Exploring Her World : Falling under the spell of a friend named Estrella : UNDER THE FEET OF JESUS, <i> By Helena Maria Viramontes (Dutton: $17.95; 128 pp.)</i>

Estrella. Star. Helena Maria Viramontes refers to the heroine of her story with either her English or Spanish name, depending on who’s doing the talking. The novel traverses different worlds and pulls you right into the multiplicity of Estrella’s life; it’s one of the things that makes it such an exciting read.

That the author pulls it off, without being confusing, is a testimony to her literary gifts. Reading “Under the Feet of Jesus” is like talking to a brilliant Latina friend who speaks in English, Spanish and “Spanglish” and expects you to follow along because she’s always choosing the right word.

There are no apologies here, no footnotes, no subtle winks or explanations for the non-Latino reader. This is a novel that makes you work--it’s not to be read quickly--yet its complexities are what make it a book I want to read again and again.

Viramontes’ prose is thick and lush, like the grape fields where migrant workers labor under the hot sun. There is passion here, but the author avoids easy sentimentality. The migrant workers’ terrain brings to mind John Steinbeck, but the lyricism of the prose recalls Isabel Allende:

“He noticed Star’s back next to him. One button on the back of her floral dress had slipped from its mouth and he moved closer to her to feel the comfort of that unburied patch of skin. . . . She turned . . . her face looking as if she took her sleep seriously. A sleeping face looked so different than one awake.”

As the novel begins, we meet Estrella and her family after they have made yet another move. Estrella is the oldest child; the family increasingly depends on her. Her mother’s boyfriend, Perfecto Flores, is 70, longing for rest; yet he is the man of the house. Petra, her mother, is 33 and arthritic; she knows that she looks 50. The incredible aging process is part and parcel of this life. We meet Estrella as a young woman, and in Petra we see her destiny--until the character of Alejo appears.

Alejo is a young farm worker who falls in love with Estrella. Only 16, he dreams of a life beyond the fields. For Estrella, there is nothing but this life and the problems right in front of her. Alejo is in school and dreams of becoming a geologist: “He loved stones and the history of stones because he believed himself to be a solid mass of boulder thrust out of the earth and not some particle lost in infinite and cosmic space.”

Courting isn’t easy on the migrant worker circuit. Growing up, Estrella learns that in the brutality of field life, it’s every woman for herself. Friends are not made easily. But from the moment Alejo sees Estrella, he sees beauty in her, even when she is so tired that she can barely continue her work.

The simple act of sharing a soda, such an Americanism that harks back to the ‘50s and soda fountains and Cherry Cokes, is different in this world, because there is no money for refreshments for the people in these fields, no money to buy the very fruit they pick--and sometimes steal. So when Alejo offers Estrella the soda in its glistening blue bottle, she seizes it lustily, drinking and licking her lips. Describing the cola, Viramontes writes, “amber it seemed against the diminishing light of the moon.” When the bottle is empty and Estrella asks Alejo to let her keep it, he assumes she wants the deposit. He is surprised, and even more smitten, when she blows a tune with the bottle as with a flute.

Both Estrella and Alejo are American-born, and in this time of immigration reform and Proposition 187, the racism they face cannot be overlooked. When Alejo is sick and Petra worries about his being turned away at the hospital, Estrella is furious. “He was born in Texas, his grandmother and her grandmother,” she says.

But he is far from home and, without his birth certificate, his brown skin and the Spanish that rolls from his tongue endanger his very life. It is what Petra fears the most for her children. She warns them not to let the immigration officials intimidate them. Pointing to the statue of Jesus she keeps in the house, she says: “You tell them the birth certificates are under the feet of Jesus.”

Again and again, throughout this rich novel, Viramontes brings us into her world and we fall under her spell.