Always Running

by Luis J. Rodriguez

  I made it to the field and saw Yuk Yuk kissing the other girl on a section of cinder-block wall while Fuzzy opened her legs with his hand to get a better feel. Ernie looked at me and motioned me to come over. I didn’t want any part of it. Something filled my throat and I puked around my shoes. Yuk Yuk by then had thrown the girl to the ground. I knew what they were going to do, and wandered off.

  I walked up the slope, saw Paco pulling his pants up through the slightly-opened van doors. As before, I found myself ambling along a dirt road.

  Wilo and Payasa moved to El Monte to live with an aunt, partly to remove themselves from the violence surrounding the barrio. Their older brothers stayed and continued to carry on the fight. Glad my friends were not to be in the line of fire, I went to say goodby on the day they were leaving.

  They lived on Berne Street, a section of Lomas called “Little TJ,” which consisted of a road which flowed in mud on rainy days, making it difficult to get in and out. Makeshift stucco, brick and clapboard shacks clawed the hills on either side of the road.

  Payasa looked different, following several months in rehab hospitals and half-way homes. Her hair was back to its normal luster, short and combed straight down instead of teased. She had on no makeup and thus seemed a stranger, although we were so close at one time, sleeping together on park benches, sniffing and groping in the tunnel or in my garage room. I no longer knew this person in front of me.

  Payasa didn’t smile. Yet she acknowledged me rather sweetly.

  “Oh my Chin—you’ll miss me?” she asked, more a statement than a question.

  “Depends,” I replied. “Just keep in touch.”

  “I’ll always remember you, homes,” she said and placed her hand on my face; meandering scars across her arms. “We’ve seen things most people never see. We’ve seen death. And here we are, still able to say goodby. I don’t know if we deserve this.”

  “Orale, sure we deserve it. Don’t ever forget that.”

  “I mean, we haven’t done anything really decent,” she said, then paused.

  “You know,” she continued. “I’ve forgotten what it is to cry. I don’t know why.”

  “Me neither, but I know one thing, we better find out.”

  Wilo came by with a medium-sized bag of his belongings, but then he wasn’t one for possessions.

  “Hey, ése, what’s up?” he said.

  “Aquí nomás. You got everything?”

  “You pack for where you’re going, and where I’m going there’s nothing to pack for.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “I’m sure I don’t want to do this,” he answered, then looked back toward his former home. “But there’s nothing I can do about it. Even my carnales want us to leave. And I do what they say.”

  I helped Payasa and Wilo put their things into their father’s beat-up station wagon which had a side door held on by twine and good wishes. I would miss them but it was best they leave, maybe start fresh again if this were possible.

  “I owe you man,” I finally said, something I never told Wilo about his role in my near-death experience. “You saved my life.”

  “Chale, ése don’t put that on me,” he said. “You don’t owe me nothing. Just pay yourself back.”

  I hugged them both and proceeded down Berne Street to the nearest fields. It would be the last time I ever saw them again.

  Later I found out Payasa ended up pregnant and in a prison of matrimony somewhere. But 10 days after they moved, dudes from the Monte Flores barrio would shoot and run over Wilo several times; his body discovered wedged between metal trash bins in an obscure alley. Payasa called me one day to say she hadn’t heard from Wilo for a day or so. Then she called back to tell me she heard of his death while listening to the radio. Wilo was 15 years old. Payasa didn’t cry.

  Everything lost its value for me: Love, Life and Women. Death seemed the only door worth opening, the only road toward a future. We tried to enter death and emerge from it. We sought it in heroin, which bears the peace of death in life. We craved it in our pursuit of Sangra and in battles with the police. We yelled: You can’t touch this!, but Come kill me! was the inner cry. In death we sought what we were groping for, without knowing it until it caressed our cheeks. It was like an extra finger in the back of our heads, pressing, gnawing, scraping. This fever overtook us, weakening and enslaving us. Death in a bottle. In spray. In the fire-eyes of a woman, stripped of soul and squeezed into the shreds of her humanity.

  I stopped spray soon after my near-death experience. But I needed something else. At first, the dudes in the Animal Tribe used to go off somewhere and shoot up smack. At 13 years old, they shooed me away.

  “This is not for you,” Joaquín used to say.

  Still, I fooled with all kinds of pills, with mescaline and meth. I sought the death in Silver Satin and muscatel, and then pure tequila and vodka. I snorted heroin and PCP with Payasa. By the time I turned 15, smack was everywhere. The epidemic followed a pattern in the barrio. It began with the pachucos. Most of the old-timers in prison, the pachucos of the 30s and 40s, were incarcerated because of chiva. Then every ten years or so a generation of ex-gang bangers became hooked. Now it was our time. Already, the older dudes in the Tribe were hypes, most of them behind bars.

  Chicharrón went with me the first time I tried it. For this maiden trip, we skin-popped it in our forearms, a few “cents” worth. Lencho, who had marks up and down his arms, only gave us a taste until we could score with more money. Because Yuk Yuk turned us into a stealing organization, this became the basis for scoring heroin.

  Chicharrón and I often cruised Whittier Boulevard. Every weekend, the 14-block stretch between Atlantic Boulevard and the Long Beach Freeway became the cruising capital of the world. Lowriders from every barrio in Southern California, and often from places throughout the Southwest, congregated there. Girls sat on car tops, dressed to impress, while dudes piled into dancing “shorts” as speakers blared the latest street beat. Some of the corners were taken over by different barrios. Lomas controlled the corner of Clela Avenue and the Boulevard. The lowrider club, Groupe, allowed us use of the parking lot there. In our finest cholo attire, we drank, laughed, and challenged. We picked up women and fought with other barrios. Sometimes we had shoot-outs with the dudes from 18th Street who controlled the corner across from us.

  So on weekends, Chicharrón and I went out on excursions, looking for good times. Being out of school, and up to our eyeballs with time to kill, this also involved hitchhiking throughout East L.A. and the San Gabriel Valley and pretending to be incoming students at local high schools for a day. It proved to be easy: We told school officials we were new students and our parents would come in the next day to sign us up. Some of the schools allowed us to figure out our courses and start attending classes. We met more girls this way. We also got into fights with the local vatos, one time being chased by a mob of irate boyfriends in La Verne.

  Soon we had girls to visit with in Pomona, Pasadena, Norwalk, in Boyle Heights, and El Monte.

  So there we were, cruising the boulevard and pulling into a side street crowded with girls. We offered them booze or pills and then slid around an alley, behind a brick wall. We drank, staggered about and had a taste of some of them by pushing a finger around the crotch of their panties and into their vaginas, then continued on our way.

  Around two in the morning, we passed Atlantic Boulevard when we spotted two girls sitting at a bus stop. We pulled over. Many times girls would shine us on when it got to be this late, but one of them came up to the car. She was big, but not fat, in tight jeans. She had kinky hair and chola-style makeup. The other girl was thinner, cute like a china doll, with short straight hair and a party dress.

  “You want a ride?” I asked from my shotgun position in the car.

  “Sure, you know where there’s a party?” the kinky-haired one inquired.

  “No, but I’m sure we can find one.”

  They climbed into the car,
almost too easy, and we sped on looking for some “haps.” The big one was named Roberta, the cute one was Xochitl, a Nahuatl name which sounded like Shoshi, so that’s what we called her.

  We ended up in Legg Lake along Whittier Narrows. The park was closed but we snuck in and ran around the swing area, having our own party with the pills and booze Chicharrón had left over from before. Police cruised by and we fell to the ground, quiet as the grass, until they passed by.

  That night we drove Roberta and Shoshi to barrio La Rock Mara in the Maravilla Housing Projects. Roberta said she lived in one of the duplexes there with a 21-year-old sister named Frankie, which stood for Francisca. Frankie also happened to have five children. Shoshi was a runaway who stayed with them for a while. They were both 15 years old, like us.

  We sat in the car until the dawn swam in orange-red colors across the horizon. I moved over to Roberta and kissed her, while Chicharrón made out with Shoshi in the front seat. After that night, Chicharrón and I practically made this our second home.

  “Oh, Louie, touch me there … simón, just like that … ummm.”

  Sweat roamed down the side of my face. The car windows steamed. I broiled, as if working in a foundry, while Roberta lay there in the back seat with her blouse open and ample breasts wet with my saliva.

  “Don’t stop … ummmm, don’t stop.”

  My tongue drew circles around her nipples, which were on a dark patch over honey-brown skin. My hands rubbed her cunt from the outside of her pants. Her hips moved in waves, pushing harder and harder into my hand. She groped for my zipper, tugged and slid it down. Her fingers kneaded the top of my penis, hard and wet with anticipation.

  “Eso, así … oh baby, lick me.”

  Roberta pushed me up, my back arched and my head scraped the top of the car. Then she held on to my penis with both hands while her lips smothered it and her tongue lightly flickered over the tip. After a moment, she pulled at her pants, pushing them off with her hands and feet. I looked down and saw the tuft of wild hair at the crotch, her legs spread and nearing my shoulders, inviting me to enter.

  She grabbed the back of my neck and then pressed me down to her. The penis sank into the bristle of pubis, then slid into the oiled vagina, covering it in flesh and juice and rhythm of pelvis. Roberta’s mouth sucked at my chest, my neck and shoulders as her fingernails scraped tracks into my back. The scent from her hair and neck filled my head as I moved and quivered inside of her.

  Night after night, I stayed over at Roberta’s place. Because there were many children in her house, who never appeared to fall asleep, we made love in the car, beneath the staircase, or fondled in the driveway. Chicharrón and Shoshi found their own spots. At four or five in the morning, Chicharrón and I left, grabbing some huevos rancheros at a 24-hour Mexican restaurant on First Street.

  Sometimes Fermin, Frankie’s wino husband, would show up and the fights would start; the yelling and plates being tossed against a wall, and then the poor bastard being thrown out on his ass. Frankie was one tough East L.A. mama.

  But other times we had to hassle with Smokey, Roberta’s brother and a member of La Rock. I stayed cool with him and he pretty much left me alone. But Chícharrón and Smokey didn’t get along. I believed Smokey also liked Shoshi.

  One night, after Roberta and I lay back in the car seat, following a fevered bout of lovemaking, Chicharrón rapped on the car window.

  “What’s up homes?” I yelled out.

  He opened the door. A lead pipe filled his hand.

  “I’m waiting for Smokey,” he said. “He’s after me. You got to back me up, ése.”

  “Ah, just leave it alone, he’s only testing you,” Roberta responded. “He does it to everyone—to see how tough you are.

  Chicharrón didn’t like being around there though. Often he took Shoshi away from there while I stayed with Roberta.

  There were a few nights when I came over to see Roberta and she wasn’t there.

  “Man, where does she go?” I once asked Frankie.

  “You don’t want to know,” she said.

  “What do you mean, I don’t want to know,” I replied. “Of course I do.”

  “Listen, I like you Louie,” Frankie confided. “So it’s better you just don’t ask.”

  But I insisted. And it was true. I shouldn’t have asked.

  It happened that Roberta turned tricks. This is how she could pay for staying with Frankie, and sometimes to help pay for her sister’s habit. Frankie had marks on her arms—but she was careful not to get popped because she didn’t want the children taken away. In fact, her husband Fermin had been an old hype who turned to the bottle. To Frankie, this was worse, and she threw him out.

  A fever of emotion swept through me. The thought of Roberta selling herself to other guys for money choked on me. Frankie told me Roberta worked the Boulevard, the same place I met her.

  “How come she didn’t ask me for money?” I yelled. “How come she didn’t even come off like a whore then?”

  “Maybe she liked you from the start,” Frankie submitted. “She’s only a teenager, Louie. She still has feelings for men—but I don’t know how long this will last.”

  I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to rush out of there. But I felt I had to wait for Roberta to come home. I wondered if Shoshi also sold her sex and if Chicharrón knew.

  “Oh, yeah, her too,” Frankie said. “Not only does Chicharrón know, but he’s out there pimping for her.”

  “Are you fucking with me!” I yelled. “How come he never told me?”

  “You’re a sweet dude, Louie,” Frankie said, coming up to me and kissing me softly on my lips. “There’s not too many of you out there. We told him not to tell you.”

  I started to feel tears beneath my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them fall. Frankie pressed her finger on my eyelids and a drop traced down my cheek. She kissed me again. Told me how much she liked me, how she had liked me from the first day, then led me into her bedroom and closed the door.

  Later that morning Smokey came by and invited me to a house across the street, situated on top of another one. We climbed a section of unkept stairs. Smokey knocked, said a few words to the door before it opened and we entered. The place had no electricity or gas. Candles were situated around a kitchen table. Hypodermic needles, spoons, matches and bags of powder were on the table. I looked around and saw about five people, including two women. They had dark circles beneath their eyes, tattoos like old pachucas, and collapsed veins along the inside of their arms.

  Smokey was also a tecato, although he looked fit and muscular; if you know what you’re doing you can actually live well on heroin for a while.

  My head swarmed with tortuous thoughts of Roberta in somebody else’s arms, but it was also my fault. I fell in love with a prostitute. Although she never asked me for money, indicating perhaps I was special, I still felt hollow inside. Smokey prepared a kit while I tightened a belt around my biceps. I watched the needle enter a bulging vein that Smokey brought up through the skin by slapping it with two fingers. I saw the tinge of blood enter the needle, indicating it had punctured the vein, then watched the liquid get pushed into the bloodstream. The sensation began like a pinhole glow at the inner pit of my stomach and then spread throughout my body. There was nothing like it, this rush, and here I was on the edges of a new fraternity which crossed barrio and sex lines, this fellowship of la carga, so integral to “la vida loca.”

  Chapter Six

  “There are choices you have to make not just once, but every time they come up.”—Chente

  IT STARTS WITH A dream. This dream creeps beyond others of sinuous ordeals, beyond demons throwing side-glances, beyond falling out of the bed and into an abyss of molten stone, beyond slipping in traffic and being unable to get up as headlights swim toward me. Then one night, a variation of the dream:

  I’m in front of a house situated in a clearing among tall, moss-infested trees. The house is enormous, Gothic in style. I see myself walking to
ward it, leaves and branches lightly scraping the sides of my face.

  I step up a creaky set of stairs with marble railings and emerge on a large empty porch. Through a walnut door, which opens without my assistance, I go through a dimly-lit hallway, the walls breathing. There are rooms on either side of me, but I venture on, ignoring them. I continue past a row of doors without doorknobs. Out of a smoky haze, another room comes into view. The door of this room opens, slowly, as I stand transfixed in front of it. The breathing walls now follow the cadence of a heartbeat.

  I enter the room, a chill dampens the beads of sweat above my brow. In the center of the room is a baby’s bassinet, washed in orange-red and draped in lace with ruffles along the edge, like something out of a Sears catalogue. I move toward the bassinet, deliberate, as if rehearsed. Lying there among the lace is my long-dead sister Lisa in a white baptism dress, her face in tranquil sleep like the way she looks in a picture my mother keeps in an old album.

  This is where the dream usually ends, with Lisa in a deathbed of bliss.

  But this time, the dream advances. This time I keep looking at the child. This time Lisa opens her eyes, so suddenly I jerk back. Only blackness stares out of them. Then the baby’s mouth opens and a horrendous scream fills the room, distant yet distinct. The scream echoes through the walls, the hallway, the doors. I wake up with my hands to my ears. I enter consciousness. But the scream does not stop. It isn’t in my head. It comes from the next room, where my sister Gloria sleeps.

  I get up from bed and stagger into Gloria’s room; she is screaming in spurts and talking nonsense. I wake up Mama, who’s in the living room asleep. Soon Dad is rushing about, looking for the car keys. Gloria is dangling in Mama’s arms, fading in and out of delirium. My brother Joe and sister Ana are also up, Ana in tears.

  “What’s wrong with her?” she cries.

  No one offers an answer.