by Reyna Grande
Mila and Papi spent the day together, talking to their coworkers. Because Carlos had his leg in a cast, he had no choice but to stay in the same spot, watching over our stuff. I spent the day by myself. I walked from one side of the park to the other, wondering what rides I could go on. Most of the kids had someone to hang out with. I seemed to be the only person at Raging Waters who was alone. I tried to go on the rides, but on the third one, when I went down a waterslide and landed in the pool and couldn’t touch the bottom, I freaked out. I didn’t know how to swim, and the death of my five-year-old cousin Catalina still haunted me.
I decided to call it quits and went back to hang out with Carlos. “Why don’t you go on the rides?” Carlos asked, looking longingly at the blue pools glittering in the sun and the big waterslides all around us. So many years dreaming about swimming in the pools of La Quinta Castrejón, and now that we were in a place a hundred times more beautiful, we couldn’t enjoy it.
“It sucks going on them alone,” I said.
“Well, it sure sucks being here like this,” he said, raising one of his crutches. So he and I sat there, watching dripping wet kids run from ride to ride, laughing and screaming, until finally, it was time to go home.
Carlos at Raging Waters
16
Reyna at Franklin High School
AFTER CARLOS BROKE his leg, things were not the same between Mago and Papi. It wasn’t something that one could see right away, but I knew my sister better than I knew myself, and I could tune in to her emotions in the same way I could twist the mouthpiece of my sax until I knew the sound that came out was just right.
Before, she would take pride in coming home on paydays and would happily hand over half of her salary to Papi to help him with the household expenses. Now, her fingers hesitated for a second too long before they released the bills. Papi didn’t notice it. He didn’t know her the way I did.
She no longer had the feverish desire to be the best in school because it made Papi happy. Even though she was now the first person in our family to attend college, she was no longer concerned about being the “best and brightest” in her classes at Waterson College. Instead, she talked about looking for a full-time job so she could buy herself a car and pretty clothes. She talked about her desire to go out with her coworkers, who spent their weekends dancing at clubs.
“Papi wouldn’t want you to be out partying,” I would tell her.
She would shrug and say, “I don’t give a damn what he wants or doesn’t want.” And just like that, the father she had longed for while in Mexico, the father she had dreamed would be her hero, vanished in her eyes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the same for me, and I could not so easily dismiss my desire to please him. My father’s acceptance of me had become my sole reason for being.
One day in November, as I was walking with Mago down Figueroa Street, where we had gone to make another payment at Fashion 21 for the clothes Mago had put on layaway, we passed by the shops and looked longingly at the shoes and pretty clothes the mannequins in the windows were wearing. As we passed by a dress boutique, Mago stopped abruptly and pulled me over to the display window. A mannequin was wearing the most beautiful quinceañera dress we’d ever seen.
I looked at Mago, wondering if she was feeling bad about not having had a real quinceañera. When she turned sixteen, Papi had actually thrown her a party, perhaps because he had felt bad she didn’t have a quinceañera. The party was held in the six-car parking lot at the apartments. Mago wore the long, puffy blue dress she wore at her junior-high graduation and had her hair permed.
Now, as she looked intently at the dress, I wanted to remind her of that party, tell her that a sweet sixteen party in a parking lot was better than no party at all. I thought about those nights in Mexico when we would go sell cigarettes and snacks with our mother at La Quinta Castrejón and watch the young girls with their beautiful quinceañera dresses. I recognized the look of longing in her eyes, and I knew that if I were to see myself in a mirror right then, it would be the same look I would see in my own eyes.
“Come on,” she said, turning around and pulling me away from the dress. She was deep in thought, and just as I was about to ask her what she was thinking, she stopped and said to me, “You know what, Nena? I’m going to throw you a quinceañera.”
“What are you talking about? You’re crazy,” I said. “I already turned fifteen two months ago. And besides, where are you going to get the money?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll get it. I’ll ask my friends to be the godparents. But I’ll do it.”
I thought my sister had gone insane. Quinceañeras were expensive, and there was no way Mago, with her part-time job, could pull it off.
When we got home, Mago got on the phone with her friends and told them what was on her mind. She didn’t want to tell Papi about it. “This is my gift to you,” she said. “I don’t want him to have anything to do with this.” But I insisted that she tell him. Who knew? He might actually get excited about it. This might be a way for them to repair their relationship. Finally, I managed to convince her, but when she told Papi about it, he was even more skeptical than me. “Estás loca,” he said, and he didn’t offer to help.
I tried not to get excited about the quinceañera, knowing that pretty soon Mago would come to her senses and realize it wasn’t going to happen. To my surprise, on Sunday when we visited Mami and Mago told her about her plans, Mami got onboard with the quinceañera and offered to help get some godparents. Mago said she wasn’t very surprised at Mami’s response. She said, “Don’t you remember those nights at La Quinta Castrejón?” And I suddenly knew what she meant. Those nights at La Quinta, we weren’t the only ones watching girls blooming out of limousines like pink peonies. Mami was, too—Mami, who also never had a quinceañera, who was also once a starry-eyed girl with glittery dreams.
Not even a week had gone by before Mami called to tell us that a friend of hers would be the godparent for the cake, another would take care of the catering, and she would pay for the souvenirs. Mago’s friends offered to help pay for the hall, the mass, the photographer, the floral arrangements, and the DJ. Mago didn’t look for a godparent for the dress. She would be buying my quinceañera dress herself. She set the date for May 2, 1991, which left us a little over five months.
Mago’s excitement was contagious. Even Carlos wanted to participate. He offered to be one of my escorts and helped me find a chambelán. I gathered up my nerve to ask Axel to be my chambelán, but the next day he told me he couldn’t because his family wouldn’t let him participate. I also asked my girlfriends to be my maids, and luckily, their families accepted.
Mago hired a professional dressmaker to make me a dress. It cost $350. The bottom part was made of layers and layers of blue tulle. The top part was made of white satin, and the sleeves were decorated with blue satin bows. I looked like a princess, just as I had always dreamed.
I hadn’t done my first communion because Papi never took us to church, and after her heart was broken by that boy in junior high, Mago never made another attempt to go back to St. Ignatius. Without Abuelita Chinta to remind us to pray and to keep God in our hearts and minds, we had lost our religion.
But that day, I stood outside the church at Placita Olvera, about to have a mass in my honor. I was officially going to become a little woman in the eyes of God. The problem was that in order to have this mass we had to lie to the priest about having done my first communion. When the priest asked, Mago right away said that I had done my first communion in Mexico but didn’t have the certificate to prove it. He believed us, and I felt bad afterward for lying to the priest.
The organ player started to play, and my court, composed of six couples, walked into the church in pairs. I held on to my own escort, who was a friend of my brother’s. He was a sweet boy, but there was nothing romantic between us. It was strictly business. He was there to hold my hand, take pictures with me, and dance the waltz with me, but the next day, he could go on with his life and
I with mine. I thought about Axel. I wished his family had allowed him to participate. I wished he were there with me instead of a boy I hardly knew.
My heart beat faster as I went into the church. My eyes fell on the statue of Jesus Christ hanging on the wall. Forgive me for my lie, Jesus. I held on to my chambelán as we walked down the aisle. People smiled at me and congratulated me. Papi and Mila were sitting to my left. Mago, Mami, Betty, Rey, and my little brother Leonardo were sitting to my right.
Too soon we got to the altar, and I was kneeling before the priest. Jesus looked down on me from his cross, and my eyes were starting to burn because I was about to commit a grave sin. I turned to look at Mago, who was sitting in the front pew. I wanted her to stop this. I wanted her to tell the priest we had lied and that I shouldn’t be having this mass. But she was so excited, my sister, so proud of what she had accomplished that day, that I knew I must go through with this no matter what. I could not ruin the party my sister had worked so hard to give me.
The dreaded moment came when the sacred Host was put onto my tongue and it stuck to the roof of my mouth as soon as I closed it. Tears filled my eyes as the Host began to dissolve, and I pictured Jesus bursting down from Heaven in a blinding beam of light and sending me straight to the worst Hell imaginable, a Hell where I would spend all of eternity alone, without my Mago, for even though I wanted to stop being overshadowed by my sister and her bigger-than-life personality, I was terrified of being without her, of being on my own, of making my way in the world without her by my side. Forgive me, Jesus. Please, don’t take my sister away from me.
After mass, we took pictures outside the church. “Nena, ¿qué te pasa? Smile!” Mago said as the photographer took picture after picture. But I couldn’t do it, and in all the pictures I looked as if I were attending a funeral.
As we headed to Los Feliz to take pictures at Mulholland Fountain on the corner of Riverside and Los Feliz Boulevard, I told Mago what was on my mind. “I’m going to go to Hell. I’ve committed a great sin.” I started to cry. She laughed.
“Nena, all that is nonsense. First of all, there is no Hell or the devil. Those are just stories Abuela Evila liked to frighten us with. Come on, when are you going to stop believing in that? Use that imagination of yours for other things. Second of all, if there is a Hell, we’re already living in it.” She wiped away my tears and hugged me. From then on, I started to smile in the pictures, and I didn’t think about my fear of being punished for lying to the priest. Mago was right. We were already living in some kind of Hell in this strange place of broken beauty.
The reception was held at the Highland Hall on Figueroa Street. That night was a night when my wishes came true. I had wished to have my father and mother together in the same room. Now, there they were, although on opposite sides of the banquet hall. My mother was running around helping to serve food to the guests. She was wearing a black dress covered in sequins. She’d even had her hair done at a beauty salon. I’d never seen her looking so glamorous. My father was on the opposite side of the room wearing a dress shirt and tie, sitting next to Mila. She took sips of her soda while my father drank beer after beer as if afraid it would run out. The photographer called them over and took pictures of us. First, I took one with my mother. Then I took one with my father. And just as he was walking away, I pulled his arm back and I took one with both, my father and mother on either side of me.
Reyna at her quinceañera
Finally, it was time for the waltz I would dance with my father. The DJ didn’t have “El Vals de las Mariposas” so my father and I danced to a classical song. But I didn’t feel those overpowering emotions I thought I would feel when I would finally dance with my father. My heart wasn’t racing, my palms weren’t sweating, my head wasn’t spinning. I didn’t feel a thing. I smelled the alcohol on his breath and I kept turning my face away from his. Always, my eyes returned to my sister, who was standing by the door looking at me proudly.
And I knew, I knew, that I should have been dancing this waltz with her.
17
Reyna as a member of All City Honor Marching Band
IN NOVEMBER OF my junior year at Franklin, I received the good news that I had been accepted into the All City Honor Marching Band, which was composed of students from sixty high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. In order to get in, I had to switch from the sax to bells. The All City Honor Marching Band only accepted brass and percussion players. I was glad I had taken a piano class at Burbank, but it was with great sadness that, at the beginning of my junior year, I gave up my saxophone and switched to the beautiful—but extremely heavy—marching band bells. The tinkling sound was so sweet that even after practice was over, I could still hear it in my head. It was like having a fairy in my ears, although it didn’t occur to me that one day that sweet, but very high-pitched tinkling sound would be the cause of my partial hearing loss.
I was not the only one who switched instruments. Axel temporarily gave up his clarinet to play the trumpet so that he could also get into the All City Band. Soon after, we found ourselves riding on the school bus on Saturday mornings. I was happy to know that he and I would be marching in the 1992 Rose Parade together.
As usual, my father hadn’t said anything about me getting accepted into the All City Band. But since he didn’t say I couldn’t be in it, even though it would require me to be out of the house every Saturday, I told myself that inside he really was proud. I hadn’t had the chance of being a flag bearer back in Mexico, like Mago, but marching in the Rose Parade in front of millions of people was even better!
Every Saturday, we were taken over to Dodger Stadium where we practiced the songs we would be performing in the Rose Parade. My favorite was “La Malagueña.” Later in the day, all one hundred–plus band members lined up to practice marching around Dodger Stadium. It was a six-mile march. By the end of each practice, everyone’s feet were hurting and our bodies were sore.
Axel and I started sitting on the back of the bus together. I knew he liked me and I definitely liked him, but he didn’t want anyone to know about our romance. Even after we shared our first kiss in the bus, he didn’t want anyone to know. He was ashamed to be with me, that I knew.
Ever since I started at Franklin, I had earned a bad reputation. Perhaps “earned” is not the right word. Earned implies something added, like a bonus, a plus. “Cursed” was a better word. Yes, cursed with a bad reputation. Since summer practice of the previous year, the girls in the marching band started whispering things about me, saying that I was conceited just because I didn’t hang out with them and kept my head buried in a book. Later, when the school year started, and we began to attend football games and parades, I was still too shy to make friends. I didn’t know how to. This led to even more talking until it got to the point where I couldn’t look at any girl without feeling despised. Even to this day, people still misinterpret my shyness for arrogance.
One day something snapped inside of me, and I began to rebel. I was getting enough hassle at home, to also be getting it at school from complete strangers. An anger I had never felt bubbled up inside of me, and I lashed out. I pretended I didn’t care what anyone said or thought. I began to answer back to my drum major—who was a girl quick to say bad things about me. Once, as we were practicing our formations at the field, she asked everyone to bring their instruments even though we weren’t going to be playing them. I decided to leave my bells in the band room because my back was hurting, and they were too heavy to be carrying around if I wasn’t going to be using them. When the drum major saw me without my instrument she said, “Reyna, go get your instrument. Now!”
The field was on the opposite side of the band room, on the other side of the bridge that connected one side of the school to the other, and I tried to tell her that it made no sense for me to have the bells on if we weren’t going to play that day. She kept insisting, so I ended up yelling at her, “If you want the bells, then you go get them yourself!” After that, she ha
ted me even more for being defiant in front of the whole band.
The only ones who weren’t mean to me were the guys, but that was because they only wanted one thing from me, and that was something kids at school called “a scam.” It meant making out with someone, but when I looked it up in the dictionary the definition was different, more appropriate to what was really happening—I was being swindled, cheated, tricked. When the kissing was over, the boys would go on their merry way without another glance. I was left feeling the same way I felt when my father would glance at me without really seeing me. I was left feeling as if I didn’t exist. As if I didn’t matter.
And what if I don’t matter? What if that is the reason why I can’t have a boy like me for longer than a day? For more than just a scam? I would ask myself many times. I didn’t know then just how much my relationship with my father would affect my relationship with other men. I didn’t know that my need to be loved by him—and his inability to show affection—would make me desperate to find it elsewhere. The more he denied me his love, the more I would seek it in the boys I would meet.
Yet, I thought Axel was different from the other boys at school. Even though he was from Guatemala, and not Mexico like me, I had a connection with him that I hadn’t had with any other boy. His parents had left him to be raised by his grandmother, just as I had been raised by my grandmothers a lifetime before. I understood Axel and the pain he felt at his parents’ absence. But he, too, just wanted to kiss me in the school bus on our way to and from Dodger Stadium, yet when the bus pulled over in front of Franklin, our romance was put on hold until the next weekend.