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Finding the Metaphorical Key Under the Feet of Jesus Norma Helsper, State University of New York College

at Cortland

Prepared for delivery at the 2001 meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Washington, DC, September 6-8, 2001

Finding the Metaphorical Key Under the Feet of Jesus

(Under the Feet of Jesus is the first novel of Mexican-American writer Helena Mara Viramontes, Dutton, New York, 1995)

"I believe that a novel is an encoded representation of reality, a type of riddle of the world. The reality that one deals with in a novel is different than the reality of life, although the novel's reality is based on life's reality, as is the case with dreams" --Gabriel Garca Mrquez, Olor de la guayaba, 36 A few semesters ago, I asked my students on their final exam to write about how different authors we had studied conceived of "reality" and how each portrayed it in his or her work. My assumption was that they would talk about how the definition of "what is real" has changed over time, from the realist idea of describing in detail (as if the eye were a camera) and including as many sordid details of life as possible, to the ideas of a Borges that reality is not so easy to pin down given our mental capacities. To give another example, they would need to explain that Jos Mara Arguedas was trying to portray the reality of indigenous people in the Andes, and did so by creating a fictitious language to communicate that Quechua-speaking reality to Spanish-speaking readers. So, I decided to give myself the same assignment with regard to UFJ. How does Viramontes conceive of reality in her novel, and how does she choose to portray it? In this novel, the harsh reality of the daily existence of migrant farm workers, their poverty, is presented in constant contrast with the incredible natural beauty and wealth of California. Viramontes portrays this world with a highly metaphorical language, a language that dignifies her characters and reveals the complexity of the inner lives of these "simple" working class people. In addition, the author problematizes the presentation of reality by narrating her story from multiple points of view. The central characters of the novel are members of a MexicanAmerican family of migrant farm workers. The mother, Petra, and her five children have been abandoned by the children's father. The man who becomes Petra's lover, Perfecto Flores, is 30 years her senior; he is longing to return to his native Mexico. Estrella, the oldest daughter, is l3, and the novel's protagonist. She has her first love experience with Alejo, a young migrant worker who is taken in by the family after he suffers pesticide poisoning. The novel opens with the family arriving at yet another temporary home in their old station wagon. From the present of the narration established by the opening scene, the events previous to that moment are told via a series of flashbacks, using a third person omniscient narrative

voice that takes on the viewpoint of one or another of the characters in turn. The handling of space and simultaneity often owes a debt to film, with the equivalent of wide-angle camera sweeps from one scene to another. Two examples come from the novel's first few pages. The novel begins with the scene inside the station wagon, then switches to the perspective of two young migrants watching the distant car from up in a peach tree, where they are stealing fruit to supplement their meager wages. Later Estrella and her siblings disturb the birds in an old barn and their flight serves to link the two scenes again: "the swallows and owls shrieking in a burst of furious flight, feathers snowing down, the girls screaming." (A space on the page indicates the change of scene.) "--Cats fighting. Alejo whispered between the toes of his Concord tennis shoes, through the branches and down to Gumecindo. Then the cousins looked up. Birds whirled like frantic bits of torn paper " (10). This technique, along with the shifting allegiance of the narrator, gives the reader a multiple vantage point, showing, in effect, "this is how it looks from here where person X is standing, while this is how it looks from this other angle where Y is." Later in the novel, Viramontes is even more explicit about this, narrating the same scene three times, each time from the point of view of another character. The Spanish saying Cada cabeza, un mundo ("Every head its own world") comes to mind. These characters don't talk much, but the narrative techniques allow us to hear what's going on inside each individual. The relative lack of dialog as we are shown, in turn, the inner monologues of the characters, emphasizes their emotional isolation in contrast with their physical proximity. And yet, there is not a sense of total alienation because people share their images many times, almost as if they are dreaming collectively. The narrative is full of similes, metaphors and symbolic imagery-- its most notable feature. The novel opens with a direct suggestion of symbolism: "Had they been heading for the the barn all along? Estrella didn't know. The barn had burst through a clearing of trees and the cratered roof reminded her of the full moon "(3). This image and those that follow are from the book's first two paragraphs: "the clouds above them ready to burst like cotton plants . . .Sunlight weaved in and out of the clouds . . .the etched horizon of the mountain range . . .A cluster of amputated trees marked the entrance of the side road"(4). The novel's third paragraph already suggests the process of decipherment needed, but brings the meaning back down to the concrete nitty-gritty of daily life: "The silence and the barn and the clouds meant many things. It was always a

question of work, and work depended on the harvest, the car running, their health, the conditions of the road, how long the money held out, and the weather, which meant they could depend on nothing" (4). As I mentioned, the book has little dialog and lots of interior monologue, which makes it interesting to observe an almost obsessive repetition of images involving mouths. In some of the images, the mouth seems to represent its function as source of sustenance--air, food, drink, and love's kisses. When Estrella's real father leaves the family destitute the mother's panic is described in terms of "her mouth desperate, desperate for air" (l7) and "Petra broke, her mouth a cut jagged line" (l9). The farmworkers' fear of physical deformity as a result of pesticide exposure is represented repeatedly by references to missing mouths: "--You think 'cause of the water our babies are gonna come out with no mouth or something? Estrella asked" (33). And later: "Unborn children lurking in their bodies were in danger of having their lips bitten just like the hare on the moon if nothing was done to protect them. Is that what you want, the mother yelled, a child born sin labios? Without a mouth?" (69). And yet again: "Petra thought of the lima bean in her, the bean floating in the night of her belly . . . Would the child be born without a mouth, would the poisons of the fields harden in its tiny little veins?" (125) Alejo, the adolescent boy who becomes Estrella's friend, manages to connect with a mysterious harelipped child: "It seemed to Alejo that he was crying, though all he heard were the wind-tossed trees. Even the gaping hole of his own shirt hung like a speechless mouth on his belly" (22). This last image is one of several that see the mouth as origin of the voice, which makes possible expressions of protest, anger and therefore is a source of power and self determination if present and a sign of powerlessness when absent. "Perfect Flores was not her papa. In the last labor camp, near the water spigot where the farm workers got their drinking water, Estrella used her knuckles to rip Maxine Devridge's mouth into a torn pocket to prove it" (28). During Estrella's visit to the barn that ends the novel: " . . .the swallows flew out from under eaves of the cedar shakes like angry words spewing out of a mouth" (l75). When Perfecto asks her to help him tear down the old barn to earn some extra money, Estrella thinks: "Is that what happens? . . . people just use you until you're all used up, then rip you into pieces when they're finished using you?" "The nails would screech and the wood would moan and she would pull the veins out and the woodsheet wall would collapse like a toothless mouth" (75).

The personifying simile emphasizes Estrella's identification with the old barn and the metonymical function of the mouth image. This last mouth image is also part of another series of images: images of people and things stretched to the limit, on the edge, feeling impending disaster or collapse, images that echo and mirror the situation of the migrant workers, always just getting by, barely. The old barn with the cratered roof is the first visual image of the book, and is in the background throughout. Its precarious situation is referred to repeatedly. One of the first flashbacks of the novel is Estrella's memories (recounted by a limited omniscient narrator with her perspective) of the time when her father abandoned the family, "just as they settled in a city apartment with the hope of never seeing another labor camp again" (l3). The view out the apartment window provides an image that reflects the family's "on edge" existence: "A car wreck waiting to happen, Petra had said . . . The freeway interchange . . . looped like knots of asphalt and cement and the cars swerved into unexpected steep turns with squeals of braking tires. Sunlight glistened off the bending steel guardrails of the ramps. Just you wait and see, Petra said in a puff of breath on the window glass, a car will flip over the edge" (16). This image is expanded in intermittent fragments of narration that emphasize the family's precarious economic situation as the story of the man's leaving and its aftermath for his wife and children is told. "The traffic swelled and cars lined up on the curving on-ramp of the freeway until the cars yanked loose like a broken necklace and the beads scattered across the asphalt rolling, rolling, and she waited, her breath gone until the rubber treads of the tires connected with the pavement again" (l7). On a day when the money has run out and the children are hungry, Petra "loses it" and runs out of the apartment. "Petra . . . stalled on the boulevard intersection divide and waited for the cars to stop, waited for him, for anyone, to guide her across the wide pavement; but the beads rolled on, fast howling shrieks of sharp silver pins just inches away from her (l9). A variation of the "on edge" image string is the "stretched to the limit" image. Estrella is in the fields on the verge of weeping from sheer exhaustion: . . .her eyes fell on the flatbeds of grapes she had lined carefully, sheet after sheet of grapes down as far as she could see . . . Morning, noon, or night, four or fourteen or forty it was all the same. She stepped forward, her body never knowing how tired it was until she moved once again. Don't cry" (53). Another example comes from Petra's thoughts: "Love, Petra knew, came and went. But it was loyalty that kept them on the

tightrope together when it was gone, kept them from seeing the void beneath their feet . . . Just keep your balance, tiptoe across the tightrope, one foot up one foot down . . ." (118). Viramontes' world is reminiscent of Garca Lorca's poetic universe, a world in which everything is itself and something else as well, for example, " . . . her words netted in the rustle of the trees" (9) (words are birds, the sounds of the wind in the trees are nets, vibrations become concrete). Images are repeated and linked, as in the following example: "Estrella would ask over and over, So what is this, and point to the diagonal lines written in chalk on the blackboard with a dirty fingernail. The script A's had the curlicue of a pry bar, a hammerhead split like a V. The small i's resembled nails. So tell me, But some of the teachers were more concerned about the dirt under her fingernails . . . She remembered how one teacher . . .asked how come her mama never gave her a bath. . .. And for the first time, Estrella realized words could become as excruciating as rusted nails piercing the heels of her bare feet. The curves and tails of the tools made no sense and the shapes were as foreign and meaningless to her as chalky lines on the blackboard. But Perfecto Flores was a man who came with his tool chest and stayed . . . Perfecto Flores taught her the names that went with the tools: a claw hammer, he said with authority, miming its function . . . Tools to build, bury, tear down, rearrange and repair, a box of reasons his hands took pride in. She lifted the pry bar in her hand, felt the coolness of iron and power of function, weighed the significance it awarded her, and soon she came to understand how essential it was to know these things. That was when she began to read" (24). The novel's repetitions and linkages are a way of representing every human beings search for meaning: things are like other things because of the human urge to find connections in order to make it all make sense. God is tried but is found ineffective: "There was something unsettling about this whole affair to Estrella, but she couldn't stop long enough to figure out what it was . . . She did not want to think what she was thinking now: God was mean and did not care and she was alone to fend for herself" (139) " . . . a break. If only God could help" (l47). He doesn't, so when the clinic nurse

charges them their last nine dollars to tell them Alejo is very ill and needs to go to the hospital, Estrella threatens her with a crowbar to get their money back so they can buy gas to get him there. In the novel's last pages, the mother's statue of Jesus falls over and breaks, and the mother thinks: "That was all she had: papers and sticks and broken faith . . ." (168) Characters even tend to blame themselves in order to find some explanation for the way things are. "Remembering Perfecto's withdrawal, she wondered if he thought she had failed somehow . . . She had failed, failed the test" (124). While Alejo is being sprayed with pesticides he thinks, "Was this punishment for his thievery? He was sorry, Lord, so sorry" (77). The final image of the novel is Estrella standing on the edge of the old barn's roof: "Estrella remained as immobile as an angel standing on the verge of faith" (176). Contrasted throughout with the adults feelings of being worn out, her strength is also shown to be fragile, fleeting. She is powerful, but mortal. Her precarious position at the end of the novel emphasizes the for-this-moment-ness of her power. As she stands at the roofs edge, it is unclear what she is doing. Is she contemplating suicide, so as not to be beaten down eventually? Or is she pausing to concentrate her strength, which she will exercise for as long as she can before the next generation must take over? The reader must draw his or her own conclusions from the novel's final paragraph: "The roof tilted downward and she felt gravity pulling but did not lose her footing. The termite-softened shakes crunched beneath her bare feet like the serpent under the feet of Jesus . . . No longer did she stumble blindly. She had to trust the soles of her feet, her hands, the shovel of her back, and the pounding bells of her heart. . . .Like the chiming bells of the great cathedrals, she believed her heart powerful enough to summon home all those who strayed" (176). Not only is the novel a riddle of the world, as Garca Mrquez would contend. Life itself is a riddle and is portrayed as such in Under the feet of Jesus. It is interesting to note that the other great Chicano novel about migrant farm workers, Toms Riveras ...y no se lo trag la tierra, also refers in its title to a loss of faith in traditional religious explanations that traditionally have given life coherence. As religion is found to be lacking, characters (like some of the rest of us) must create their own meaning from

the materials at hand, just as Viramontes readers struggle to tease out the meaning of her novel.

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