by Myriam Gurba
There was so little to do in our town that we had to invent games to play and things to be a part of. Way out by the dry riverbed that borders town, there was a racetrack, the old Speedway, a California hick paradise where they served bad food and little kids with shit-stained diapers ran wild. The tomboy in Mickey was dying to go and Gabriella thought it would be fun. They eventually convinced me to go too, and we bought buckets of bright yellow popcorn and shitty nachos. We sat in the front row, the worst and most dangerous place to sit at the races. Grit and exhaust spat into our faces and our food and our cheeks stung from the tiny rocks that pelted us. The people there were scary. A few Mexicans, some people from the Indian reservation, drunk white men with big bellies, lots of babies, horrible sad looking wives. The husbands all wore those funny hats with the mesh in back and the foam fronts. They drank beer from cans and some younger guys shared their Coors with us and we sat there getting shit-faced and the guys wanted to get some, thought we’d be easy because we were three creepy girls. But they got pissed when we laughed at their suggestion.
“Fuckin’ dykes,” one of them muttered as we walked away, the three of us holding hands, giggling, dirty, and high.
We drove home, the long drive from one canyon to another, and finally arrived back at the sisters’ farmhouse. Their house was so romantic to me because someone had died in it, an old man. Before they moved in, their mom had it exorcised. The priest went from room to room, sprinkling holy water and blessing the place. Nothing strange happened. Nothing moved or creaked or groaned but I liked thinking about the idea that maybe something was there in the house, something that had to be cast out. We pulled up and Gabriella parked her truck out by the barn and we all climbed out, still giddy and light-headed. We had run over a tarantula going up their driveway and its white guts were all over the dirt path.
We came in through the side door and Gabriella’s dad was sitting in the kitchen with a glass of something and we all ignored him. He wasn’t a very nice man. We went upstairs to Mickey’s room and sat in the dark, talking. I took off my shoes and climbed into bed with Mickey, our feet touching, and held hands. I was so warm next to her. There was one dim light on and there was a record playing, I don’t know what, something painful and whiny, and we stayed there and talked through midnight. One sister was on one side of me and the other on the other. Mickey had my hand in hers and she caressed it, her face buried into the pillow and I didn’t understand what her caress meant but I enjoyed it. Gabriella sat next to the bed, her fingers playing on my cheekbones, tracing something back and forth, neither knowing if or where the other sister was touching me. I had both of them and I felt like the third sister. When Mickey’s caresses stopped, I knew she was asleep. I wiggled myself out of her arms and from under her leg and grabbed Gabriella’s hand. We slipped out of the room quietly, shutting the door behind us.
We walked across the hallway to her bedroom and closed the door as gently as we possible could. I put my arms around her neck; I had to reach up to do this, I was smaller than her, and I could feel her shaking. We were both shaking. Both of our bodies were taut, pulled tight with restrained excitement that was muted and dead and had nowhere to go. I could feel her nipples poking through her shirt. Her breasts seemed so full and she was totally and completely a girl to me in that moment. She continued trembling as I slowly reached down to pull off her shirt and she helped me, lifting her arms up like a little girl helping her mommy undress her for a bath. I dropped the black t-shirt on the floor and very slowly cupped both of her breasts in my hands. It was the first time I ever felt anybody’s but my own. Mine were small, girlish and high. Gabriella’s were real breasts like a woman’s, like in a magazine, heavy and round, and I held them like they were delicate fruits. I thought that they were the softest things I had ever touched. I felt them slowly, like the priest lifting the host at the sacristy, ready to anoint and poised for the daily miracle of transubstantiation. I wanted them in my mouth. I touched my mouth to them and I felt a melting sensation, warm ice cream dripping down my chin on a hot summer day, cream and sugar, girlish things pretty and beautiful, white and warm. White warmth and white light. I touched them and she groaned and my mouth was so hot I didn’t know where her heat began and mine ended but I continued to kiss and lick and suck and her nipples got firm and hard, ready to explode. My pussy was hot and warm and I was so scared I could not imagine being touched anywhere down there and I felt ashamed. I hated everything below my belly button and wanted to stay here, hungry forever, drinking imaginary milk.
Gabriella pulled away from me and I was so scared for a second that I’d done something wrong. When she took my hand and pulled me down to the floor, I knew I hadn’t. I sat beside Gabriella on the bed and waited. There was a weird moment of awkward silence and I heard fumbling noises and then I saw her face and she was lighting a cigarette. She handed it to me and she switched on a night-light, an ugly thing in the shape of a clown’s head, and she struggled to find something under her bed. She pulled out a box, old and beaten up and held together by duct tape. She folded her legs and took off the lid. I think it was a shoebox. I took a drag from her cigarette and gave it back to her. I stared at her in the dim light of the clown, big soft breasts, cigarettes, and a worn out shoebox. She pulled off the lid, reached into the box, and pulled out a knife that caught the dim glow, shining so faintly, the tip seemed almost delicate. She held the heavy thing in her hands, silently demonstrating its weight and its violence and in some mute way, how much she liked me back. The cigarette hung out of her mouth and she smiled.
“You want to,” she asked.
I went weak. “Yeah.”
Gabriella smiled bigger and it was a smile that I didn’t understand but that I wanted to see again. She crawled toward me and wrapped her legs around me. She was still wearing wool pants. She pulled off my slip, stripping me to my old underwear, cotton panties that hadn’t been replaced since I was 12. She embraced me and I didn’t want to blink because I was so afraid I would miss something and it was all I could do to get myself to breathe. She touched the cold shaft to my thigh and it felt so cool and precise against my leg. She pressed my skin, going into my flesh, not cutting, just pressure, silver against brown and I waited. I put my hand on hers and wrapped it around her fingers so that we held the knife together.
“Let me,” I said.
Gabriella let go of the knife and I held it in the same place for a minute or so, slowly dragging it up and down my thigh, doing it with a really light touch, not really doing any real damage. I pulled it up my leg again but on its way down I put pressure on shaft, broke the skin with it, the blade traveling horizontally down the length of my leg for her, to show her how ready I was for her, so she could see some part of me that was on the inside. Blood began to appear. At first, it was just a thin red line but then fat drops of blood began oozing out of my thigh and it felt so hot, everything centered in that one spot that we both stared at, my leg, and she slowly bent over, crawling around me, and I went backwards, propping myself on my elbows, watching her face, trying to read whatever I could from her blank expression. It was sexy, not knowing what she was thinking. She put her finger on it, the cut, and then fingered it gently, getting her fingers wet with the thick drops and running her index back and forth across the line, smearing me with it. I smiled the smallest smile I would allow myself. She reached over and put her mouth to it and I could feel her tongue in it, stinging me, really enjoying it and feeling for the first time another person making me tingle down there with a satisfaction that I would later learn to get with fingers and tongues and fists and cocks. But first, it was in my thigh, my wound, my open gash. My pussy came and my panties were wet and neither of us understood what was going on. My body tightened and then released with hardly a shudder and my underwear was moist. There was no violence in my coming, I muted it, softened it, becoming not myself at all. Gabriella climbed on top of me and held me and we fell asleep that way, not saying anything, but thinking about strang
e things and wanting more.
Primera Comunión
Before I was born, my abuelita had dreams about me. On the eighth month I was inside my mom, my abuelita started to pray. She would make my mom kneel with her, in the living room, in front of an icon of La Virgen. They lit candles and recited the rosary together, every day until I was born. See my abuela, my grandma, had a dream about me that scared her. She dreamt that she and my mom were in the house, and I was outside–I wanted them to let me inside. The Medicaid doctor told them that I was gonna be born a girl, but my abuela swears she saw me in the dream as a boy, a pale boy with big, blue eyes. I knocked on the door, but my abuela said that something wasn’t right, she knew she couldn’t let me into the house. I went around the house, looking through all the windows while my grandma held my mom, protecting her from me as I tried to crawl into the house. There was something wrong with me. My abuela went to the window to send me away, and she cursed me in her dream. I stared back at her, my tongue flicking in and out of my mouth como una serpiente10, long and thin, split down the center, flicking, back and forth. That scared my grandma. She was scared I was a malcreada, born of evil–my mama needed to be cleansed. What else could it mean if I had the tongue of a serpent?
They were scared so in order to cheat destiny they gave me a name that they hoped would protect me. They called me Esperanza, “Hope.” I seemed like a normal enough baby girl when I was first born. They told me I was chubby, with thick black hair, and when they pierced my ears after one week, they said I didn’t even cry. My abuela hung big gold hoops from my years. That’s how you tell babies apart in my barrio: the girls are pierced, with gold, stones, and gems hanging from their earlobes. Babies with jewelry. But my abuelita should have known she couldn’t cheat destiny. She came here to escape from Mexico but found demons waiting for her in the United States, ones that are worse. They’re in disguise.
Naming me Esperanza didn’t help. What my abuelita didn’t realize was that Christian names don’t mean anything in the barrios of gringolandia. No, in my rumbo11, you’re nameless until your clicka12 claims you and decides who you really are. Sure, we have birth certificates that might say Maria or Consuelo, or maybe a priest pours some water on your head and announces that as God’s child you will be called Beatriz or Guadalupe. My abuelita might call after me on a Sunday afternoon, “Esperanza, ven a ayudarme con las tortillas13,” and I might answer to the name, running to the kitchen to help her grind the corn with a heavy pestle.
But the truth is, until your homies gaze into your soul and see who you really are, your name doesn’t mean anything. Your family, they want to change the real you, prevent the real you from ever happening, and so the name they give you, it’s an empty one. They’d rather not recognize the potential for evil as well as good that grows inside you, that from within your soul grins the smile of a sinner and criminal. But your clicka, they’re not scared to see this ‘cause when they look at you, they see themselves grinning right back. Your homies don’t mourn the loss of innocence like your family does, your old lady remembering how proud she was the day of your first communion, tu primera comunión, as you got down on your hands and knees in front of a priest and took the host on your tongue for the first time. They know that, in the barrio, innocence is a lie and that the biggest lie of all is that you were ever really innocent at all. In the eyes of the world, you were born a sinner, a criminal, a whore, or a gang-banger. And with pride, your clicka gives birth to you and helps you fulfill this prophecy.
That’s how I became Angel Malo, Evil Angel. The homeboys would pass me by while I was cutting class, kicking it in front of the store or at the park, waiting for trouble. They’d check me out and holler, “Eh, Espie, what are you doing, homegirl? Come roll with us.” I’d take off with my homeboys and we’d get stoned, go cruising, and find trouble. The homeboys from my rumbo, Grape Street, they taught me all kinds of shit during those lazy days: how to steal, to cheat, and to fight. One day, we were cruising out around Southgate, and we were jackin’ this truck. I was jimmying the door, and my homeboy burst out laughing.
“Look at her, check her out, dude. She looks like an angel with her smooth skin and big ol’ brown eyes, a little boy angel.”
I grinned at him, my homey Bandit, the one who taught me how to steal.
Then Lalo said, “Shit, she ain’t no angel, and if she is, she’s un angel malo, an evil, crazy-ass angel, in loco drag with a talent for crime.”
We finished boosting the ride, and we took it to an underground body shop out in La Puente where it got stripped and sold for parts. After that, I became known as “Angel Malo” and, true to my name, I had it tattooed on my forearm: an angel with wings, standing on a green-eyed serpent.
There was this one heine, La Dreamer, who started to kick it with the homeboys, too, but it was different for her. Me, I was one of ‘em, didn’t matter that I had a pussy and tits. I didn’t flaunt ‘em and I might as well not even had ‘em. But this heine, she was a straight up girl, a fine ass Grape Street girl with curves like a woman should have, and she wasn’t afraid to show ‘em. She never kicked it with the girls. It wasn’t ’cause they didn’t like her. There was just something different about her. Something macho about the way she looked at you and the way she breathed. Something different just kind of oozed out of her pores and filled the air around her. But no one really said anything about it ’cause she was so fine and they didn’t mind having this heine around all the time. She was always fucked up and she’d give it up for any loco who’d kick down some speed, or even better, coke. Most days, though, she was just stoned with her eyelids fighting to stay open. She was a fine, pretty woman but her macho vibe also communicated something else, something broken, like she had learned too much about herself, like she was cracked inside. Sometimes, when the locos weren’t watching, I could feel her look in my eyes and I could tell that she was thinking about things that the other locas in Grape Street didn’t think about, like she wanted me to reach inside her and fix her. But I knew that until she showed me exactly where it was that she had been cracked, I could do nothing for La Dreamer.
The night that La Dreamer’s father died, she showed herself to me. It was late at night and I was just kicking it, getting high, watching TV, Sabado Gigante14, or some shit like that. I heard crazy banging on the screen door and I went to open it up. Dreamer was standing there, all scared looking, kind of twisting her body, swaying back and forth. I knew from her scared look that something was wrong, but when I saw she was wearing a big ol’ jacket, I knew something was really wrong. It was the middle of summer and she had on this big old parka. Something was all fucked up.
I opened the door for her to come inside. I was embarrassed ’cause it was so hot that all I had on was my boxers, a wife-beater, and tube socks. I had a new tattoo on my neck that was still healing and covered in Saran Wrap that needed to be taken off. I stood there, staring at her, waiting for her to tell me what was up.
“Angel Malo, can I stay here for tonight? You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t real important. The jura15 are looking for Chato and I gotta help him out. He did something for me that no one’s gonna understand, especially not the pinche jura, so I need a place to crash.”
She sat down on the couch and I sat down in my dad’s old recliner. She put her hand in her jacket pocket and pulled out a cohete. The gun looked heavy in her hand, and she held it so tight, her knuckles were turning white. Chato was her brother. I knew by looking at her that he’d probably fired that gun and killed someone only a little while before she showed up with the weapon.
“Yeah,” I said, “You can stay here.”
“My dad’s gone, Angel Malo. He ain’t never comin’ back. Chato blasted him. Chato found him, Papi forcing me to be Mami, and he went crazy. He blasted him straight away.” She took off her jacket. She had blood on her shirt and arms. Her eyes looked empty.
I said, “Come with me to the bathroom, Dreamer. I’ll help you get clean.”
Sh
e followed me to the bathroom. She was silent as I helped her take off her shirt. She wouldn’t look at me. I got a washcloth and washed the blood off her with warm, soapy water. Then I brought her a clean t-shirt from my room.
“Let’s go to my room, Dreamer, my mom’s gotta get up early to go to work and I don’t wanna wake her up.”
She followed me to my room and I shut my door. Dreamer sat on the mattress I had on the floor and looked around, taking in the small space that was mine. It could have been any homeboy’s room: walls with pictures of girls naked or in little bikinis draped over the hoods of cars torn outta Low Rider magazine, tangled blankets on an old mattress, a black and white TV sitting on a nightstand, and a bong full of brown water in the corner. On the window ledge was a little statue of La Virgen that my abuelita gave me when I was eight years old.
I turned the TV back on and sat down on the mattress next to Dreamer. I let her lean her head into my lap and stroked her hair. Her muscles felt tight as I held her in my arms, and I wanted more than anything to fix her, to help her know that everything was gonna be okay. I wanted to exorcise the tension, the pain that was making her wound tight. I knew that drugs would help her to relax.
