After Layoff, Miscarriage, an Unclear Future

Surrounded by family photos in her Hawthorne apartment, Martha Pinzon waits for her boss to call. Despite the lingering sadness, she’s ready to get to work at the airport.

For $7.92 an hour, she’ll arrange a ride to LAX, wait in line with passengers to pass security and spend eight hours in the kitchen of Wolfgang Puck’s, making salads, soup, sandwiches and pizza. “I like to work with all my friends,” Pinzon says.

The call doesn’t come on this day. But that’s OK.

It means Pinzon gets another day with her 18-month-old daughter, Rebecca. When she was logging 40 hours a week, before the layoffs, she had to work late and on weekends. It was worthwhile only to build a nest egg for Rebecca and the next child, already six weeks along in Pinzon’s belly.

When her husband called her out of bed that morning with the news from the East Coast, she was already nauseated with morning sickness. The images of crashing airliners produced a deep anxiety, twisting her insides even more.

“So many people lost their families,” she said. “The Christmas and the Thanksgiving, it will never be the same.”

After Sept. 11, she dutifully returned to her job in Terminal 7. She worked through the sickness and the sadness for more than two weeks. The layoff notice came Sept. 28. It wasn’t just losing her job; something else was wrong. The next day, she checked into the hospital. The baby was lost.

Now, the future is not as clear.

She’s been getting two days of work each week, as a fill-in. She’s cut her medical insurance, because taxes and union dues already shrink her paycheck too much.

Her husband, a school district truck driver, wants Pinzon to stay home with Rebecca and study for a high school diploma. In her native Monterrey, Mexico, she worked on a computer and as a secretary.

“But to get a good job here I need English,” she says.

The doctor says she must wait six months before she can try for another baby. In the meantime, the bank account is shrinking. There’s not even enough money to keep her old Toyota station wagon running.

Something seems different at the airport, too, and out in the world. Pinzon feels less trustful of people, and has bouts of fear, especially when she hears an ambulance.

“Always when I go to my job, I pray to my God,” she says. “I’m thinking, ‘What will be my last day in this airport?’ ”