by John Rechy
“I told the cops I didn’t have no mother,” Juan said angrily.
“What!” She felt attacked, accused.
Juan let his words stand. Then he added: “So they wouldn’t contact you. I knew they would, they’re pigs. So now you know.”
“Yes. That you’re in trouble for drugs,” Amalia said. In the raid at school that he had told her about, and a gang would be involved.
“You lied!” Juan was enraged. “You haven’t read the damn letter—or it’s not about me.”
Only now, when his face flushed with anger, did she notice that the bruise on his forehead would leave a small scar. She wished she could shut the trap she had set for him because now she had to ask words she didn’t want to ask. “What are you in trouble for, Juan?”
“I’m not.”
When the telephone rang, Juan turned away as if to leave the house.
At the same time that she picked up the telephone, Amalia commanded her son, “Don’t leave, I have more to say.”
“I got things to tell you … Mom,” Juan challenged back. He moved toward the converted back porch, where Manny had slept.
“Amalia—”
“Rosario!” Even over the telephone, even with only one word having been spoken—her name—Amalia recognized her friend’s voice.
“Milagros left a message that you’d come looking for me. Have they contacted you about Jorge or me?”
Then she was in trouble. Amalia felt cheated—she had wanted to turn to her friend for help. “No. I just wanted to see you, I miss our talks—”
“I miss you, too, corazón.” The tension in Rosario’s voice eased. “I have to hurry, I’m in a booth, Milagros leaves messages for me at this store—”
“I’ll call you there—”
“I just want to say good-bye.”
“But it’s Jorge who’s in trouble.” Amalia allowed herself to assert only that.
“Then you have heard something.” The urgency returned.
“Only that the women at the factory think he killed a coyote.” Amalia thought of Angel.
“Jorge killed a migra” Rosario said quietly. Then her words burst out in anger: “The bastard deserved to die. Jorge paid a coyote to bring his youngest son with his wife across the border, and—” Her voice stumbled with rage. “They had to take the dangerous route across the hills because the migra now patrol with horses, flood the border with lights.” She rushed more words, as if that way to thrust the ugly spectacle away, find relief from it. “Hundreds of people from San Diego drive there each night to add their car lights, shout their support, while desperate people are netted rushing the border—and now snipers wait for them. Yesterday a twelve-year-old boy was killed—”
With a shudder, Amalia remembered the men and women she had seen trapped by uniformed men of the border patrol in the blackened Rio Grande, remembered the drowned girl. But that was years ago. Things had to have changed.
Rosario had paused, regained control of her voice: “Jorge’s son made it across the border with his wife and some others, and then the coyote surrendered them to a migra agent who paid him for them, bragged about how many people he captured.” She had gasped the last words. Then her voice slowed with weariness. “Jorge couldn’t find out what became of his son, the wife—probably separated, in some detention camp.” Her voice was hardly audible: “You take so much and then you explode and say, no más—no more—and Jorge did. He stalked that savage migra, in San Ysidro, and Jorge made him kneel the way they had forced him to do at the factory, and then Jorge executed him.”
“And you’ve sheltered Jorge, that’s all. But you didn’t—”
“I was with him all along,” Rosario said quietly. “And when one of their own is killed, they become even more savage.” She sighed. “Jorge’s gone, he had to disappear—somewhere. Now I have to become invisible, too, corazón.” Rosario laughed: “That’s not hard when they’ve never really seen us.”
“I’ll ask God and the Holy Mother to make it possible for you to return to the sewing factory, and then we can visit again.” At that moment, Amalia wanted only to restore what had been.
“Amalia, corazón, you ask for so little of your powerful God.”
“Don’t you believe, Rosario?” Amalia had to ask. She had to hear her answer, yes, and then God—
“No.”
“But without the intervention of the Holy Mother—”
“—you’re left to find your own strength, corazón,” Rosario said softly, “you don’t accept that you must be a victim.”
“There are miracles—” What Rosario had just said had disoriented Amalia powerfully.
“Those happen only in fábulas,” Rosario said. “And we have too many fables.”
“But nothing is possible without the help of the Holy Mother, she’s the only one who can give us strength. Without her help—” She knew that without the Holy Mother’s help she could do nothing.
“Good-bye, corazón,” Rosario said.
“I’ll pray for you,” Amalia insisted, to feel that she would lend holy protection to Rosario, and to try to dissipate the disturbed feelings Rosario’s words were arousing.
Silence. Then: “Yes, pray for me. And Jorge,” Rosario said.
Amalia hung up, slowly, not wanting to sever the connection yet. This day, this strange day that had seemed to promise … so much … was instead exposing only sadness and anger … this strange day during which she had expected … so much! Where would it lead, finally?
The thought frightened Amalia and she shivered.
Then she saw Juan leaning against the door, staring at her, waiting, showing her he had not run away from her.
She fired at him: “Are you in trouble for stealing?” Like Salvador! Like Manny! Do I want to know? she wondered.
“I already told you, I’m working, I don’t have to steal.”
Amalia welcomed the roar of the motorcycle outside. It had stopped what she would have had to ask. There was the sound of agitated voices approaching. Then Gloria was there, looking from Juan to her mother, detecting tension. His long hair tied now into a ponytail, Mick stood behind Gloria.
My daughter is so sexual, Amalia thought. Yes, her breasts will be as lush as mine. She looks like a movie star, yes, like Ava Gardner—no, like Maria Felix.… Amalia needed urgently to release the tension of the unfinished confrontation with Juan, and there was a strain between Gloria and Mick—she could tell that by the way they stood apart, their raised voices earlier; and so she felt secure in saying to Mick: “Pues es Mi-goo-ell!” She mimicked his pronunciation of his father’s Mexican name.
“I told you, I’m Mick and I don’t speak Messican.” He slurred the last word, deliberately taunting.
Gloria had smiled at Amalia’s mimicking. Good! Amalia needed to spill more anger. “You’re ashamed of being Mexican,” she confronted Mick from this morning. She watched Gloria carefully, asserting her approval.
“I think he’s just ashamed of being himself,” Gloria said. She was teasing her hair with a comb. Her dark hair gleamed like a black halo. “Or maybe he just doesn’t know what he is—but I do.” She said to Juan: “You know what Mi-goo-ell is?” She took up her mother’s mocking pronunciation. “He’s a chickenshit.”
“That right, dude? You chickenshit?” Juan taunted Mick.
Amalia did not welcome this language, no; and if she had been alone with her children, she would have protested; but, more, she cherished that she and her children were allied against the hateful young man with his silly earring—and she was glad that Juan was welcoming the split between his sister and Mick. Yes, she felt good, doubly so because her children had never been ashamed of being Mexicans; she had taught them correctly, they were Mexican-Americans, like her. Amalia wanted to assert this allegiance with her son and daughter. “And what do you say to that … Blondie?” Mick had the darkest hair she had ever seen.
Juan and Gloria doubled over with laughter. “Blondie! El Blondie!” Gloria kept gas
ping. “Mick is el Blondie!”
“Hey, ‘Amá, you got it just right,” Juan approved. He placed his arm about Amalia’s shoulders.
She had pleased them! Amalia covered her son’s hand with hers. With a surge of warmth, she received this sudden closeness between her and her children, the closeness of a good mother and her children—and if God knew anything about her, it was that she was a good mother. These cherished moments would make whatever would follow easier, because her mind kept reminding, My Juan is in trouble with the police.… But perhaps, after this close allegiance, Juan would inform her that he had just been reacting in anger to her trap about the letter, suspecting a trap, just that—of course, that was it!—and she would accept it.… Exulting in their approval of her, Amalia goaded Mick: “Oye, Blondie—” She waited, smiling, to allow Juan’s and Gloria’s new burst of appreciative laughter. “Oye, I bet you don’t know that a Mexican—Colon—discovered America—and I bet you don’t even know who Juan Diego is.”
She waited for Juan and Gloria to volunteer the answers. When they didn’t—they were still laughing—she offered for them: “My Juan and my Gloria do.” She had told them often enough about Columbus being Mexican—well, Spanish, and not really Spanish, she knew, but close enough; and she had told them even more often about the Indian peasant to whom Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared … “I bet you’re not even Catholic. Oye, Blondie,” she said, delighting in the fact that Gloria and Juan were now waiting eagerly for her next words, “eres un born-again?”
“Huh?”
“You got it right again, ‘Amd!” Juan managed to say between roars of laughter.
“How’d you figure it out so quick that Mick’s a born-again chicken, ‘Amá?” Gloria said.
‘Amá! Gloria never called her that anymore. Amalia stopped laughing. This moment was too beautiful.… ‘Amá.… She saw her son and daughter doubled over with laughter, like children, her children. She had made them laugh with her!
“Everyone who drove by the born-again chickenshit today,” Gloria was saying between peals of laughter, “Mick thought was after him because he’s going out with me and I used to go out with real Chicano guys. I told him don’t worry, I’d straighten it all out.” She bent over, searching for something in her boot. “I even walked up to this guy and asked him was he after Mick, and the guy says, ‘Who the hell’s Mick?’—and you know what Mick said when I told him no one was after him, that he could cool it now?” She stopped laughing for a few moments, shook her head, resumed her laughter.
Was her daughter as tough as she talked? What was she fishing for in her boot? Not a knife, please, not a knife like those she had heard even girls were carrying in the schools. Whatever it was, Gloria now clasped it firmly in her hand.
Juan had waited for his sister to finish. When she didn’t, he said in pretended amazement, “Mick can’t be that chicken. He’s a tough dude with his little black shirt and his big bad bike.”
“Hell, man, your sister’s not worth no hassle.” Mick hooked his thumbs into his silver-studded belt, but he backed away from Juan.
Amalia quickly looked at her daughter. Gloria had winced.
But when she spoke, her voice was instantly sure. “You heard the tough dude. That’s what he told me earlier.”
“You should be proud that my beautiful daughter even glances at you,” Amalia said. And she touched Gloria’s luscious hair.
“Say that again about my sister, chicken—” Juan advanced toward Mick.
“Don’t bother with the chicken,” Gloria told Juan, “he’s not worth the hassle.”
“No one who’s ashamed of what he is is worth un centavo, and that means not worth a penny, Blondie.” Amalia basked in Gloria’s and Juan’s renewed approval.
“Ashamed?” Mick challenged Amalia. “If you mean about all that heritage stuff, yeah!” He waved his hand toward Amalia’s Sacred Heart of Jesus, the brightly bleeding Christ. “All that conquered warrior stuff, victim stuff? I get enough of it from my old lady It’s not for me.”
Amalia winced. She remembered her own repugnance at the old beata draped in veils, crawling on her knees up the church steps on Sunset; remembered Teresa’s La Dolorosa, and she remembered—and she felt a sudden sadness—the beautiful mural in East Los Angeles, the proud Indians about to be ambushed by invaders. What had happened to the revolutionaries in muslin?—they had looked just as proud, those men the Indians had been gazing toward. And where were the women? That question, pushed away a distant day, returned. Did they find courage?
“Where’s all that pride bullshit got you?” Mick was still aiming at Amalia. “What are you? Just another fuckin’ Mexican maid.”
“Don’t say another goddamn word about our mother, bastard!” Gloria reached out as if to force Mick to face her.
“You fucking chicken. Say one more word about our mother and I’ll—” Juan moved toward Mick.
Juan and Gloria were defending her! Amalia felt overwhelmed. Had they ever defended her like this before? Had anyone? Yes, Manny… They love me, she thought. How can I have doubted it?—and they know how much I love them. She wished she could hold this moment, stop it, at least make it pause.
Juan’s fist struck the side of Mick’s face. His hand pulled back, prepared to hit him again.
Fear knotted tightly in Amalia’s stomach, and she said, “Leave him alone now, Juan, he’s not worth your touching him even with your fist.”
Mick felt his bleeding cheek. Startled, he backed away from Juan. At the door he yelled at Amalia, “At least I wasn’t busted for being a fag, like your son!” Then he ran out.
Her son, a maricón? Amalia waited for Juan’s denial.
“You told him,” Juan accused Gloria quietly.
“I trusted him,” Gloria said as softly.
The closeness shattered for Amalia into a million cutting fragments.
For seconds there was only the sound of Mick’s motorcycle dying over and over, and then it gasped, started, sped away.
What Gloria had held in her hand had fallen to the floor. Amalia saw it only now. A small pocketknife.
Openly, Gloria picked it up. “Just a file, see?” she answered Amalia’s stare. She began filing her long lacquered nails. “Besides, you never know when you’re gonna need protection.” She said that even more quietly.
Amalia would deal with that later. Now she had to ask Juan, “What did Mick mean … about you, Juan?”
Juan turned his back.
“Tell her, Juan,” Gloria stood near her brother. “I think she really wants to know.”
“Yes, I want you to tell me now that you are not a maricón.” Amalia closed her eyes. “Tell me that now.”
Juan tossed the words at her with sudden defiance. “I was busted for hustling on Santa Monica Boulevard.”
“What?” The shirtless young men she had seen on that street, the men in cars picking them up. “What?” Amalia repeated.
“Yeah—I was busted for going with guys for money,” Juan answered her look of disbelief.
Amalia stared at the stranger before her. “You’re telling me you’re a maricón.” Now he would deny it.
Gloria stood before her mother. “Don’t call my brother a queer. That’s what those cowards from the Valley called him when they jumped him on the street.”
Her son, beaten up by those ugly young men she had seen attacking with bats that night with Raynaldo? She had never allowed any of the men she had lived with even to yell at her children—and Juan had been beaten by strangers? The bruise on his forehead—She felt indignant, but then a wave of new anger, at him, washed over that. “Isn’t that what he’s telling me?” she asked her daughter. Had they really been so close just moments earlier? “Deny it!” she yelled at Juan.
“No! Whatever you call it, yeah, I am,” Juan said.
Amalia needed time. “Get out, Gloria, I don’t want you to hear any of this.” But she covered her own ears.
“I know all about it … Mom. He had to turn
to someone, he couldn’t turn to you.”
Amalia had to sort this all out, draw some reprieve from all that was ganging up on her. But she could find none. “That boy in the garage—that Salvadoran boy—”
“Paco, his name is Paco. I met him in jail, he was busted for hustling, too.”
“You told me you were working—”
“I am. Listen, that shit you hear on TV? About guys making so much money hustling the streets? Well, it’s just cop bullshit so they can keep up their fuckin’ roundups. You pick up some extra bucks, get by, that’s all.” His eyes leveled on hers, aiming his words. “But it’s not as bad as what Paco was making hustling Lafayette Park, ‘cause Salvadorans and Guatemalans make less because they’re more desperate!”
She did not want to hear, she did not want to hear such terrible things! Amalia turned away from Juan. His words pursued her:
“That’s why I brought him to the garage, ‘cause he didn’t have no place. Then you came sneaking up on us and you sent him away,” he accused her.
“You’re not involved with him!” She faced her son.
“Yeah, I am. We—”
Amalia stopped him. “That was him in the car this morning—”
“Yeah, man—and you know who the driver was?” Juan was shooting his words at her now. “He’s a John I know, the guy I called when I was busted. He bailed us out.”
“You called a stranger”
“If I had called you, you might’ve just left me there.”
He wanted to hurt her. “You are not a joto. No son of mine could be.”
Gloria laughed bitterly. “Aren’t you going to ask him if he’s in bad trouble? He’ll have to go to court, you know.”
To court. The Hall of Justice. When she had visited Manny. The woman who had gotten into the separated line. The young man in the orange uniform in jail.… Amalia pushed all that away.
“I’ll be okay, first offense,” Juan assured himself. “It’s a misdemeanor, first time. My friend’ll pay the fine for me and Paco, he told us, he’s a good guy.”
“What are you and Paco going to have to do for his generosity?” The words were harsher than she intended.