by James Frey
They sit in the front row. Jorge sings every hymn at the top of his lungs. They take communion together. Graciella (who controls the family’s finances) empties her wallet into the offering plate. At the end of the service, they mingle with the other parishioners in front of the church until everyone is gone, and on their way home, Jorge suggests they stop for brunch at a restaurant that makes Mexican French toast, which uses tortillas instead of regular bread, and is topped with brown sugar and cinnamon. Midway through the meal, Jorge looks at Graciella and raises his eyebrows slightly she shakes her head slightly he does it again with more emphasis she shakes her head again. Esperanza notices what he’s doing knows he wants to say something that he feels is important, she speaks.
What is it, Papa?
He feigns surprise.
What do you mean?
She laughs.
You have something you want to talk to me about?
Why do you think that?
You’re not so subtle, Papa.
I am very subtle.
She laughs again.
Am I right?
Maybe.
Esperanza looks at her mother.
Am I right, Mama?
Graciella nods.
Yes, you are right.
Esperanza looks back at her father.
What is it, Papa?
Jorge reaches over, takes Graciella’s hand.
We love you very much, Esperanza.
I know you do.
We want you to be happy. To have a happy life.
I know you do, Papa.
When you came home last month we knew something was wrong. When you won’t come out of your room or eat or talk to us, we know something is really wrong. We think…
Graciella interrupts him.
Your papa especially.
Jorge nods.
Me especially thinks that if you had someone in your life, like your mama and me have each other, you would be happier.
I don’t want you to set me up, Papa.
Of course you don’t. What girl wants her father doing that? No girl wants it. But we, and especially me, were very worried about you. You are so shy and so humble, you don’t even know how beautiful you are, how wonderful you are. When I see you sad it crushes me. For the last month, every night after I leave your room, I go in my bed and cry myself to sleep.
Graciella speaks.
Every night, Esperanza. Like a little baby.
Esperanza speaks.
I’m sorry, Papa.
Jorge speaks.
You don’t need to be sorry. You were feeling your own pain. My pain was because I couldn’t help you. So I decided to figure out how to help you when you started being better, and I knew you would be better, because everyone, until the very end, which is a long ways away for you, always gets better. So what did I do?
Graciella speaks.
Wait till you hear this.
Jorge smiles.
I joined a singles group for young Mexican professionals.
Esperanza starts laughing.
I had your cousin Miguel find it for me on the computer. It is called Talk and Tequila, a mixer for young Mexican professionals in East LA.
Graciella speaks.
And he went. I tried to stop him, but he was very stubborn.
Jorge.
I did. I went. I paid twenty dollars to go to their Birthday of Benito Júarez Mixer. Everyone stared at me and one of the group members asked me why I was there.
Esperanza.
What did you say?
Jorge.
That I felt young and I was a professional father.
And what did he say?
He asked me if I was there making sure it was safe for my daughter.
They all laugh.
And I told him yes, that was why I was there, that my daughter is the flower of East LA and I wanted to see if there were men in attendance who were worthy of her.
Esperanza.
Were there?
Jorge.
Yes. Lawyers and doctors, teachers and salesmen. All worthy young Mexican professionals.
Esperanza.
There’s a problem, though, Papa.
What is that?
I’m a maid, not a professional.
Graciella.
He has a solution for that.
Jorge.
A wonderful solution.
Esperanza.
What is it?
Jorge.
Students who are studying to be professionals can be part of the group.
Esperanza.
I’m a maid. An unemployed maid.
Graciella.
Stop saying that.
Jorge.
You are the flower of East LA.
Esperanza.
I lost my scholarship. I don’t think I can get it back.
Jorge.
Your mother and I went to the bank. They told us to talk to a lawyer. We talked to a lawyer who sent us to the offices of the city. The offices of the city sent us to three other offices and they finally sent us back to the lawyer who made us fill out lots of papers. We put your name on the deed of the house. We own the house with no bank mortgage. It is no mansion but it is a house with a yard and it is worth some money after all these years. The bank said they will give you a loan, a special education loan with the house as collateral, for you to go back to school. When you are in school, you are a professional and can go to mixers and I will wait out front for you.
Esperanza smiles.
Thank you, Papa.
Jorge.
It was your mother’s idea.
Esperanza.
Thank you, Mama.
Graciella.
We love you, Esperanza.
Jorge.
Yes. More than anything. The only time I cry again is at your wedding.
Esperanza laughs.
I love you too.
By 1958, Los Angeles is the largest automobile market in the country and its six million residents consume more gasoline per capita than the residents of any other city in the world.
Joe runs away from the boardwalk, though for him, running is more like walking quickly in a stilted, awkward manner. He takes an alley that runs east/west, he’s going inland, east, away from Lemonade, who is lying dead on the concrete somewhere behind him. He doesn’t know where he’s going. He doesn’t know where any of his other friends are, what they’re doing. He’s scared to go back to his bathroom the girl knows where he lives and they could come to kill him. They may be killing his friends or trying to find them so they can kill them. His friends may be fine, sitting together getting drunk or eating pizza from a dumpster, they may be with the police, he doesn’t know, doesn’t know what to do or where to go, he just wants to get away from what he saw, from the body of his friend lying dead on the concrete.
He crosses Pacific Avenue. Homes are in the same style as on the walk-streets along the beach, small California bungalows with three-stair stoops and front porches, some are painted bright colors red, blue yellow there’s one that’s purple and pink. They’re in good shape European cars sit in the driveways and line the curbs furniture on the porches costs more than he can panhandle in a year, maybe two, he keeps walking east. He crosses Main St., which runs through Santa Monica and Venice, in Santa Monica it’s lined with cafés and bars and stores that sell designer clothes and special hand creams, face creams, creams for everything imaginable. In Venice there’s one huge building with a fifty-foot pair of steel binoculars at the entrance it used to hold a fancy advertising agency now they’re gone, the rest of the street is desolate, empty parking lots, warehouses, a gym.
He crosses Main Street still walking east he enters another residential neighborhood. The houses are the same style though not as well cared for, paint is chipping, furniture is broken, cars are older some don’t run. And while the rest of Venice sleeps there is life here, people sitting on porches listening to music and drinking, cars moving slowly up and down long narrow
streets, cars parked in alleys with illuminated brake lights, teenagers on corners hands in their pockets hats pulled low pretending to be indifferent they see everything around them in teams of three or four they service the drivers of the cars, provide them with whatever they want, whatever they need. Everyone has the same color skin there are no whites no Asians no Hispanics, and unless they’re coming in to do business, none are welcome. Occasionally a police cruiser will roll slowly down one of the streets no one looks no one watches no one cares nothing changes it’s just another car with an unwelcome white man behind the wheel he’ll leave soon enough.
Joe walks no one pays much attention to him he looks like what he is a homeless man in ragged clothes with no money and nowhere to go. Now and then someone on a corner will offer him smoke or rock when he walks past liquor stores men standing at their entrance say we got good shit cheap but it’s not cheap enough. He wants to sleep, though there’s nowhere for him to lie down he doesn’t want the concrete of an alley or the rats and smell of a dumpster or a line of garbage cans, if he goes into someone’s yard it would most likely end badly for him. He keeps walking, playing the events of the night the planning dividing into groups of two creeping down the boardwalk the gunshots again and again the gunshots and the body convulsing. He hears the distinct pop/crack at first he’s not sure if it’s his mind or if they’re real hears them again three in a burst followed by a scream followed by four more in a burst more screaming. He’s seen enough tonight he turns south away from the shots away from the screams away from the cars and the corners he wants to walk away from more but can’t just turns south.
The change comes quickly. He crosses a street and though the houses are the same and the yards are the same and the cars are the same and the business is the same, the music is different, the skin color is different, the language is different. On one side he found indifference, on the other open hostility. As he approaches corners teenage men step into his path he lowers his head and steps around them they spit at his feet at the back of his head. No one offers to sell him anything and when he’s spoken to he can’t understand the words though he knows the intentions. There are fewer liquor stores they are just as crowded. Police are less common but treated in the same manner no one cares no one stops no one acknowledges. He doesn’t hear any gunfire but leaves quickly he knows the rules this is not somewhere he is welcome he keeps walking south. The change comes quickly. He crosses a street and though the houses are the same and the yards the same all built in the same style at the same time on lots with the same amount of land on one side they are worth far less than on the other side. There is no one outside. Porches are empty but for their expensive furniture. Cars are new, clean, have single red lights blinking on their dashes (though the alarms really don’t do anything but make noise). It is quiet, still, peaceful. Beds of flowers line one edge of the sidewalks, healthy palms the other. The few houses that are empty have for sale signs in front of them with seven-figure price tags. Empty lots are cared for flat and green no garbage no car parts no cardboard boxes. Joe walks up and down these streets he wonders what it would be like to live among these people, if he had the money would they even let him. Police cruisers are highly common and highly visible though there is nothing for them to do except be seen keep the residents calm and happy let them know that if interlopers from the other areas intrude they will be dealt with quickly. One of them stops alongside Joe a black officer in the white car asks him what he’s doing he says leaving the officer says good. On his way out he passes through a crowd of paparazzi camping outside the house of a movie star who recently had twins, the first pictures of the children will sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Joe asks how long they’ve been there one of them says fuck off another says a week a third calls him a drunk homeless fuck and tells him to go away. Joe asks how long they will wait the singular answer is as long as it takes and somewhere inside the house five-day-old children sleep under siege because their mother has a nice smile and beautiful hair and can recite lines on camera.
Joe walks to Venice Boulevard divided by a median that used to hold a railcar and is now mostly grass dead without rain. Half a mile one way is home the beginning of the boardwalk and a hundred yards farther the Pacific Ocean. Half a mile the other way he has no idea because he’s never been there and he usually gets scared when he walks inland. He crosses Venice Blvd. there is a small church sitting between two mini-malls it’s beige stucco a cross above its doors they’re open even though it’s the middle of the night. Joe walks to the door, stands below the cross looks inside there are two rows of pews fifteen or twenty on each side a humble altar behind it. On the wall a man hangs from a cross his hands are bleeding, his feet are bleeding. Joe stares at the man. He may be wood or plaster the blood red paint, he may be salvation, he may be nothing more than a doll for adults. Joe steps into the church. He walks to the first pew a few feet from the altar a few more from the man. He sits down he stares he thinks about his friend is he still on the ground where he died have they taken him away is he lying in the back of an ambulance or a van, is he lying on a cold steel slab? He sits and he stares there’s a dim light above the altar it casts shadows across the racked body of the man Joe sits and he stares and he tries to remember if he ever knew Lemonade’s real name, if he ever knew his dead friend’s real name.
He sits for an hour two.
The shadows move as the sun starts to rise it is the first morning in a decade that Old Man Joe aged thirty-nine but looks seventy-five isn’t lying on the beach watching the sky turn gray white pink blue isn’t waiting for answers but seeking them.
Streaks of light come through the door he sits and stares.
Parrots wild in Venice they were brought here in the early 1900s and never caged they never left start singing in the palms.
Traffic behind him.
Sits.
Stares.
Blood on his hands blood on his feet.
Light moving up the aisle, streaks, slowly.
His friend somewhere in the city dead.
A priest walks in lights candles smiles at Joe nods priest leaves candles burn.
Joe picks up a book it’s simple black in the carrel of the pew a gold cross embossed he looks at the face of the man he doesn’t look like he’s in pain he speaks.
Why’d you take my friend?
His eyes are open they’re deep blue, calm, at rest.
Why did you take my friend and leave those pieces of shit who killed him?
His hands open not clenched in pain fingers extended inviting.
Why?
Why?
Why you let men with different-colored skin hate each other for no reason. Why you let one man have more than another man when they both deserve it. Why you let children die in the streets killing each other over a corner or some white powder or the color of a bandana. Why you make my friends eat out of dumpsters and drink their fucking lives away when they ain’t done nothing to hurt nobody their whole damn lives. His mouth is open slightly his teeth white he’s not grimacing calm.
Why you make me spend my life chasing yellow, make another man spend his life chasing green, another man spend his life spilling red. If you for real and you love everyone like they say you do then why you treat us different, why you give to some and not to others, why you take and hurt and destroy so many people that are just trying to get by and get through the day. Why you let that happen over and over and over again. Those that got, get more, and those that don’t get nothing over and over and over again. If you for real it don’t make no sense to me.
He wears no clothes just a white sheet tied loosely at waist.
You want worship for what? For what you give? For how you treat us? For what you allow to happen? For the hatred that exists that you don’t stop? For the violence that you don’t stop? For the death that you don’t stop? Man killing man killing women killing children that you don’t stop. And you want worship? You want us on our knees? You want devotion? You wan
t exaltation? You want faith?
A crown of thorns pressed into the skull bleeding at the tips.
I walk down the street and men hate me not love me, hate my skin, my smell, the clothes I wear, the way my hair is, what they think I am and who they think I am not one motherfucker looks at me and sees love they just hate, every single one of them, and you call yourself all-knowing, all-powerful, say you sit in judgment.
Thick streaks in his hair, on his chin, running down his chest.
You want and say you deserve and we must or we are condemned and all you give us is this, this world where children get burned alive and men spend their money blowing each other up and women sell themselves to feed and all we see is destruction and war and mayhem in your name and it never gets better and you never stop all-knowing and all-powerful it never ends. It never ends. And it never will.
Head hanging but not in defeat.
Why’d you take my friend? He didn’t deserve it. None of us deserve it.
Lit from above.
Joe stands and walks out.
In August 1965, a white Highway Patrol officer pulls over a black motorist for driving erratically on a street in Watts. The driver and two family members are arrested, and riots erupt that last a week. Fifteen thousand National Guard troops are sent in to contain the riots. Thirty-four people are killed by police, and three others die. Over a thousand are injured and almost 4,000 are arrested. Six hundred buildings, almost none of which were private residences inhabited by African Americans, are damaged or destroyed by looting and fire.
