by John Rechy
“Alicia Gonzalez is engaged to the famous magazine columnist in San Francisco. I bet she won’t be when he finds out who she really is.”
As I prepared to return to the states, there were these considerations: I would have to return to El Paso, a cemetery of cruel memories, and cherished ones; a place of endless windstorms and enraged tumbleweeds, of hot desert and a beautiful azure sky like no other I would ever see, and of the grand mountains I had climbed. In El Paso, I would have to face my mother with the news that I would be leaving again, after a brief stay, I would have to harden myself against her tears, and perhaps even more so, against mine. I would again leave her in the projects—where, I reminded myself without washing away the sense of impotence—she lived proudly. I would give her my separation pay, and that would pull her through until I could send her money again. I intended to work while I went to school on the GI Bill—in New York. I had applied to Columbia.
Wilford would eventually be there. Even with the knowledge I had gained about myself in Paris, I would not—could not—pretend to reciprocate his feelings. I loved him, yes, but, I knew, he had been in love with me. Would what I could give him, the love of friendship, be enough?
It took five days to return by ship to New York, from where, with only a glimpse of the city viewed out of the windows of waiting army buses, all released soldiers were taken to Camp Chaffee, Arkansas, for official discharge. Again, the forms to fill out, the equipment to return, the desultory formations to keep. Soon, soon, it would end.
The day I was to be discharged—that would happen in a few hours—there was only one more office to stop at for final papers, and I was on my way there now. I was feeling so recklessly free from the army already that I opened the top two buttons of my khaki shirt. I placed my cap askew, I—
“Hey, soldier!” A jeep had screeched to a stop beside me. A sergeant was driving. A lieutenant sat beside him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing going around like a tramp, soldier!” The lieutenant jumped out of his jeep, standing before me only inches away. “Are you drunk, private?”
“I’m discharged,” I said. That would be true in less than an hour.
“You’re still in uniform,” shouted the lieutenant, who was only slightly older than I, “and as long as you are, you belong to the army, private, and that means you wear the uniform proudly!”
The fact that I was almost free and that this stupid lieutenant could still assert his authority over me made it difficult for me to breathe, to form any words.
“I can have you court-martialed!”
The sergeant jumped out of the car, standing behind me, ready to execute whatever orders the lieutenant might issue.
“You understand, private!”
Of all the times of defiance, this was the most dangerous. In a moment this lieutenant would order me arrested, handcuffed, taken to the brig; would charge me with insubordination—and this petty encounter would grind on toward a court-martial. I wanted to resist, needed to resist, had to resist.
“You understand me, private!”
I breathed deep. I formed the words I would aim at him, whatever the result, including the word I would use now for the first time in my life: Fuck you, son of a bitch!
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I understand.”
Hurriedly, I adjusted my shirt, the tie, the cap.
“That’s better, private,” he said, and hopped back into the jeep with the sergeant and rode off.
I was breathing again, with relief and rage, relief because I had guaranteed that in less than an hour I would be out of the army, rage that I had acquiesced in one last despised order, that I had compromised my cherished defiance.
* * *
Discharged, I got off the bus in Dallas. I would stay there for a couple of days at the YMCA. I wanted to go home looking relaxed, not worn down by the last encounters in the army. Too, I wanted to advance toward El Paso slowly, to enhance the awareness, with distance, that I was leaving behind those years in the army that were already blurring for me, a period of my life I would soon be able to separate myself from, as if all of it had happened to someone else.
I stayed at the main YMCA in a city of tall buildings, slurred accents. It was hot; very hot; very, very hot. Fat clouds roamed the sky promising rain, bringing only humidity. It clung to the streets, waves of heat radiating visibly.
I went to the sundeck of the Y. There were about twenty men, twenty bodies; some looked naked in tiny bikinis like posing straps. Most were young. A few older men roamed about as if to find an elusive place to take. I placed a towel on the concrete ground. I took off my shirt, socks, and shoes. I lay back. A man moved over next to me. I shut my eyes, aware of the same muted currents I had located in Paris.
When I had had enough sun, I picked up my towel and clothes and returned to my room. Still in his trunks, the man who had lain next to me on the sundeck was following me.
I left the door to my room slightly ajar.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
“Sure.”
I sat on the small bed. He sat next to me. He placed his hand on my groin.
I pulled back harshly.
“What the hell—?”
“I’m too tired.”
“Fuck you, creep. You’re not all that hot, punk.”
I welcomed his disdain. I deserved it. Why had I done this again!—encouraged only to reject. I did know this now: what had presented itself, in Paris and here in Dallas, was not what I was looking for, at least not yet. But I had taken another step into the tempting world of men, only men. What essential step was next before I joined it?
I returned to El Paso.
“M’ijo!” my mother cried joyously, opening her arms, to welcome me, instant tears covering her face. She looked lovelier than ever.
“Mama!” I said, surrendering to her embrace, enclosing it tightly with my own.
“I’ve missed you so much, m’ijo,” she said.
“I’ve missed you very much too, mama.”
“But now you’re back home; the Holy Mother has heard my prayers.”
“I’m home now, mama, yes.”
That night, with my brother Robert, divorced for the second time, we had dinner. In anticipation of my arrival, my mother had ordered from the butcher the best cut of filet mignon. Robert topped it with hot chili.
I went to see my sister Olga.
“Sister!”
“How handsome you look, little brother! I’ve missed you so much.”
“I’ve missed you, too. How beautiful you are, sister!”
“I know,” she said, “more beautiful—no?—now that there’s more of me.”
She had learned how to cook—soup.
We talked about what had occurred since I left—her husband had a better job; Louie, her boy, was enrolled in school; and she was pregnant again. She asked how I had been able to overcome the army—“You, so finicky,” she said. I told her good things only. “I went in a private and I came out a private,” I said, with the curious triumph that this gave me, a testament to my maneuvers to keep moving from place to place.
“Well … Oh, why pretend?” she said, “I know you want to know about Alicia Gonzales.”
“Isabel Franklin.”
“Alicia Gonzales. She is crueler than ever. No matter how Tina tries to contact her—”
“You told me Tina had given up, didn’t care.”
“How can a mother stop caring?”
I smiled; the tomboy who had protected me had become a mother.
“Go on, then,” I said, expecting that she would decorate, with grave emotion and suspense, what had occurred.
“That man—isn’t he a gossip columnist?”
“Yes.” I knew she was talking about Bert Schwartz, the man who had in his magazine column referred to the “beautiful mystery woman” from New Orleans by way of Spain.
“Don’t you think he’d know what everybody in El Paso knows?”
It did seem ill
ogical that the columnist who often unearthed deceptions would not know who Isabel Franklin really was. What I didn’t understand was why my sister thought it should matter so particularly now to him.
“She married him,” my sister said.
My brother Robert lent me his car, a Ford. He had become foreman at the factory he worked for. He had been elected president of his union three times, by acclamation. “Whatever you need, brother,” he reiterated, as he had from my earliest years.
I visited with my brother Yvan, always, for me, a stranger I was fond of, felt warm toward, even loved. I visited my sister Blanca, and we remembered how she had coached me to sing—“in case she answers”—after I had written Shirley Temple offering to partner her, but the little bitch never answered.
I parked my brother’s car and got out, to walk familiar blocks. In reaction to the army, I had not shaved for a couple of days. I had unbuttoned my shirt, three buttons now.
“Hey, boy!”
I couldn’t believe it—the tone of the lieutenant in Arkansas who had threatened to court-martial me on the day of my separation from the army.
A squad car—the El Paso police—had stopped as I had been about to cross the street back to my brother’s Ford, to drive to the mountains I had so often climbed.
“Yeah?”
They hopped out, hands on their holsters. An Anglo and a Mexican—the latter startled me. Not too long ago, a Mexican cop was rare.
“Where you from? Whatcha doing in El Paso?”
My appearance had branded me an outsider, a potential troublemaker as they saw it.
“I live here,” I said.
“You live here?” one challenged.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
I told them.
“You don’t look from here,” one said. But they had removed their hands from their holsters.
“You working?”
“I just got out of the army.”
“Not working,” the one said to the other. “Hustlin’ your way to Los Angeleez, huh?” he sneered at me.
“Vagrant,” the other said. “No visible means of support,” he recited.
I knew what they were plotting. Generalized vagrancy laws were used everywhere, whether the details were legal or not.
“What’s your name?”
“John Rechy.”
“Rechy?” said the Anglo.
“You related to Yvan and Robert?” the Mexican cop asked.
“They’re my brothers.”
“Professor Rechy?—he’s your father?” the Anglo asked.
Professor Rechy; yes, that was what everyone still called him. “Yes, he was my father.”
“Sorry, kid,” said the Anglo cop. Both smiled at me. They walked back to their car.
“Stay out of trouble.”
“And get a shave.”
Despite the quick anger that would always be aroused when I was confronted by arbitrary authority, I had discovered this: I could look like a transient, an attractive transient.
I could barely face my mother when I told her that I was going to school in New York. We were sitting on the couch in the small living room where I slept while I was there.
“I love you so much, my son,” she said, “I miss you so much. Couldn’t you go to school here?”
“And I love you just as much, mama, and miss you a lot. I need to go to a better school. I want to be successful so I can give you what you never had, what you deserve for giving me so much.”
“I don’t need anything more,” she said staunchly.
I felt myself wavering. Yes, I could go back to school here, I could—No! I had to leave.
She moistened one of her fingers with her saliva.
“Remember when I used to curl your eyelashes?”
“Yes, I remember.”
She touched my eyelashes with her finger. “That’s why they’re so long and curled now.”
Under the GI Bill, I qualified for full college tuition. Anticipating acceptance, I applied for a writers’ workshop taught by Pearl Buck, only as a possible way to connect with someone or other who might help me toward publication. She required a sample of work for admission. I had already sent her the first chapters from Pablo! High on Wilford’s enthusiasm for it—I kept putting off plans to connect with him again—I had no doubt she would welcome me. I was waiting only for the official notice.
The dreaded time arrived for more painful good-byes. My sister Olga’s stomach was full with her new child. She still looked beautiful. After agreeing to forward immediately any notice from Columbia, she reminded me: “So long, remember? Never goodbye, little brother.”
I tried to kiss her; her full stomach interfered. I manipulated the kiss sideways. “So long, beautiful sister.”
With my duffel bag containing all the clothes I thought I needed—and with the typewriter my father had given me—I waited outside the government projects for my brother to drive me to the bus station. I hoped I would never return here to see my mother still in the projects. Now she stood next to me. Robert honked for me.
My mother blessed me. “Que Dios te bendiga, m’ijo.”
* * *
With the fifty dollars I had kept from my separation money, and the priceless ruby ring my father had given me, I took the bus to New York. Not yet there, in Urbana—where Wilford was when he had last written to me—I impulsively got off. I would contact him!
No, not yet, not when I was just drifting.
I wandered about a well-kept neighborhood. I passed a lawn overgrown with grass, despite the elegant house it was a part of. I knocked at the door. A coifed lady came to the door. If she had a lawn mower, I would mow her lawn, I said—or I could clean her garage.
“Are you a student at the university?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I lied easily.
She hired me to do both chores. I was twenty dollars richer. I asked whether she knew someone else I might do similar work for. She called a neighbor. For the neighbor, I mowed the lawn and pulled weeds. When I left Urbana, I was fifty dollars richer, with tips.
When I stepped out of the bus at the Thirty-fourth Street Greyhound station in Manhattan, I was overwhelmed by terror. Where would I stay? What was I doing here? A newspaper headline warned that a rare hurricane was threatening the city. Rain was already pounding against the windows of the station. A cop there kept staring at me ambiguously, perhaps misinterpreting my obvious bewilderment.
“Can you recommend someplace for me to stay?” I asked him, to dissipate his unnease about my intentions.
“Try the Sloane House YMCA,” he said, pointing. “It’s just down the street, kid. You won’t even get wet.”
21
I checked in at the Sloane House YMCA, paying a week in advance for a room. From a public telephone in the lobby, I called my sister Olga, to give her my temporary address and to connect with a badly needed friendly voice.
“Little brother!”
“Beautiful sister! Is my mother OK?”
“Yes, sure, don’t worry, we’re all watching over her. Little brother, you received that letter you were waiting for, from that Chinese woman.”
I was too eager to hear about Pearl Buck’s acceptance to laugh at my sister’s confusion. “Please open it; read it to me.”
I heard her tear open the envelope. There was a puzzling pause.
“Little brother—”
“Sister?”
“Little brother, she says—uh—let me read it again. I think she says—”
“She turned me down?” There was only that one reason for her hesitation. I accepted the awful fact immediately: bad news becomes assertive the moment it is spoken.
“I think so, but—” My sister read to me: “‘I have no doubt you’re talented, but from the sample you sent me, I don’t believe I could help you in your writing. I wish you the best.”
“Fuck her,” I said.
“Little brother!”
“Sorry, sister. I don’t really car
e. I wasn’t going to take her class anyway. She’s not a very good writer, you know.”
I managed more small talk, interspersing it with questions about whether my mother was really all right.
Now what? In the tiny room I had rented, I lay in my shorts on the small bed, not moving, trying to cool off. Now what? I felt lonesome, afraid. Shoved harshly every which way by the wind, heated rain pounded the windows. Now what?
It pleased me to remember that I had never read anything by Pearl Buck and hadn’t even seen the movie made from one of her books. That provided a few moments of respite.
Increasingly hot and unnerved, in my shorts and with a towel, I made my way to the showers, hoping to drench away some of my growing anxiety and sadness. I told myself that the strange content of my novel—overtones of incest, narcissism, rampant witchcraft, an old man obsessed with a boy—had frightened the woman away. Besides, whom did I trust, Wilford or her?
I walked along the hallway past a half-open door; someone was inside. In the shower, I welcomed the cold water on my body. A rough-looking bulky man entered. In a glimpse, I saw tattoos on both his arms. The man removed his towel and got under the shower next to me. I reached for my towel, to dry myself and leave.
“Hey!”
“Hi.”
“Take you out to dinner—how about that?”
I was almost broke—I hadn’t even let myself check how much money I still had.
“Come to my room when you’re dressed.”
I returned to my room. Taking my time so that the man would not think I was anxious, I dressed in jeans and T-shirt.
“Come in, kid,” the man responded to my knocking at the designated door, the room I had walked past earlier; he had probably seen me. I went in. Dressed, he sat before the small table provided in every room. Before him was a bag of food, recently delivered, as I could tell from the smell of hamburgers and french fries. Next to the two bags were bottles of Coke. My stomach turned at the assault of mixed odors.
