- The next day on the way to school, Pearl notices that Amiel is juggling soda bottles. This time, though, it's no pantomime.
- Pearl's mom seems annoyed at the guy, which Pearl thinks is a little racist.
- She's fifteen and doesn't get why there are so many day laborers anyway.
- When she asks her mom, Pearl is told that they come to America in hope of getting work. Some do, some don't.
- Now for some some backstory…
- Uncle Hoyt owns a huge orchard and hires people all year round to work the fields.
- One day Pearl asked her uncle why all of his workers are Hispanic, and he said that's just the way it is with farmworkers; no one else applies.
- Pearl knows that not many of the workers are legal. In fact, whenever they go to visit their families in Mexico, there's talk of paying coyotes to smuggle them across the border again.
- She remembers visiting her cousin Robby's tree house one day and one of the workers asking who lived there. It occurs to Pearl that even a job as a day laborer is better than some of the villages where her uncle's men are from.
- That Friday, Pearl asks Uncle Hoyt if he hires anyone from the street corner where she saw Amiel.
- Usually he doesn't hire someone without a recommendation, which Pearl thinks is unfair. How are people supposed to get work if they don't know anybody?
- It reminds her of the riddles her dad used to tell her before he left.