Jazz Owls_A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots
Page 5
foretold by an upside-down exclamation
or question mark!
¿Will today once again
be a waking NIGHTMARE
of violent
SAILOR RIOTS?
¿What about TOMORROW?
¿Can this CRAZY city ever
feel SAFE?
June 8
Papá
Nearly a hundred kids were arrested
and only two servicemen.
Blowing off steam, that’s the way politicians
are defending the sailors’ actions, in all those
pointless newspaper interviews
and on la radio.
One of them even quotes an Army Flying School
pilot trainee who describes his part in the riots
as “cleaning up L.A.”
¡En mi opinión, it was poison that seeped
from places where people still think
the Civil War
never ended!
¡Watcha!
Ray
I blame those cops who SEIZED my SHOES.
They set the hateful example, started that ugly
pattern,
showed me that I’m not seen
as HUMAN in their eyes.
Sailors were watching; they saw how easily
a kid like me could be defeated, just by the
NAKEDNESS
of FEET.
Pos, I promise it won’t happen again.
From now on I’ll ALWAYS
be armed
with caution.
Back to Work
Lorena
Eleanor Roosevelt, the president’s wife,
called it a race riot, so now city officials say,
“That’s not true, we like Mexicans, just look
how we go to Olvera Street to eat tacos
and wear big ranchero hats, listening
to mariachi music, so lively
and cheerful.”
Well, I feel like our brains are being used as piñatas,
with everyone trying to break open my thoughts
so they can understand mexicanos, but by now
they should know me.
I’m the one
who makes it possible
for sailors and soldiers to eat
overseas,
where all they have
is the food
we slice
pack
and seal
into hard
round
metal
cans.
Each bite of anything
that contains
tomato sauce
spinach
or peaches
should taste
so bitter and salty
after being wildly spiced
with my fears
and
tears.
I don’t know what I can do to change anything,
but there must be some way to grow
like one of Abuela’s garden plants,
changing directions to find
sunlight.
Dancing Again
Marisela
Returning to work feels as strange as traveling
through time, trying to reach last week, before
all that VIOLENCE changed
everything. . . .
But at least Ray SURVIVED,
and Manolito, too, the best jitterbug partner
who ever helped me
break free
from gravity
to leap
twirl
SOAR
and land
safely!
If he asked me to marry him right now,
I’d shout
YES!
Locos
Manolito
Crazy, both of us.
Yes, it’s true, we’re locos,
because everyone knows
un cubano negro
can’t marry
a brown mexicana,
not here in Los Angeles,
where the law turns her
into a white girl,
even though sailors, policemen,
and reporters
treat her family like enemy
invaders.
So I’ll go out on the road,
but I’ll come back again
someday soon, when we’re a bit older
and this hate-crazed city
regains
its sanity.
Awareness
Ray
Swimming season passes without a single
submerged stroke, because my temper
feels too hot to be cooled
by water.
Is the spirit of José Díaz homeless,
still soaring above Sleepy Lagoon?
Or is he winged,
angelic,
blessed?
Can he see far beyond
this haunted
imitation
of life?
How can I ever feel normal/normal
on streets where my body was stripped,
my mind peeled, turning me into El Pelado.
If so many others hadn’t experienced
the same rage, that could be my new
nickname instead of Sombra/Shadow,
a living,
shifting,
floating
ghost.
We all have many names now, my friends
who understand one another, this group
made up of an entire neighborhood,
los carnales, the kinfolk I choose
because it’s so much easier
to understand
tangled memories
than shared birth. . . .
So each time I dance now, the steps
are my own, a pachuco hop, not the Lindy,
my new black zoot suit, bought with borrowed
money, daring those crazy sailors
to rage again—just let them try,
because this time
we’ll WIN.
Cannery Blues
Marisela
With the Sailor Riots already fading
into a troubling vagueness of memories,
los duraznos shed peach fuzz all over
my boring clothes, so I’m surprised
to find myself wishing
for more work,
not less.
I need to stay busy, or I’ll go crazy with longing!
There’s no point dressing nicely, when Mami and Papá
won’t let me stay out late anymore, only allowing us
to work day shifts, even though refusing
odd hours
puts me and Lorena at risk
for getting fired.
My worst fear isn’t more violence.
It’s never seeing Manolito
again.
Growing
Lorena
Sorrowful
danceless
joyless
both of us
are girls
who move
like gazelles
inside our tiny
zoo cage of limitations,
unable to slide
leap
glide
except within
our ever-increasingly wide
imaginations.
I can see Marisela’s new strength
as clearly as if it were built
of bricks.
This Slow Life
Marisela
Time SAGGED
as soon as he left.
I receive letters and postcards
from all over México, where he claims
that la música cubana is almost as popular
as mexicano movies are in his island
homeland.
Different accents.
Unique rhythms.
Each country of Latin America
sounds so special
the way he describes them.
&nb
sp; How will I EVER be able to travel
with his band
when I can’t even go to the
All Nations Church
dance club?
Thinking of all the words we enjoyed comparing,
I remember the way he said lechuza
instead of tecolote
when he called me a night owl,
and mondongo instead of menudo
when we shared a bowl of tripe soup,
maní in place of cacahuate
as a name for roasted peanuts,
fruta bomba, not papaya,
and pavo instead of guajolote
for a turkey on Thanksgiving. . . .
To Manolito, the word tortilla
meant “omelet,” and a bus was la guagua,
a campesino, farmworker, un guajiro. . . .
The one thing we agreed on was that el español
is NOT a foreign language in California, because
it was spoken here long before el inglés
invaded.
So we found it easy to follow the habit
of letting SWEET words mix and roll like a river
tumbling toward a waterfall
of meanings.
Decisions
Lorena
Union organizers
prowl near the cannery.
We’re warned by checkers
to keep our distance . . .
but Marisela and I finally know
our own minds.
Yes, we’re tired of taking orders
from narrow-brained men who don’t care
about my brother or my father, or the way
we’ve worked here for so long but still
can’t qualify for men’s jobs, men’s pay,
respect.
Papá decided that he isn’t old enough
to stay out of the war anymore, so he just
signed up and shipped out,
hoping to find some clue
to the disappearance
of Nicolás.
Now my sister and I stand up boldly
singing
at a secret meeting,
agreeing that it’s time
for the unity
of a union.
If we can’t receive
the same hourly wage as a man,
at least we can display our own
female
courage.
Organizing My Own Voice
Marisela
Manolito used to say that jazz
grew from SADNESS, a desperate need
to invite dance moves
into our hearts,
one wildly
hopeful rhythm
at a time, like musical
birds in a forest
creating a territory marked
by natural melodies
and wingbeats.
So when I finally have a chance
to speak my mind at a union meeting,
I say EXACTLY what I’m thinking
in the form
of a PROTEST song.
Lorena wrote the strong words,
but I’m the one who SINGS so
powerfully!
Our Demands
Lorena
We need dry floors
so we won’t slip
on peach juice,
and gloves and goggles
in hot pepper season
to keep our fingers and eyes
from burning so fiercely
that flesh turns to blisters
and vision
is blurred.
Women like Mami, at walnut packing plants,
should never lose their hammers as a punishment
for cracking hard shells too rapidly
in an effort to make more money
for their families—no, it’s not right,
forcing her to crush nuts
with bare knuckles,
bruised,
bleeding.
A Growing Chorus
Marisela
Safe, healthy working conditions.
THAT’S ALL WE ASK IN OUR HEARTFELT
SONG.
The rhythm
is traditional.
The song is
told in the form
of a ballad,
a STORY,
un corrido,
not jazz.
Soon even the older women join in,
SINGING of ESPERANZA/HOPE
for EQUALITY!
It’s Not Enough
Lorena
Safe conditions are important,
but I want more, so much more,
I need
dignidad.
Dignity.
Yes/sí, I demand my bilingual freedom/libertad
to speak openly, without fear of getting fired
for being a troublemaker.
In my opinión, the real trouble is made
by people who don’t listen
to our song,
our story.
Living Dangerously
Marisela
Some of the union songs at meetings
teach HISTORY.
1903
Mexican and Japanese farmworkers
joined together in Oxnard, SUCCEEDING
because their strike was UNIFIED.
That’s what the word unión
means.
1920s
More walkouts, but farmers never
took the refusal to work seriously, until:
1930s
Agricultural strikes ALL OVER California.
Mexican Americans, Filipinos, and dust-bowl
refugees from Oklahoma and Arkansas
ALL WORKED TOGETHER, demanding
better wages—unity, that’s what
helped them, even though
some were deported
or beaten,
even KILLED.
When The Grapes of Wrath
was being filmed, the Motion Picture Guild
showed up in Shafter, a little town near Bakersfield,
to throw a party with food and praise
for ten thousand migrant
farmworkers.
I could read that book to find out
what people are talking about when they say
that John Steinbeck
learned from US.
Pamphlets.
Mimeograph machines.
I could learn it ALL, how to SPEAK UP
on paper, translating into many
languages, so that every woman
at this cannery knows how to ask
for fair treatment.
I could be just as calm and sensible
as my sister, without losing my own eager
ENERGY!
By the time I’ve painted my first poster
asking everyone to donate blood to the Red Cross
as proof of patriotic loyalty, I feel so USEFUL
that I almost forget what it felt like to have
un novio,
a boyfriend—
Manolito,
my heart’s
true partner.
These days only my fingers
know how to
DANCE
on paper.
What Will the Future Be Like?
Lorena
While peach season leads to tomatoes,
Marisela is gradually transformed
from one person into another,
without losing her original
self.
I’m changing
too, my hair bobbed short,
my clothes so deliberately dull
that no one would dream of wearing them
to a dance.
I spend part of my paycheck on union dues
for dignity
and part on war bonds to help Papá and Nico
fight for liberty
from the Nazis’ hateful ways . . .
but who will struggle for f
reedom from racial hatred
here
at home?
Scarred
Ray
None of those boys who were
PEELED
during the Sailor Riots
will ever be able to forget
how we
vanished.
When your clothes are STRIPPED AWAY
by raging strangers, something invisible
happens inside your rib cage.
¡Corazón!
Heart!
That’s what I exposed
by SURVIVING.
So now when I fight, each PUNCH
is like a dance move, natural
and strategically planned,
all at the same rhythmic TIEMPO/TIME.
Expelled from School
Ray
Kicked out.
Busted.
Booted.
Defeated.
Too many battles
with other angry guys,
carnales—brotherlike neighbors
who got peeled
and ended up
scarred
scared
lonely
just
like
me.
Swing Shift
Lorena
Deciding to leave the cannery is easy.
One of our neighbors helps me apply
to a parachute factory so far out in the desert
that we have to share the price of an old car
and take turns learning to drive,
instead of relying on buses
and streetcars.
Sewing is a skill all the girls know,
taught by our grandmothers when we were little.
My stitches are perfect, the parachute cloth
so fiercely strong that I feel certain
this sharp needle and sturdy thread
will save lives,
maybe my own.
Yes, why shouldn’t women
learn to fly, just like men?
We sit in a circle, female workers
from so many places, dark and light
together.
Some were born in Mississippi,
others are refugees from Armenia, Russia,
Poland, but there aren’t any language barriers
when we dream
of seeing
our parachutes
on newsreels,
unfolding over
the grateful
smiles
of rescued
pilots.
Signs