Migrants by Elizabeth Tallent
"Migrants" by Elizabeth Tallent explores the emotional landscape of Sissy, a high-school senior grappling with feelings of isolation and longing after moving to rural Colorado with her father, Rafer. The narrative unfolds as Sissy tries to navigate her new life, marked by her father's frequent absences due to work and her own deep-seated loneliness, exacerbated by the separation from her mother who has moved to Los Angeles. In a poignant moment, Sissy encounters a caravan of migrant Mexican farmworkers, which elicits a mix of fascination and empathy within her, highlighting her desire for connection in an environment where she feels alienated.
As she observes the migrants, she recognizes their struggles and the unwelcoming atmosphere of the small town, which adds to her sense of disconnection. An encounter with a young migrant bathing in an irrigation ditch further deepens her emotional turmoil and illustrates the universality of human vulnerability and longing. This encounter, mixed with her own feelings of loneliness, culminates in her quiet yearning for a different life, perhaps symbolized by her wish to visit Los Angeles. The story intricately weaves themes of isolation, the search for belonging, and the fragile connections that can form between individuals from vastly different backgrounds, making it a reflective piece on the human experience.
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Migrants by Elizabeth Tallent
First published: 1986
Type of plot: Psychological
Time of work: The mid-1980's
Locale: Colorado
Principal Characters:
Sissy , a high school seniorRafer , her father, a sales representative of farm irrigation equipmentA Mexican farmworker
The Story
Sissy, a high-school senior, is living with her father in a rented farmhouse near a small town in Colorado, after moving there from Iowa after her mother ran away with her boyfriend to Los Angeles. Sissy is alone much of the time while her father, Rafer, roams the open land selling "Rain Cats," giant circular sprinkler systems, to farmers. Sissy misses her mother, wonders what Los Angeles is like, and hates the place in which she lives. She has an affectionate relationship with her father, but it is not enough: "All spring in Wheaton, where she knows no one and nobody seems to be under forty anyway, Sissy has been lonely: all spring Rafer has been on the road." When he comes home on weekends, he takes Sissy to shoot at bottles lined up in an arroyo. When he is away, Sissy roams the empty fields with her dog, Joe, and stares off into the thousand-mile space between herself and Los Angeles.
Once, while Sissy is riding her bike, a caravan of beat-up cars drives past her, filled with migrant Mexican farmworkers. She is astonished at this sudden burst of exotic vitality: "Sissy loves them for having appeared behind her, out of nowhere. The dusty dashes hold groves of plastic saints, and rosaries wag from the rearview mirrors. A child sucking on its fist pushes aside a pair of fluttering pantyhose and gazes out at her." She knows that these migrants will probably stay near her town for a while and will not be welcomed by its white residents. Delighted by their sudden presence, she decides to pedal alongside one of the slow-moving cars. To her astonishment, the worn-out Cadillac she is keeping pace with slowly accelerates and then edges into her lane to cut her off. She wonders why she has been rejected without being recognized. The caravan slowly recedes in the distance.
When Sissy visits the local post office, the small room is crowded with Mexicans who are there to send money to Mexico. The men move away from her, permitting her to be first in line. She is embarrassed, but Mr. Cox tells her she might as well take advantage. Sissy does not want to take advantage, revealing her sympathies for the migrants. Seeing one who is their apparent leader, a young man, she smiles at him.
A few days later, hunting in the field with her dog, Sissy shoots a rabbit. She walks over to an irrigation ditch and finds a young migrant bathing there, his white shirt hung up in a branch to dry in the sun. She is touched by his care for his clothing: "He had wanted to keep it dry, or air his sweat from the cloth, and this is a revelation of his fastidiousness, of something as private as his nakedness. She loves the half-floating, half-sagging shirt." She wants to speak to him, thinking he might be the same man she smiled at in the post office. She knows no Spanish, however, and he no English, and he is naked, embarrassed. He silently hints that she should back away while he gets his shirt, but for a moment she senses she wants to see his nakedness: "She almost wants, so silently instructed, to do so yet she wants—it is so exquisitely clear what she wants that she can't, for the fraction of an instant, condemn herself for wanting it—to watch him rise from the water." She tries to talk to the young man, but there is nothing to say. Her pathetic attempt to talk reveals the depth of her loneliness.
That night her father takes her to the movies in Wyoming, forty miles away. He knows something is wrong with her but is unprepared for her soft-spoken request for a bus ticket to Los Angeles as they sit down together in the theater.