Jazz Owls_A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots
Page 2
Yes, I’m DONE
talking.
Photographed
Lorena
I always hoped a burst of light
from flashing cameras might reach me
during the Orange Queen beauty contest,
or a graduation ceremony for some
fancy secretarial school.
But I’m a slightly darker brown than Marisela,
so she would probably be the winner of any pageant
judged by old Hollywood men, and I’ll never
make it through a private school, unless
I somehow manage to keep my cannery job
long enough to save for tuition.
So instead here we are, sisters, hermanas,
shoulder to shoulder, standing in this lineup,
hands behind our backs, flash, flash, flash,
scary cameras. . . .
Most of the arrested girls
are zooterinas wearing boys’ drapes—
baggy pants and fingertip jackets,
hair piled high
to make them look tall
and strong.
In my homemade flour-sack dress,
I begin to realize why Ray always tries
to look stylish.
It would feel safe to know that policemen
are just as scared of kids who swagger
in zoot clothes
as we are
of their shiny guns
and dazzling
flash, flash
cameras.
If I can’t alarm these cops with my confident
way of walking,
maybe I can at least shock them with lawyerlike
calmness.
Trapped
Ray
It took me a long time to perfect
this gato-cat
hipster-vato
cool-pachuco
way of walking—relaxed
shoulder hunch, squared
boxer arms,
easy
runner knees,
swaying through time,
CLAIMING my share
of rugged public
sidewalk.
A tough strut is proof that I’m demanding
my own powerful
slice
of space . . .
but when I slow-walk into that trial room
I’m just one of so many older boys
who are faking the same coolness,
so nobody
notices
ME.
Boiling-hot mad and terrified, I barely listen
to the row of lawyers who try to organize
all of us
alphabetically.
They start with our second last names—
our mothers’ apellidos—instead of our fathers’
surnames, until someone corrects them,
and finally they manage to see
that Montes del Río
doesn’t just mean “mountains
of the river,” it’s Papá’s father’s last name
FOLLOWED by Mami’s father’s last name,
NOT the other way around.
I end up lounging in the middle of a long,
snaking circle of suspects
that rings
this big, frightening official room.
Shiny hair. Ducktail cuts. Slicked back.
It’s the way we look that got us arrested
in the first place, and now
no amount of coolness
can help us.
The grand jury will see us
with dirty shirts
and oily hair
because jail guards
won’t let us change
into clean clothes
or get barbered to look military
like newspaper HEROES—like Nico,
if he’s still
ALIVE.
Wolf Pack
Reporter #1
There’s no telling whether the verdicts
would be different without our headlines.
What if these teenagers had been allowed
to change their clothes and wash their hair?
No matter—all but a couple dozen boys
have already been sent home for lack of evidence,
after their mothers raged at the jailhouse,
shouting in Spanish and English,
demanding to know where, why, how. . . .
Yeah, those tough foreign women are a story
of their own, but for now I’ll just stick to these
surefire scary headlines, like:
PROWLING WOLVES OF SLEEPY LAGOON.
The real name of this trial is People v. Zammora,
which sounds about as exciting as one more sad
Hollywood movie star divorce.
Yawn.
Citizens’ Committee for the Defense of Mexican American Youth
Reporter #2
I couldn’t dream up a more boring headline
than the name of that committee if I tried,
so I just aim to build up an overall effect
of Irish, Jewish, black, brown, and who-knows-
what-else union organizers and dangerous
communist sympathizers,
all poking their noses
into the respectable
white jury members’
private business.
When that police lieutenant testified
about the way Indians from Alaska to South America
all walked across an ancient land bridge from Asia,
it was easy to quote him describing Aztecs
as wildcats that must be caged, making them sound
like the enemy in our modern war—
Mexicans, Japanese—the average newspaper reader
doesn’t know any difference, so human
sacrifice, living hearts carved from
Aztec-and-Asian savagery, that’s a phrase
I plan to sprinkle all over the front page,
just to keep people wondering who will be
the next victim.
Now all I have to do is show
that across the border from Texas,
Mexican gangsters are probably
making deals with Nazi agents,
then sneaking
back here,
ready to pounce
on innocents.
Yeah, that’s it, I need to create
a feeling of slinking submarines
as they glide underwater
to attack our ships.
Nothing sells newspapers as quickly
as fear.
Released
Lorena
I feel like two people at the same time,
one glad to be freed from jail, the other still
locked up
confused
frightened
angry.
!Me pongo tan brava!
I become so outraged,
just as furious
as a brave but trapped
fighting
bull.
Life Sentences
Marisela
Girls and little kids like Ray
were all released before the trial,
but now we’ll have to walk around
for the rest of our lives,
constantly REMEMBERING
how it FEELS
to be roughly CAPTURED
and falsely
ACCUSED!
There’s no way out of the mess
except a lively jitterbug
to SHAKE away
all this sadness
with JAZZ!
Fantasía
Lorena
While Marisela goes back to her dance life,
I stay home, looking at comic books.
DARK SIDE OF TOWN was the worst headline,
with words that made the rest of this city feel
like white people had received official
permission
to fear
and hate
all of us.
No more newspapers for me.
Wonder Woman; Sheena, Queen of the Jungle;
Miss Fury—these are the lives
I want to see . . .
but with so many new female superheroes,
why do I still feel
totally
powerless?
Lawbreaker
Ray
Out of jail.
Right back to school.
Looking like a fool.
No GIANT drape.
No BIG dancing pants.
Just my ordinary shape.
Dressed like a gardener.
I look like old Papá.
Auto shop, woodshop, metal,
those teachers don’t even expect me to
graduate.
Zoot suits might be illegal soon.
The Los Angeles City Council will vote.
Do they really expect to outlaw
all that JAZZ
and HAPPINESS?
When the remedial English teacher
asks me to translate my angrily muttered
words that she overhears,
I tell her ¡órale! I mean !ándale! go on,
¡épale!
you can
do it, carnal . . .
but I can’t really explain this last word,
blood brother, cousin, kin?
She says I’m defining slang words
that don’t really exist in English,
just by adding more of the same,
so I try: Wow!
Go get ’em!
Knock ’em dead,
pal!
Then she says I’m belligerent
and trying to fight, so I end up
in detention
AS USUAL.
Concerts
Manolito
No drapes in L.A.?
I’ve traveled to lots of places,
just like Cab Calloway in his glad rags,
bright-colored eastern zoot suits instead of these
West Coast sharkskin black or charcoal
pinstripes.
Real zooters don’t need the right clothes
to dance; we just jump up on tabletops anyway!
Girls ride on shoulders, slide under boys’ legs,
then get tossed up, flipped over, leap back up,
spin around, fly, swoop down, rise
and soar!
For boys, it’s all about making the girls
look like acrobatic experts.
As long as we keep sharing this rhythm
of living, everyone feels like survivors
in wartime, ’cause that’s what we are—alive!
Playing for zooters
who won’t be allowed to wear baggy suits?
It would be a first for me, but this is Hollywood, movie land,
the glitzy world of the Palomar,
the same club where Benny Goodman himself
introduced the whole world to SWING music
on a hot summer night
way back in 1935.
Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller,
the jazz greats of every race have played here
and at the Orpheum
and the Million Dollar Theatre. . . .
All any teenage kid has to do is take a Red Line
streetcar toward downtown, then lie about age
and dance until dawn.
Black, Jewish, mexicano, Chinese,
this mixed-together dancing is the real reason
those old-fashioned white cops
hate, hate, hate
zoot suits.
They can’t stand seeing
musicians as dark as I am,
not even while these brown kids’
brave older brothers
are overseas,
fighting and dying
in segregated
brigades.
Floating Upward
The Spirit of José Díaz Speaks
Change is a wind whoosh
my life as a ghost was brief
and now no one will ever be sure
who murdered me even I
didn’t see all the faces
and knife blades
but change is a wind whoosh my life
from the day I was given to the light by Mamá
in Durango, México to the night when I was taken
from this world on a breeze of frog song and bird eyes
all those years following crops lettuce in Salinas,
tasty grapes in Parlier, then the sweet oranges of Pomona,
and dry white cotton in Firebaugh, plump purple plums
in Santa Clara, and now here, my chance to join
the U.S. Army and prove my loyalty
gone
like bird flight
sunlight
space. . . .
Our Shrinking World
Lorena
No letters from Nico.
How long has it been
since I thought of my older brother
by his little-boy-playing-outside
nickname?
Shortages at home—rationed sugar,
not to mention rubber and gasoline
for anyone lucky enough to own a car.
Factories switch
from making jukeboxes to weapons,
and from sewing dresses to stitching
lifesaving parachutes.
Even the dances are quieter, with so many
of the best musicians signing up to fight, trading
sweet melodies
for rattling
machine guns.
Knife
Marisela
Daydreaming about a handsome jazz musician
just gets me in TROUBLE, when fantasies
about romance should bring joy, not confusion.
Ay Dios, too fast, oh God, tan rápido
while my mind races, until once again
I’m ordered to SLOW down, chop LESS,
leave some fresh green spinach
for the other girls, so men can cook it
down to a slimy mess, stuff it into cans,
and sell it, calling the soggy leaves
healthy.
Keeping men in uniforms sturdy, that’s what
this spinach craze is all about, cartoons
and comic strips about Popeye the Sailor Man,
who gobbles green magic to make himself
STRONG.
Lorena, with her quiet STRENGTH,
says all we really need to think about
is JUSTICE, fairness, a world
where we could be paid
the SAME as men,
get hired for BETTER jobs,
and make enough to save
tuition
for school.
Lorena says she wants to be
a secretary, but I think if she keeps
talking like that, she’ll end up being
la jefa,
the BOSS!
A Future?
Lorena
There must be some way to pay for
secretarial school, typing lessons,
shorthand, dictation, filing, answering
telephones the way businessmen expect,
in swift,
perfect English
with no accent at all,
not even the occasional
¡Ay Dios!
to plead for help
from a shared God
who surely must
understand
every
language.
Dancing at the All Nations Club
Marisela
Ray assures me that it’s okay
to dance with anyone of any race,
even off-duty musicians,
dark or light.
So I learn new steps from back east,
bailando con el cubano who wears
s
uits as bright as a sunny sky,
gold or turquoise, depending
on the music, wild big band
or casual jam session, either way
I practice FLYING as I LEAP
over his shoulders,
slide low beneath him, then RISE UP
feeling weightless
and FREE,
even though this is a church club
with stern old ladies watching, little kids giggling,
and every once in a while, my bored sister
sighing, Ay Dios.
What would the nosy crowd say if they knew
that I’m interested in more than just dancing . . . ?
City Life
Ray
If you can’t dance
with your neighbors,
you live in the wrong
place.
¡Ritmo!
Manolito
Back on the island
I played congas and bongós,
but now in this traveling big band,
I focus on kettle drums and cymbals,
metallic, not wood and goatskin
rumbling and tapping so naturally
against my hands, fingers and palms
transformed into sound waves. . . .
When white sailors call me Snow,
I tell them to use
my name—but I can see
that some who come
from southern states
seem to really think
I’m being too bold for a dark foreigner,
so I play faster to trip their steps,
and I dance closer when la mexicana
chooses me after my shift ends and another
island drummer takes my place playing el ritmo,
the afrocubano rhythm that makes people
of any color
fly
slide
spin!
Dancing doesn’t seem like a quiet enough way
to really get to know someone, but we find
plenty of chances
to talk
hold hands
ask questions
whisper answers. . . .
Front-Page News
Reporter #1
After the Sleepy Lagoon trial dragged on
and sentences were finally declared, a bunch
of Mexican kids went to San Quentin for life.
Now overseas battles fill every page,
so I dream up a new angle, and even though
it makes me feel old-fashioned, it’s the law,
so I use it, reminding my readers that the California