Tropic of Orange

by Karen Tei Yamashita

  the coffee and the sugarcane.

  And then the music and its rhythms,

  pre-Columbian treasure,

  the halls of Moctezuma and all 40,000 Aztecs slain—

  their bodies floating in the canals.

  In slipped the burned and strangled body of the

  Incan king Atahualpa in a chamber filled with gold.

  And then came smallpox, TB, meningitis, E coli,

  influenza, and 25 million dead Indians.

  After that everything clamored forth:

  the spirit of ideologies thought to be dead

  and of the dead themselves—

  of Bolívar, of Che, Francisco de Morazán,

  Benito Juárez, Pablo Neruda, Sandino, Romero,

  Pancho Villa, and Salvador Allende,

  of conquistadors, generals, and murderers,

  African slaves, freedom fighters, anthropologists,

  latifundistas, ecomartyrs, terrorists, and saints.

  And every rusting representation of an

  American gas guzzler from 1952 to the present

  and all their shining hubcaps.

  Then came the rain forests,

  El Niño, African bees, panthers, sloths, llamas,

  monkeys, and pythons.

  Everything and everybody got in lines—

  citizens and aliens—

  the great undocumented foment,

  the Third World War,

  the gliding wings of a dream.

  CHAPTER 34:

  Visa CardFinal Destination

  Bobby eyeballs the Visa card drag itself through the slit. Jus’ like any Americano. Shopping Tijuana. Chinese connection’s smooth operation. It’s a onetime dumping fee. Free the cuz for half-price. An easy five thou. Put it on the plastic. No muss. No fuss. It’s a complete laundry.

  Bobby got ’em down fifty percent. It’s the limit on his Visa. Forget the paperwork. Forget the China to Chinatown deal. Bobby gonna smuggle the cousin across himself. He figures it won’t be even near another five thou. Ten percent of that should do it. She could be his daughter. Who’s gonna know?

  Been a while since Bobby brought the wife over. But that was different. He was legal, gonna get married. Just a matter of paperwork. Got him a lawyer to do the business. Her brother Pepe always saying Rafaela got lucky. Places ’long the border everybody knows, every woman don’t get raped, she don’t pass. The price she pays. Next up from the women, it’s the poor Indian types. They don’t know the language, don’t know the ropes. It’s gonna be the border rats robbing them. Cross the river. Make a run for it down Zapata Canyon. Lose their money. Their shoes. The clothing off their bodies. Maybe nobody gonna see these folks again. Bunch come floating up the river. It’s a fourteen mile zone. All lit up. It’s a fiesta. Maybe you needing gloves for the trip. Work the barbed wire. Maybe a little barbecue pollo for your last supper. Chiclets? Somebody given up crossing’s selling it to you for a price. On the other side, the migra arrests 1,000 per night. Puts the chivos under thermal imaging. It’s high technology with a revolving door. If you lucky, Border Patrol chases you down. Puts you in a wagon and dumps you back. But maybe you gonna be one of them gets shot.

  Bobby checks out the market. It’s $100 to cross the river. $350 to cross I-5. $500 gets you all the way to L.A. Bobby figures the cuz gets across like his daughter. But just in case, he gets some documentation. Birth certificate. That should do it.

  “What’s your name?”

  “You don’t know my name?” The cousin looks worried. Maybe her problems aren’t over. Maybe this skinny man’s a bad man.

  “They say your name’s Xiayue, but that could be a phony name.”

  “That is my name.”

  “Are you related to me?” Bobby takes a close look. He looks at her sad eyes.

  “I don’t know. Are you my uncle?”

  “I don’t know. But now I am your father. You must call me father now. That is how we are going to get across.”

  “I am already across. They got me off the boat.”

  “It’s not the final destination. Where did you think you were going?”

  “America.”

  “So you still have to cross the border. Actually, it’s right over there.” Bobby points north. “Not far at all.”

  “My brother said he would meet me there. That’s where there’s work for him. He said he’d find me.”

  “Well, maybe he made it. You never know.” Bobby’s looking at Xiayue’s long pigtails. “Maybe we’ve got to cut these off. It’s not the style. We need to get you some other clothing too.”

  “My brother knew how to swim. I know how to swim too. I should have jumped with him.” Kid looks fierce.

  Bobby don’t know about the brother, but maybe she’d’ve made it. Bobby’s thinking she’s tough, but he’s still asking the questions. “Why did you come along? Why didn’t you stay home?”

  “There’s only my brother and me. My parents are both dead. I would have to come sooner or later. That’s what they said. I came sooner.”

  Bobby thinks for some, there’s a plan. For others, there’s none. Like the cuz here. The brother’s gonna work. Work like all the celestials before him. Put down rail ties. Pick oranges. Wash shirts. Sew garments. Stir-fry chop suey. This li’l celestial here, there’s no plan. She just came sooner. Bobby’s thinking what kinda plan he had when he was her age. When he stepped off the plane. It wasn’t any plan either. Just gonna survive was all. Now he’s thinking what’s the plan now? Still no plan. Rafaela said pretty soon he was gonna work himself to death. Was that the plan? Rafaela didn’t want to watch him die. So she left.

  In the U.S., can’t work much if you’re twelve. So right away, he’s sixteen. Li’l brother gets put in school. Teacher finds out there’s no mom or pop. Who’s signing your report card? Teacher finds out it’s a twelve-year-old parent. Like parachute kids except the folks’s poor. Makes Bobby quit work and go to school, too. Puts the boys up and sends them to school. They go to school with the Mexicans and the centroamericanos. Even get some religion at La Placita. That’s why Bobby gets a latinoamericano education. Gets in good with the vatos locos. A taste of la vida loca. Who’d a thought? But that was the plan, wasn’t it? Surviving. Maybe he and the little cuz on the same plan. Getting by. It’s no plan at all.

  Bobby takes the little cuz to a T.J. beauty shop. Get rid of the pigtails. Get rid of the Chinagirl look. Get a cut looking like Rafaela. That’s it. Now get her a T-shirt and some jeans and some tennis shoes. Jeans say Levi’s. Shoes say Nike. T-shirt says Malibu. That’s it.

  Border’s nothing but desks and lines of people on linoleum floors. Bobby’s in line like one more tourist. He’s got the cuz holding a new Barbie doll in a box, like she bought it cheap in T.J. Official eyeballs Bobby’s passport and waves them through. That’s it. Two celestials without a plan. Drag themselves through the slit jus’ like any Americanos. Just like Visa cards.

  CHAPTER 35:

  JamGreater L.A.

  Despite everything, every sports event, concert, and whatnot was happening at the same time. L.A. marathoners slouched by the droves across the finish line at the Coliseum. At the Rose Bowl: UCLA versus USC; the Bruin mascot had been carried off the field with heat stroke, and the Trojan horse was tied up after throwing its sweaty rider. The Clippers were attempting a comeback in overtime at the Sports Arena. It was the end of the seventhinning stretch, and Nomo fans at Chavez Ravine hunkered down with their cold beers and Dodger dogs. Scottie Pippen fouled Shaq who sank a free throw for the Lakers at the Forum in the last seconds. The Trekkie convention warped into five at the L.A. Convention Center. Bud Girls paraded between boxing matches at the Olympic Auditorium. Plácido Domingo belted Rossini at the Dorothy Chandler under the improbable abstract/minimal/baroque direction of Peter Sellers. At the Shrine, executive producer Richard Sakai accepted an Oscar for the movie version of The Simpsons. The helicopter landed for the 944th time on the set of Miss Saigon at the Ahmanson, and B
eauty smacked the Beast at the Shubert. Chinese housewives went for the big stakes in pai gow in the Asian room at the Bicycle Club. Live-laughter sitcom audiences and boisterous crowds for the daytime and nighttime talks filled every available studio in Hollywood and Burbank. Thousands of fans melted away with Julio Iglesias at the Universal Amphitheater. Robert McNeil and The Jubilee Choir were jumping gospel at the Greek, and movie music nostalgia brimmed from the Hollywood Bowl with John Mauceri conducting. King Tut had returned to LACMA; Andy Warhol to MOCA. The AIDS walk 5/10K run was moving through West Hollywood. Andrei Codrescu read from “Zombification” at the Central Library. Surfers kicked butt with punks in leather and chains at The Lollapalooza in Orange County. Chicanos marched from the Plaza de la Raza down Whittier to César Chávez in solidarity. Volleyball teams vied for titles all along the beaches from Malibu to the Hollywood Riviera. Street fairs and food fairs and farmers’ markets bustled with gawkers in every park and parking lot. Endless lines extending down major freeways waited to get into Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Magic Mountain, Universal Studios, and Raging Waters for their half-price specials. Drag races were underway, deafening the Pomona Raceway, and across the way, a 4-H demonstration of cow milking gathered a crowd at the Los Angeles County Fair. Japanese Americans reenacted the historic 1942 relocation of thousands of legal aliens at the Santa Anita Racetrack. Sin Ying Chang and his wife waited in a line five blocks long for the long-awaited premiere of a new Spielberg film. Political rallies and benefit dinners at one thousand dollars a plate for several Republican presidential candidates clapped themselves toward dessert at the Sheraton, the Hilton, and the Bonaventure. The middle class clamored in malls for summer sales; the poor clamored at swap meets. Chris & Qris inquired at will-call about orchestra seats for Pizzicato 5 at the Japan America Theater. Across town, the Cirque du Soleil was back for the umpteenth time at the Big Tent at the Santa Monica pier. Meanwhile, Stomp stomped trash cans at the Wadsworth. And the horses were running neck and neck at Hollywood Park. . . . Everybody was doing their thing in the greatest leisure world ever devised.

  Manzanar saw this thing like a gigantic balloon swelling larger and larger. The most horrific aspect of it was that it would all end at the same time—a Caltrans nightmare. One more L.A. disaster. Of course, this was not planned, although everything else had been, months in advance—subscription tickets, guest invitations, the yearly semifinals, the predictable events of every summer in L.A. Was it possible that anyone could be bored? Individual random and chaotic acts of planning. Coincidental same-day events. Yet how was it possible that everyone could be physically there with the live action and not watching it on TV? How was it possible to leave commercial time—Madison Avenue’s wagging tongue—to the infirm and invalid? What did they care about Ford pickups and Nikes? Yes, it was a big screw-up. But only Manzanar could see the undulating patterns and the changing geography corrupting the sun’s shadows, confusing time, so that all events should happen and end at the same time.

  Perhaps it should have been a comforting idea to Manzanar. A kind of solidarity: all seven million residents of Greater L.A. out on the town, away from their homes, just like him, outside. In the next moment, they would all cram their bodies through exits, down escalators, through arcades, lobbies, and turnstiles, all partake of the outside. And in the next moment after that, they would all head toward their cars, their buses, their motorcycles and limousines, wend their way through giant parking lots several miles square or stories high or deep, all jam their bodies into vehicles of every size, all slam their doors, all buckle their belts, all gun their motors, all simultaneously—a percussive orchestration that even Manzanar found incredible. And CLICK, one two, SLIDE, three four, FLOMP, one two, BLAM, three four, SNAP, one two VROOOM, three four. Just amazing. And then the syncopated REAR VIEW CHECK IT OUT and a one and a two, and AC UP TO THE MAX and a three and a four, and CREEP ON OUT and a five and a six, and MERGE, MERGE, MERGE. They all converged everywhere all at once. Man’s most consistent quest for continuing technology in all its treaded ramifications jammed every inch of street, driveway, highway, and freeway. And Manzanar, loathe to lose any moment, writhed with exhilaration and christened it all: the greatest jam session the world had ever known.

  To envision the automobile as an orchestral device with musical potential was an idea lost upon the motorist within. In moments such as these, the mechanical and the human elements of Manzanar’s orchestra became blurred. The car became a thing with intelligence. He envisioned the person within as the pulpy brain of each vehicle, and when the defenseless body emerged, for whatever reason, he often felt surprise and disgust. A memory was triggered, and he was once again a masked surgeon, cutting through soft tissue. He remembered intimately the geography of the human body, and that delicate, complex thing within each car frightened him.

  So when the inevitable impossibility of moving in the greatest traffic jam the world had ever seen made people GROAN one two, UNLATCH DOORS three four, EMERGE five six, Manzanar gripped his baton like a knife. He saw them all with their moving mouths speaking out of sync, as in a Toho Film production of Godzilla, with a strange dubbed language not their own. And yet, it was a babel he understood.

  SATURDAY:

  Queen of Angels

  CHAPTER 36:

  To PerformAngel’s Flight

  By the time Arcangel reached San Ysidro, he no longer really had to pull the bus. The great multitude behind pushed it for him. Pushed it and its passengers and the little boy sitting on his suitcase with the orange. Pushed the Tropic ever northward. Still attached by hooks and cables to the bus, however, Arcangel—naked to the waist—continued to press forward toward his destination: The Village of Our Lady Queen of Angels on the River Porciúncula, the second largest city of México, also known as Los Angeles.

  “Which way to the Cajón Pass?” he inquired along the way. “I am told Earth has become soft again, and there is a way through the pass to the great basin beyond.”

  “Go back, old man,” people warned. “It’s not what you think. What do you think you will do there anyway?”

  “I will sell my art. They say there is free trade now, so here I am. I will perform. I will read my poetry. I am making this pilgrimage to perform my greatest work yet.”

  “In the name of the Virgin of Guadalupe, go back old man. Do you have a green card? Do you have a social security card? Do you have any money? When you get there, you will be unprotected. If you get sick, no one can give you care. If you have children, no one will teach them. In the name of Tonantzin and the memory of Juan Diego, go back! You are illegal.”

  “Is it a crime to be poor? Can it be illegal to be a human being?”

  The crowd behind him agreed. They chanted, “Is it a crime to be poor? Is it a crime to be poor?”

  But the people already north warned, “Listen to what we say. We have lived here all our lives, even before the others. Our ancestors hunted the woolly mammoth and the saber-toothed tiger. And still we do not belong here.”

  But the old man was unperturbed. “Tell me. Where is East L.A.?”

  And the crowd behind, “East L.A.! East L.A.!”

  “Oh, Tío Taco. You’re nothin’ but a lazy old freeloading mes’kin around here.”

  Arcangel looked offended. “I may seem old to you, but I am still a virile old man. Let me show you.” He held out his strong penis for everyone to see. The crowd behind him cheered.

  “Put that away, old man. Old Latin lovers are not wanted here.”

  “I have heard there are so many sights to see along the way. Sea World and Bubbles, for example. General Dynamics and Camp Pendleton. The nuclear reactor at San Onofre is described as two giant white tits embedded in the seascape in a cloud of milky steam. Perhaps you could point them out.”

  “What do you think you are? A tourist?”

  “Can’t you see? I am a pilgrim.”

  “We are pilgrims! We are pilgrims!” shouted everyone.

  “Old man, the on
ly pilgrims here came on the Mayflower. And that was a long time ago.”

  “Ah yes, I remember those pilgrims. I was there at Plymouth Rock when they arrived.”

  “Old man, you say

  you were with Sitting Bull at Custer’s Last Stand,

  at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and

  on San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt in 1898.

  You say

  you sailed down the Magdalena River with the

  dying Simón Bolívar.

  You were with Che in Bolivia in 1967

  when he was killed, and likewise

  with Leon Trotsky just as he was stabbed in 1940.

  You saw Tachito Somoza assassinated in Asunción.

  You knew Eva Perón, and

  you marched with the Mothers of the Disappeared.

  You say you flew in 1906 with Santos Dumont and

  sailed with Darwin to Galapagos.

  You even kissed the Spider Woman.

  You were everywhere every time. How is that?”

  “Strange how things happen the way they do.” And Arcangel continued on, taking the elevator to the top of Angel’s Flight. It was one of those odd moments in liberation theology in which a messenger named Arcangel stood at the top of Angel’s Flight, looking out over the City of Angels with his arms raised to the heavens and his body fastened to an entire continent.

  Sol scrambled out of the bus and accompanied the old man as if he were his tiny assistant or the monkey dancing to the tune of a hand organ. He sat obediently on the suitcase while Arcangel performed tricks of magic, prophecy, comedy, and political satire. He turned a poor man on the street into a dapper gentleman. He produced a bouquet of roses for a young mother. A young man was brought to tears upon hearing the unknown story of his past and his future. Thousands pondered the meaning of modernity, and an old man died laughing.

  And then he introduced the famous professional wrestler, El Gran Mojado, who miraculously appeared from nowhere and announced his scheduled bout in the Ultimate Wrestling Championship known to everyone as El Contrato Con América. Like chile con carne, Arcangel said. Flyers were passed out, information verbally reproduced and distributed almost simultaneously with the frenzy of a kind of information saturation. It was probably the last time millions of people were instantly informed of a piece of news without the mechanical aid of television or radio or telephone or newspaper. The entirety of the message was disseminated in a thousand languages, including Spanglish, ebonics, and pidgin, to everyone.