Amá, Your Story Is Mine: Walking Out of the Shadows of Abuse

The Last Frontier

~ 165 ~ later, sick and weak with a bad case of bronchitis and a mild case of frostbite, José returned home, unchastened. No, these setbacks didn’t affect José. Big José continued to behave in the same old ways, contrary to his promise to me back in Calexico: “I’ll change.” He could not change any more than a tiger could change his stripes. I took on more than my share of responsibility for his carousing. I then found how futile it was to try to control another person. I was beginning to change and it was not for the better. I wanted to return to my family so badly but I couldn’t bring myself to do it a second time. I was becoming bitter and mean myself. The LastFrontier ~ Unions were losing power in Chicago in the early Seventies, and the workers who earned fifteen dollars an hour had to take jobs for seven dollars an hour.TheTrans-Alaska Pipeline was being built in Alaska. José and I followed his brother Gus to the Last Frontier. José became one of the more than twentyone thousand people to get work connected to building the pipeline. We arrived in Anchorage, where there was an extreme housing shortage. All we could do was crowd into a small three-room trailer, for which we paid an astounding nine hundred dollars a month. It was literally falling apart but it was the only housing available to us. Only two people could fit in the kitchen. The kids slept in the living room and we ~ 166 ~ slept in the bedroom. We were packed into that apartment like sardines. At that time, national news on television was a day old. The films were flown up by plane from the Lower 48. The Today Show was too early for us since we were four hours behind NewYork.We got only the PTL Club, withTammy Faye and Jim Bakker. One shopping center was just being built to accommodate what was a modern-day Gold Rush. People would swing into town to purchase the clothes they’d need for the subzero conditions. Long underwear and bunny boots sold faster than business suits. Unlike in Chicago, though, people were friendly and honest . In Anchorage, you could leave your purse unattended in your shopping cart and it would be untouched when you returned .Tourism was prospering, too. People were always selling others on Alaska.The place was wide open to all. Doctors lived next door to construction workers. Society wasn’t layered in as strict a way as in other, more established places. Businesspeople wore flanneled shirts instead of business suits. Restaurants were filled with people whose dress ranged from Carhartts to cocktail dresses. José, as a general laborer, did a little of every kind of construction work on the pipeline and put in fifteen-hour days. He stayed out of town many months without a break. We would follow him whenever we could—from Glenallen to Valdez. We were able to stay in Valdez for the last four years of the pipeline construction. There, where the kids started school, we rented a nice apartment. I, though, was unprepared for the snow—at least twelve feet per year. When the snow was shoveled off the roofs, it was piled even higher. People would literally tunnel through the caves of snow to shop at the two stores in town. It, though, was a beautiful place, surrounded by tall peaks and mountains. In the spring, wildflowers blanketed theThompson Pass. During those years José made lots of money. While work- ~ 167 ~ ing in the camps, he saved his money, at least at the beginning, and we, his family, actually saw a part of it. Alaska had its dark side, too. Prostitutes set up shop to service the large number of men who searched for fortune. Street drugs came with the easy money. Marijuana was decriminalized and very available. The city fathers closed their eyes to the plethora of active gambling operations. True to form, Big José chose the lowest common denominator . As time wore on, he indulged in gambling, alcohol, and street drugs. For José, money bought access to more bad habits and excesses. He invested in foolish opportunities that went nowhere. A parade of loose women entered his life. Our lives became hell, and once again I was taught that there was no safe place. He attracted unsavory friends—a...