Jazz Owls_A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots
Page 1
CONTENTS
Epigraph
The River of Music
Swimming Season
Barefoot
Peeled
Ghostly?
Victory Familia
Americanos All!
Author’s Note
References
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Para Sandra Ríos Balderrama, héroe de las bibliotecas
and for dancers, dreamers, and heroes of peace,
in honor of all the nonviolent Chicano protesters of later decades,
whose courage triumphed despite vicious attacks against their
communities in the 1940s.
Pero una nueva pulsación, un nuevo latido
arroja al río de la calle nuevos sedientes seres.
Se cruzan, se entrecruzan y suben.
Vuelan a ras de tierra.
But a new pulse, a new throb
hurls thirsty new beings into the river of the street.
They cross, crisscross, and rise.
They fly close to earth.
—Xavier Villaurrutia,
from Nocturno de Los Angeles
(Los Angeles Nocturne)
Manolito from Cuba
Age 16
We flow into the city of ángeles
following a flood of young sailors—
thousands at first, then millions
from all over the U.S., scared teens
who long to dance, need to leap,
craving that feeling of being so alive
as they pass through L.A.
on their swift way
to the horrors
of war.
I’m just one of hundreds of musicians
who arrive from New York, Memphis, Chicago,
Kansas City, Saint Louis, and from the steamy islands
of música too, Cuba and Puerto Rico, drummers,
trumpeters, and saxophonists, wizards of rhythm,
wearing our loose suits, the zoot shape
that drapes us to keep dance leaps smooth
and COOL in this HOT summer river
of JAZZ!
Jazz Craze!
Marisela
Age 16
The musicians call us owls
because we’re patriotic girls
who stay up LATE after working all day,
so we can DANCE with young sailors
who are on their way
to triumph
or death
on distant
ocean waves.
I love feeling jazz-winged,
so this owl life is easy for me,
until early morning, when my shift
at the cannery begins, right after a LONG journey
of clanging streetcar bells and SLEEPY smiles, all
those memories of dancing the jitterbug, Lindy Hop,
and jump blues, while adding my own swaying bit
of Latin-style swing rhythm!
¡RITMO!
Sweaty
Lorena
Age 14
Everyone says I’m still the calm, sensible one,
even though I quit school two years ago,
right after a teacher washed my mouth out
with foamy
foul-tasting
soap.
My crime? Speaking words the teacher
called dog language—español,
my family’s natural música,
the songlike rhythm and melody
of lovely syllables from Mazatlán in México,
where Mami and Papá once danced
beside warm, sparkling, tropical
ocean waves.
I don’t like staying up all night with Marisela,
because our day shift at the cannery means sleep
is needed, to keep fingers alert so they don’t
get crushed by machinery
or sliced
by knives.
High heels, wide skirt, jitterbug
and all that jazz, the sailors call us owls
because we obey the U.S. government’s wish
for a sizzling, sweaty summer of pre-death
entertainment, to cheer navy recruits while they wait
for their warships, our battles, this shared war
of worldwide violence.
Chaperoned by our brother—that’s the only way
any mexicana mother will allow her daughters
to dance, joining las señoritas de la USO
—la Organización de Service United—
a club where navy boys swing and hop before gliding
out toward the oceanic unknown.
Our older brother, Nicolás, is already over there
somewhere in Europe, Asia, or maybe the South Pacific.
We’re not even allowed to know the name of the land
where he’s fighting against fascism and racial hatred.
So Marisela and I have to depend on little Ray
to escort us safely from our exhausting cannery jobs
to an evening of dutiful, patriotic dancing.
Everyone says I’m sensible, but secretly I feel
really angry.
¡Mira!
Ray
Age 12
Swing dance, swing shift, swing a bat,
swings at the park, swing from a tree—
isn’t it funny how many meanings
one little five-letra word can hold?
That’s why I wear my clothes BIG.
HUGE suit, ZOOT suit, baggy pants
for a leaping dance, COOL hat, WIDE shoulders,
watcha—mira—LOOK at me, not old enough
to DIE in the war, but plenty GRANDE
when I perform my own style of pachuco hop
at the All Nations Club, where I go alone
after taking las owls
to the USO.
As long as my sisters don’t get in trouble,
Mami lets me stay out, so we can all be patriots
like our superhero BRAVE
big brother.
Impatient
Marisela
Cannery work is all about seasons,
and August means duraznos,
so I have to DANCE with my dress
full of peach fuzz and the sweet-smelling juice
that leaves sticky stains under my fingernails.
Only men like Papá get the best packing jobs,
cooking thick syrups, sealing slick cans,
and carrying heavy boxes to earn
a better living, while women and girls
have to do piecework,
prep work,
knife work,
slice, slice, slice,
sliding this sharp blade
through soft fruit flesh
ALL DAY.
Checkers watch us.
They fire us if we’re caught working
too slowly or too quickly,
because slow means lazy
but swift means we’ll make TOO MUCH money.
Imagine that. . . .
Rápido, rápido, the silenced half of my bilingual voice
longs to shout, let this day of rapid peach slicing END
so I can finally go out to el baile, the LIVELY dance
where my real life BEGINS, all those owl hours
of stomping heels and flying LEAPS,
energetic movements—my only true FREEDOM!
Despacio, slow down, sensible Lorenita reminds me.
If we get fired, Papá will be ashamed, and Mami
won’t let us leave the house, so try to keep a steady pace,
reme
mber it’s not a peach-slicing race, just chop
smooth and easy, like the fox-trot that tired sailors
always request when they need a slower,
more restful
dance step.
At the end of my workday, I try to relax
and remind myself that if I slip on this peach-juicy floor,
I’ll be fired, so I STROLL like an old woman, carefully
ESCAPING!
Censored
Lorena
Maybe I should have stayed in school,
because Spanish is forbidden here at work, too.
Ray mixes his words back and forth
or makes up completely new ones, like watcha,
and let’s eat a picnic lonche at noon,
or look at all those trocas in the parqueadero lot.
When he does that, I feel so old-fashioned,
even though we’re only two years apart.
Español at home, English while standing
at this conveyor belt, watching peaches roll
past me like quiet slices of time,
I can’t let myself forget
that being revealed as bilingüe
is a sure way to get fired.
Checkers don’t like two-language girls
because they start to wonder what we’ll say
about them, so we have to choose el inglés
or joblessness.
In Trouble
Ray
I shouldn’t have gone
to that party at the Williams Ranch
after taking my owl sisters to the USO.
It was just some girl’s birthday
until a fight broke out, and then later
these guys from 38th Street went back to take
revenge
against rowdies
from Downey.
All I did was swim in the farm pond.
How can anyone blame me—this is summer,
crazy hot, loco sweaty, and public pools
let mexicanos jump in only on certain Fridays,
right before the janitor drains all that water.
Yeah, man, fíjate, fix your mind on THAT!
THEY believe OUR skin is DIRTY!
Well, I think THEIR brains are sucios,
because racial hatred is the WORST filth
on Earth—in fact, it must be this blaze
of swimming weather that fried
that first policeman’s hate-filled mind
and made him act
estúpido.
But this second cop is even more idiotic,
dumb as un buey,
a slow ox. . . .
Hold still so I can hit you again, he commands
over and over—sit down, shut up, accept
the sort of truth only a grown man’s fist
can offer—but he’s wasting words,
because his thumping knuckles
are all I hear now,
drowning the sound
of insults
as I fade
in and out
of caring.
Ambitious
Reporter #1
This lurid murder at that swimming hole
is just the thing I need to make my name
famous!
Most of these foreign kids quit school
after fifth grade or eighth, just to work
in factories or canneries, so they can pay
for those fancy zoot suits that use up
too much valuable cloth; it’s an outrage
in wartime, the way they wear baggy pants
instead of narrow ones, wasting fabric
that our military needs for uniforms
and hospital sheets.
The Mexican Problem, that’s what I really
need to write about, but which angle?
Zoot suits that imitate the sleek style of black musicians?
Or stubborn foreign mothers who refuse
to let their kids learn English, fit in, look right,
act regular, assimilate, change into real
Americans . . . ?
Maybe I’ll go for this police crackdown story
first and then try switching to the bad-mother angle
only if I find a fantastic example of a Latin family
that talks normal
and eats
ordinary food—burgers
instead of spicy
tacos.
Yeah, that’s my plan, but only if this steamy
summer murder
fails to make
the front page
over and over,
the way I hope it will,
considering the eerie name
of that swimming hole—
Sleepy Lagoon!
Aggressive
Reporter #2
Hah!
Other reporters think they’ll scoop me,
but I’m already here on the Williams Ranch
in Eastside, where some foreigner called José Díaz
was found bleeding, right before he went
to the hospital
and died.
Stabbed, beaten, robbed—that’s news!
Sleepy Lagoon—it’s the perfect headline.
Sounds so peaceful and pretty,
but it’s spooky enough to make readers
shiver—chills up the spine, that’s what sells
newspapers!
The Shadow of José Díaz
Ray
I wonder if the man who got knifed
is really a spirit in heaven now, like Lorena says,
or just a lonely ghost floating above frog songs
and slimy algae, the way Marisela warns
when she tells me not to fight back
if I ever get jumped on the street.
I could map that crime scene in my mind.
Seven farm labor shacks north of the lagoon,
and seven south—mexicanos, Chinese—and that empty
little house where the Hakada family used to live,
until they were taken away and locked up
just for being Japanese.
¡Watcha! Look at ME, try to SEE who I really AM,
americano just like you two cops who keep beating me—
American and Mexican at the same time, like Nico,
my brother, a HERO who FIGHTS for OUR
SHARED country, these UNITED States.
Where’s the UNITY?
A Waste of Time
Policeman #1
The governor of this great state of California
ordered a crackdown on Eastside boys.
Mexicans, in other words.
So the Los Angeles district attorney’s office
said we should go ahead and do it, and now
here we are, grown men
beating up little kids
who don’t know
what
or why.
Not Me
Ray
Gangster? No way!
Zooter, sure, but dance cat
and outlaw are two different things,
one violent, the other just drape-shaped
COOL.
A Gang of Children?
Policeman #2
BABY GANGSTERS is the silliest headline
I’ve ever seen, but newspaper reporters
are powerful people, so I go out and smile
when I’m supposed to, then frown on cue,
have my picture taken,
and try to put on a show
of being the strong, silent type,
like a modern-day cowboy in a uniform,
conquering Aztec warriors and other
Hollywood bad guys. . . .
Well, sure, I know they’re not actually
building sacrificial pyramids, but what if Mexico
really is like Japan, just waiting to attack
the rest of us—then the headline
BABY GANGSTERS makes sense, doesn�
��t it?
Some of these Mexican kids
with Indian blood
almost look Asian.
Arrested?
Mami
¿Las muchachas también? The girls, too,
after you’ve taken my boy?
Pero mis hijas are so well behaved, se portan bien,
son señoritas de la USO. Tecolotes—owls. ¿No?
¿Cómo que you don’t understand what I mean?
After all that patriotic dancing,
you newspaper liars and crooked police
still don’t think mexicana girls deserve
respect?
Marisela and Lorenita are not even tough
like those others, las zooterinas, the ones
who wear
big hair
and boys’ pants.
Disgusted
Papá
I was born right here
in California, and only went to Mazatlán
when my grandparents were old
and needed help.
I met my wife there, brought her back here,
and now our U.S.-born children are treated
like invaders.
You’d think the way Nicolás
is risking his life for this country
would be enough of a show of loyalty
to help him earn appreciation
for our whole familia.
We work hard!
All the farms and canneries would be empty
without us, and guess who—yes, you—
all the policemen and reporters would be
hungry!
Hundreds of Suspects
Marisela
Rounded up like vacas—cows—
handcuffed, LOCKED UP, boys, girls,
mostly Mexicans, but black neighbors too.
Did they arrest me just because Ray
was at that party, or because anyone
who ever goes anywhere near la 38th Street
is being scooped up for this policía game
of finding someone to BLAME
for the murder
of a stranger?
We didn’t know José Díaz!
We weren’t at that Sleepy Lagoon party.
We don’t know anything about killing.
We’re USO owls, we DANCE and work,
that’s all.
Eso es todo.