Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  Fitz said he was pressing charges. Instigating a riot. There were others involved. There would be a full investigation. There we were at the police station. Guess maybe I wouldn’t be graduating. But I wasn’t sorry. I wasn’t. Gigi was crying. René, hell, he just looked sad—like he was tired of losing. Charlie kept ranting, “It wasn’t our fault! How come they’re not arresting those bastards who started the riot? Those F.F.A. shitkickers. Why aren’t they arrested?” I finally told him just to sit down. We had it all planned. Shit. We couldn’t plan a camping trip to the backyard. I was numb. That’s what I was. At least the pigeon was taking a nap.

  I don’t know what was taking so long. We were in a room. They’d already taken our statements. They’d done that. Now what?

  “Jail,” René said. “They’re gonna put us in fucking jail.”

  Angel didn’t say anything. “My mother’s going to kill me.” She was more afraid of her mother than she was of jail.

  “What about your dad?” René was looking right at Charlie. I knew what he was asking. Our parents didn’t know doctors or lawyers or accountants or teachers. Our parents didn’t know anybody. But Charlie’s dad, he knew some. He knew people. Maybe—

  “When my dad finds out about this, he’s gonna kick my ass from here to Jerusalem.”

  That’s when we laughed. Because he made a joke. About his own kind. And that’s what we did. That’s how we’d survived. So we laughed.

  And then, the pigeon came back. I knew then that the pigeon wasn’t all bad. He wasn’t beating me up. He was just there, waiting with me.

  We paced. They wouldn’t let us smoke. Not in that stupid waiting room. Or whatever it was. I don’t know how long we were in there. I kept looking at the door. When it opened—I didn’t want to think about it.

  “My dad always said I’d wind up en la pinta.” René said that. “Maybe he was right.”

  We all looked at each other.

  “What’s la pinta?” Charlie asked.

  “Jail,” Gigi said.

  And then, then the door opened. And we all looked at each other. I saw Gigi and Angel squeezing each other’s hands. And then this man in a suit walks in, young guy. Younger than thirty. He was all smiles. “You can go,” he said.

  Charlie’s jaw drops open. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Your lawyer.”

  “What?” I kept looking around the room. “We don’t have a lawyer. We’re from Hollywood. We don’t know shit about lawyers.”

  “Oh, yes, you do,” he said. And he smiled. He stuck his hand out and shook my hand. “You must be Sammy. My wife talks a lot about you, says you’re really something. I’m Paul. Paul Davis.”

  I nodded. He shook everyone’s hand, had good manners. “She’s married to a lawyer?” I said. “Mrs. Davis is married to a lawyer?”

  He smiled. “Yup. She sure is.”

  “What are they gonna do to us?”

  “Nothing. Oh, I think your principal wants to throw you out of school, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. The school board meets on Monday—I’ve scheduled you and your friends to speak on behalf of the students. If they don’t consider changing the dress code, I told them I’d sue them on your behalf. And I will, too. If I were you, I’d just show up to school tomorrow like nothing happened. And maybe by Monday evening, when you talk to the school board, maybe you should bring along a petition. With names on it. And maybe you want to bring some students along.” He smiled. We all looked at each other. He laughed. “My wife tells me you put on a helluva good show at school today.” He searched our faces. I wonder if he found what he was looking for.

  We all went back to school the next day—and nothing happened. Our teachers didn’t say a word. Not one word. Everything was the same. Except for Colonel Wright who growled something at me when he saw me walking down the hall. And Mrs. Jackson who said it hurt her to teach students like us. Deeply.

  We took up a petition. People stood in line to sign it. Ninety percent of the school signed it. “Ninety percent,” Charlie said. He was the one who did the math. A real numbers guy, I was finding out.

  René said that he hated the thought that a gringo had saved our asses. I told him to re-laaaaaax. “Look,” I said, “how many Mexican lawyers do you think there are in this town? Re-laaaax. They’re not all bad.” I thought of Mrs. Davis. How she’d stood with us.

  I read a statement at the school board meeting. I wore a tie. My dad made me. I told him it didn’t make sense for me to wear a tie when I was trying to get them to loosen up. “I don’t care,” my father said. “You’re going to speak to the school board, and you’re going to wear a tie.” And so I did. Five hundred kids showed up at the meeting. Parents, too. I made my presentation. I introduced myself. “My name is Sammy Santos,” I said. “This is my father,” I said. He stood. He was proud. Please, Dad. Don’t cry. He did that, sometimes. I handed them the petitions. I told them that the citizens of Las Cruces High had spoken. I told them that we did not feel respected. I told them that when you did not respect someone, that you shouldn’t be too surprised to find out they hated you. I said that. I’d read it somewhere. Or something like that. I was trembling. And Mr. Davis, well, he stood right next to me.

  The school board nodded. I asked them if they had any questions. One man, a guy named Mr. Stafford who had eyebrows that looked like mustaches asked me about the riot. “Some kids from F.F.A. poured milk on the strikers,” I said. “Mr. Fitz saw what happened. Ask him. The strikers didn’t do anything. Ask Mr. Fitz.”

  Mr. Fitz admitted that the strikers hadn’t been violent. Except for Charlie, and he admitted that even Charlie was only fighting back. “But they provided an opportunity for the riot to occur. They created an environment for chaos to flourish. They threatened the safety of the entire student body.” All by ourselves. That’s what he said. Yeah, yeah. He spoke against allowing the dress code to be changed. When they asked him if his teachers were for or against the measure, he said his teachers were solidly against the measure. “Solidly.”

  Mr. Davis produced a petition of his own. Sixty-four percent of the teachers had signed a petition in favor of the student’s request to change the dress code. Sixty-four percent, Mr. Davis said. He handed the petition to the school board’s president. Mrs. Davis, she’d been working after hours.

  There was some discussion. Was it legal to vote in private? They conferred. No, no, they would vote publicly. Why not?

  The measure passed unanimously. Not because they agreed with us. I knew that. But because they were afraid. Of us. Their children. I knew that. But right then, I didn’t care. We’d done something.

  After the vote, the room went crazy. Crazy, crazy. God. Crazy.

  We were a fire, and we were blazing, alive, blazing. And we thought, just for a moment, that we were the heart of America.

  If you asked me what I remembered most about that strike, if you asked me, I’d have to tell you it was the look on René’s face when the board voted to change the dress code. When they all said, “Aye,” in unison, with one voice. The look on René’s face. He’d looked broken and tired the day when we’d buried Reyes. And old. And he was too young to look so old. But that’s how he’d looked. And sometimes, when people got that look, they never looked young again no matter how old they really were. I’d seen it happen.

  But that day, after the vote, René wore this look, like it meant something to be René Montoya. We looked at each other. In all that commotion, we searched for each other. I think sometimes, people look holy, they do, that’s how he looked. He waved from where he was standing. And I waved back. Hello, René. Hello, Sammy. I remembered the night I’d seen him in the light of the streetlamp outside that apartment where we found Reyes. I’d told myself he was a stranger, that I didn’t know him. But there he was, René Montoya. I swear he was holy. Maybe the pigeon inside him had found a way out. Flown away. Gone. Maybe.

  And one more thing I remember—Gigi’s arms around me and she kept kissing me
on the cheek. “We won! We won! Sammy, we won! God, Sammy, can you believe it?”

  Yeah, Gigi, I can believe it. We won. We won.

  When I went home that night, I sat on the front porch. Mrs. Apodaca came over and told me I smoked too much. I nodded. Then she shook her head and said that she didn’t agree with what we’d done. “You think you’ve done something? Dressing disrespectfully? You think that’s a good thing?” She started to walk away, and then she turned around. And she had a huge grin on her face. “It feels good to win, doesn’t it?” Before I could say anything, she’d disappeared across the street.

  I found myself talking to Juliana. You should’ve seen it, Juliana. It was all so beautiful.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I had this dream, clean, soft, like dew in the morning light. In the dream, I was sitting on my porch, and everybody I knew was walking by, everybody, and there wasn’t any difference between the living and the dead. That was the good thing about dreams. So, everyone is passing by, waving, Hi, Sammy, Hi and the sun is soft and I’m happy just to sit there and watch. God, I’m happy. But there aren’t any sounds, no sounds at all. It was like I was deaf. Maybe I was dead. Maybe that’s when you’re really happy—when you’re dead. And the people passing in front of me, they were the ones who were alive. My mom, she passed by and waved. And she was walking toward my dad, who was up the road. She looked so beautiful, my mom, the same way she looked before she got sick. Mrs. Apodaca, she passed by, and she was wearing a hat like she was going to church. Juliana passed by, too. And she was happy, and when she waved at me, it was like there wasn’t any more sadness in her. I thought she was as pure as anything I’d ever seen—but just when I was about to reach out and take her hand, she disappeared. And then Elena and Gabriela, those two little girls, they came wandering by, and they were holding hands, and when they saw me, they waved. Hi, Sammy. I could see their lips moving.

  And the last one to march by was Pifas. He looked the same, his fine black hair falling into his eyes, the way it always did. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, just a pair of jeans and a white shirt. God, his shirt was white. White. And when he waved, his smile disappeared, and then he had this look, this awful look, and then he looked at his hands.

  Pifas, he looked at his hands—and they were gone. And there was blood everywhere. Blood.

  I woke up sweating. Staring at my hands. In the dark.

  In the morning, when I woke, I forgot about my dream.

  I’d never left home before. Not ever. Staying out of the house all day—that didn’t count. Watching the sun rise over the Organ Mountains from the river after having stayed out all night—that didn’t count as leaving home. Didn’t count. I knew that. I remember that afternoon—clear as an empty bottle of Pepsi. Clear as Mrs. Apodaca’s voice praying a novena. Clear as the look on my father’s face when he looked at me.

  I sat there, thinking about home. Hollywood, that was home. Las Cruces, this house I’d lived in all my life. My room no bigger than a monk’s. Home was everything that could fit in my room. A bed, a desk, that’s all that fit. More like a big closet, really. But it was all I’d ever known. Part of me wanted more. But part of me could have stayed in this house forever. I could still smell my mom in this house. I swear I could. My dad, he’d saved some of her clothes in his closet. Maybe that’s why her smell was still in our house. My dad didn’t know—that I knew about my mom’s clothes.

  This was home.

  I wondered what it would be like to leave, what it would be like to be homesick. Maybe I was thinking about home and about leaving because I was holding a letter of acceptance in my hand. A letter from a university, a real American university. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t going. I knew that, but damnit it felt good to get accepted. But it felt bad, too. I don’t even know why I’d applied, a waste of time. Maybe I sometimes had these demons of optimism that just took over my body. But then, life, well, life just sort of exorcised those demons. And I was back to my serious, get-real-you’re-just-a-guy-from-Hollywood attitude. That’s what you needed to survive. Otherwise you’d break. Like Reyes. Maybe that’s why he did heroin—because his dreams were too big. And the only way he could get at those dreams was through shooting some stuff up his veins.

  I put the acceptance letter away. Before my father saw it. He’d just get upset. Get mad at himself for not making more money. I didn’t want that. He had enough to worry about. And he hadn’t been feeling well. Not that he said anything. I knew him. Just like he knew me. I knew him.

  There were two other pieces of mail I got that day.

  I was sitting there studying the other two pieces of mail. Mail for Sammy. Sammy Santos. That’s what it said on both of the envelopes. A letter from Jaime, and a letter from Pifas. They, they knew what it was like to leave home. Not that I was envious. Not really. I mean, I didn’t want to be in Nam and I didn’t want to be in Jaime’s shoes. I mean, both of those guys had bigger troubles than I did. I mean, Jaime had been sent away because of what he held inside. “To protect him,” that’s what my father said. I thought maybe it was the other way around. Maybe it was us who needed protecting. From people like him. That’s how people acted anyway. And Pifas, Pifas was fighting a war. Getting shot at. God, I thought of him every day. My Dad and I, we watched the news every day—and the war didn’t look good. Made me want to cry. And who in the hell would want to go? And who could blame all those guys for burning their draft cards? And me? Hell, I wouldn’t be eighteen until September. By then I’d be in college. At the local college. Oh yeah, poor Sammy, disappointed because he didn’t have enough fucking money to go to Princeton or Stanford—B.F.D. Big Fucking Deal. No, I didn’t have troubles, I didn’t. Didn’t stop me from feeling sorry for myself.

  My only real problem. Which letter to open first. Which one? Not that it mattered that much. I guess I just wanted to enjoy the moment. Hell, I never got letters. Never. I poured myself a Pepsi over ice. I lit a cigarette. I stared at the two letters on the kitchen table. Two letters. Both of them for Sammy Santos. I closed my eyes. I opened them. So finally I decide to read Jaime’s letter first. Because it was from California. Because Jaime’s handwriting was neater. Because, hell, I don’t know why.

  Dear Sammy—

  Sorry I haven’t written. I’m not much of a writer, guess that’s more your bag. Anyway, my mom gave me your address so I thought I’d drop you a line just to let you know I’m doing okay. Not great, Sammy, but okay. I live with my uncle. His house isn’t all that big here in East L.A. And I have to share a room with two of my cousins. I get along with them all right. They’re a little younger than me. They keep asking why I came to live with them. My uncle tells them that I got into a little bit of trouble. He makes them think I’m running from the law or something. Makes me look like a tough guy. Not that I haven’t gotten into my share of fistfights. And my uncle’s just trying to help. I guess that’s okay. He’s cool, my uncle. He told me not to say anything. He said just keep my mouth shut about everything. He says no one can tell the way I am by the way I act. He says that’s good. He’s real nice to me. Real nice to his kids, too. Lot nicer than my old man, that’s for fuckin’ sure.

  But I miss my mom. She’s a good lady, and I think, well, hell, I don’t know what I think. I miss her, that’s all. I’m going to school and working part-time at a taco/burrito place. Don’t laugh. I mean, it’s a job and I’m saving money, and school’s okay. Not too hard. I have to go to summer school and then go to school next year—at least through the fall semester if I want to graduate. That’s cool. I don’t really care. I just want to finish. Save money. Get my own place. I mean, what else is there for me to do? My uncle says I can stay here until I graduate. He promised my mom. But after that, I’m on my own. It’s hard for him, I know. Small house. An extra kid. And I’m queer. Yeah, well, it’s true. You probably don’t want to hear it. That’s cool. And maybe my uncle just doesn’t want me around after I graduate. He’s doing this for my mom. I know that. Not that he’s
not nice to me. He is.

  It’s real different here than Las Cruces and Hollywood. I guess I never really realized what a small town Las Cruces was. And hell, Hollywood is so small it wouldn’t even qualify as a neighborhood here. But I miss it, Sammy. It was home. And I can’t go back there, I know. Not ever. I guess after I graduate sometime next December or whenever, I guess maybe I’ll move out, maybe go to college. My grades are pretty good and I always wanted to go to U.C.L.A. So who knows? The world’s a big place. Just find your place in it. That’s what my mom said.

  So how’s it going in Hollywood? When I tell people that the barrio I grew up in is called Hollywood, everyone here laughs their ass off. I guess I don’t think it’s so funny. But they do. Listen, I guess I don’t have all that much to say. I’ve written to René but he hasn’t written back. Written him twice. Gigi wrote. God, she’s really great, huh? If you hear from Pifas, tell him I said hi. Tell him I moved to California, but don’t tell him why. He doesn’t need to know. No one needs to know.

  I haven’t heard from Eric. I’ve written to him a bunch of times. Maybe his aunt is intercepting his mail. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll never hear from him again. I guess I should just forget about him. I think probably that’s a smart thing to do.

  Listen, take care of yourself, Sammy. Not that I need to tell you that. If anyone’s ever going to make it—it’s going to be you. Everybody’s always known that.

  Your friend,

  Jaime

  No, not a long two pages but a sad two pages, I think. I read the letter three or four times. Yeah, it was sad. But I thought maybe he was going to be all right in the end. So, he had some problems. Leaving Hollywood didn’t make your problems disappear. And that part about me making it. Well, that was funny. That was real funny.