by Lynne Ewing
When they jumped me, I fought back so hard I broke Serena’s nose. They were afraid to keep hitting me. I hadn’t planned on hurting anyone. I was going to take my beating, show them I was down for the neighborhood. But Ana was holding a sweatshirt to her ears to stop the bleeding, and I couldn’t let it go. Ever since we were niñas, I had defended her. No one hurt Ana and got away with it.
“Forget the earrings,” Serena said now. “That was in the past. I was down for Chancey. We were best friends, her and me.”
“No you weren’t,” I said, feeling the devil stir the anger bubbling up inside me.
Serena looked up at Pocho and pushed her fingers through her long brown hair. That’s when I saw Ana’s gold hoop earrings hanging in her ears.
“You take those off,” I said to her. “I can’t even believe you’d wear those earrings today and disgrace Ana’s memory.”
“Kata, stop,” Kikicho said, and motioned for me to get in the picture. “She’s doing it to pay respect, to show her love.”
Kikicho was always trying to make peace. I ignored him.
“You’re disrespecting Ana,” I said to Serena. “Put the earrings in the casket.”
“Not today,” Kikicho said softly. “Don’t fight today.”
“Take them off,” Pocho said.
Serena shrugged and took off the earrings and slipped them under Ana’s pillow. I looked away as Pocho and Serena held their hands in our gang sign and the camera flashed.
I stepped into a small alcove near the altar and stared at the gentle statue of our Lord Jesucristo that stood behind a line of candles. How many funerals had I been to? How could He allow another death?
A sudden gust of wind sent a draft through the sanctuary, making the candles flicker like wild tongues. My head felt thick. The statue shimmered and took a step forward, the alabaster hands reaching for me, a huge weight falling on me. I cried out and tried to run, but my feet refused to flee, becoming impossibly heavy, sinking into the adobe floor.
Then I felt soft hands wrapping around me.
“Jesucristo,” I sighed, but those alabaster hands weren’t the hands holding me. Ana’s mother grabbed me before I fell and walked me back to her pew. She wore a black dress, her ankles swollen from the tightness of her patent-leather shoes. Ana’s mother smelled of lilac powder, Aqua Net hair spray, and comfort. I wondered if she knew she was burying her grandchild along with her daughter. Had the deputy told her about Ana’s secret life? Had the mortician shown her the gang name tattooed across Ana’s belly in Old English letters?
Ana’s mother looked down at me, her brown eyes red from crying. “Are you all right, Kata? Do you need some water?”
“I’m okay,” I whispered.
She motioned to her daughters to make room for me on the pew, and we sat down together.
Then she saw where I had cut Ana’s name on the web between my thumb and index finger. Scabs still covered the letters. She gripped my hand, her fingers as cold as Ana’s. She drew my hand to her lips and kissed the scab of Ana’s name. Her tears fell, warm drops on my skin between her cold fingers. The sudden change in temperature sent a chill over me. She wrapped her arm around me, pulling me to her, rocking us back and forth.
Ana’s two older sisters, Margarita and Rosa, craned their necks around to look at me, their mascara running in black strings down their cheeks and necks, staining the tops of the white collars on their black dresses. I felt the glare of their hateful eyes staring at me. They gave me mean looks, as if I didn’t belong there, sitting in the pew next to them with their perfect lives and working husbands and gold wedding bands.
Amelia poked her head from behind Margarita, her green eyes red and swollen with the loss of Ana. She flashed my gang sign at me. I pulled away, stepped over Margarita’s and Rosa’s knees, and squeezed into the pew on the other side of Amelia.
“Don’t disrespect your mother or my gang,” I whispered into her ear, the smell of her strawberry shampoo filling my nose. “You haven’t been courted into the neighborhood, and I’m not going to let you in. That’s my promise to Ana. You’re not getting in. I won’t let it happen.”
Amelia turned away from me and stared ahead, anger and determination rising in her face. I had seen that look before. Amelia was hungry for the never-think-just-do life she thought we lived down by the L.A. River. When I was her age, it seemed exciting and romantic to me, too. Hanging out, listening to music played on a boom box, sloshing down forties, and not worrying about school or rules.
I stood and started back to my place next to Ana’s mother.
“Make sure Kata gets Ana’s bracelets and books,” her mother said.
“How can you think about such things today?” Rosa said angrily.
“So she doesn’t have to think about what you’re thinking about,” I said to Rosa.
Rosa shrugged. I could tell she was afraid of me.
“It’s okay,” I said, and sat back next to Ana’s mother.
If I hadn’t seen my grandmother at my grandfather’s funeral, I would have thought Ana’s mother didn’t care, the way she was thinking about bracelets and books at her daughter’s funeral. Death makes people say odd things as if nothing has happened. I think it’s the only way they can get through what’s going on.
The priest began talking, and his words carried me to memories of my grandfather. He had liked to go out to sea on a boat he had built himself. Fishing one day the boom came loose. It swept back and forth out of control and knocked him overboard. Three days later a family walking along the beach found what was left of him in a pile of kelp washed ashore.
Grandpa was a mamo, a shaman, a curandero with big magic. The first time he saw my grandmother, he was crossing an ancient suspension bridge high above the roiling Apurímac River near Cuzco in Perú, Her face appeared in the rising mists, and he knew he had to travel north to find her. Each night as my grandfather journeyed toward the United States, he and my grandmother met in his dreams. Somehow he knew he’d find her in Los Angeles, the city of angels. My name, Katarina Phajkausay, came from them both. Phajkausay means “peace” in Quechua, the language my grandfather spoke as a child. Katarina was my grandmother’s first name.
After my grandfather’s funeral my grandmother made his favorite fried chicken, marinated in lime juice and diced jalapeños. Everyone wondered how she could cook. I sat in the kitchen, hidden on a stool beside the broom closet, watching my grandmother’s tears fall on the marinated chicken as she dipped it in flour and placed it in the crackling grease. Everyone said that chicken was my grandmother’s best.
Now I imagined my grandfather with Ana in his boat, sailing across the universe.
“Take her to heaven, Machula,” I whispered. “She don’t belong in hell.”
The priest stopped speaking, and people began whispering rapidly behind me with the soft chatter of sparrows after a storm.
Ana’s uncles lifted the casket and carried it outside to the hearse.
I walked slowly behind.
My grandmother always said that God gives us suffering to mold us into the person He wants us to become, and as I stepped from the dim candlelit church into the whirling wind and blinding white light of day, I surely felt as if I were being kneaded by some powerful hand.
Wind littered the cemetery with eucalyptus leaves and broken branches. I waited away from the others in the old section, lost in a field of granite headstones and marble angels.
My homies stood, uninvited, at Ana’s open grave. The security guard with the yellow beard had asked them to leave. When they wouldn’t, he asked Ana’s mother if she wanted him to call the sheriff. She didn’t want the sheriff at Ana’s funeral.
It had to be confusing to Ana’s mother and sisters, sitting so rigid on folding chairs under the green plastic awning, wondering why these gangbangers had come to Ana’s funeral. I prayed no one told them the truth: that we were Ana’s other family.
A sudden gust of wind whipped the ribbons from Maggie’s han
d, and black satin strips fluttered around the mourners like dancing snakes.
My homies pushed around the casket, dropping pink and purple flowers onto the white lacquered surface as the machinery cranked and lowered Ana into the grave. Suddenly I saw us all lined up, pushing and crowding, trying to be the next one to climb into the casket with Ana. We were zombies, the walking dead, and maybe that was how we could do the things we did. Some part of us knew we were dead already. I hadn’t shot anyone—yet—but I knew I could. Kill. I wanted to find the guy who killed Ana and blast him.
When I started to leave, a gentle breeze touched the back of my neck and made me look up. I don’t know what I expected to see. Machula with Ana in his boat, sailing across the clouds? I watched for a long time. Somehow I knew that Ana wasn’t in the grave anymore, and I thought if I looked hard enough I might see her in the sky.
That afternoon we gathered down at the riverbed. I put on my black sweatshirt then and sat on a block of crumbling cement that had once been part of a flood-control channel. I didn’t want to be there with everyone drinking and getting stoned, but Kikicho had talked me into coming because it was supposed to be for Ana. Kikicho sat next to me, his canes resting on the black mud and grass in front of us. I liked the way he stroked my back, soft and gentle, as if I were delicate and might break.
Pocho had stolen a white curly-haired puppy with brown spots like freckles across its face, and a long fuzzy tail. He yelled at the little dog, making it cower, tail between its legs, its fat belly shivering. Pocho laughed like it was really funny to see the puppy cringe. He was showing off for Serena. She was a fool to be impressed, but she was laughing like she was seeing a circus of clowns, her red lips waiting for Pocho’s kiss now that Ana was gone. She had taken off her sweatshirt and unbuttoned her shirt, saying it was too hot, but we all knew what she was doing.
“Stop it, Pocho!” I yelled finally. “Leave the little dog alone.”
“Don’t watch him,” Kikicho whispered, his breath warm and soft on my cheek.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” I said.
“I’m not telling you,” he said, and took my hand.
“It sounded like it,” I said.
“I just don’t want Pocho to get you more upset,” he said. “You don’t need it today.”
“I’m sorry,” I said after a pause.
“¿Por qué siempre estamos peleando?” he said softly, and kissed my hand. “¿Qué problema hay?”
“We’re not always fighting,” I said, and then I smiled big and sweet the way my mother does at men to melt their anger.
Kikicho smiled back at me. “Come on, I’ll make you that teardrop for Ana.”
“Okay,” I said.
He drew a tear under my right eye with an ink pen, then took a needle and began sticking it into my skin where he had drawn the teardrop to make a tattoo.
“You think she’s close enough to see?” I asked. “Ana, I mean.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do.”
I kept my eyes open the whole time, watching my reflection in the black pupils of his deep brown eyes as he pricked my skin with the needle. When he finished, he kissed the teardrop. A smear of blood and ink stained his full lips. Then he kissed me so gently I wasn’t sure our lips had touched until he kissed me again. He wasn’t rough like other boys. Sometimes I wondered how he could like me when there were so many girls who did themselves up so fine to please the boys and let the boys own them, always ready to spread themselves.
“Why don’t you get yourself a real girlfriend?” I said.
“You’re my lady,” he said.
“I don’t give you what you want,” I answered.
“How do you know what I want?” he said.
“I know,” I said.
He shook his head.
“What?” I said.
“It feels like you want to start an argument with me.”
“No, I don’t,” I said, but my words came out angry, and I knew he was right.
Then a squeal made me jump up. The puppy had started to pee, and Pocho, impatient to hold it, had yanked the dog into his arms before it had finished, and the dog had dribbled on his Pendleton. He cursed the dog and threw it down. The dog whimpered as if it understood the words. Pocho threw his beer can. Beer foam exploded over the dog and made it yelp and turn in tight circles.
Kikicho held my arm. He knew what I was thinking. I jerked away and ran to the shivering dog. I picked it up, kissing its ear, and wiped its wet fur with my sweatshirt.
“Pocho, you’re a fool.” I said. “Dogs don’t give anything but love, and you treat it like this?”
“You don’t even know what love is,” Pocho said.
I wrapped the puppy in my sweatshirt and started walking away with it.
“Where you going?” Pocho yelled. “That’s my dog.” When I didn’t stop, he ran after me and grabbed my arm, his black eyes dangerous and angry.
I pulled away from him. He grabbed my arm again and looked at me with hard, dull eyes.
“The others may be afraid of you, but not me,” I said.
He tried to take the dog, but I wouldn’t let him. “I know you, Pocho,” I said in a fierce whisper through my teeth. I could hear Kikicho’s canes rattling and thumping the soft ground, coming closer. Pocho’s grabbing me was an insult too close to the bone. To save face, Kikicho had to fight him, but I knew he couldn’t, not standing with two canes.
“The little dog doesn’t want you anymore,” I said, making each word slow and deliberate. I knew how to hurt Pocho. “Doesn’t want you no more.”
He pushed me away, and I started running, the puppy bobbing in my arms.
“Kata, come back!” Kikicho yelled.
“I got to get home to my mother,” I said without looking back as I ran up the slope toward the freeway.
“Don’t go by yourself,” he yelled. “The guys that got Ana are probably out looking for you.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said.
“It’s not safe,” he yelled back, anger breaking his words.
I was disgracing him by not going back, but I couldn’t stand being there with all of them, drinking and smoking, the music pounding loud on the boom box and Ana in her grave.
When I reached the top of the slope, I turned back and stepped onto a cement wall that had once been used to guide floodwaters. “How can all of you act like this is a normal afternoon?” I shouted down at them. “Ana’s not coming back.”
Pocho grabbed Serena’s malt liquor and threw it at me.
“We all loved Ana, you bitch,” he yelled.
“Then why are you flirting with Serena like a matador courting a bull?” I said, and turned away.
The sun fell behind eucalyptus trees, pines, and oleanders, once a freeway beautification project to hide the flood-control channels, now a home to winos and the homeless. I hadn’t gone far when I heard leaves crackling behind me.
I stopped and listened.
“Who’s there?” I said softly, thinking Pocho might have followed me.
The wind rushed through the oleander branches, blowing the pink blossoms forward as if someone were making a path through the thick foliage toward me, but I couldn’t see anyone in the moving shadows. Maybe it had only been the wind, or a cat, or someone’s dog that had startled me.
I started walking again, the puppy whimpering in my arms, the wind howling around me, blowing dust into my eyes. That’s when I heard someone’s footsteps heavy behind me, like the hounds of hell padding after me to take me back where I belonged.
“Who’s there?” I shouted.
When no one answered, I took off in a dead run, the puppy bumping against me. Whoever it was raced behind me, twigs breaking underfoot.
I turned toward the freeway underpass. A fire burned across my chest as I ran through the urine-soaked cement walkway and jumped across two homeless men lolling against the wall with a bottle of tequila.
Footsteps slapped behind me.
; I burst out into an open field on the other side of the freeway, set the puppy down, and felt on the ground until my hands found a big rock. I hid behind a bottlebrush tree, my back tense and rigid, my hand ready to throw the rock.
Fear surged through my body, suffocating me with the certainty that there was someone near, watching me.
I waited a long time.
But nothing stirred. Had I only imagined the footsteps? I decided the only way to find out if someone was stalking me was to make myself visible. I held my breath and stepped from behind the bottlebrush tree.
“Come out and fight!” I yelled.
A breeze ruffled through my hair like a stranger’s fingers. If someone was still there, hidden behind the oleander bushes, he chose not to show himself.
Finally I picked up the dog and walked to the street. I kept casting glances over my shoulder, expecting to see someone suddenly spring from a bush and grab me.
I stopped at Thrifty and went to the rows of vitamins in the back near the pharmacy. I wanted something for Mom, something to help her keep her promise, but I didn’t know what to get her. When no one was looking, I stuffed brown bottles of vitamins C and A and multiples in the back pockets of my bagged-out jeans and pulled my sweatshirt low to cover the bulges. Usually Ana came with me, and I stole perfume and makeup while she kept the salesclerk busy with talk about condoms, tampons, and douches. Then on the way home we’d laugh at all the questions Ana had asked and try to think of new questions that were even more embarrassing for her to ask the next time. A rush of loneliness for Ana came over me. I held the puppy to my face, its wet tongue licking my nose, to keep the tears from coming. I wondered who could make me laugh again.