Always Running

by Luis J. Rodriguez

  When I entered, Mr. Humes, with graying hair, short-sleeve striped shirt and tie, stood in front of the blackboard, addressing a scattered row of students.

  “Young man, you have no business barging into my class like this, you better leave …”

  “No, I won’t leave. What’s this about calling Cha Cha a chola whore.”

  “I don’t have to answer to you!” Mr. Humes yelled. “I’m tired of this dictatorship of students we have here.”

  Oh, I see—you want to be able to call somebody a whore and get away with it. That’s over with, man. We refuse to take any more abuse.”

  “And I won’t take this abuse,” he countered. “I want you out of my class—now! If not, we’ll see Mr. Madison about this.”

  “Well, you’re just going to have to see Mr. Madison.”

  Mr. Humes stalked out the class. As he slammed the door, the students in the room and in the hallway broke into cheers. It was far from over.

  Mr. Madison called Cha Cha and me into his office.

  “You can’t go around disrupting classes,” he said. “This conduct has got to stop.”

  “Nobody should get away with what Mr. Humes called Cha Cha,” I said.

  “But there are other ways to resolve this. There are channels. There’s me—why didn’t you come to me first?”

  “We’re taking this into our own hands. We have no way to control the outcome if we don’t. We just don’t trust how anything gets resolved around here.”

  “But I have the authority, not you,” said Mr. Madison. “I can’t have students interrupting classes whenever they feel like it.”

  Then Cha Cha spoke: “Listen Mr. Madison, you’ve forgotten that Mr. Humes called me a whore. Who cares about us ‘disrupting’ a class. What are you going to do about Mr. Humes? It’s my life here. It’s the lives of others like me. What are you going to do?”

  It was far from over. Other students found out what happened. Again the anger held inside boiled over. Somebody slashed Mr. Humes’ car tires.

  Later a group of Mexicans beat up some Anglos in the gym. This escalated to fights in the cafeteria and parking lot. Cha Cha’s encounter served as the catalyst for that year’s Tradition.

  The student council called a special session. Daryl, the student president, proposed a “Communicators” group which would consist of leaders from among the Mexican and Anglo students. Mr. Madison approved the suggestion and provided a meeting place for the group. A list of 60 names were drawn up; I was on the list.

  The Communicators were to stifle any rumors. Stop any fights. Resolve any differences. The Communicators wore red armbands. We were excused from classes and allowed to roam the hallways and talk with students. The fights ceased after two days as the Communicators walked up and down the school espousing calm.

  On the third day, the 60-member group met in the auditorium to determine how to deal with disruptions. I proposed they take affirmative steps for people to talk out their problems, to address the inequities, and allow more power to fall into the hands of students. This led to a wild debate. As we argued the finer points, a teacher ran into the auditorium.

  “They’re at it again!” she yelled out, her hair disheveled. “They’re fighting in the halls!”

  “Okay, everyone,” Daryl said. “We’ve got to go out there and stop this.”

  The Communicators poured out of the auditorium to where a knot of students gathered near a stairway. Screams and shouts greeted us. I saw one dude jump in crazy anger from the top of the stairs onto the crowd of students below.

  I rushed up to the melee and tried to pull apart a couple of students on the ground. But as I got a hold of one guy, I looked up and a crumpled soda can filled with sand smashed against my mouth. The jagged edge and weight of the sand burst open my bottom lip; blood streamed out as if it were a waterfall. Others stopped fighting as I stood there in a daze. A student and a teacher grabbed my arm and escorted me to the nurse’s office.

  When we got there, a number of students were already sitting around with various injuries. The nurse looked at my mouth. The crumpled can had sliced the lip and chipped off a piece of tooth. She suggested I be taken to the medical clinic.

  “You’re from Keppel, right?” the doctor said as she came into the operating room where I lay holding soaked towels to my face.

  “We’ve been getting a lot of you guys this past week,” the doctor said. “Let’s take a look.”

  I removed the towels. The doctor looked stern, but not alarmed.

  “Ain’t no big thing,” she said. “We’ll get you some stitches, and you’ll be good as new.”

  I liked her already. She prepared the cat-gut while I lay back.

  “I’m not using any anesthesia,” she declared. “You seem like a tough dude. I’m sure you can take it.”

  I hated her guts. Yet I didn’t say anything. I let her sew up the lip without any painkiller; I felt the needle enter in and out of skin, stitch after stitch. I didn’t wince or complain. I just tightened my grip on the bedsides so the doctor wouldn’t see.

  After the doctor finished, she looked at me with a devious glint in her eye.

  “I guess you could take it,” she said. “Not even a whimper. Okay, tough guy—you can go home now.”

  But I didn’t go home. I went back to the school with an immense gauze bandage on the lower lip. By then hundreds of students were gathered outside. It was an impromptu walkout following my injury. I walked up to the crowd which roared at the sight of me. Esme addressed them from the top of the front steps. I came up next to her, the gauze and the pain keeping me from smiling.

  “Louie, can you say a few words?” Esme asked.

  I took my time, but I managed.

  “We’ve come a long way in this school. But something keeps coming up to show us we’ve got a long way to go. All I can say is, we can’t stop fighting until the battle’s won.”

  The students exploded in a frenzy of clapping. Inside the school doorways, I could see Mrs. Baez was pleased to see me asserting myself. But Mr. Madison, trying so hard to contain the controversy, looked tired.

  Not long after this, the school fired Mr. Pérez. Mr. Pérez ran the print shop. It was the most popular class for Chicanos; many meetings were held there. He not only sponsored the ToHMAS club, he was also the school’s best teacher. Mr. Pérez arranged field trips to downtown, the beach, even to Beverly Hills; he wanted us to see the world, see how others lived and know why we didn’t live the same way. But teachers who helped students think were considered radical.

  One day Mr. Pérez received a notice. The school claimed he was insubordinate and unresponsive to the students’ needs—the exact opposite of the truth.

  I walked into the Chicano Student Center. Esme’s face covered with pain; Amelia, crying. Mrs. Baez held a phone in her hand, although not talking into it.

  “This is it, man,” I said. “I’ve had it with these people. Another walkout, man, we’re going out until they bring Pérez back.”

  “No, Luis, not this time,” Mrs. Baez said, waving the phone at me. “You can’t walk out every time something isn’t to your liking. The school and Mr. Pérez need to work this out.”

  “That’s just an excuse,” Esme said. “They’ve wanted to get rid of Mr. Pérez for a long time. He’s the only teacher willing to take chances, to challenge the way things are.”

  “Yeah, Mrs. Baez, I don’t buy it,” I said. “We’re going out.”

  “Luis, don’t forget you’re a Communicator,” Mrs. Baez said. “You’re supposed to keep the peace.”

  “Not any more—I quit!”

  This time, I worked the halls hard, telling as many students as I could about the pending walkout. This time, the school was prepared. For a year or so, Alex, who lived in the Hills, worked with Mr. Madison to diffuse any tension. The day of the proposed walkout, Mr. Madison had a talk with Alex, who then went around the school telling everyone the walkout was off.

  Some students came up t
o me, confused. I began to see the plan: Mr. Madison wanted a tug-of-war between Alex and me—and he was betting on his stooge Alex. In fact, the walkout’s strength had waned because of Alex’s misinformation tactic. But still, Mr. Madison implemented Plan B.

  I had designated 1 p.m., following the lunch period, for everyone to meet on the lawn. But just before the lunch break, the loudspeakers made an announcement: At 1 p.m. there was to be a special school-wide assembly at Aztec Stadium.

  “They’re doing this to stop the walkout,” Esme said.

  “I know, there’s nothing we can do now,” I said. “Let’s see what Mr. Madison has in mind.”

  Hundreds of students assembled in the bleacher stands. I found a seat at the very top and sat down, my face a mask of indifference.

  Mr. Madison made a long-winded speech about cooperation, about harmony and understanding; how certain elements were out to undermine all Mark Keppel High School stood for.

  I sat there, feeling the flux and flow of power within me. I had called off the walkout, that much I had to do. But I also knew all this—the school assembly, the address to the student body, Alex’s role—all of this was because of me!

  I recalled when I first entered school in Watts, how I had been virtually written off, pushed into a corner with building blocks and treated like a pariah; how in Garvey I had been heaved out of classes and, later in high school, forced to drop out and labeled a failure!

  Now I was somebody they couldn’t dismiss—somebody who had to be heard.

  “I finished reading all the work you gave me a while back—remember, your poems and stories,” Mrs. Baez said.

  “Yeah, sure—they’re no good, right?”

  “Luis, how can you say that! They’re wonderful. We should get them published.”

  “Great—but how?”

  “Well, I picked up a newspaper the other day where they announced a Chicano Literary Contest in Berkeley. It’s from Quinto Sol Publications. Let’s send them the work. But it has to be retyped—your typing is terrible.”

  “I know, I know … but who’s going to retype it?”

  “I’ll find some help. I’m sure there are people willing to do something. What do you say?”

  “I guess okay—I mean, it’s worth a try.”

  About the same time, the California State College at Los Angeles offered me an Economic Opportunity Program Grant—despite my past school record, lack of credits and other mishaps. Chente, Mr. Pérez and Mrs. Baez teamed up to help me get accepted.

  And a Loyola-Marymount University art professor asked me to paint a mural for the school; he offered some pay and student artists to work with.

  My head spun with all the prospects.

  But the kicker was when Mrs. Baez returned the newly-typed versions of my writing; I couldn’t believe I had anything to do with it. The shape of the words, the forms and fragments of sentences and syllables, seemed alien, as if done by another’s hand.

  The fact was I didn’t know anything about literature. I had fallen through the chasm between two languages. The Spanish had been beaten out of me in the early years of school—and I didn’t learn English very well either.

  This was the predicament of many Chicanos.

  We could almost be called incommunicable, except we remained lucid; we got over what we felt, sensed and understood. Sometimes we rearranged words, created new meanings and structures—even a new vocabulary. Often our everyday talk blazed with poetry.

  Our expressive powers were strong and vibrant. If this could be nurtured, if the language skills could be developed on top of this, we could learn to break through any communication barrier. We needed to obtain victories in language, built on an infrastructure of self-worth.

  But we were often defeated from the start.

  In my case, though I didn’t know how to write or paint, I had a great need to conceive and imagine, so compelling, so encompassing, I had to do it even when I knew my works would be subject to ridicule, would be called stupid and naive. I just couldn’t stop.

  I had to learn how, though; I had to believe I could.

  One day, I received a phone call. It was from Dr. Octavio Romano of Quinto Sol. I had been chosen as one of two honorary winners in their $1,000 literary contest. My award was $250, a paid plane trip—my first ever—to Berkeley, and a publishing contract.

  At the news, I felt so alive, so intensely aware of my surroundings. After I hung up the phone, I raced out of the house in the rain and danced: an Aztec two-step, boogie-woogie, a norteño—it didn’t matter, I danced.

  Mama looked out at me and said I had gone crazy for sure. And I was crazy—like my Tía Chucha, who continued to create without recognition, despite being outcast from the family; crazy like the moon which jitterbugged in the night, crazy like the heartbeat which kept pumping its precious liquid when so much tried to stop it.

  I won $250—the most legitimate money I’d ever obtained in one chunk. I danced for the ’hood, I danced for the end of degradation, I danced for all the little people who ever tried to make it and were crushed.

  Berkeley … my own book contract … 250 bucks!

  I finally graduated from high school. Quite an achievement. I didn’t attend the official ceremony and prom because I felt it had nothing to do with me.

  ToHMAS had its own celebration where I received a certificate in appreciation of my activities of the previous two years. Mrs. Baez and Chente were among those present, both smiling with perhaps a sense of some accomplishment. They helped make me.

  I gave Esme, Flora, Amelia, Chuy, Cha Cha and the others my sincerest hopes for the future. A few of them were continuing as Keppel students and planned to carry on the fight we had begun. Delfina was there and I walked up to her. She was to be next year’s Josephine Aztec.

  “Louie, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you,” she said.

  “I’m glad—I’m just sorry it didn’t work out between us.”

  We hugged, and then I made the rounds embracing and shaking hands with the other students. When it came time for me to say a few words, I told the group: “I believe anything I’ve done, anybody can do—and do better. I’m no exception. Everyone here is a potential leader.”

  I managed to go to Mr. Madison’s office and pick up my diploma. Mr. Madison handed it to me without a word and shook my hand, looking ambivalent. I felt he didn’t hate me, but he had never known anyone like me—and I suspected he figured it would be a long time before he’d meet another.

  As I left the school, I carried with me numerous scars, but there were also victories: Mr. Pérez got his job back, the school hired another Chicano Studies teacher—and Mr. Humes received an early retirement.

  In my last year, ToHMAS members attended Mexican American Leadership Conferences with students from all over Los Angeles County. The Belmont High School teacher Sal Castro, a leader of the 1968 East L.A. “Blowouts,” and other Chicano leaders were key speakers.

  We also participated in L.A.-wide conferences with youth of other communities: Jewish students from the Westside, Anglos from the San Fernando Valley, Blacks from South Central L.A. and Compton, sons and daughters of the longshore, refinery and canning industries in the Harbor—many of whom were undergoing similar predicaments. We told our story to enraptured groups and struck a chord.

  Most importantly, Anglo students at Keppel began to grasp the significance of struggle and pressed for their own demands.

  One of them, Maureen Murphy, ran a controversial campaign for school office on a program of unity and justice. She wrote me a letter following her victory: “You are one of the three persons in this world I term a ‘real person.’ You showed me many times where I was wrong and where I was right, and even where I have to fight and what to give up. I’ll be frank … I’m scared. I need someone to help me. I’m not really that happy I won for if the color of my skin was different, like you, I would have lost.”

  Some like Maureen understood that the foundation for the sinking levels o
f instruction for all students, for their own diminished rights, lay in the two-tiered educational system. As long as some students were deprived of a quality education, they all were.

  I began Cal State-L.A. in the fall of 1972, majoring in Broadcast Journalism and Chicano Studies. I even bought my first car, a blue bug with chrome rims and tires which stuck out several inches from the side. A lowrider Volkswagen.

  While going to college I had to continue working since the grant I received would only cover part of the cost. I worked part-time gigs as a school bus driver, a warehouse employee and a truck driver for a lamp manufacturer.

  I signed a contract with Quinto Sol and worked on the publication of the book, tentatively titled “Barrio Expressions.”

  Chicharrón continued to visit, sometimes letting Junior play in the back yard. I stayed in the garage room to save money. Besides, the place carried so many memories; I didn’t want to leave, even when Mama offered to let me stay in the house again.

  I became active in MEChA, eventually becoming vice-president and editor of the club’s newspaper. We set up a MEChA Central which trained and organized Chicano students from high schools all over the Eastside: Roosevelt, Garfield, Lincoln, Belmont, Franklin and Wilson. I traveled to these schools talking with youth and serving as liaison to the college.

  On one of those excursions, I met Camila Martínez. She was a student at Garfield High School, an almost 100 percent Chicano school with one of the highest dropout rates in the city. I attended a MEChA meeting there and was asked to speak. I addressed issues of organizing, drawing a lot upon my Keppel experiences. But I became terribly distracted by a cute, Filipina-looking, curly-haired, dark-eyed student in front of me. She had on a short skirt out of which emerged some killer legs. I didn’t know it then, but this girl knew what she wanted, and she wanted me.

  Camila showed up at all the meetings, gently interrupting my talks with questions and comments, constantly keeping herself in my view. I invited her to study sessions we were starting in various East L.A. homes. She came, participated, picked up readily the concepts and fell in well with the discourse. Before I knew it, I invited her to a dance MEChA was having at Cal State. During a slow dance, she said she liked me. I felt something kindle in my chest. I was falling for Camila.