Under the Feet of Jesus

by

Helena María Viramontes

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Under the Feet of Jesus: Chapter One Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Estrella, a thirteen-year-old girl, is sitting in the backseat of Chevy station wagon, crammed alongside seven of her family members. She sees a large barn come into view and wonders if this is what they’ve been heading towards all along. Sunlight is coming through the clouds, and many kinds of fruit trees are swaying in the wind. Estrella’s mother, Petra, indicates that Perfecto, who is driving, should turn the car towards the barn.
While cars are often positive symbols of power and mobility in American literature, Estrella and her family are clearly anxious to exit the Chevy and find a place where they can stay. From the outset, Viramontes transforms the car into a symbol of their poverty and shows that they are excluded from conventional American narratives.
Themes
The Value of Labor Theme Icon
Race and Marginalization Theme Icon
Everyone in the car is silent, assessing the barn and the weather outside. Their ability to work depends on so many things: “the car running, the health, the conditions of the road…and weather”; because of this, the family can “depend on nothing.” To Estrella, Perfecto seems uncertain.
That everyone in the car – even the children – is thinking about work demonstrates that the effort and stress of migrant labor pervades every aspect of family life. Estrella’s ability to recognize Perfecto’s uncertainty shows that, although she’s a child, she already understands her parents’ fallibility.
Themes
The Value of Labor Theme Icon
Race and Marginalization Theme Icon
Coming of Age Theme Icon
Quotes
From a nearby peach tree, Alejo sees the car coming and warns his cousin, Gumecindo, to be quiet. He’s been taking advantage of the sunset to pick peaches and hand them to Gumecindo, who acts as lookout on the ground. They’ve been having a playful argument about an acquaintance named Plato; Gumecindo thinks the name means “plate” in “gringo Spanish,” and Alejo has just informed him otherwise. Now, Alejo watches the car doors open as wasps buzz around his face, their legs dangling “like golden threads.”
From the start of the novel, Alejo is an instructor – he tells Gumecindo about Plato and later shares his love of geology with Estrella. This evidence of his curiosity and intellectual potential implicitly critiques the fact that he’s not in school but rather stealing fruit to feed his family. The lush descriptions of the wasps signal the characters’ – and the author’s – respect for the natural world.
Themes
The Value of Labor Theme Icon
Consumerism and Environmental Destruction Theme Icon
Alejo sees an old man carefully climb out of the car; he looks towards the peach trees but doesn’t see Alejo. He gets back in the car and continues driving towards the barn. Inside the car, Estrella’s younger brother Ricky wakes up and asks when they will arrive. No one answers him, but Petra confirms to Perfecto that this is the place she’s been looking for.
Ricky’s unanswered question points to a larger truth – that the family has no settled home, and will never arrive at any particular place for good. Throughout the novel, ordinary actions will emphasize the family’s exclusion from mainstream American society.
Themes
Race and Marginalization Theme Icon
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When they reach a small, decrepit bungalow situated close to the barn, Petra announces that they’ve arrived. Estrella’s four younger siblings burst out of the car.  Estrella picks up a plastic doll that has fallen on the ground and asks her if she’s all right; then she shakes the doll’s head “no.” Running, Estrella follows her brothers, Ricky and Arnulfo, into the fields.
As the oldest and most mature child, Estrella is distinct from her seemingly carefree younger siblings, yet her articulation of her own feelings and uncertainty through the doll also reminds the reader how young she really is.
Themes
Coming of Age Theme Icon
In her rubber sandals, Petra looks around for some horsetail weed, which is “just as good” for cleaning the cooking pit as steel wool. As she pokes the ashes of the cooking pit, she imagines the fragrance of tortillas and other dishes cooked by previous residents rising up. Behind her, Perfecto stomps on a scorpion. He enters the shack and examines the inside, looking for a place to set up Petra’s altarpiece. On the floor is a dead bird; knowing that this will upset Petra, he quickly throws it out the window.
Rather than relying on consumer goods – like steel wool – Petra has to find what she needs in the land around her. This is a testament to her ability to live within nature, rather than exploiting it for her needs. Yet it’s also a reminder that she can’t afford even the most basic supermarket products.
Themes
Race and Marginalization Theme Icon
Consumerism and Environmental Destruction Theme Icon
As she’s extricating her broom from the car, Petra sees Estrella leaping around in the grass and thinks about the varicose veins in her own legs. She yells at the children to watch out for scorpions, but they don’t listen to her. Listening to “the tease of words and leaves,” Estrella runs towards the abandoned barn. She’s just turned thirteen, and both she and Petra are anxious about this “unlucky” number.
As Petra watches Estrella come of age, she often thinks about her own aging and careworn body. This is indicative of how closely mother and daughter identify with each other. It’s also shows the immense physical toll that fieldwork takes – Petra is barely twenty years older than her daughter, but after years of labor she’s lost her health and vigor.
Themes
The Value of Labor Theme Icon
Motherhood Theme Icon
At the entrance to the barn, which is like a “cathedral,” Estrella finds her twin sisters Cookie and Perla. Bravely, Estrella volunteers to enter first. The barn seems “so strangely vacant,” and a chain hangs from the ceiling. Suddenly, the door swings open and startles all the birds living in the barn. The girls scream.
Here and elsewhere Estrella compares the barn to a church. While Petra turns to prayers and icons in times of trouble, Estrella finds the same solace in the solitude of the barn.
Themes
Coming of Age Theme Icon
In the peach orchard, Alejo reassures his cousin that the strange noise is just cats fighting. Gumecindo is frightened and pleads with Alejo to leave; he thinks the wailing comes from La Llorona, a legendary ghost. As they walk, Alejo notices that Gumecindo’s shadow keeps “smashing” against the trees. He tells Gumecindo that they need to hit a few more trees in order to have enough fruit to sell.
Even though the image of two boys walking through the trees seems idyllic, the violent illusion Alejo sees is a reminder of the danger they face if they’re caught in the orchard, as well as the environmental degradation that inevitably accompanies commercial farming.
Themes
The Value of Labor Theme Icon
Consumerism and Environmental Destruction Theme Icon
In a flashback, Estrella thinks back to her “real father.” Her strongest memory of him is a moment when he peeled an orange for her during a rest stop on a long drive north to look for work. In the memory, they’ve stopped in the middle of an orange grove, and since there’s no foreman around, Petra picks some fruit. Estrella’s father takes off the peel in one piece, “as if it meant something to him to peel the orange from stem to navel.”
Throughout the novel, acts of physical labor – even the trivial task of peeling an orange – emerge as moments of dignity and empowerment. Although looking for work is an uncertain and stressful process, Estrella derives comfort and satisfaction from the work of her father’s hands.
Themes
The Value of Labor Theme Icon
Quotes
At the cooking pit, Petra is thinking about the past as well. Even when her marriage was beginning to dissolve, the women in the labor camp advised her not to leave her husband. He might track her and the children down and kill her in revenge, they said. Even if he didn’t, Petra would never find someone else to provide for her and five children.
The women’s advice shows society’s drastically different expectations for mothers and fathers: mothers are responsible for their children’s welfare, even if it means staying in a bad marriage, while fathers are expected to put their own desires first and allowed to be absent or even violent.
Themes
Motherhood Theme Icon
Quotes
In the end, Estrella’s father leaves the family to work in Mexico and soon disappears – just as they’ve managed to rent a real apartment for the first time. In Estrella’s confused memories of that period, her father often calls, promising to return soon and asking for money. As the bills pile up, Petra prays constantly and the twins begin to call Estrella “mama.” No job that Petra finds pays enough to provide the family with food.
Petra’s inability to provide for her family alone is not a sign of personal weakness but a reflection of the social obstacles she faces – no matter how much she works, women don’t get paid enough to support several children. Lack of paternal involvement and social resources makes motherhood an impossible and oppressive task.
Themes
Motherhood Theme Icon
After some time, they pack up their belongings in garbage bags and move to an even smaller apartment. Estrella chalks up her father’s lack of letters to his ignorance of their change of address. Estrella knows that Petra often thinks of him, but she’ll never know if he remembers his family in the same wistful way.
The father’s ability to forget about his family contrasts with the responsibility ingrained in Estrella and Petra, even when they chafe against the restrictions it imposes.
Themes
Motherhood Theme Icon
Now, Perfecto stands at the barn door and chastises Estrella for running inside. The walls are unsteady and they could have been killed, he says. He orders the children to go help Petra, and Estrella resents his commanding tone. She catches up with her brothers and punches Ricky. She remarks grumpily that Perfecto isn’t her real father.
Estrella’s refusal to accept Perfecto is a sign of the independent spirit and sense of personal agency she’s developing – qualities that will be assailed by various crises throughout the novel.
Themes
Coming of Age Theme Icon
Estrella remembers that when her family lived in an apartment, it looked out onto a freeway interchange. In the memory, Petra worries that the road is “a car wreck waiting to happen.” She looks out the window while her husband ties up his new shoelaces. She knows it’s only a matter of time until he leaves, and she finds herself holding her breath as she watches the cars spill across the road like “beads” from a “broken necklace.”
For Petra, cars are not symbols of power or progress but harbingers of doom. It’s also important that while she endures the inconvenience of living near the freeway, she doesn’t benefit from it in any way. Moments like this show how migrant laborers are shut out from even the most basic aspects of American public life.
Themes
The Value of Labor Theme Icon
Race and Marginalization Theme Icon
Petra is almost envious that her husband has the “spine” to leave the family, especially when she hears fantastic rumors about his whereabouts – that he’s selling peanuts in another city or walking down the streets with a glamorous woman in high heels. While Petra lies to her children about his whereabouts, he’s behaving “as if his life belonged to no one but him.”
While Petra sacrifices her personal desires for her children, her husband sacrifices their welfare in order to forge his own identity. In this sense, Petra’s domestic life mirrors the broader plight of migrant workers who make great sacrifices to provide for a society that doesn’t respect or value them.
Themes
The Value of Labor Theme Icon
Motherhood Theme Icon
Quotes
Overwhelmed after her husband’s departure, Petra spends hours at the window fingering her rosary beads, oblivious to the domestic chaos of the apartment and the daily rituals occurring in the street beneath her. Petra bites her thumb until she draws blood. She can hear the twins banging on buckets, a game Estrella has invented to distract them from hunger. When the noise becomes too cacophonous, Petra bursts into the kitchen and screams at them to stop. Frightened, the young children hide under the bed. Estrella reprimands Petra for her outburst.
Viramontes often praises mothers and emphasizes the everyday heroism that raising a child requires. However, she’s careful not to romanticize motherhood, and in moments like this shows how extreme poverty makes motherhood an impossible and unwanted task. Meanwhile, by taking charge of the situation Estrella establishes herself as her mother’s new partner, who will mature quickly and take on the responsibilities abandoned by her father.
Themes
Motherhood Theme Icon
There’s nothing in the pantry except a can of Raid and an empty box of Quaker Oats. Estrella takes the box, with its cheerful mascot, and dances it in front of the twins, doing a funny routine until they stop crying. Petra runs downstairs and stands at the edge of the freeway. Her children are hungry, and she doesn’t know what to do. She remembers her own father, who worked carrying sixty-pound bags of cement, and thinks about Estrella “trying to feed the children with noise.”
Well-known throughout America, the ubiquitous image of the Quaker Oats man is supposed to represent the comfort and security of home, but here it serves to emphasize Petra’s helplessness and desperation as she tries to provide for the children. Viramontes inverts the conventional symbolism of consumer goods, making them signs of poverty and social injustice.
Themes
The Value of Labor Theme Icon
Motherhood Theme Icon
Consumerism and Environmental Destruction Theme Icon
Quotes
In the present, Alejo and Gumecindo are sneaking past the barn when they see a small child playing near it. Gumecindo wants to leave, but Alejo insists they stop and see if the child is alright. Coming closer, they see an unfamiliar boy with a harelip; the boy glares at a space somewhere above Alejo’s head. Gumecindo is deeply uneasy. For some time the boy plays in the dirt, but then he falls and cuts himself on broken glass; he starts crying silently, and to Alejo even the hole in his shirt looks like a “speechless mouth” crying. To distract the boy, Alejo uses his hands to make shadow animals on the barn wall. Fascinated, the boy forgets about his injuries and begins chasing the illusions.
The “harelip boy” is an enigmatic character who appears occasionally to Estrella and Alejo but whose origins remain unknown; he could be either a wandering child or a figment of the teenagers’ imagination. His unprotected state and inability to speak for himself may represent the plight of disenfranchised and marginalized migrant workers; moreover, since Petra will later associate harelips with pesticide contamination, his disability may be a comment on the physical toll commercial farming takes on migrant bodies.
Themes
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Race and Marginalization Theme Icon
Consumerism and Environmental Destruction Theme Icon
During her marriage, Petra spikes her husband’s coffee with menstrual blood, but even that doesn’t keep him from leaving. As he finishes tying his shoes he promises to be back by the end of the week, but Petra has a bad feeling. She summons Estrella to say goodbye “for now,” and the little girl pleads with Petra to hide his shoes so he can’t leave.
Throughout the novel Petra places great store by religion and folk rituals, even though, as in this moment, they usually fail her. Estrella’s plaintive comment makes clear that, even at her young age, she understands her precarious and unprotected situation.
Themes
Motherhood Theme Icon
Coming of Age Theme Icon
When Estrella first meets Perfecto, she opens the red tool chest he carries everywhere. She can’t make head or tail of the jumbled tools inside, which are “as confusing and foreign as the alphabet.” For days Estrella is enraged, as she hates the feeling that people are keeping information from her. It’s just like the schools that she occasionally attends – no matter how much she wants to learn, the teachers are more interested in checking her hair for lice. She sits at the back of the classroom, in seats reserved for migrant children who are just passing through.
For Estrella, learning to use the tools is a highly empowering process, giving her a constructive way to interact with the world around her. While it’s good that she’s acquiring these skills, this passage also points out that due to the prejudice and indifference of educators she’s unable to access the education to which she’s entitled or derive any real empowerment from school.
Themes
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Race and Marginalization Theme Icon
Once, a teacher whose face looks like a Kleenex asks “how come her mama never gave her a bath.” Estrella has always taken pride in the tight braids into which Petra ties her hair every morning; she’s never realized that she’s “dirty.” For the first time, she sees how words can be “as excruciating as rusted nails.”
The teacher is quick to classify Petra as a “bad” mother, but it’s clear that she’s doing the best she can in harsh circumstances. Judging impoverished mothers on criteria that are impossible to fulfill does nothing to improve child welfare and simply perpetuates harmful stereotypes.
Themes
Motherhood Theme Icon
Race and Marginalization Theme Icon
Even though his tools don’t make sense at first, Perfecto stays with the family a long time and begins to share his extensive knowledge with Estrella. He explains how to use a chisel and hammer to remove a door, and what to do if the hinge pins are stuck. Soon, Estrella knows the names of all the tools and what to do with them. When she lifts up a pry bar, she feels the “power of function” and the “significance it awarded her.” She realizes how important it is to know things, and she begins to learn to read.
When Estrella masters the use of Perfecto’s tools, she begins to understand the dignity of work and the satisfaction she can derive from it. However, her simultaneous insistence on learning to read shows her cognizance that society doesn’t value manual labor the way she does. In order to wield “power” in the world around her, she’ll need a wider variety of skills.
Themes
The Value of Labor Theme Icon
Coming of Age Theme Icon
Quotes
Now, Perfecto asks Estrella to bring him some nails. He’s plugging mouse holes in the bungalow. He says that her exploits are making him old, and she reminds him that he’s not her father. Still, she helps him up from the floor; together they nail up a sheet to divide the room into sleeping quarters.
In many ways, Perfecto is a more responsible father figure than Estrella’s “real” father. However, her hostility towards him shows her reluctance to trust men to uphold their obligations.
Themes
Motherhood Theme Icon
Once, Estrella got into a fistfight to prove that Perfecto wasn’t her father. During one stay in a labor camp, Estrella meets a girl her age, Maxine Devridge. She comes from a white family infamous for bad behavior; many of her relatives are in jail, and all the other migrants pitch their tents far away from them. As Estrella is walking home one day, Maxine asks her if she “talks ‘merican” and beckons her to the family’s shack. She’s sitting on a mattress covered in urine stains, and her dress is hiked between her legs.
Worn down by the pressures of migrant life, the Devridges are indifferent to their terrible living quarters and bad reputation; in comparison to Maxine, Estrella is lucky to belong to parents who uphold their dignity and keep their children clean and well-cared for. Despite this, it’s Estrella who has to “prove” her American nationality by speaking English, while Maxine, who is white, takes this privilege for granted and assumes that others will as well.
Themes
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In her hand, Maxine holds a comic, which she now shows to Estrella. It’s titled Millie the Model, and there’s a beautiful blond woman crying on the cover. Estrella realizes that Maxine wants her to read the comic aloud and grabs it from her. She’s never been allowed to take a book home from school, and the only book she has at home is a religious pamphlet. Estrella opens the comic but is most struck by the advertisements peddling laundry detergent, premade dinners, and sunscreen. Estrella interprets the comic for Maxine, and the other girl says that if she keeps coming over, they can read other comics her brothers have stolen.
The comics allow Maxine and Estrella to peek into a society from which they are completely excluded. Both the elegant, clean women in the pages and the advertisements for consumer goods are totally alien to the girls’ hardscrabble existence. Although it’s their poorly-paid work that makes the production of these goods possible, they don’t get to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Themes
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Race and Marginalization Theme Icon
Every day after work, Estrella and Maxine meet up at the tree by the irrigation ditch, which forms a small stream. Both girls are exhausted, and the smell of tomatoes clings to their bodies. Although they’re thirsty, neither drinks from the stream, because they know that pesticides spill into the water. Estrella thoughtfully asks Maxine if she thinks they’ll give birth to children with no mouths. To cool down, they splash water on their faces, careful not to ingest it.
Describing the trees and the stream, Viramontes evokes the beauty of the natural world, but she immediately disrupts this image by mentioning pesticide contamination, which imperils both the environment and public health. The contrast creates an atmosphere of danger and unease which hovers over the girls’ health and their friendship.
Themes
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Consumerism and Environmental Destruction Theme Icon
Quotes
The two girls are reading Millie the Model and teasing each other about the handsome hero when the smell of rotting flesh reaches them. Looking into the ditch, they see a dog carcass floating along. The corpse gets stuck on a grate. To escape the smell, Estrella and Maxine have to leave their hideaway.
The polluted, dangerous environment in which the girls live contrasts starkly with the trivial problems addressed in the comic. Moments like this show how invisible the plight of migrant workers is to the wider society.
Themes
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Idly teasing Estrella, Maxine asks why her father is so old. Estrella replies tersely that Perfecto isn’t her father, and Maxine teases her for letting an old man “fuck your ma.” Angrily, Estrella insists that they’re not having sex; when Maxine laughs at her, Estrella pulls her hair and two girls fight viciously until Maxine’s mother pulls them apart. In the aftermath of the fight, the foreman tells Perfecto and Petra that they should leave the camp before the Devridges take their revenge. Perfecto doesn’t scold Estrella or ask what the fight was about. Everyone packs up their meager belongings and Petra dismantles the tarp and poles that constitute the family’s home.
Estrella’s ignorance of her mother’s love life is one of her few moments of childlike naiveté, and the drastic outcome shows how quickly and painfully she’s ushered out of childhood and into adult knowledge. Although both girls are culpable in the fistfight, only the Latino family is displaced from the camp; the discriminatory treatment they receive shows that, although fieldwork is oppressive to migrants of all races, non-white workers are especially vulnerable to displacement and exploitation.
Themes
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On their way out of the camp, Estrella looks out the car window at the rows where she and Maxine had once picked tomatoes and eaten them after wiping off the pesticides. She sees the oak tree where they retreated to read comics. She even sees Maxine herself looking after the car as it leaves forever.
Even though they’ve ended their friendship on a fight, both girls are clearly repentant. The harsh conditions of migrant life, and the racial discrimination that accompanies it, have destroyed a positive and empowering childhood relationship.
Themes
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Coming of Age Theme Icon
By this time in the present, Gumecindo is desperate to go home, especially since he knows they could be fired for being in the orchard now. But Alejo is climbing a tree in order to watch a strange girl (Estrella) washing herself and a watermelon at the irrigation ditch. He and Gumecindo have gathered fifteen sacks of peaches, which they’ll sell at the weekend market in order to make extra money. While Gumecindo begs to leave, Alejo watches the girl take her dress off and step into the water, where the fruit is floating. Gracefully, she swims to the middle of the ditch and retrieves the fruit. Lost in reverie, Alejo falls out of the tree.
Both Alejo and Estrella are in the process of harvesting and washing fruit – but right now, they’re doing this for themselves and their families, not at the behest of a large corporation. Lyrical moments like this emphasize the beauty of working closely with the land; the novel’s critique lies not with fieldwork itself but the social conditions that keep fieldworkers trapped in poverty.
Themes
The Value of Labor Theme Icon
Petra stokes the fire, singing to herself. Estrella returns from the stream, cradling the watermelon like a baby; this image makes Petra feels sad, even though she knows that Petra will inevitably grow older and already has to be mature for her “safety.” Estrella tells her mother to come to bed, but Petra wants to wait up for Perfecto, who has gone to the local store. In the meantime, she makes Estrella draw a circle in the dirt around the house, which she believes will protect them against scorpions.
Petra views Estrella’s approaching adolescence with grim trepidation. In her eyes, growing up can lead to nothing but a repetition of her mother’s difficult life. Petra’s passivity and pessimism about the future contrast with Estrella’s current sense of agency and possibility, but by the end of the novel, her views will become more closely aligned with her mother’s.
Themes
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Coming of Age Theme Icon
Walking towards the bungalow, Alejo sees a biplane dusting the crops with pesticides. Inside, Ricky and Arnulfo watch the plane as well; Ricky dreams of flying the planes when he grows up. Outside, Estrella is boiling the day’s drinking water when she sees a strange boy – Alejo – approaching. He nervously introduces himself and presents Petra with a sack of peaches. Petra gives him some pinto beans to bring to his own mother, but Alejo explains that his mother is dead; he lives with his grandmother in Texas, and has only come to work here for the summer.
To the young boys, the biplane is exciting and admirable, but it’s actually covering the fields with chemicals that will jeopardize their health. Throughout the novel, Viramontes creates images that are both evocative and disturbing in order to highlight the simultaneous bounty and destruction of the environment.
Themes
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Estrella warns Alejo not to get caught picking fruit, and Petra remarks darkly that given their pay, the bosses are lucky they don’t burn the orchards. Estrella tells her not to talk tough unless she means it; she offers her a bite of a peach. Alejo walks away from the cabin and thinks about Estrella’s face, seeing within it “the woman who swam in the magnetic presence of the full moon.”
Estrella and Petra’s affectionate exchange emphasizes their closeness, a bond that will endure the many ensuing crises of the novel. Alejo is attracted to Estrella specifically but also allured by the familial closeness that she embodies and which he currently lacks.
Themes
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Coming of Age Theme Icon