Breaking Through

Despite the hard work involved in keeping up with schoolwork while working at jobs picking fruit and cleaning the local school, Francisco and Roberto retain their youthful instinct to have fun. Specifically, the boys engage in berry-picking contests and the author surmises that “[w]henever Papa and I picked side by side, he handed me handfuls of strawberries” (61). On one occasion, Ito, the sharecropper who employs the family, witnesses Francisco throwing a rotten berry at his older brother and the author is terrified that the family will suffer reprisals as a result. Ito’s weekly visit to the Jimenez family home in order to pay Papa and the two boys has an almost ceremonial aspect, and the sharecropper sits at the head of the table and writes paychecks. Mr. Jiménez is paid at the rate of $1 per hour because he was “[…] a better picker and because he had worked for Ito for several summers” (64), while his sons are paid eighty-five cents per hour. Upon leaving the house, Ito compliments Francisco by saying, “You have a good arm, Panchito” (65), a reference to the accuracy with which the boy had hit his brother with the rotten berry.