The First Rule of Punk

by Celia C. Pérez

  “Is this your little diary?” she asked. “It’s so cute.”

  I jumped out of my seat and grabbed for the zine again. Selena shot me a wicked grin and held the zine behind her back.

  “If you don’t give that back to me, you’re going to be sorry,” I warned.

  “¿Hay algún problema?” Señor Ascencio asked, looking over in our direction.

  Selena tossed the zine back onto my desk. “No, Señor Ascencio,” she said sweetly.

  “You shouldn’t leave your diary lying around, María Luisa,” Selena said. She shot daggers at me with her eyes. I gave her the evil eye right back and gathered my things quickly before she had a chance to grab anything else. “Don’t touch my things again.” My ears burned even more.

  “Or what?” Selena asked. She waited a few seconds before walking away.

  I really didn’t know what I would do. I couldn’t remember having had an enemy since kindergarten, when Katie Austen took a crayon and drew mustaches on all the pictures of Grandma Beetle in my copy of Just a Minute. I was so mad, I tattled on her when I saw her take two graham crackers during snack time. But that was as far as our feud went. At least then I knew what we were fighting about. But with Selena, it wasn’t as easy as crayons and graham crackers. I didn’t know what I’d done to make her not like me.

  Chapter 11

  “Hey, will you sign my petition?”

  My language arts class had library orientation, and in the last few minutes we got to check out books from Mr. Baca, our school librarian. I stood in line at the circulation counter waiting my turn.

  The girl who spoke to me held a clipboard and wore a serious expression. She had a face full of freckles and the reddest hair I’d ever seen, pulled up into a sloppy, lopsided bun on top of her head. The girl’s jacket, an old army one, was covered in pins and patches. There was a rainbow flag, a peace sign, and a pin that said I READ BANNED BOOKS.

  “What’s it for?” I asked, sliding my book farther down the circulation counter. She moved along with me.

  “Better choices in the cafeteria,” she said, putting the clipboard on the counter next to me. “Do we want another school year of lukewarm mac and cheese and oversteamed veggies?”

  “Don’t forget the unidentifiable blobs,” I added.

  “Exactly,” she said, holding out a pen to me. “You know what I’m talking about.”

  I took the pen and signed my name on the next available line. She’d only gotten eight signatures.

  “How many do you need?” I asked, tapping the petition.

  “Mr. Jackson said I should get as many as I can, no max. But I’m aiming for at least a hundred.”

  “You’ve got a ways to go,” I said.

  “Don’t I know it? I’m Ellie, by the way.” Her serious look softened with a smile.

  “I’m Malú,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll get plenty of signatures. It is school lunch we’re talking about.”

  “I think so too,” Ellie said.

  “So do those petitions really work?”

  “Doesn’t hurt to try,” Ellie said. “My grandma’s an old activist, and she always says to me that it’s important for us kids to have a voice. Plus, being involved in school looks good on college applications, right?”

  I nodded even though I had no idea what she was talking about. We were in the seventh grade, and I wasn’t exactly thinking about college yet.

  “You should make a petition for a less strict dress code,” I said. “I’d sign that.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Ellie said. “But one petition at a time. Next up is a petition to get a daily fifteen-minute break in the morning. You know, so our brains can refresh between classes.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” I said.

  “Anyway, I should probably grab a few more signatures before the bell rings,” Ellie said, adjusting her backpack.

  “All right, everyone, it’s about that time,” Mr. Baca called from behind the circulation desk, pointing at the clock. My first week of school was over, and that meant about a hundred and three weeks to go. But who’s counting?

  “Be sure to grab the flyer for our Fall Fiesta on your way out.” He pointed to a stack of green papers on the counter. “It’s got the talent show audition date and the art show deadline, so if you’re interested in either of those, you should give it a read.”

  “Thanks again,” Ellie said, waving her clipboard.

  “Sure, good luck.” I watched as she walked up to another girl in our class, her red bun shaking and threatening to topple over as she talked enthusiastically about cafeteria food. Maybe not everyone at Posada was so bad after all.

  Chapter 12

  The green Fall Fiesta flyer was burning a hole in my backpack when I walked up to our building. But I’d have to wait to reread it because our neighbor, Señora Oralia, was sitting on a rocker on the porch. The sound of a woman’s voice, kind of mournful, almost like a wounded animal, filled the air. Goose bumps crawled up my arms. Señora Oralia looked up from what she was doing when I opened the gate.

  “Ven, niña.” She motioned for me to join her. “You want a snack?”

  I really just wanted to go to my room, but Mom would have said that was rude, so I dropped my bag on the floor and sat on the porch swing.

  “Cookie?” she asked, pointing to the package of wafer cookies on the table next to her.

  Señora Oralia was crocheting something yellow and fluffy. She had an assortment of items on a side table, including a mug of coffee, a small CD player, a few CDs, and . . . a brand-new roll of toilet paper?

  “Thank you,” I said, and took a cookie. I bit into the thin, crispy outside, and powdery crumbs fell onto my shirt.

  “When I was a little girl in Mexico, there were flowers everywhere that same color,” Señora Oralia said, pointing to my Day-Glo fuchsia leggings. “Es un color bonito.”

  Dad said that while a lot of great music came from the eighties, there were a lot of not-so-great things too, like Ronald Reagan and Day-Glo fashion. This was one thing we didn’t agree on.

  I wore the leggings under a pair of cutoff shorts since I couldn’t wear them as bottoms, but Principal Rivera stopped me in the hall between fourth and fifth period and told me cutoff shorts were not allowed either. I asked her if that was in the dress code, not to be a smart aleck but because I didn’t remember seeing cutoffs listed. But she ignored my question and told me not to wear them again.

  “I like it too,” I said. Mom had told me I looked like a “penniless street urchin” before I left for school. You’d be surprised the many ways your mom can insult you when she’s an English professor. Nothing I wore was señorita enough for her. I’d decided that Mom and Principal Rivera would probably be best friends if they ever met.

  “Who are you listening to?” I asked.

  “This is Lola Beltrán,” Señora Oralia said. “¡La grande!”

  “It sounds really sad,” I said.

  “Pues, sí. Life is sad, ¿no?”

  “Truth, Señora Oralia,” I said, finishing my cookie and brushing crumbs off my lap.

  “Eh, you’re too young to agree,” she said, waving me away with her needle. “What do you have to be sad about, niña?”

  “I wish I didn’t have to move,” I said, wondering why adults always thought kids had it so easy. “I wish I was home.”

  “Ah, sí, home,” she said. “You are sad because you miss it?”

  “I do.”

  “What’s important is that we keep going. That’s how we survive,” Señora Oralia said, making a fist like a boxer. “You keep looking back and you get stuck in the past.”

  “It’s not the past,” I said. “I am going back.”

  “¿Sí, cuándo?”

  “In two years,” I said in a whisper, realizing how ridiculous I sounded.

  “Two y
ears? ¡Híjole!” Señora Oralia said. “You’re going to get tired of waiting.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It already feels like forever.”

  “So you have more than one home,” Señora Oralia said with a shrug. “That’s not a bad thing. Some people don’t have any.”

  “I guess,” I said.

  “Besides,” she went on, “you have your—¿cómo se dice? Your toys? Phone and computer. Like you never left.”

  “It’s not the same,” I said.

  “Bueno, things could always be worse, ¿no?”

  Why did adults always say stuff like that? As if thinking about a worse situation was really going to make you feel better? Señora Oralia was obviously not going to sympathize with me so I changed the subject.

  “What are you making?” I asked.

  “A cover. Para el toilet paper.”

  She held up what looked like a frilly Civil War–era skirt for me to see.

  “A toilet paper cover?”

  “Sí, niña,” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing.

  On the table next to the plate of wafers was a creepy-looking doll with peach-colored skin and a head of big curly black hair. Instead of legs, her torso tapered into what looked like a short baton. One fat, round, rubbery leg. I shuddered.

  I picked up the stack of CDs and read through the names. Some of them were familiar, stuff Mom listened to when she was in a SuperMexican mood.

  The Lola Beltrán CD had a photo of a woman with a massive lacquered bun and long spider-leg eyelashes. Her head was tilted back slightly, and she held her hands out in a theatrical gesture. Her long fingers ended in red-polished nails.

  “Do you like ranchera music?” Señora Oralia asked. “Does your mami play it for you?”

  “She plays it sometimes,” I said.

  I stacked the CDs back into place neatly.

  “Take them,” Señora Oralia said.

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t.”

  “It’s not rock and roll, but it’s good music,” she said, and let out a raspy chuckle that made it sound like she was laughing at her own little inside joke.

  I wondered what Señora Oralia knew about rock and roll. I pulled the Lola Beltrán CD from the top of the pile.

  “I’ll just borrow this one,” I said, not wanting to be rude. “And I’ll bring it back right away.”

  Señora Oralia nodded. “And this is for you and your mami,” she said. “A housewarming gift.”

  I watched as she pulled the crocheted dress onto the creepy doll. She picked up the roll of toilet paper and placed the stumpy doll leg into the center of the cardboard tube. Then she fixed the bottom of the dress until there was no sign of a roll of toilet paper lurking underneath.

  “¿Ves?”

  She twirled the doll and its frilly dress like it was a debutante.

  “Oh, wow,” I said. “Uh, thank you.”

  I took the doll and toilet paper. I didn’t know anything about housewarming gifts, but this definitely had to be one of the stranger ones.

  “And don’t forget this,” she said.

  Señora Oralia removed the Lola Beltrán CD from the CD player and handed it to me. She popped in another disc before picking up her crochet needle again. I headed inside as a deep male voice sang another sad song.

  In my room, I pulled the green sheet out of my backpack and finally got to read it again. Fall Fiesta was an annual fund-raiser carnival at Posada. Food and fun for the whole family, the flyer announced. But the most exciting part, the part I focused on, was toward the bottom. There would be a talent show, and performers were invited to audition. I felt a fountain of hope bubbling up as I read the words out loud one more time: musical acts welcome. I couldn’t wait to see what kind of cool bands would play. And maybe I’d even have a chance to find my people there.

  Chapter 13

  Before Mom could pack our whole Saturday with boring “cultural events,” I asked if I could do homework at Calaca. I had no plans to do any actual work, though. I just wanted to hang out at the only place in Chicago that I liked besides the library. Mom agreed to let me go so long as I texted her as soon as I got there.

  Inside Calaca, I walked up to the counter and looked at the selection of pan dulce while I waited for someone to come over. The whooshing of the milk steamer and a banging noise came from behind the espresso machine. A dark head of hair peeked out over the top.

  “Dang it!” The person emerged and placed a green mug on the counter in front of me.

  “What does this look like to you?” It was the blue-haired kid who’d been in the auditorium with me on the first day of school. Except his hair was now black.

  I looked down at the blob of milk foam floating on the coffee’s surface. I knew there was a right answer, but I wasn’t sure what it was.

  “Umm . . .”

  “It’s supposed to be a tulip,” he said.

  “That’s what I was going to say.”

  “Liar,” the boy said. “This is so frustrating. I’ll never get it.”

  He took a sip of the coffee before emptying the mug into the sink.

  “You wanna order something?”

  I looked at the chalkboard menu hanging behind him.

  “Can I get a concha?” I asked. “And a Café Olé. Hold the art, please.”

  “No need to rub it in,” he said.

  “Sorry.” I smiled at him to let him know I was just joking. “Hey, you had blue hair, right? On the first day of school?”

  With a square of waxy bakery paper, the boy pulled out a concha frosted with pale yellow sugar and placed it on a plate in front of me.

  “That’s me,” he said, touching his hair. “You had the raccoon eyes.”

  “They weren’t raccoon eyes,” I said with a frown. “They were punk eyes, duh.”

  The boy laughed and slid over to the espresso machine to make my drink.

  “Aren’t you kind of young to have a job?” I asked.

  “I’m thirteen,” the boy said. “When my grandfather was my age, he had dropped out of school, crossed the border, and was supporting his family. So, no.”

  “You sound like my mom with your sad Mexican story,” I said.

  “You get those too?” He laughed. “Anyway, I don’t really have a choice since my parents own the place. Free child labor and all, you know?”

  “Wait,” I said. “You’re José?”

  “Joe,” he said. “How’d you know my name?”

  “I met your mom,” I said. “And your grandma’s my neighbor.”

  “Did Bueli make you one of her famous toilet paper covers yet?”

  I nodded.

  “She makes those for everyone,” he said, and laughed. “You ain’t special.”

  “Thanks.” I thought of the creepy doll that now lived in our bathroom. “Your parents let you work here alone?” I asked, looking around for any sign of an adult presence.

  “Yeah, right. They’re in the back.”

  At that moment a loud, heartbroken wail came out of the coffee shop’s sound system.

  “I know this song,” I said. “Your grandma was playing it yesterday.”

  “Lola Beltrán,” Joe said. “Bueli loves Lola Beltrán.”

  He placed a mismatched ceramic coffee mug and saucer on the counter.

  “One café, no art,” Joe said with a frown. “I’m really good at those.”

  Mrs. Hidalgo came out of the back room, her arms full of bags of coffee beans. She wore a brown CALACA COFFEE T-shirt—printed on it was a skeleton holding a mug.

  “Art or no art, you make a mean cafecito, m’ijo,” she said, easing coffee bags into his arms. “Hi,” she said to me, and gave me a big smile. “María Luisa, right?”

  “Malú,” I said.

  I held out a ten-dollar bill for Joe to take.r />
  “It’s on the house, Malú,” Mrs. Hidalgo said. She waved away my money.

  “Really?” I asked. “Thanks.”

  Mrs. Hidalgo smiled again and started pouring coffee beans into a large grinder.

  I picked up my coffee and plate and settled onto a big purple pillow on the floor by the front window. I thought about doing homework like I told Mom I would, but decided to work on a zine instead.

  When I finished eating, I placed my plate and mug in the plastic bin for dirty dishes and walked to the wall decorated with album covers.

  “You like our wall of fame?”

  I turned to find Mrs. Hidalgo nearby, wiping a table.

  “Wall of fame?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “Mexican and Mexican American bands and singers we love. We put them right up there to honor them.”

  “But Morrissey isn’t Mexican,” I said, pointing to where Moz’s mopey face looked down on us. Morrissey was the singer of The Smiths, one of Dad’s favorite bands, and I knew they were from England.

  “That’s a joke,” Mrs. Hidalgo said with a laugh. “He’s an honorary Mexican because he’s so popular in Mexico.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said. “That’s funny.”

  “You had a Ramones shirt on the day you came in with your mom, right?”

  “Yeah, they’re one of my favorite bands,” I said.

  “You see those guys right there?” She pointed to a record sleeve with a black-and-white image of four guys and THE ZEROS scrawled across the top in hot pink. “They were often called the Mexican Ramones.”

  “That’s weird,” I said without thinking.

  “What’s weird about it?”

  I suddenly felt nervous, but Mrs. Hidalgo had a look on her face like she was genuinely interested in why I thought it was strange.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It just sounds funny. I didn’t know there were even Mexican punk bands, I guess.”

  “Well, technically, they’re Mexican American, but sure,” she said. “There’ve been Mexicans in punk for as long as it’s been around. There’s Alice Bag, the Plugz, the Brat.” It sounded like she could go on.