by John Rechy
“And when they put you in jail,” Amalia said angrily.
The old veterano was quiet for moments, his head bowed. Then his memory of grandeur resurged: “We even took on the U.S. Navy once, manos—you know that?” he asked the rapt boys. “Ever hear about the zoot-suit riots?”
The boys nodded. One said his grandfather had been in them.
“That was us.” In a long, slow arc, the old man’s palm swept down, even lower now, the gang gesture of greatest pride. “And then some of us even joined the navy later, manosl” He laughed. Then he frowned. “But we belonged!” he said emphatically.
That night Amalia said to Raynaldo, “If we could only move away from it all.”
“We will,” he assured her, and held her hand.
A letter came:
Amalia—
Your father is dead—I am coming to live with you—there is nowhere else.
Your Mother.
Teresa arrived from El Paso with her Dolorosa. She cleared a table at the entrance on which Amalia had placed “fresh” cloth flowers to thwart what she had suspected would happen, and did: Teresa set her mournful statue there, to command the house. She handed the flowers back to Amalia.
Amalia repeated the story about her and Raynaldo getting married at the courthouse. She went on to embellish that they had even gone to a Catholic church, on their own, to exchange “sacred vows under God’s watch.”
Teresa said, “God doesn’t believe lies, and neither do I.”
“Our mother’s not lying,” Juan said firmly.
“She’s telling you the truth,” Gloria said.
That evening the old woman seemed quickly to “accept” Ray-naldo. Out of convenience, Amalia thought, and crossed herself in case there was something sinful in thinking that.
Often startling them awake with her hacking, Teresa slept on what had been Manny’s cot, in the room with Juan and Gloria.
Raynaldo found another house for them. In Hollywood! He took Amalia to see it.
It was a bungalow in another of the ubiquitous clutches of stucco courts that proliferate throughout Los Angeles. It was near Western Avenue and Fountain—and it was pretty, Amalia tried to convince herself. If not, it was certainly better than the unit in East Los Angeles, and far better than any place she had ever lived in. She was excited to learn from the only Anglo who still lived there, with his wife—but not for long, they both looked to be at least eighty to Amalia—that the court had once been inhabited by “movie people.”
“Movie stars?” Amalia was hopeful. Ava Gardner …
“No—grips and extras,” the old man said.
Amalia didn’t understand what they were, but, she reminded herself, as she would often, it was in Hollywood. It was also close to the tangle of freeways, but: “You can imagine the sound of the traffic is the sound of the ocean—someone told me that,” Raynaldo advised her. That would be difficult, since she had never been to the ocean. Her enthusiasm dampened when she saw that other houses in the neighborhood were beginning to decline, windows left broken, patched. But each unit in the court did have a small “garden”—only about two feet by four—and there was a rose bush toward the back. The unit was flanked by stubby palm trees. From one of its windows you could see—in the distant hills—the giant HOLLYWOOD sign. This disturbed her: A few blocks away, on Sunset Boulevard, along a strip of fast-food stands and seedy motels, exaggeratedly painted women paraded the streets. Still, there was this: She saw no sign whatever of gangs in the neighborhood.
They moved there.
Juan and Gloria kept joking about being “movie stars” now that they lived in Hollywood.
Raynaldo turned a small porch into a bedroom for Teresa. Amalia placed her mother’s statue on a table there—“a special table, just for her,” she told the old woman; but Teresa insisted she wanted to share La Dolorosa with everyone. She located the somber black presence again in the living room.
Amalia marveled at her mother. Despite her now constant wheezing, she still had so much energy. Perhaps too much. Soon after they had moved into the new neighborhood, she set out to investigate her surroundings. She came back indignant. “Who would have thought I would come to live so near Filipinos and Protestants.” She had discovered that several blocks away from this area that was populated mainly by Mexicans, there were pockets of other groups—Armenians, Asians, a smattering of black people. To Teresa they were all “Filipinos” because there had been some in the tenement where she had lived and they had been Protestants. “I saw stores with names written in God knows what language. Certainly not Spanish. And all those Protestant churches—one with a star instead of a crucifix.” She made an eternal sign of the cross, punctuating each movement with a stern look at Amalia.
Teresa’s hacking often wakened Amalia, especially on nights when Raynaldo was away.
Still, in this new neighborhood, Juan and Gloria were going to the good school nearby—even some Anglos went there, and there was no sign of gangs, no territorial graffiti. When Manny returned, he would be away from the dangerous former neighborhood.
It was around that time that earthquakes invaded Amalia’s fears. That was when she saw the wall split apart before her eyes. She thought the world had exploded. It had not, and what had occurred was called a “moderate earthquake.” That annoyed her—it had not seemed “moderate” to her.
Soon after, she went to visit Rosario at the sewing factory. Rosario now ate her lunch late—“to avoid listening to Milagros’s accounts of her serials,” she told Amalia. They were sitting on the stairs in the hallway of the building and eating Amalia’s homemade chiles rellenos when Milagros ran past them and into the sweatshop, blaring the news that the Mexican tabloid—in her hands—was predicting that the Big Earthquake would occur at exactly 1:34 that afternoon. It was the same earthquake that a famous astrologer had centuries ago foreseen for this very date—and a “seer” down the block had further confirmed it in the newspaper.
The Mexican women—and the Nicaraguan, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran women who now worked there—all hastily gathered their belongings, because it was 1:29, five minutes before the earth would tremble disastrously.
“Bunch of supersticiosas—still believing in witches,” Rosario chastised them. “No one can predict when the Big One will occur.”
“I’m not waiting to find out if it’s today,” said one of the women.
“Not me either,” said another. Soon they had all fled the sweaty factory. Rosario kept eating her rellenos. Amalia was torn with conflict. She wanted to believe Rosario—who was, after all, the intelligent one—and to stay with her to show she was not a supersticiosa. On the other hand—
“Are you sure it’s not going to happen?” She asked the older woman.
“No one can tell.” Rosario kept eating.
Amalia longed to stay. But at 1:32 she ran out into the street.
The news had spread. Women from the sewing factories in the garment district, Anglo secretaries from glassy office buildings, businessmen in suits, skid-row bums from Main Street—all gathered outside, looking up as if the earthquake would descend from the sky. Several tried to laugh. Amalia looked for Rosario. Nowhere.
Now it was 1:33.
Then it was 1:34.
Amalia closed her eyes and braced her feet.
It was 1:35.
Buildings—new chromy ones—were impassive in the hot day.
“Well it is earthquake weather,” said an Anglo businessman, laughing.
“Hot and still,” confirmed a secretary.
Then it was 1:40.
Someone said, “What the hell,” and went back to work. Some still checked their watches. Then everyone laughed and they went back into their buildings.
Amalia whispered to Rosario, where she had remained eating on the steps: “I didn’t believe it.”
Rosario didn’t even look at the women coming back, did not gloat.
“There won’t ever be a Big One, will there, Rosario?” Amalia ask
ed hopefully. But when she saw the older woman about to answer after peering at her for pensive seconds, Amalia excused herself to go talk to Milagros, who greeted her with her usual “Here’s la Liz Taylor!”
At least, Amalia consoled herself about having rushed out with the other women, she had not been like so many of the new aliens who for days refused to return to their apartments and slept in parks. She felt even better on learning that many very rich people had fled the city in airplanes during that time.
“What worries you so terribly, Rosario?” Amalia asked her friend on another occasion, when the tiny woman was sitting on the familiar steps of the old building.
At first Rosario only shook her head, as if thrusting away the possibility of any answer. Then she touched Amalia. “Mira, corazón—” She spoke slowly, softly, as if to contain words that might otherwise explode out of her: “Every day hundreds—a thousand now—are arrested crossing the border—every day!—risking danger because they’re hungry, fleeing poverty, risking la migra hunting them down like animals, with horses, helicopters, brutal ambushes to keep the desperate people away—and from what? From jobs no one else would take!” Her voice had risen with anger: “Thieves rob them of their savings, women are raped, people murdered.” She breathed deeply, continued slowly as if to make sure Amalia understood her full despair. “And if they make it across? More horrors.” She shook her head in disgust. “Two men escaped a ranch in Somis—yes, escaped, corazón—through barbed wire. Beaten, their heads shaved, worked sixteen hours a day for fifty dollars a week, charged five dollars for a gallon of milk. Amalia, corazón—” Her voice almost broke. “Families end up separated in detention camps. Jorge told me of a man who sold his home to pay a coyote more than a thousand dollars to smuggle him and his wife across, and the coyote left them—his own people!—left them abandoned in a hovel in the desert, without food, water. His wife got her period—” Her voice was harsh with rage: “And those who reach the cities? Slums! The streets! Terrorized by gangas and violence and the migra always tracking them down. Illegals? Huh! How can a human being not be legal?” Her voice softened, a whisper: “Corazón, a human being has the right to eat, to have a home, work—”
“And to worship God and the Holy Mother,” Amalia added, assuring Rosario that she understood, and cared.
Rosario smiled. “Yes, that. But many times the Church—” She pulled back. “Corazón, at this very moment, Jorge’s family—” She stopped abruptly. She said quietly: “For all the destitute people, it’s like living with a loaded gun held to your head.”
A loaded gun held to your head!
Just the words terrified Amalia. A loaded gun held to your head!
When Rosario returned to work and Amalia remained at the steps for a few moments, she was astonished to see—again—how tiny and frail her friend was.
Well, Amalia thought later, despite all the miseries, there was always faith in God’s ways, although Rosario had certainly made them seem even more mysterious, hadn’t she? Amalia had often wondered—but had never wanted to ask—whether Rosario had strayed away from the Holy Church. No, she assured herself, because her name meant “rosary” and what was more Catholic than that? Whatever! God, if only through the Miraculous Mother, would be sure to extend His compassion to someone like Rosario. Of that Amalia was sure.
There was a time with Rosario that Amalia cherished especially. She often evoked it because she understood part of it and wanted to understand all of it. Rosario had said to her: “You’re a very smart woman, Amalia, perhaps smarter than you know—but what good does it do you, corazón? Amalia was flattered, then immediately puzzled. “What should I do, Rosario?” she asked. “Think,” Rosario had said. “Just think.”
Things were changing for the worse in the garment district of downtown Los Angeles. Thousands of new aliens were seeking work, any work. Men, women, boys, girls from countries south of Mexico, with no papers, worked up to sixty-four hours weekly for $50, and they did not complain because if the sweatshops closed they would have no income at all. More and more women brought their children to work with them, tucking the smallest on rolls of material stacked against walls.
Rosario informed the women at Lewis’s shop about all this, her voice furious with new indignation. Once—and Amalia increasingly adjusted her housework hours so she could see Rosario, and, too, listen to Milagros’s accounts of the romantic travails in her serials—a middle-aged Anglo woman and a young Mexican man from a group called La Familia del Pueblo—The Village Family—rushed in passing out pamphlets that spelled out in Spanish the rights of garment workers. Many of the women threw the pamphlets away nervously. Rosario picked them up and placed them assertively next to their machines.
“You got no business here,” Lewis was shouting at the invaders.
“Just information.” The Anglo woman faced him. She had bright red hair and deep-set, pained eyes.
“I run a fair shop.”
“Then there’s nothing to fear, sir,” the Mexican man said.
So handsome, with gleaming white teeth, Amalia noticed. Of course he would be a devout Catholic.
“No need for those pamphlets in a fair shop,” Lewis emphasized to the women when the invaders had left.
“Fairer” Rosario admitted, and mumbled: “Imagine what it’s like in the others.”
“The others” were unlicensed shops burgeoning in declining buildings nearby. Most often, Koreans, who spoke neither English nor Spanish, were identified as the owners, but no one was sure—the Koreans claimed they were only “managers” for invisible small contractors; and the landlords of the aged buildings and the manufacturers whose labels would be attached to the garments produced in the sweatshops claimed ignorance about the contractors.
“Those Oriental owners don’t know our fair American ways,” Lewis declared, separating himself from the unlicensed sweatshops that did not even bother to post a company name over their workrooms. “That’s why there’re so many damn inspectors now.” He avoided Rosario’s cold stare. “And who the hell can compete with those new shops?” he complained in a sullen mumble.
Soon after, women on the buses were warning about a migra agent terrorizing the garment district, demanding to see the work papers of lone women, “arresting” them, handcuffing them—and raping them and abandoning them miles from the city. That even made the television news—at least three women were known to have been attacked.
So Amalia decided to stay away for a time.
Then Manny returned, a man now. Amalia welcomed him with love and sadness.
He seemed to get along with Raynaldo, quietly—and even Teresa appeared to be growing fond of him. Once she called him “m’ijo”—and Amalia resented it. He did not complain about Teresa’s coughing, though he slept on the floor near her cot.
One night he gave Amalia money, several bills. “I don’t want you to be poor,” he told her. She longed to believe what he told her—that he had gotten a job. And he was gone all day. And not, Amalia assured herself without daring to ask, because he was going back to his old neighborhood.
Another night, when Raynaldo was gone, Manny sat on the floor laughing and playing cards with Gloria and Juan. He kept explaining the rules of the game to them, patiently; but—Amalia saw this and marveled at how wonderful it was to have all her children with her serenely—he was making sure that Gloria would win, and then Juan, and—
Two policemen burst into the house with guns drawn.
Manny stood up with his hands raised. “’Amá—” That’s all he said, a whisper.
Amalia rushed over to hold him. “M’ijo!”
A cop pushed her away roughly.
Manny strained toward her. A cop threw him to the floor, handcuffing him.
In a corner, Amalia held Gloria and Juan.
Amalia sat in a courtroom in the Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles and heard her son charged with attempted murder. In that courtroom she came to despise—and she went alone, did not want anyone wit
h her—she learned—for certain, finally—that her son—who listened fascinated as if people there were talking about someone he did not know—dominated one of the toughest gangs in the city, along with Indio, his age. Both were vatos locos, the most reckless. Sometimes he and Indio led others in what seemed to Amalia to be no more than childish pranks—couldn’t they see that?—raiding an orange grove and feasting on fruit; other times they led them into pointless danger, riding a “borrowed car” to the police station, and, horn made to stick, leaving it there as the klika scattered in every direction. On roca or polvo—crack or angel dust—Manny became fearless, one terrified boy testified.
In that courtroom, Amalia discovered a whole other life that belonged to her son: After a series of pleitos with a rival gang—skirmishes that augur a major confrontation—and only minutes after the name of Manny’s gang, scrawled on a wall, was spattered with paint—a car sped by Indio’s house, a shack surrounded by sunflowers—where Manny, Indio, and another boy drank beer, smoked. “From Chuco and his boys!” Those shouted words were followed by three shots. Indio was dead. Manny went, alone, to confront the invaders on their own turf. Backed by his own home boys, the young man named “Chuco”—because a distant relative had been a famous “pachuco”—met him. At the sight of the slight young man standing before them unarmed, they heckled, laughed, taunted.
Manny said to Chuco: “Estás escamado, ése. Te rajas … Even with all your home boys, you’re scared shitless, man. I’m facing you like you couldn’t face Indio, and I don’t even have a gun. No tienes huevos.”
“I don’t have no balls, huh, ése?” Chuco brought out a knife. Lazily he cleaned his nails with it. He said very slowly: “Tu madre está chingada.”
“I’m a son of a what?”
“You heard me.”
It was then that Manny went out of control. He knocked the knife from Chuco’s hand, grabbed it, wrested him to the dirt, and held the knife over his throat.
“Say that again, cabrón, and I’ll kill you.”
