Most are undocumented, and before President Trump’s election, they went to Valentina when they didn’t know their rights or when shelters didn’t have space. Like Silvia, many are ashamed, reluctant to point a finger or to file for divorce. The women who come are waitresses, saleswomen, fruit and vegetable pickers, housecleaners. She is an immigrant who opens her home to women whose husbands or boyfriends abuse them. Valentina isn’t a social worker or a therapist or a lawyer. “But if you had an emergency,” Valentina asked, “you’d call me, right?” She still had two children in the house, and she worried their father would take them to Mexico. “If he were deported because of me, because of my situation, I think I’d lose my kids completely,” she started to ramble. Her partner had one domestic-violence report already, and if she accused him now, he’d likely be picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She didn’t want to call the police or go to a shelter. Valentina was the first person Silvia had told about her problems at home. The two women drove to a bakery at a nearby mall, where they sat under fluorescent lights discussing Silvia’s options once again. She had come to the United States in 1985 as a teenager to join her father, and she’d been with her partner for nearly 30 years. Silvia was reserved, a truck driver, a mother of five who often looked defeated, with deep lines around big brown eyes, her shoulders folded in. She had a particular affinity for Silvia, whom she’d met a few years earlier. Since the mid-’90s, Valentina had assisted hundreds of Latina women who were beaten at home, harassed at work, assaulted. Like Valentina, Silvia is from Mexico, and she was trying to leave her partner. Valentina, who is 60, had been encouraging her to indulge in little luxuries, like walks on the beach or manicures, and she smiled at the sight of Silvia’s hands. She dangled her crimson fingernails for Valentina to admire.
Silvia looked up from the cactus she was planting and walked to the car. With broad shoulders and dyed-blond hair framing her soft face, Valentina is striking even without her signature crystal-encrusted shoes. “Silvia,” she sang, tilting her head out the car window on a recent afternoon.
Valentina* drove two hours up the California coast to the flat farming town of Santa Maria and stopped outside a white motor home.
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