Editor’s Note: Jesús Jank Curbelo described his harrowing journey from Cuba to Texas in the Observer’s July/August issue. Here, he follows up on life in the Dallas suburbs.
The first thing I learned about Dallas was the route from my house to the Health and Human Services (HHS) office, where you apply for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), aka Food Stamps.
[Editor’s Note: Certain non-citizens—not including unauthorized immigrants—are eligible for SNAP benefits. Federal legislation in the 1980s specifically extended food stamps to “Cuban and Haitian entrants.”]
I could have learned the way to Catholic Charities, where I had to go at least once a month for an entire year. But that route is longer and more complicated. You must climb a road full of teeth and tentacles called a “tollway” while zigzagging between thousands of cars. It’s a map that my head will never learn. The drive to HHS is 10 minutes: straight, turn left, turn right, and that’s it.
HHS was a warehouse of human rags: an old man with no legs, the corpse of a woman in boots, mothers with sick children, a beggar. Many of them Latinos.
I had previously seen the shiny buildings of Dallas, flocks of birds on wires, shelves full of food at Kroger, virtual membership discounts at 7-Eleven, and traffic jams. Even in the lines at Catholic Charities, people seemed to me elegantly dressed and well-mannered.
A CLOCK/CALCULATOR WAS
INSTALLED IN MY BRAIN THAT
RULED MY LIFE.
But now, I confronted the depths of reality. A week after arriving in the United States I had been unable, without a work permit, to earn even a dime. I had joined the 1.5 million low-income Texas families and individuals who receive food stamps.
A lady named Dolores helped me. I told her about my struggles and she approved my card: $291 each month for food.
I envied Dolores for her work. Every time I entered McDonald’s or Walmart I envied all uniformed people with jobs. In the eyes of those I left behind in Havana, I had not fulfilled my mission as an emigrant. Not for myself and not for my family. It made me angry to see so many toys, candies, and clothes on shelves and not be able to send any to my son.
I also didn’t think my language skills were good enough to learn how to put hamburgers in a bun or how to stock shelves. I wasn’t like Dolores, who jumped from English to Spanish with fluency, and had a state credential hanging around her neck. For me, talking to her was like talking to President Joe Biden.
As a longtime journalist, I really had no experience or talent for any other job. Eventually, I was hired at Taco Bell only because they were short-staffed. At that time, 18 months ago, every business in my neighborhood had posted HIRING signs. I guessed no one wanted to make fast food, though everyone eats it. So I applied and the next day I had my apron, my hat, and I was standing in the Taco Bell universe where the cebolla is an onion and each order must be ready in less than three minutes.
My coworker and coach said, “This is a burrito, this is a taco,” holding up items one by one. He showed me how to prepare foods on the menu, how to wrap a tortilla, and what kind of paper to use. Then he left me alone to survive. I didn’t know which hose to use to fill the cleaning bucket, or how to prepare the artificial beans, or that there was a thing called “Three Cheeses.” I understood the basic English of Justin Bieber’s choruses, but I mostly spoke through signs.
A coworker told me that she spent her first three months at Taco Bell crying. She had been a nurse in Venezuela. She came here with zero English and the hope of helping her parents. Everyone who emigrates is fleeing something and hopes to achieve something. It was easier for my coworker to vaccinate a child than to learn the taco menu. Our gringo coworkers made fun of her (they teased me too, but I knew how to say “Fuck you”).
She told me she wanted to quit 10 times a day. But you have to do what you have to do. Lift your head and enter the machinery of a country that does not understand you and which you understand less.
“Look what studying at the university has done for me,” another coworker of mine, a fellow Cuban, said one night. He was building a 3-foot-tall house of cardboard boxes, fitting one box inside another to make it easier to carry to the dump. I laughed, but later, I found that sad. He had spent five years focused on books and passing exams. He had defended an architectural thesis that sought to illuminate the world. But that blockhouse of boxes was his greatest architectural project.
I finished my shifts at 4 a.m., and at that lonely hour we cleaned the entire closed store so that the next shift would not arrive to a mess. The store reopens at 7.
As soon as I began to generate and pay my own bills in America, a clock/calculator was installed in my brain that ruled my life. I already learned you must blend in with U.S. machinery until you become part of it. Maybe I should get that phrase tattooed on my forearm.
The machinery forces you on different paths. For example, I can’t walk from my house to Taco Bell. I would have to use the side of a road where cars travel at 50 mph. The neighborhood is designed for cars, so I had to buy one. This was so urgent that I couldn’t save the money to pay cash. I bought a car on credit.
All the money I earn is consumed by monthly payments: rent, utilities, car, etc. This includes food because as soon as I got my work permit, they took away my food stamps. I still do not have enough money to help my family in Cuba.
A year has passed, and I have not fulfilled my mission as an emigrant to my family or to myself. That’s why I started doing DoorDash in my free time.
Why don’t I get a better job? Because “HIRING” ads disappeared. Denton County, where I live, grew by nearly 30,000 new residents from 2022 to 2023, and it now has a population of more than 1 million, according to the U.S. Census. However, the county’s infrastructure is not growing as fast as its population, so available jobs have decreased. Every day, five or six job-seekers arrive at the Taco Bell where I work, yet no positions are left.
Even DoorDash stopped sending me the notifications that once lured me with the hook that “Dashers in Dallas earn an average of $22.54 per hour.” Now, the app sends those who try to sign up to a waiting list: “We have reached our maximum number of dashers in your area.”
It’s never a good time to dash. There are more drivers than demand. Last night I earned $7 in almost two hours.
Meanwhile, the situation in Cuba is getting worse, and that breaks my soul. Somehow I have to generate enough money for my own bills and for my family.
So if you order food in my area, I’ll definitely bring it. DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub. I drive for them all. Gotta go. It’s lunchtime, and I should wrap up my writing and go out and deliver.
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