Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  “People?”

  “Your mom.”

  “What the hell do you care?”

  “Listen, René—”

  “No, you listen, Sammy. You get in that car, and you drive, just fuckin’ drive. Drive yourself to L.A. or San Antonio or El Paso or Juárez. I don’t give a damn where you drive yourself. Just get the hell away.”

  “I don’t like that you’re scoring nickel bags.”

  “So, who the hell do you think you are, Mrs. Apodaca?”

  “Talk to me.”

  “If you don’t get your pinche ass outa here right now, right now, I’m gonna kick it—I swear.”

  “C’mon then,” I said. “C’mon.”

  “I swear, Sammy.”

  “C’mon, go ahead. Haber, cabrón, vente, dejate venir, vente. C’mon mother, kick my ass. C’mon.”

  He leapt from the car. Tackled me to the ground. We rolled around trying to punch each other. I got away, got up. Waited for him. He threw a punch. I dodged, then I took a swing, caught him right in the side of his head. Hurt like hell, hard head—and then I felt a punch. Right to my lip. I fell. I swear I saw stars. All of them spinning around me. I just let myself lay there. I knew I had a bloody lip. I was always getting hit there. Maybe so I’d learn to keep my mouth shut. I just lay there. I didn’t care if I ever got up.

  After a while I hear René’s voice. “Sammy?”

  “What?” I said.

  “Are you alright?”

  “I hate you.” That’s what I said. “You’re a pinche. You’re a pendejo. And you’re killing me.”

  “Just go away, Sammy. Just leave me alone.”

  I got up. Walked to my car. Wiped my lip, felt it throbbing. I turned the ignition to my dad’s car. Then sat there, the engine idling. But I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I just couldn’t stand it anymore, couldn’t stand it. Because I’d lost my mother to cancer. Because I’d lost Juliana to a bullet and I carried her around with me and she was getting heavier and heavier and it made me tired and sad, but mostly sad. I couldn’t stand it anymore because I’d lost Jaime to an exile I hardly understood. Because I’d lost Pifas to the army. Because I was running out of people to lose. Because I just couldn’t stand losing one more damn thing. As if I wasn’t poor enough already.

  I got out of the car. I walked up to him—just walked up to René and took him by the shoulders and shook him. “Listen to me. Just listen. You didn’t kill anybody.” I was crying. Damnit to hell, I hated that pigeon inside me. “You didn’t kill anybody. You gotta believe me. If you don’t believe, then you’re a dead man. And if you’re a dead man, then I’m a dead man, too. You didn’t kill anybody.” I didn’t let go of him. I wasn’t going to let go. I wasn’t. “Say you believe me.” God that pigeon was killing me.

  “I believe you,” he whispered.

  “Say it again.” I wasn’t letting go of him.

  “I believe you.” Then he broke down. I could hear his sobs. Hell, the stars could hear his sobs.

  “Say it again!” I yelled.

  “I believe you!” he yelled. God, he was crying. Me, too. I was crying, too.

  And then—finally—I let him go.

  I was one angry seventeen-year-old. Reyes was dead. And he died for nothing. Pifas was fighting a war that we didn’t even call a war. And those things were changing me. Something broke in me. Something broke. But that something needed to be broken. It did. Sometimes you have to tear something down so you can build something new. It’s like, if you know the house you live in needs to be fixed, well, if you really want to fix it so you can live in it, well, sometimes you have to tear down a wall. And school? School was worse than ever. Like it was about to explode. It was like the whole school was having a nervous breakdown. And I don’t know why, but I suddenly thought that it was my job to fix it. Maybe it was because Reyes was dead. Maybe I thought I had to fix the house I lived in because a part of me was dead, too. That’s how it felt. Maybe that’s what I was thinking when I called Gigi the Monday after I’d found René at the river. I’d found René, and now I was determined to find Gigi. I couldn’t stand it anymore. That pigeon inside me was pounding away again. And I just had to put him back to sleep. Or set him free.

  So I called Gigi. “Gigi,” I said. “What is it?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Nice telephone manners.”

  “I’m not planning on being a secretary.”

  She was still mad at me. Gigi could hold a grudge, I’ll tell you that. She could punish you. In the sixth grade, she didn’t talk to me for a month, because I’d beat her at tether ball. She’d been the champ. Until then. And she didn’t forgive me until after I played her again—and let her win. That’s when she talked to me again. High maintenance. That was Gigi. “I hear you’re seeing someone.”

  “¿Y qué? What’s it to you?”

  “Just asking.”

  “You jealous?”

  “Not the jealous type, Gigi.”

  “I hate you.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “I hate guys. I hate them.”

  “Guess you dumped him.”

  “In the trash.”

  “Well, some guys, that’s where they belong.”

  She laughed. I liked it when she laughed. She had a good laugh, Gigi. Maybe I hadn’t lost her. Maybe I hadn’t lost René either. Maybe we were all still alive. “Hey, why don’t we get some people together, hold a meeting, you know, pass out flyers. Have a sit-down strike or something? You know, change the dress code, blow up the school, hang our teachers.”

  “Serious?”

  “I’m a very serious guy, Gigi.”

  “Don’t play with me, Sammy. Don’t be that way.”

  “I’m not playing.” She knew me. She knew when I was serious. I could almost see her smile over the phone. “Okay,” she said. She said okay. “Who told you I was seeing someone?”

  “Angel,” I said.

  “Just wait till I get a hold of her. Just wait.”

  I laughed. Gigi. She was back. I’d missed her.

  Chapter Twenty

  It wasn’t hard to come up with a committee. Me, Angel, René, and Gigi. That was four. Charlie Gladstein, who kept saying if he couldn’t grow his hair long, he was gonna explode. And then he’d make this exploding sound with his mouth. Susie Hernández was in. Those school-rule hemlines might as well have been prison. Hatty Garrsion—she was in. Because she said it was our civic duty. That Hatty, she was a good girl. Always putting a good spin on everything. And Larry Torres, that asshole. He was still being an asshole. But Reyes had always been an asshole, too, and I felt bad because I’d always been so hard on him, and I’d promised myself I was going to be a better person, so I tried to be patient when I approached him. He said he’d join up, but he said we were all fucked. “Aaaaaahhhhhl fucked up.” He said he’d do it, but only because he hated this fucking school and he was so bored that he thought he was gonna die, and that he wanted a little trouble. And this was the car he could hitch a ride on. But boy, we were fucked up, and it was a miracle we didn’t get into another fist fight. I hated that guy. But he was gonna be on our side. So, I said okay. I put my fists back in my pocket.

  We had a plan. We met at Pioneer Park. After school. Twenty of us. Give or take. Charlie. That Charlie Gladstein was one mad bastard. Man, that guy, sometimes he acted like he was born in Hollywood. He’d collected copies of the dress code from everybody. He had hundreds of copies. “We’re going to burn these,” he said, “just like they burn draft cards.” Serious. He was serious. We nodded.

  “Okay,” I said. “Sit-down strike during lunch. We get flyers. We pass them out. Some people pass out flyers. Some people will just sit down on the lawn in front of the cafeteria. We don’t do anything. We don’t say anything. Peace, baby.” I laughed. We all laughed. “That’s all. We just pass out flyers. And we sit. We just send a message. They can’t kick us out if all we’re doing is having our say.”

&nb
sp; “That’s all? What the fuck is that?” Larry. Larry Torres.

  Gigi gave him her look. “You got a better suggestion?”

  “Let’s storm the principal’s office.”

  René shook his head. “You’re full of crap. That’ll get us thrown out. Then what? We don’t graduate. Then what?”

  Gigi nodded. “Look. They think we’re stupid. They think we can’t think. Sammy’s right. This is smart. We pass out flyers. We sit down. We behave ourselves. They won’t like it. But if we behave—if we show them we’re just having our say—what can they do?”

  “But we have to burn these,” Charlie said. “As long as we burn these, then I’m in.”

  “Yeah,” Larry said, “at least we have to burn the fucking dress code.”

  I didn’t like it. “Okay,” I said. I said okay.

  There were three lunch periods. Gigi and René and Angel and Charlie, we all had first lunch. We broke up into groups. Every group had at least four people—to pass out fliers. And we had an assignment. Find twenty people to sit down at each lunch period. To sit down in a circle. That was all. “Hell,” Charlie said, “the whole damn school’s gonna sit down.”

  Two days later, everything was set. Gigi and René and Charlie had signed up forty-three people to sit down during first lunch. Second lunch, Hatty and Frances and Pauline had signed up thirty-seven. Third lunch, only twelve people. But Sandra and her boyfriend, Ricardo, said there’d be more. Okay. Okay. We were set. But there were certain things we hadn’t counted on. We didn’t know about organizing. We thought we knew—but we didn’t know crap. Not crap. But, God, we were excited. We were gonna take Las Cruces High by the throat and choke it till it spit out our names.

  The night before our strike, Gigi and Angel came over just to hang out. René showed up a little later. Then, Charlie Gladstein showed up. “Didn’t know you knew where I lived,” I said. I’d been to his house. I guess I was embarrassed, I mean, this wasn’t what he was used to. He didn’t seem to notice, though, didn’t care. I liked that about him, the way he just got out of his car, waved like he’d been coming over here all his life.

  We were scared. But we weren’t gonna back down. No way. That didn’t make us any less scared. Pigeons. Sure as shit, we all had a pigeon inside us. Except maybe Gigi had a Quetzál. Gigi wouldn’t have had a common pigeon. No way, not Gigi. A Quetzál. The Mayans loved that bird because their feathers were like fire—yeah, Gigi had a Quetzál.

  My dad came out, said hi to everyone. He was friendly, my dad, liked my friends. Liked everyone, my dad. I’d told him what we were planning to do. “I guess this is your way of loving the world.” That’s what he said. Then he kissed me. He always did that, kissed me. He looked at all my friends, my dad. He nodded. He was smiling. I was afraid he was going to kiss everyone.

  Elena came out, couldn’t help herself. “It’s late,” I told her. “Better go to sleep.”

  “Aw, Sammy.”

  “Go on.” She kissed me.

  “You’re not gonna read to me, are you?”

  “I’ll read to you,” Dad said. Elena got this look on her face. I kissed her. “Tomorrow,” I said. “Tomorrow I’ll read to you.”

  When they went back inside, Gigi smiled at me. “You’re a good brother,” she said. “That kid’s crazy about you.”

  “I’m crazy about her, too.” Then I laughed. “And when she’s old enough to go to Cruces High, there’s gonna be a different dress code.”

  We all clapped. Clapped. Yeah, yeah. God, we were scared.

  That night, I had dream about Juliana. And in the dream, she was running for president, and I remembered how she’d stared down old Birdwail. And when I woke up, I thought that maybe Juliana was alive. And I was half hoping I would see her at school. But I knew she wouldn’t be there.

  That pigeon was pounding away all morning at school. I thought lunch would never come. Didn’t hear a damn thing any of my teachers said. And finally, finally first lunch arrived. We met in the front of the cafeteria. Charlie had printed the flyers, and Gigi had our packet. Me and Gigi and René, we started passing out the flyers. “Change the dress code!” René shouted it like he was selling hot dogs at a ball game. He put a flyer in someone’s hand. We spread out. “Change the dress code!” The flyers were going like hot cakes. No one was going into the cafeteria. Charlie was sitting down with a group of about forty people. Just like we planned. They were all sitting in a circle. And they were all holding up sheets of paper that read: CHANGE THE DRESS CODE! But they didn’t say a word. Just like we planned.

  That’s when I noticed a group of F.F.A. types, all in their blue corduroy jackets with their yellow and blue Future Farmer badges. They were standing not too far from where the strikers were sitting. They were talking. I didn’t like the look of it. They were trouble. Then I saw a group of pachucos from Chiva Town. They were talking, too. Shit, I thought, trouble. I gave René a look. I pointed with my chin. He saw what I saw. We both had a bad feeling. I handed Gigi my flyers. “Keep passing them out,” I said. Just then Fitz and his sidekick, Mr. Romero, walked up to Gigi and me. “What’s going on here?”

  “We’re passing out flyers,” Gigi said. She smiled, handed him one.

  “You don’t have permission.”

  “It’s a free county, Mr. Fitz.”

  “I want you to stop. Right now! I want you to stop.”

  René was watching us. “Change the dress code!” he yelled—and kept passing out flyers. I could tell he was watching the two groups, the F.F.A. jackets, the pachucos from Chiva Town. By then, it seemed, the whole school had gathered. I didn’t know it then, but Charlie had told everyone to skip their classes and come to first lunch. And they had. They had. But I didn’t know that, then. God, it seemed like people were everywhere. All of a sudden. The whole school. Where had they come from? Fitz reached for the flyers Gigi was holding. She was smart. She let them drop to the ground.

  She smiled. That’s when I looked up and saw the group of F.F.A. types pouring milk on the group of people sitting down. They were pouring milk all over them. Fitz saw them, too. “You gonna let that happen?” I said.

  “You made your bed—”

  Right then, right there, all hell broke loose. Charlie Gladstein didn’t have a pacifist bone in his body. He got up and started a fist fight with one of the guys pouring milk over Jeannete Franco. “You sonofabitch.” That was the cue for the Chiva Town pachucos to move in. Those guys from Chiva Town were on those F.F.A. corduroy jackets—all over them. And they were going at it. They didn’t give a damn about a dress code. What they knew is that they hated each other and this was as good a time as any to beat the holy crap out of each other. That’s when the whole school exploded. Everybody just moved in. Punches everywhere. For once, René and I weren’t throwing fists. We were just watching. Gigi and I just looked at each other. Fitz and Romero had disappeared.

  I kept watching as students poured out of the building. People were shouting and yelling. But where were our teachers? Where was Mr. Fitz? Where was Mr. Romero? Then Mrs. Davis walks up to me and says. “Sammy, Sammy, my god, make them stop. Look at them. Make them stop.” It was a riot, chaos, what everybody was afraid of. All that anger, crawling all over the place with no direction. “Change the dress code! Change the dress code!” That’s what I started yelling. Mrs. Davis caught on. So did René. So did Gigi. “Change the dress code! Change the dress code! Change the dress code!” And then, more voices. And then more, our voices like a steady beating of a drum. “Change the dress code! Change the dress code!” René ran over to the Chiva Town pachucos and made them stop. None of those guys wanted to fuck with René, they didn’t, and the chicken shit F.F.A. guys—they were all for stopping the fight. They weren’t winning. God, it was all happening so fast. And everybody was chanting, “CHANGE THE DRESS CODE! CHANGE THE DRESS CODE!” Mrs. Davis looked at me and smiled. “You done good, Sammy,” she whispered.

  I could barely hear her above the chants. “That’s not g
ood English,” I said.

  That’s when all the cops came. Every cop in the damn city—they were there.

  They stood in a line about twenty feet away from us. There were more of us than them. Not that it mattered. They scared us. All we had on our side was our stupid pigeons.

  “Go back to your classes.” We heard the voice over the bullhorn. “Go back to your classes or you will be arrested.”

  The chanting stopped.

  “Go back to your classes! Or you will be arrested!”

  Gigi moved to the front. I followed her. Couldn’t leave her there by herself. René was right behind me. There we were, the three of us, between the cops and the whole school. It was so quiet. God, all of a sudden, the world was so quiet. Gigi turned around and faced the students. “Everybody sit down!” she said. “Everybody sit down!”

  And they did. They did just like she said.

  That’s when Fitz and Romero and all our teachers came out of the school building and walked straight behind the line of cops. The students booed. “BOOOOOOOOO! BOOOOOOOO!” Right then, I hated them all. They were afraid of us. They were afraid. Of us. It made me mad, that they thought we’d hurt them. Hiding behind the cops. I hated them like I’d never hated anyone. And then I noticed that Mrs. Davis was standing right next to me.

  “Go back to your classrooms! Or you will be arrested!”

  “Come and get us!” I knew that voice. It was Charlie. And then he got up in front of everybody with his stack of papers—the dress code. He held up the stack of papers. “This is the dress code,” he said. Then he lit the pages on fire. A few pages at a time. God. The fire, it was so peaceful. Just for a few seconds. And no one said a word. No one moved.

  “I’m warning you—you will be arrested!”

  “Come and get us,” Charlie said. And they did.

  Most of us went along quietly. A few of us mouthed off. Our big chance. They took our names. They didn’t technically arrest us—or at least, not the whole school. They took our names and our phone numbers, then sent us back to our classrooms. Except Gigi and René and me and Charlie and Angel, we were taken down to the station. I was getting tired of that police station.