by John Rechy
Outside, she decided to accompany him a short distance, because the way he was looking at her made her realize how pretty and young she must appear to him; and she felt that way. She made sure to keep a distance between them so that no one could assume they were together.
“Will you?”
She had realized only after moments that he was inviting her to his home, “very close by.” She felt the effect of the third beer—but, then, it had warmed her. Still, she didn’t answer as they walked on.
He touched the gardenia he had bought her. “Bonita Amalia,” he sighed.
What was wrong with a brief visit? For extra assurance, she sought the cross he wore about his neck. She would make sure he lived in a place that wasn’t isolated, remain outside for a few minutes, then leave—all for the purpose of allowing Raynaldo his usual few hours of sulking, after their rare spats.
Angel lived off Fountain Avenue in a large, recently painted house separated into rooms and small apartments. A few youngish men and women—new aliens—lingered outside. They would think she and Angel were novios, because they must look like “sweethearts.” That warmed her in a way that had nothing to do with the night, which was cooling, as warm days in Los Angeles often do.
“Please—” He was inviting her in.
He seemed saddened by the prospect of being alone after all the memories of loss he had shared with her. She walked with him into the hall of the house, the door open. She would allow nothing to happen, and nothing would, because anyone could tell he was a gentle, tender man who was looking at her in a special way no one ever had before.
He opened the door to his room. She was not entirely sure, but she thought he might have bowed slightly. Now he waited for her to enter. She looked in. It was a front room, neat, with two windows, curtained, and a small kitchen. Clearly, he worked, earned proper money, had done well, considering so much hardship in his country, leaving his country. Would he be as generous a provider as Raynaldo? She didn’t welcome that thought. It had been aroused only because he was making her feel like a courted girl who has not yet learned about ugliness. And then she saw it, on a wall, a small picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe! What could be more convincing that she could trust him than his reverence for the Holy Patroness of Mexico? Still, when she walked in—and this time she was sure he had bowed—she left the door pointedly open.
In her Hollywood bungalow, Amalia realized that she had been staring into the black television screen. She got up. She decided: She would go out. Perhaps have breakfast at the Carl’s Jr. coffee shop nearby. If Raynaldo didn’t come back—although she knew he would but why was he staying away this long?—and if harder times came, she might as well indulge herself in a meal out. Yes, and when she returned, he would be back, full of regrets. She might even sulk a part of the day. Had he gone on one of his overnight hauls?
She dressed in a pretty light-orange dress that had a ruffle across the shoulders, and a nice swirl to the skirt. What would the blonde wife of Mr. Lewis think of this dress?—Amalia often soothed that chafing memory of years ago. Touching them delicately, she left on the earrings Juan had given her. She put on her creamy sling pumps and wondered, as she often did, why so many women no longer wore high heels—that accounted for their slouchy walk.
She found an empty pop container, filled it with water, and placed it by the door to water the rosebush behind the court. Then she opened her purse to make sure she had Manny’s letter with her. Of course she did. She never left it behind, but still she would often re-check to make sure she did have it. When sadness pulled severely, she would take it out, read his words of love: “My dearest mamacita … I love you with all my heart.”
She looked, startled, at the harsh printed return address. She had pulled out the wrong envelope, the unopened one from the public attorney. Had Gloria and Juan glimpsed that address and thought the letter was about something else? About one of them? Saying what? She put the envelope back, banishing her suspicions.
At the door, she looked back at her living room. Would it look better without all those paper and cloth flowers? Should she add new ones? On this morning that had begun so brightly, with a lulling peace she could not remember having wakened into before, ever, Amalia forced herself not to sigh.
It was Saturday. There would be yard sales up and down the blocks, mostly junk, a bargain or two. In the several shopping centers nearby, some stores would have put up their SALE TODAY ONLY signs, although prices stayed the same. She’d go look at dresses, appliances, jewelry—she loved to look at extravagant wedding rings—and, as always, she would seek out a huge-screen television that wouldn’t fit in her bungalow. She might even stop by El Bar & Grill, hear a word or two about Raynaldo. Had he gone back there looking for her last night? Who knows, she might even pay a visit to the brujos in the neighborhood, the old Mexican woman and her husband who gave consultas and claimed to have “powers”—and to be good Catholics. She had never been to them—she wasn’t a supersticiosa—had gotten as far as their door once. She knew from a woman in the court that you could discuss certain troubling matters with them, though, and what was wrong with that? Nothing, especially since—she added this quickly to her itinerary—she would stop at the big church on Sunset Boulevard.
And light a candle for her dead son.
And one for Teresa, of course… Before she did any of that, there was somewhere else she had to go, although the prospect frightened her. She had to know whether she had actually seen the graffiti of a new gang on the wall she had turned away from yesterday.
With the can of water she had prepared, she stood outside on what she called her “front porch,” the small square of concrete at the entrance of her unit. She heard a rising siren, then another. There were always sirens screaming now. At times it seemed to her that the city itself was shrieking, protesting violence everywhere, even under the earth, stirring into earthquakes.
This early heat would scorch all the flowers, Amalia worried as she walked down the narrow cement path that separated the three units on one side from the three on the other. She stood before the despondent rosebush. Only a few feeble buds remained—how sad that they would die without opening; others had crumbled like long-dry blood. She watered the bush anyway.
A little farther into the garage area, a plant had managed to squeeze through a large crack in the cement. She had noticed it, but today it had blossoms. In the center, their petals were rolled into folds, like candles, and then they opened at the bottom; and they were white. This is not rare in Los Angeles, that flowers seem to grow overnight, perhaps from seeds scattered by wind and then surprised into premature life by sudden heat.
Amalia plucked one of the white blossoms, brushing off a dusty splintery covering on the stem. She liked facing the day with a flower in her hair. Few women did that anymore. Well, she still did. Its whiteness would look grand in her black hair.
As she walked on with the new blossom in her hair, she paused, as she always did, over tiny clusters of flowers surviving before another unit. They looked like bridal bouquets, lilac and yellow centers. Well, the music belching out of radios that had been on since early morning was not a wedding march.
On the sidewalk and just a few feet from her bedroom window was a sign that said TO HOLLYWOOD FREEWAY. She wished she did not live this close to the freeway. Its vibrations had come increasingly to resemble those that begin an earthquake. Garbage cans were already placed near the corner for collection. She could not move away from garbage, she often thought. She sought this out: In the narrow space between the back of the bungalow court and an Armenian grocery store were … deep-red gladiolas.
Oh, if only …
“Is there something up there, Señora Gómez?”
“What!” Amalia looked down at the little boy who had asked her that. He lived with his fat, superstitious mother and God knows how many aunts and uncles and visiting cousins in the noisy bungalow at the end of the court. “What did you say, Lalo?” she asked the eight-year-old b
oy.
“Is there something up there?—where you were staring.” He gazed up.
She had been staring into the sky! Amalia realized. “There was a cross in the sky earlier.” Of course she had said that only because she wanted to hear, and that way dismiss entirely, the silly words.
“I saw it, too,” Lalo said. “It was over there.” He pointed up.
Amalia was irritated. This boy always lied. “You did not see the cross, Lalo, because there wasn’t one. And even if there was one, you wouldn’t have seen it.” Her anger mounted.
“I did see it.” Lalo backed away from Amalia’s threatening voice.
“Liar!” She reached out toward him. He dodged, almost toppling against a garbage can. “Say you didn’t see the cross!”
“I did.”
“If you admit you didn’t, I’ll—” She opened her purse.
Lalo held out his hand.
She found a nickel, some pennies. She tossed them into his skinny hand.
“I didn’t see anything,” Lalo said.
Amalia moved hurriedly away from him.
“Did you see it?” Lalo called out.
“No!” Amalia did not turn back. “It was smoke!”
“Well, did you see those vatos locos banging up on that motorcycle in front of your house?”
“No!” She walked on.
“Were they after John-nee?”
Had the altercation been aimed at Juan? Of course not! Amalia turned sharply to question the boy—and protest the mocking Anglicized inflection he had given her son’s name. But Lalo had run away.
In the vacant lot across the street, a few boys had gathered, about twelve years old, no older than fourteen. Another boy, older, perhaps sixteen—all were Mexicans—was talking to them. They exchanged something. Dios mio! Were those children buying drugs? “Selling death to their own people,” Rosario had once lamented.
Catching sight of her, the boys challenged her look openly, as if she were intruding. Amalia walked away with added fear of her immediate destination.
What contrasts in the neighborhood! The area around the Fox Studio, sealed off by high walls and watched over by security guards stationed at every entrance, looked like a well-tended private park. Yet on almost every block in the neighborhood were declining houses, windows smashed, shells of cars left on dirty lawns. Increasingly there appeared wires strung across porches, for drying laundry in backyards, to economize. There were, too, the stubbornly pretty houses, freshly painted, with urgent gardens and grass, but even those had harsh black iron bars protecting windows.
And everywhere, everywhere, trees and flowers splashing the neighborhood with desperate beauty!
Young men in undershirts were working on their cars already—where they got the money to paint all those flames and dragons on them, God only knew. Girls talked with them or sat on the curbs. Families were putting out their items for yard sales, or sitting on gutted sofas outside, courting a nonexistent breeze. Rock music and Mexican ballads waged battle. Amalia greeted some of the few people she knew—people these days tended to keep separate, even though this was still a predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood.
“Look, Amalia! It’s you!” One of the neighbors she regularly greeted was pointing to a drawing he was putting out for sale in his yard, along with chipped dishes, shoes, old clothes, vases, painted bottles, broken lamps—and old plastic flowers. Amalia recognized that the drawing had been cut out of a calendar and framed: In resplendent “poblana” costumes, the dress of their village, pretty Mexican girls with thick braids and dazzling sequins sewn into patterns of flowers and butterflies on their whirling skirts danced joyously with good-looking charros, their wide-brimmed hats adorned with silvery swirls to match those on their short jackets, snug pants. Nearby, smiling old women washed clothes at the edge of a serene river running through their village of pretty adobe huts.
“This girl looks like you.” The man was indicating one of the women in the dance.
“When you were young—perhaps,” his wife amended.
Pretty poverty! Amalia thought she could hear Rosario reject the calendar drawing. “That girl looks to me like Maria Felix,” she told the man. The image of the Mexican movie star of her girlhood had come easily into her mind. Why? Only because she had wanted to extend the man’s compliment. She dismissed any further importance to the thought, but it had left a welcome warmth inside her.
“Ah! La Maria!” the man toasted with a sigh.
“You want to buy the picture?” the woman demanded testily to Amalia.
Amalia knew why the woman was annoyed, because she, Amalia, had seen her buying some of the items in her yard from Thrifty’s Drug Store, on sale—and now she was trying to resell them, for more! “No,” she told the woman, “because I have that calendar—and I could have bought one of those odd lamps for less, at Thrifty s.” She moved on, to her determined destination.
Amazing what people tried to sell in these yard sales! Amalia passed more of the outdoor displays, more mangy clothes, worn shoes, clumsily painted jars trying to pass as vases. “Garage sales,” some people insisted on calling them, even when they had no garages, let alone cars. Of course, those cloth flowers were pretty, weren’t they?—newer than hers. Well, later, she might stop and barter for them; they might add some needed color to the house.
Now she was passing a sight she usually avoided. All the units in this court, except one, were boarded up heavily, as if captured by rotting planks of wood. Weeds scratched at patches of dirt. Amalia had seen an old woman lurking about the one unit not yet sealed, but crumbling. There she was now.
“Que ves?” the old woman challenged Amalia. A crudely rolled cigarette did not leave her lips; it merely trembled there slightly.
“I’m not looking at anything,” Amalia answered. Drying vines and trees arched across the units, creating a tangle of shadows. Toward the back of the desolate court, five or six boys roamed, one as young as six, the oldest perhaps sixteen. Hearing the woman’s challenge of Amalia, they moved forward, still within shadows.
Amalia had a sense of menace. Perhaps the woman was a coyote, specializing in bringing the children of illegals across borders. Did she send them out to rob? To sell drugs?
Amalia hurried away. She glanced back once and saw the old woman push aside some boards into one of the sealed units, and she went in. The boys followed. Then all remained deserted.
Yet if Amalia proceeded only two blocks in another direction, toward Sunset, or toward Melrose Boulevard, she would encounter television studios and tourists, men and women, young people, children—always many in shorts—lined up to gain entry to their favorite shows. No matter how they tried to do their hair, wear their clothes, they still looked like tourists…. And around the corner a condominium had just been completed. NOW LEASING LUXURY UNITS, it said on a large banner decorated with colored balloons that wobbled against its balconies and sliding glass doors. From that height, you would have a clear view of the beautiful homes scattered over the Hollywood hills, lawns always green.
Think of it! This was Hollywood!
Amalia reached her destination: a corner on which a wall rose two stories high. On the upper level of the small building were rooms for rent. They were held up flimsily on stilts over a large garage. Most often, the rooms were inhabited by incongruous Anglo men and women, shaggy, in their thirties; they lived there only briefly, shady transients. Next to the garage, garbage spilled out of an open bin—left uncollected—cans, bottles, shreds of tires, gutted boxes, paper dishes with the remains of food. At times men and women would pluck out old clothes and food from the trash. Amalia assumed those were the shadows who crept into abandoned houses for night shelter.
She faced the wall she had avoided yesterday.
LOS VATOS NUEVOS.
“The New Dudes.” The name of a gang.
The fresh, bold letters were painted over older graffiti. And across the gang name had been sprayed an even fresher harsh black “X.”
A sign of challenge from another gang, a signal of invasion, violence. And along with that would come another invader, another gang, just as deadly: the police. Only a short time ago cops had raided and smashed houses randomly in south central Los Angeles, and amid the wreckage they created in search of unfound drugs in the neighborhood suddenly under double siege, they had spray-painted their own placa, their own insignia: LOS ANGELES POLICE RULE.
Amalia looked around at the familiar blocks that had suddenly altered; a threatened barrio. What would the “New Vatos” look like? Full-haired, shirtless?—like Juan? But the car she had seen him talking into had not looked like a gang car. Of course, there were those men—and even women now—who sold drogas to gangs for further street sale.
Nowhere to move to, nowhere else she could afford! And yet—Amalia held on to this, firmly—there were, increasingly, gang imitators, who merely dressed like members of gangs, even performed their superficial rites, like posting graffiti. On that wall, and for more than a year, there had been scrawled nicknames that sounded like those of a klika: CHICO, BLUTO, LOCO, JOKER—even BASH-FUL—children’s nicknames, it always amazed Amalia to realize. But there had been no gang activity in the neighborhood. So the new name there meant nothing definite, she told herself. Still, feeling cold, she walked away from the terrorized wall.
Minutes later she was on Western Avenue.
She walked faster, past a man lying on the sidewalk, slumped over a sack overflowing with rags next to which a tattered woman sat, gazing straight ahead. A sight that was no longer exceptional on this street, becoming ordinary—and less exceptional was what was occurring nearby: A squad car had pulled aside a car with four Mexican men in it. Only we look suspicious to them, Amalia often thought.