Whatever they throw hits the sidewalk. The boys run. Tony, overweight and clumsy, trips and hits the ground hard. A deafening explosion. Rickie waits for the pain as he runs down the sidewalk. Nothing. Cherry bomb or an M-80. A police car races by, its siren just beginning to whoop. Another pulls up.
“Over here. Quick. You. Get back here. Hands up. On the hood. Quick. Get up, kid. Right now.”
The boys do as they’re told. Tony rubs his forehead, his face contorted; he looks like he wants to cry. A blow to each ankle kicks their legs apart. Outside lights and living room lights go on. People come out to stand at their doors, wakened by the explosion, the sirens, the yelling. The boys lean over the hood of the police car in the glow of the flashing blue and red lights.
“Are we going to find anything illegal in your pockets?”
The boys shake their heads. The cops pat them down, remove their wallets from their pockets.
“I.D.’s?” the older cop asks. The younger one hands the ID’s to the older. He gets back inside the car.
“Where you coming from?”
“The UA,” Tony says in an injured voice. “Just walking home. Not doing nothing.”
The cop who asks the question is young, maybe not even thirty yet. He has a scar on the right side of an otherwise smooth, handsome face that goes from the corner of his mouth up his cheek almost to his eye. The scar pulls his mouth slightly into a permanent look of puzzlement. He looks at the boys mildly, without the stony contempt they often encounter from school police or other North Hollywood Division officers.
“How many shows did you guys see?” he asks to relieve the tension.
“Three,” Alex offers.
“Mmm,” he says. “Used to do that, too.” Rickie reads the name on his badge—Padilla. “Couldn’t do it now. Hurts my eyes.”
No one responds, unused as they are to this kind of conversation from a cop. He, in turn, is made uncomfortable by their silence and looks at his partner in the car.
“We were just walking home,” Alex says, realizing that they might have missed an opportunity. “No one’s got a license, no car. You know. We weren’t doing anything, sir. Those guys…”
“I know. We’ve been chasing them around for a while now. I don’t think they have anything except for the cherry bombs. No weapons.” His partner gives him a thumbs-up sign from inside the patrol car.
“You guys can relax now.”
Thinking that they can relax because the people in the car don’t have weapons, the boys still don’t move their hands from the hood of the car.
“No, I mean, you can take your hands down and turn around. You can sit down over there,” he says gesturing to the yard of the house they’re in front of.
They do as they’re told.
“Hey,” the cop says to Rickie, “I seen you before.”
Thinking the cop recognizes him from when he was arrested for joyriding up in the canyon, Rickie tenses. They’re going to check on him even more. He’ll get the lecture at least. He says nothing. He looks down at his shoes. They’ll get Alex in a moment.
“You play ball, don’t you? Yeah, I thought I seen you,” he says when Rickie nods. “Over here at the park? My little brother plays on the Red Sox. Yeah.”
No one speaks. Rickie doesn’t offer that he’s playing the cop’s brother’s team the next day. Padilla realizes he has been too friendly and backs up a few steps from the boys. His partner gets out of the car. “Mr. Trujillo and Mr. Hernandez,” the older cop calls. The boys look up. “Are you staying out of other people’s cars?” Rickie nods. The cop stares at him silently for a minute. “Yes, sir,” Alex says. “We are.”
“Okay. You guys head on home.”
“Where do you live?” Padilla asks as he hands the boys their wallets.
“Over on Benton,” Dennis offers.
“Not too far,” the young cop says.
“Remember. You guys are violating curfew. We’re going to let you go on that, but double time it home. If we come back and find you still hanging around, we’re going to ticket you, got it?” the older cop, Sanchez, says.
The boys nod.
Sanchez struts slowly back to the driver’s side pushing down on his belt as he walks. The Kevlar vest inside his shirt makes everything tight and uncomfortable.
“Straight home, guys. Remember,” Padilla says.
When both cops are back in the car with the door closed, Rickie says, “Fuck you.” The others look at him curiously.
“Calmate, Homes. Shut up. Don’t be an asshole,” Alex says.
Rickie makes a noise of disgust. “You’re the asshole, man. All cops are the same, the ones who beat on you and the ones who act nice. And we’re all the same to them. Garbage. Don’t let them fool you.”
“Did you see the scar on that dude’s face?” Dennis asks. “My uncle’s got one just like it. His old man, my grandpa, took a broken bottle to him when he was drunk. Abuelito cries every time he sees that scar.”
“That shit was ugly,” Tony says.
“He knew you, Rickie,” Dennis says, impressed with Rickie’s celebrity.
“So? What’s your point?”
“No point, dude. Just he knew you from playing baseball. I thought that was cool. Calm down, Rickie.”
When he gets home, Rickie goes into the living room. He knows he will find abuelita asleep on the couch with the TV still on. He watches for a minute—some guy singing in Spanish, the girls in back of him with their breasts almost pushed out of the tops of their dresses. He checks to see what he thinks about them. Too tired.
He covers his grandmother with the crocheted blanket on the back of the sofa and switches off the TV. He walks in darkness to his room. Blue-white light from the street edges past the shade and glints off the trophies on the dresser and their mirror images. He is too agitated to turn on a light or take off his clothes. He kicks his shoes off and lies back on the bed and stares at the ceiling with his hands behind his head. Angry. Angry at being tricked into running away from a cherry bomb. Angry at being stopped, at being recognized. What did that cop think he was doing by buddying up to Rickie? He doesn’t give a shit that his kid brother plays on the Red Sox. Angry, too, at the ugliness of the scar. It revolted him, made him almost physically sick looking at it. And the cop was calm about it, like it didn’t make a difference. He should hide his ugly face away from people, and work in an office behind a closed door.
When these thoughts subside, Rickie becomes conscious of a conversation going on in his head, a heated one, almost an argument, but he can’t identify the speakers or what they’re saying. He knows he is the subject and that he really should listen because it’s important, but rather than get closer and clearer to him, the conversation moves off into the distance and is lost in the enfolding darkness.
SATURDAY MORNING I
CHAPTER 7
This morning Berta remembers. She goes through the events of the past as though they are beads on the Rosary she holds in her hands. She recalls each event carefully before passing on to the next. She sits at the kitchen table with the back door open, welcoming in the cooler morning air. Nothing is before her but a cup of strong black coffee. She has time before she catches the bus. Today she works in Burbank.
“Don’t arrive before ten, Berta. Saturday’s my day to sleep in,” Mrs. Whitcolm told her. “You sleep in, too,” she added, but Berta rises at her usual early hour and sits at the kitchen table with her coffee. She wears a shapeless dark blue dress and blue cardigan sweater. The women whose houses she cleans give her clothes, some of which she wears, most of which she gives away at church because they do not fit or are not appropriate for her. She and other women from the neighborhood find their clothes on the hangers in the church storage room or in the bags by the wall outside. The parishioners line up on Friday afternoons. When the gate is opened precisely at two o’clock, they rush to tear open the black garbage bags to see what clothing they contain. Occasionally Berta is lucky to discover a good dre
ss in her size. She does not care if the dresses are a little worn, as long as they are proper. The women of today seem to have no sense of that. She thinks of the women who have carried many children, but who still wear tight shorts and T-shirts, the rolls of stomach showing in the gap between the shirt and shorts. She sees them pushing their mountains of laundry to the lavanderia in shopping carts, a string of little girls in tow, holding hands as they cross the street.
Don’t they know how they look? And the girls of today, what they don’t show!
She doesn’t understand.
Home, her real home, is half a continent away. Her husband is dead. Her son, Ricardo, lives somewhere in Ventura or Santa Barbara, she doesn’t know.
Ricardo was seven years old when she and her husband, Osvaldo, made it to this country. They gave up everything, almost gave up their lives on the journey from Sinaloa to Tijuana, from Tijuana to San Diego and finally to Los Angeles.
He was so vibrant, Osvaldo, so full of hope and determination. He never looked back, never longed for home as she did. Or, if he did, he never spoke to her about it. “Our life is here,” he would say. He was so different from everyone else, from all of those who made no secret of their disappointment with the United States. He learned everything—brick-laying and stone-work, tile-laying, carpentry, plumbing, roofing, and so much more. He freelanced as a handyman, stood on street corners with others and sometimes, particularly in the early days when he didn’t know any better, took almost nothing for his work. He knew he could never say he didn’t know how to do something, so with a sharp eye he watched and learned fast, and when the white men pulled up to the corner in their pick-up trucks and asked him something in English, he nodded and said, “Sí, yo puedo.”
He stood near a truck rental yard and spent hours waiting in the soaking rain or in the strong sun, breathing air that choked him, flagging down every truck that came or went, seeking narrow shelter in the shadow of a lamp post or the eave of a convenience store; too many of those days brought little or no work.
They lived in a garage then, the three of them. On the days when he had not worked, he returned home after dark, downcast but not defeated. Berta had frijoles and tortillas warm and ready for him, and she listened to the story of his day, about who got work and who besides him did not. The food revived him and he found some reason to speak hopefully of the next day. “Tomorrow is Monday. It is a day that many people begin jobs. There will be work.” Or, “Tomorrow is Saturday. There will be work for everyone tomorrow.” And often he was lucky, luckier than many. Perhaps it was because she washed and ironed his shirts and creased his pants every day. Perhaps it was because, other than his pencil-line mustache, he was clean-shaven every day. Or perhaps it was his indomitable good nature and unshakable belief that everything would be all right soon, so apparent on his face and in his every gesture, that caused men to stop and motion for him to come over to the truck first of all. Then they told him how many others as well.
And he returned home on those evenings with a pocketful of money. They put some aside for the landlord in an old purse of Berta’s, which she hid under her clothes in a cardboard box. Then they went to the store and bought carefully, mostly dry goods—beans and rice and flour and coffee. Some lard. A little milk, a few fresh vegetables, some oranges for Ricardo. A paleta for each of them. Pan dulce for the morning coffee.
They all slept together on a double bed mattress in the winter, glad to be close for the warmth in that uninsulated garage. During the summer and early autumn, the heat was intense in there. They had no windows to open, only the door, but Berta was afraid to leave it open at night for fear of robbers who would steal the money she safeguarded in her brown purse.
Osvaldo rose before light and dressed quietly. She made coffee for him and tortillas and heated more of the frijoles by the dim light of a lamp the landlord had given them. He had given them the mattress, as well, both of which he factored into the rent. He was from Jalisco, but he had been in America for twenty years; a large man with a smile he turned on and off at will, and a cold disdain for recent arrivals because he was convinced they would upset the delicate equilibrium of his relationship to the white Americans. “They don’t have money. They come here to get the Welfare. Their kids grow up like wild animals, join gangs, have babies at fourteen.” He dismissed the other Mexican immigrants as worthless, but saved his complete disdain for the immigrants from the other Central American countries. They were scum who came here only to become criminals.
“You look at your gang members,” the landlord would say to anyone who would listen. “They are from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. They bring only trouble here.” And his white listeners, who couldn’t differentiate one immigrant from the next, had their beliefs confirmed that only a handful of immigrants were good enough to do menial jobs and the rest were a drain on the economy.
After Osvaldo left in the mornings, Berta sat in the dim light with her coffee and waited for the time to pass until she woke her son. She made sure to dress him in clean clothes and feed him in the morning. When he had washed his face and hands and brushed his teeth, and she had combed his hair, she walked him the five blocks to school. She left him with the exhortation to “Do good” and the promise that she would be there to meet him after school. And she always was, even during the days of torrential rains and flooded streets.
She stood across from the school beneath a big black umbrella she struggled with in the wind, her shoes and knee-high stockings and hem of her long skirt soaked from crossing the streets, and waited until Ricardo came running. The two of them trudged home on the wet sidewalks, laughing and dodging the deepest puddles, and dried their clothes as best they could with the little space heater, which took so much electricity that it caused the landlord to shake his head and threaten to raise the rent when he saw the electric bill.
Berta and Ricardo followed the same routine each day through elementary school, and though she worried that he was learning too much English because she feared it would separate him from his father and her, yet Ricardo was her shining star, her hope, and her devotion. He would fit in here in America. He would understand things and explain them to her and to Osvaldo. Ricardo would stand between them and the complex, fast-moving life around them, and he would protect them from it.
After the first weeks of walking with her to middle school, Ricardo told her not to do it any more because it embarrassed him. He had made new friends and they would walk together. So she stood at the curb in the mornings and watched him join his friends at the corner. At first he looked back and waved but that stopped soon as well.
Osvaldo got a job driving a forklift at a forge in South Gate and doing maintenance for the grounds and the offices, whatever job needed to be done. A year later, they were able to move out of the garage, though not before paying the landlord extra money. He was angry that they had found the means to move out from under his control, and he issued veiled threats that he might have “to speak to the authorities” about them, or that he might have to look into Osvaldo’s new job, talk to his boss. About what? they asked. But the landlord only shrugged. So they paid for unspecified damage or for having given short notice or for something, and lived in fear in their new little apartment that someone would come knocking and send them back to Mexico.
No one came. The job continued. Ricardo finished middle school and went on to high school. Berta’s hopes diminished with Ricardo’s poor grades and his growing interest in girls. She hoped that he would read to them in Spanish, maybe teach them a little more English, but he was scornful of that, moody and bad-tempered, and she left him alone.
Then they were able to buy this small house, and she had little time to think about Ricardo. He was in high school and, Dios mío, was out of her control. He didn’t listen any more, hardly spent any time at home after his friends got cars. What was she to do? This little house took so much time!
Ricardo finished high school and got a job right after graduation at a food wa
rehouse where all his friends worked. Soon he announced that his girlfriend, Esmeralda, was pregnant. Ricardo wanted the girl to just move in, but Berta insisted on a marriage. A wedding was arranged. Her family paid for most of it, but the newlyweds would live with Osvaldo and Berta until after the baby.
At the reception at the bride’s parents’ house, she and Osvaldo ate and drank and danced like all the others throughout the warm summer evening. They watched the young people dance with little grace to the American music that seemed to have no melody, just a primitive drum beat, and to the other American music where it sounded like angry people yelling and accusing and threatening. She and Osvaldo only danced to the beautiful Mexican love songs. Most of the time they watched everyone drink their Corona or Budweiser beer and listened to them speak English, not a beautiful language as they spoke it, but dull, without song, full of profane short words like explosions. These beautiful people, children and adults, elegant in their dresses and rented tuxedos, the women with their long hair pulled back to give full view to fine-boned Spanish faces or dark Indian faces, the bloodlines running back to Mayan or Aztec ancestors so clear in the round faces, wide mouths, full lips, small noses, and black eyes… These beautiful people sounded so different when they uttered this language. It didn’t fit their faces, disfiguring them in some subtle way, she thought.
After the wedding Esmeralda moved in. Berta knew with a kind of dread what would happen, and it did. At first Ricardo was solicitous of the girl’s health and comfort, and they stayed by themselves in their room with the door shut. He was constantly draped over her back or she hung on him. But as she grew bigger and more demanding, they spent more time in the living room watching the television sullenly, barely speaking to one another. He worked more and more overtime. She spent most of her days watching the novelas and talking on the phone with girlfriends:
—What are you doing right now?
—Nothin’, just talking with you.
Rickie Trujillo Page 5
