more to the point, he is increasingly living in the past, and therefore unprepared to make the kinds of moment-by-moment decisions the family’s existence demands.