Breaking Through by Francisco Jiménez

excitedly.
    "You'll be cleaning a few of the same places you and Roberto have been cleaning on weekends: the gas company, the savings and loan, and Betty's Fabrics every day and Twitchel and Twitchel, a lawyers' office, once a week, on Wednesdays. You won't have to strip and wax the floors or wash the windows. You'll continue doing that on weekends."
    Roberto and I thanked him and went home excited.
Papá will be proud of us,
I thought.
    Papá was happy when Roberto and I told him about my new job, but his good mood did not last long. That Saturday night he got angry with Roberto and me because we came home from the movies past midnight. "Don't think just because you give me your paychecks that you can do whatever you want," he said firmly.
    "But we're only a few minutes late," I said, recalling the discussion we had in Mrs. Taylor's class about the film in which a boy argues with his father.
    "Don't you dare talk back!" he said, raising his voice. "I am still the man in charge of this house. You must obey and respect me, or else!"
    Roberto and I went to our room, said our prayers, and went to bed. As I lay in bed I thought how lucky I was to be going to school and to have a job. I did not enjoy being at home when Papá was in a bad mood.
    All day Monday I was excited to start my new job. After my last class, I went to the public library on Broadway and worked on my homework. I did my math first because I liked it best. At five o'clock, when the offices closed, I walked a few more blocks to the gas company, which was on West Main Street. It was a huge building with a front office that connected to a large back structure two stories high. As I opened the door to the rear
entrance, a draft of warm air hit my face. It felt safe and comfortable. I went to the janitor's room, picked up the cleaning cart, and began cleaning the offices on the first floor. I emptied the wastebaskets and feather-dusted the desks, which were piled with scattered papers. They looked like my high school counselor's desk. I wiped the ashtrays with a wet rag and straightened the papers.
    I then went upstairs to the second floor. It was one large room set up like an auditorium. In front of the room was a full kitchen. Above the stove was a mirror, angled so that people sitting in the audience could view the top of the range. A plate of cookies sat on the counter with a handwritten note that read PLEASE HELP YOURSELF . The following day, the plate of cookies was still there. No one had touched them. By the end of the week, someone had changed the note. It read JANITOR, PLEASE HELP YOURSELF . After I finished cleaning the bathrooms and dust-mopping the floors, I took a handful of cookies and went downstairs.
    I sat at one of the desks to do my homework. I read the first two chapters in my English text,
Myths and Their Meaning.
I had a hard time understanding them. I put the book down, ate more cookies, and wondered what the person who sat at the desk did all day.
It must be neat to work in an office,
I thought. I noticed a picture frame partially hidden behind a pile of folders and picked it up. It was a color photograph of a boy dressed in a football uniform and a man standing next to him, smiling proudly with his arm around the boy. I figured it was the boy's father. I placed the photo in front of the pile of papers and reread the first chapter until Roberto came by to pick me up to go home.

A Typing Machine
    By mid-semester, my typing speed had improved, but not my accuracy. The teacher gave us weekly typing quizzes. He projected words that flashed on a screen as fast as a blink of an eye, and we had to type them just as fast. I managed to keep up, but when he moved on to short complete sentences, I kept making mistakes. To get an A in the course, I had to type fifty-five words a minute with no errors. I needed more practice typing. I found the answer to my problem in a lawyers' office.
    On Wednesday evening, after I finished the gas company, I