Translated by Katrina Hassan
Capitalino sits under a lilac tree while he waits for the next car to come out of the automatic carwash. His job is to dry the cars with a damp towel. It is barely three in the afternoon. He works twelve hours a day from seven in the morning to seven at night, Monday through Sunday. He was been doing this for twenty one years. The smell of lilacs in spring makes him travel through time, even though it is not a flower native to La Magdalena, Chalchuapa, Santa Ana, El Salvador. The smell transports him to his childhood, seeing his mother in her garden, full of flowers and aromatic herbs. That lilac tree for Capitalino is not only for sunny days, but it is also good for his soul.
He has rheumatism in his hands because of constant temperature changes and working with damp towels. In winter time the temperatures are usually below zero. The towels are freezing and it numbs his hands. In the summer, the heat is unbearable and sweat pours from all of his body. All in all, Capitalino thinks he has it good compared to where he could be, the sugarcane fields. He grew up cutting sugar cane and remembers being treated worse than a work beast. His arms and back are messed up from working hunched over cutting cane with a machete. The sugar cane thirds were carried on his back and the cactus fruit pricked his skin.
Capitalino is not a beneficiary of the Temporary Protection Status that the United States gave Salvadoreans. When he entered as an undocumented person through the Rio Grande, the border patrol caught him and gave him a date to go to court. He didn’t go because he was so afraid, therefore never fixing his legal status. Capitalino doesn’t drive in case the police stops him and they notice he never went to court. He doesn’t want to get deported for getting caught driving. He rides everywhere on his bicycle, no matter what the weather. Capitalino has no life anyway, he only goes from home to work and back home again. He rents a space in a basement where thirteen other men live. They are all undocumented. He sleeps wherever he can find a space. He owns nothing more than his mattress and four changes of clothing.
Capitalino is not a typical man. He compares flower petals with the lips of men he would like to kiss; men who he is secretly in love with. Back home, he always had to keep up an act and fake that he was someone else. This has been the case since he was a boy, deepening his shyness. One day love came to him without notice. He fell deeply in love with a fellow farm worker. When Capitalino got the courage one day to lightly touch the guy’s hand, he responded with punches and humiliation in front of everyone. When his family found out, they kicked him out. He thought about suicide but instead decided to emigrate north. He left without money or coyote. One of the tractor drivers from the farm introduced him to truck drivers that transported sugarcane to different parts of the country. These truckers introduce him to other truck drivers and soon his connections got Capitalino to the United States border.
Capitalino is 44 years old and has never kissed a man. His coworkers think he is crazy because he always caresses flower petals with such delicacy. They don’t know that this is the only form of tenderness in Capitalino’s life.
He has to fake who is here too, because undocumented, poor and marked by stigma. Who in their right mind would want to kiss an undocumented carwash worker? Capitalino has only confessed this to the lilac petals in spring. He knows that they will never tell on him. Flowers aren’t cruel and prejudiced like humans.
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Ilka Oliva-Corado @ilkaolivacorado
