Dreams Are Not Enough Read Online Free PDF Page B

Spain to be located south of Mexico.
    School personnel understandably disliked having these transients foisted on them.
    The fourth grade marched along the pergola to the classroom marked library. The pretty blonde librarian demonstrated how to make out their cards, how to sign the slips glued to the inside of every book cover Alice, excited by the incalculable wealth of books, couldn’t wait for her turn.
    “I’m checking this out,” she said, extending The Secret Garden.
    “Alice, you haven’t written an address on your card.”
    “It’s Harrow Ranch.”
    “Are your parents picking Mr. Harrow’s lettuce?”
    Alice nodded. She always lied about her orphaned state: telling the truth, Juanita warned with an anxious squint, would get her hauled off to what the pickers commonly referred to as facilities.
    “Then you’ll need a signature from Mr. Harrow.” The librarian, no longer pretty, yanked away the book as if Alice might infect it with cooties.
    “Thanks a whole big bunch.” Alice threw back her shoulders and stamped away.
    Though teachers, cops, foremen and people like this librarian terrified her, she’d die rather than let them know it. Most of the other workers kowtowed to the authorities. Much as she loved Juanita, she despised that headbent humility of hers.
    The men stared at her a lot, so she stuck close to Juanita. (The pickers were a decent lot, and though they glanced at the luscious Alice, they would never consider molesting a child. ) Juanita took her fostering seriously.
    “Listen,” she said when Alice was around seven, “if any man tries to do things to you, touch you, don’t let him.”
    “That kind of thing? Don’t worry. Yech. It’s repulsive.”
    “If anybody tries, hit him hard here.” Juanita pointed between her ample hips—at nearly sixteen she was short and sturdily built.
    “Then run as fast as you can.”
    When Alice was ten Juanita took up with a very short man called Henry Lopez.
    From the start Alice loathed Henry passionately. He was forever cuffing her for having a big mouth, and a few times a month he beat up on Juanita, which in Alice’s eyes was far worse—Alice’s loyalties would always be greater than her self-interest. Henry, however, possessed one admirable feature. When he and Juanita were going to party-party—he called it have a bang—he would drive Alice in his rattly pickup to the nearest picture show and give her ten cents. She saw approximately three double features a week.
    Adoring movies, she learned to do sharply honed imitations of Kirk Douglas, Ingrid Bergman, Rain Fairburn, Burt Lancaster. Sometimes during intermission a boy would buy her a Coke or a Uno Bar, and she felt an obligation to repay these munificent gifts by permitting a hot hand to cup the shirt over her blossoming breasts. But no more, nada mds. In the spring before Alice was fifteen, Juanita’s method of contraception failed. Henry Lopez, miracle of miracles, came through.
    They were married in Santa Paula. It was from the officiating priest that Juanita learned about a vacancy for a couple at the nearby Taylor Ranch.
    For their full-time services, the Taylors gave the Lopezes $200 a month plus a furnished frame cottage with a working refrigerator, a real stove and, treasure of treasures, a black and white television with a wavery ten-inch screen. The Hollister sisters had stepped up numerous rungs in the social scheme. They were now permanent people, they belonged. Juanita, now called a housekeeper, held her head high as she hurried up the dirt road to the big, two-story white ranch house—Mrs. Taylor was unaware of the pregnancy.
    Juanita would have done the work at the frame cottage, too, but Alice insisted on cooking, cleaning, doing a share of the Taylors’ enormous pile of ironing as well as fixing a home lunch for Henry.
    It was now that his attitude toward her changed drastically. He began following her as she moved between the stove and the refrigerator, stroking her