From This Wicked Patch of Dust

Thousands of Planets from Ysleta

61 Thousands of Planets from Ysleta Late Summer 1978 Twenty-year-old Julia was glancing at the northern Italian countryside. The International Herald Tribune, which she had bought in Milan this morning, was still on her lap. Lisa Alvarez, her girlfriend from UTEP, sat next to her on the train to Rome, touching up her bright red lipstick. Pope Paul VI had died the day before, and the speculation about who would succeed the pontiff was the major news. The Italian newspapers, which she could more or less decipher with her Spanish, screamed in huge, 36- and even 54-point type: Il Papa è morto! Their backpacks were stashed in between their legs, and a duffel bag and a small rectangular suitcase were stowed above their heads. The train to Rome was packed with travelers, mostly Italians. A thirty- or forty-something-year-old man, unshaven, yet wearing stylish black slacks and a turquoise polo shirt, stared at them unabashedly. “I don’t know how fast they choose a pope, but wouldn’t it be something if we could be there when they do,” Julia said. “I guess. Blanca was very nice. I like her.” “Too bad she couldn’t come with us. Did you know she’s the one who got me the summer job in Rhode Island with the nuns? It was one of the best things I’ve done in a long time.” Julia’s friend Blanca Briano had met her German beau in Alamogordo, and now lived in Munich. Blanca, a Catholic activist, had mentioned the Warwick program to Julia one day. In exchange for free housing during the summer, Julia could be a translator for Spanishspeaking immigrants seeking refuge with the Sisters of Perpetual Charity. That summer Julia had helped the nuns in their health-care 62 clinics and driven immigrants to their appointments from their work in the fields. Those pobrecitos, Julia had thought: they picked apples and corn and strawberries, and their children worked by their side. They lived in shacks, moving like nomads from region to region with the harvest and the weather. The migrant kids would go to school only a month here and there. What kind of education was that? The stupidities at UTEP seemed light years away. The nuns at Warwick had even helped Julia plan her trip to Europe, to the Vatican, Assisi, Fatima’s shrine in Portugal. At religious shrines, the Sisters of Perpetual Charity knew contacts at convents and hospices, where they could stay inexpensively. Lisa went back to applying her makeup. It had been Julia’s idea to invite Lisa to Europe. It also made it easier for her parents to give her permission to go to Europe. Lisa had always been genial and easygoing, since they met freshman year in History of the Chicano Movement. But Julia wondered why Lisa had even enrolled in such a political class. She once blurted out, “My parents told me Chicanos are cholos. They’re not?” In a way, Lisa reminded Julia of Pancho, and in a way she did not. Pancho was at least street savvy. “Can I ask you a question?” Lisa asked, snapping shut her compact. “Do you think spending the summer with the nuns changed you? I mean, made you more religious?” “Well, no. It’s not like I want to go to church more often, although my mother would like that.” “So would mine.” Lisa adjusted her long skirt. “What the nuns were doing, that’s what made an impression on me. They were helping people. Everybody’s a Mexicano in El Paso, but in Rhode Island, they stuck out like sore thumbs. Away from the border, they’re treated like animals.” “That’s really a shame. Isn’t it funny how here we’re American girls? It’s so different from El Paso, like we’re Spanish somehow.” What an idiot, Julia thought. Her first years at UTEP exposed her to new ideas, to the clashes between Anglos and Mexicanos, and their 63 perceptions and misperceptions of each other. Yet her experience at Warwick changed her more deeply than she would admit. Reading about the life of St. Francis of Assisi had sent a thundershock to Julia’s psyche. St. Francis had turned against his status-conscious parents and their wealth. He had challenged the then-pope and the corrupt Catholic Church and vowed a life of service to the downtrodden...