Rubén has worked for 11 straight years in New Bedford – moving blocks of cement, hauling loads of fish – hard physical labor that he says he enjoys. He was happy in his last job, sailing for days at a time on a lobster boat out of Westport, watching the sea, pulling the lobsters out of the traps. He was able to pay his rent and bills, and send monthly support for his family back home: his wife, his daughter and his 9-month-old grandson. Some months he was able to send them eight-hundred, nine-hundred, sometimes a thousand dollars.
He had only been at his new job for about a month, last April, when he was attacked. He had just paid his phone bill and was riding his bicycle back home, when he heard someone say: “Give me some money!” Before he knew it he was on the ground. “I didn’t understand,” he says, “he didn’t rob me, he didn’t take anything. He just stabbed me and ran.”
When the police arrived they reported him as “bleeding profusely,” with his shirt, lower body, and the sidewalk where he lay completely covered in blood. The wound had severely – and permanently – damaged the nerves in his back, and since then he has lived in a cloud of pain. He has spent the last six months in the house, moving stiffly and tiring easily; even tidying up the house leaves him exhausted. He sometimes walks to the park and talks with friends, until they all go off to work themselves.
So he watches TV, and frets about his mounting debts, and thinks about his grandson, who’s awaiting surgery for a deformity of the leg. Without his work, they are all stranded. This week he received a call from his boss to go back on the boat, but because of the pain, he had to decline. He knew his cousin was looking for work, so he put him in touch with the captain; needing the cash, he sold him his waders.
Rubén received a letter from the Massachusetts Attorney General that his medical bills – nearing $12,000 – will be paid by the Victims Compensation Fund. But these other worries dominate this mind. And his roommate, whose wife is set to arrive from Guatemala next month, has asked him to find a new place to live.
“I came here to work to support my family,” he says, “and since that boy attacked me I can’t work at all.” Yo no sé qué voy hacer, he repeats, over and over: “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
No sé qué hacer,
No sé qué hacer,
No sé qué hacer.