A Place to Stand

by Jimmy Santiago Baca

  On my way back to the block after exercise one afternoon, two soldiers from La eMe accosted me at the entrance.

  “Yeah, vato, why’d you tip that snitch?” They swaggered off with a certain cockiness, meaning their business was not done. I was in a bad cross and wanted to straighten things out. I regretted doing a favor for Carey; I should have known better. The next day at dusk I was in the chow line when another mafia guy came up.

  “We want that money, it’s ours,” a lanky Chicano said menacingly, and walked off.

  Then, on my way back to CB2, another mafioso said, “Pay the two g’s that was on his head.”

  I knew nothing would stop the mafiosos. They began to dog me even harder, shadowing me wherever I went. I tried to shine them on, giving them my fuck-you attitude, but I knew they were not making idle threats. They ran their gang like a corporate business. I’d heard they were making big bucks selling drugs and protection. The days passed slowly and I grew more scared but I didn’t show it. I’d take a drink from the fountain in the block and there’d be two behind me. They followed me to the field, on the tiers, at work. Then one morning, as I sat on crates in the back having coffee with a homeboy named Chacho at the back service door of the kitchen leading into the dining room, two Mexicans appeared. A hit squad.

  “¡Ojo, águila!” Chacho warned. Watch out! As he said it, I saw them draw shanks and move quickly toward me. Simultaneously, I leaped up and grabbed the butcher knife the chef was chopping onions with. I was behind the table, and one of them jumped over it. Unable to stop his forward momentum, he came on me from above and I slit his stomach. He clutched his intestines as they slopped out of his gut and then fell on the chopping block, his blood all over the vegetables. The other one stopped dead in his tracks and dashed out. The chef slammed the button and the alarm went off. It was that quick—pure instinct and survival. I wiped the knife handle on my white apron and dropped it and walked out the back door.

  I walked into the cell block, going right to my cell, as men straggled out for breakfast. Midway down the landing, a guy named Brujo and a clika, about twenty Mexicans, confronted me. I didn’t know who Brujo was, or his standing with La eMe, and I didn’t care.

  Older than the rest, Brujo combed his black-and-gray hair back and wore sunglasses that concealed his eyes. He moved like a seasoned tiger, having survived many wars. His face had nicks and scars. He wore a thin mustache, and below his left eye were three tattooed dots. He stopped and I stopped, about twenty paces apart, facing each other.

  In a voice like a rusty blade, Brujo said to me, “You might have got away this morning, but there’s no place you can run. Or hide. We’ll get you wherever you are.” His brown eyes were seething. I asked him, “You sent the hit squad? You fucking punk, what I ever do to you?” He said, “It’s about your snitch friend and the money.” I said, “If you have a score to settle with me, let’s settle it between us now.” He leered, signaling his henchmen to hold off, because when I insulted him as a coward they started for me. They were circling me, when the young bucks who had recently appointed me their leader started coming down the second-story tiers and stairwell, yelling they were backing my play. There was a big racket as they rushed down the staircase, two steps at a time. Brujo’s boys reached for shanks under their long blue winter jackets and gray sweatshirts that reached their thighs. Their black beanie caps were snugged around their heads down to their eyebrows. Brujo gave me an evil leer, showing his control of the situation and his power over life and death. “Snitches are no good,” Brujo said. “We’re in prison because of them; we’ve lost our families, our lives, our freedom because of them. They have caused us much pain, and we live in that pain every day. You dare to insult us by protecting one of them? No, no, we will take you and them down into the pain we live in every day and make you pay for every hour of it.” Seven or eight of the young bucks rushing down the stairs drew up beside me. Brujo leered again. “You think these young kids can stop us? We have hundreds of soldiers. If they wish to die with you, fine, good, the more the better.” And with one motion, in their prison jackets with the big pockets, the army of disciplined apostles ready to give their lives for Brujo, for what he stood for, moved past me.

  I went to Macaron’s cell and told him what happened, told him how I messed everything up, how I had planned to go to school and get my GED and now everything was all fucked up again.

  He was sitting on his cot by the bars. He looked at me, brown eyes large in a scarred face, and said, “I was like you—hoping for a better life, working to do right—but that time passed. I remember when it happened. I was standing in front of the gates with the chain gang; we were going out to pick potatoes. Suddenly I lost hope, and I could never get it back again. My soul broke. It died. That day, I became a criminal. That day I had no more hope. I knew when the punishment was enough, and then it kept going on and on, and from that point it made no sense. . . .”

  After a pause, he continued. “It happens to all of us who stay here past a certain time. You do your time; then you do more and more, and the hurt in the heart turns to bitterness, freedom turns to vengeance, and you look forward to getting out, not to resume your life but to hurt people the way they hurt you, for punishment that made no sense, for the hurting and hurting, for the day when you couldn’t take it anymore but you had to and lost your humanity, lost your reason for wanting to be a human being. The day you just fell into line, knowing this is where you’d live and die.”

  He stood up, then, gripping the bars an inch from my face, staring deep into my eyes. “I know you’re going to the hole for a long time, and I know you’re in serious trouble. Remember, it’s not the size of your muscles or your mouth—here, the heart is all that matters. The mind can’t accept being in a six-by-nine cell for years, but the heart understands it has to be done. The mind says, There’s no way I can live in prison for years, but the heart says, Deal with it and shut the fuck up. The mind senses your growing brutality, but the heart ignores it. Forget freedom, the heart commands.

  “No one will help you here; you’re on your own. Fuck family, dreams, hopes, plans; when it comes down to it, you do what you got to do. If you got a parole board hearing in the afternoon and someone jumps your case, you fuck them up, and if you get more time, you get more time. If you’re put in a cross, no one cares. All you got here is heart—corazón. Only corazón. And if you don’t have it, every day will be a hell you’ve never imagined. When the mind says, I am human, the heart growls, I am an animal. When you wish to scream, the heart says, Be silent. When you feel hurt, you numb yourself. When you’re lonely, you push it aside. Strip yourself of every trace of the streets, because it will hurt you here. Here, you have no feelings, no soul; only your heart will help you survive. Forget everything except survival. Don’t ask why—there are no reasons. There is no future, no past, only the moment; you will do what you have to do. You didn’t exist before coming here; your life before here never happened. The only thought that drives you on is to be alive at the end of the day, and to be a man, or die fighting proving you are a man. That’s the code of the warrior.

  “You better get in your cell; they’re coming for you.” He gave me a cigarette. “Here, it’ll be the last one you have for a while.”

  I smoked the Lucky Strike slowly, standing at the bars, staring out into the landing, at the goons in riot gear coming up, led by Mad Dog Madril and Five Hundred, barking at cons to stick their heads in. They kept nearing my cell. I had blood on my clothes. Who was I becoming? I felt lost, a stranger even to myself. The cell-block intercom blared my number, crackling commands for me to step out peacefully. I ignored them. Mad Dog Madril stood in my open cell door. “You want us to come in and get you?” I stared in quiet defiance and flicked the cigarette butt at him. Mad Dog stepped aside. Five Hundred was first to enter, body-slamming me against the wall, wrenching me out by the neck, and throwing me against the floor. As I was pushed in handcuffs down the stairwell, I realized it was the end of
February, a time of change, when golden leaves blew across the air, returning to the earth, and spring leaves were just starting to bud in the coming warmth. I was twenty-two.

  SEVEN

  Most people might assume that cons spend their time thinking about what they’re going to do when their time is up, fantasizing about the women they’re going to fuck and scams they’re going to run, or planning how they’re going to go straight and everything will be different. I did think about the future sometimes, but more and more it was the past my mind began to turn to, especially during those first days and nights in solitary.

  The years leading up to prison had been a never-ending series of hustles. I was constantly conniving, focused on whatever screwed-up situation was at hand that day or planning tomorrow’s score. For a street kid, it was all about the basics: food, shelter, a little pocket change. Always moving forward, head down, never looking back. But things were different now. I wasn’t moving anywhere anytime soon.

  Lying on my cot, staring at the concrete wall for hours on end, for the first time in years my mind’s eye drifted back over my shoulder, down the bleak road that had led me here. Remembering was a novelty. The territory I began to explore seemed just as fresh as anything I could dream up but free of the exhausting, overpowering ache of longing. Most of all, it helped fill the void stretching out in front of me, which was not nearly so black and terrifying this time around. It was just empty time. My first stint in the hole had been a nightmare, but I’d survived it, and I could do it again. Thirty days was just thirty days.

  What began as an idle reflex became a habit of mind and then something else entirely. As my powers of concentration grew, I would revisit places and people from my past for longer stretches of time. Stretched out flat on my back, arms covering my eyes, I would replay the events over and over again like a sexual fantasy, adding details and names, redrawing faces, until they seemed as real to me as if they were right in front of me. Occasionally I’d be distracted by the sound of a guard’s footsteps or thoughts about the Mexican mafia gunning for me in the prison yard outside. But with nothing else to do but lie there and sweat, I trained my mind to shut out everything around me and travel back in time.

  Revisiting the past wasn’t about seeking comfort at first, it was just something to do, like push-ups. But as I thought back on my unhappy childhood, I found myself lingering more and more on images of Estancia, the small village where my grandparents lived, all by itself in the vast prairie, in a certain lonely innocence.

  I’d spent a few fleeting years of happiness in Estancia, during my boyhood, before my mother left and everything changed. The village was nestled under a grove of scattered cottonwoods, in the flatlands to the southeast of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I could see my grandparents’ small brown stucco house, the windswept dirt yard, and the barnlike-shed where I played with Grandpa’s shovel and pick, their handles cracked and blackened with sweat and use, shredded gunnysacks, mule harness, old iodine bottles, and rusty cans.

  I’d never gone into my memories so vividly before. I felt more outside my cell than in it. In my mind I would see the looming silver water tower on trestle stilts to the north, and next to it the three-story red-brick schoolhouse. The park and pond were to the south, the railyard to the east, and to the west the prairie rolled to the Manzano foothills.

  My grandfather died years ago, but in my mind he was alive, and my brother, sister, and I were with him, in the small village where my father grew up. From the horizon, train tracks threaded through vast stretches of endless parched rabbit brush and cactus to Estancia’s dusty warehouses. A few goats, horses, and cows roamed well-worn footpaths connecting adobe and clapboard houses. At the pond, used for centuries by sheepherders as a watering hole, renowned for its sweet-tasting water, there were picnic benches and tree stumps, around which villagers gathered for rodeos and religious fiestas. In the cottonwoods, owls, blackbirds, and hawks perched, scanning the prairie at sunrise, glinting off the galvanized tin roof of my grandparents’ house, its blackened chimney smoking as Grandma prepared coffee, eggs, tortilla, and green chile for Grandpa and my Uncle Refugio.

  It was a modest stucco house, constructed of two-by-four milled lumber, with a tiny front porch and a white wooden railing and love swing, built by the railroad as a dual-family unit for Mexican tracklayers. On sunny afternoons, Martina and Mieyo would often sit in the love swing and talk, while I walked back and forth atop the railing, trying to balance as I listened. Two brown doors faced the dirt road, and these were never opened except on hot days, to let a breeze cool the house, or for formal visits when Grandma had guests and they sat in the parlor.

  My Uncle Santiago arrives, as he does every morning, in his battered green truck, smelling of hay, livestock, earth, and water. The kitchen radio plays Mexican songs. He uses the back door, as everybody does, bringing a glass canning jar filled with fresh goat’s milk for Grandma. A chill draft sweeps through the house as he enters and closes the door, stamping his heavy work boots. He drinks a cup of coffee, sharing news he’s heard about people they know, asks how Grandpa and Grandma feel, and leaves to feed his animals on the outskirts of town. Mieyo and Martina have already eaten and gone to school. The woodstove fills the house with resinous cedar aroma; the steam from coffee, beans, chile makes me hungry. I brace myself for the ice-cold linoleum, leap out from under the warm quilt, and dash across the hall to the bathroom to pee.

  “Whoaaa!” My Uncle Refugio pretends I almost knocked him over. He’s tall and strong, Grandma’s third son, and every day after field work he spends his pay at the Blue Ribbon bar and then staggers home, and Grandma puts him to bed, lights a candle, and prays. I’m always surprised how fresh he looks in the morning, especially after seeing him so drunk the night before. Combed and shaved, wearing starched jeans and a denim shirt, he points the straight-edge razor at me, frowning. “This is not a corral!” Hot water steams the mirror as he rinses the shaving brush, puts it in the mug, and, after drying his face, slaps Old Spice on his cheeks. I pee and sneak back to bed but Grandma catches me.

  “Puerco, ven paca,” she scolds, and pulls me to the sink and scours my face and ears. Freezing water drops on my neck make me fidget. “Hold still,” she demands, cuffing my oversized shirt and pants. Combing my hair and straightening my clothes into a presentable appearance, she complains that I stink worse than a goat.

  “Wait for Grandpa. I’m going to church.” She drapes a black shawl over her shoulders and leaves. I jump on the counter sink and look out the window to watch her best friend, Juanoveva, meeting her mid-field. They go on together, both slightly stooped and frail. I believe God listens to her, and I know she’s praying that my parents will come back together.

  Grandpa comes in from chopping wood, slapping his shoulders to shake the cold off and rubbing his hands over the woodstove. I follow him to his room and lie on his bed, watching him as he sits in a spindle chair lacing his boots. I’m amazed by his huge knuckles, all scarred and scabbed. To make extra money, he fights bare-knuckled on weekends in the railroad sheds against Mexicans or gringos the growers bring in from other towns. I want to be like him one day. He towers over me, pretending he’s boxing, and I slug him in the leg as he winces. I go to hug him and realize it’s a trick; he grabs me and wipes my runny nose with his handkerchief. He tosses me back on the bed and spirals an index finger above my stomach, repeating, “Lanza, lanza, lanza la panza! Lanza, lanza, lanza la panza!” Tickle, tickle, tickle the stomach! He zeroes in on my stomach with his index finger until I’m hiccuping giggles, trying to deflect his hands. “Up, we have to go.” He sits me on his knee, swings me up and down a few times, and gently places me on the floor.

  Outside, I walk alongside Grandpa, carrying his black lunch pail in the red wagon I pull behind us. He’s wearing his crumpled fedora and threadbare suit coat over bib overalls. The land sparkles with dew. Roosters crow. Cows bellow. He looks at the clear sky and land and houses all around and slaps his chest lightly t
o indicate how he loves the dawn. I do the same. When I’m with him like this, life is beautiful. Nothing in the world can harm me. Halfway to school, he kisses me, and his rough gray stubble makes me scratch my cheek. I hand him his black lunch pail. He tells me to help Grandma and be good, that we’ll meet later, and heads off to school, where he’s the janitor.

  Back at the house, I know Grandma will soon arrive to start tortillas and clean house and wash clothes. Entering the back door, you come into the kitchen and eating room, divided by an arched opening. The west side of the house has Refugio’s bedroom facing north toward the road, then, in the middle of a small room, is a large cot for us kids, and at the foot of the cot, close by the bathroom, is a wringer washing machine. The east side of the house, through a door in the eating area, is Grandma and Grandpa’s bedroom, and then the parlor, facing the road. The parlor is off limits to kids and seldom used except for special social calls by the priest or rare visitors. I’m not supposed to go into my grandparents’ bedroom by myself, but I turn the brown enamel doorknob and skeleton key and enter anyway. The air is cold and stale. A fine dust covers the brittle linoleum creaking under my step. A dusty brass chamber pot glimmers at the foot of the brass four-poster and directly above it two daguerreotypes in oval frames depict a much younger Grandma and Grandpa poised on a buckboard, in somber attire, features weathered and rigorous. I try to imagine what their young lives were like but their eyes look as if they’re really staring at me. Something rattles against the window and I believe it’s spirit talk, warning me to leave. But instead of getting scared and tiptoeing out, I slowly open the other door, which leads into the parlor. Mexican blankets drape the couch and rocking chair. Faded pictures of Christ and Santo Nino de Atocha hang on the wall. Displayed imposingly on a cherry-wood table is the red Bible in which important papers are kept. I open it and find a photograph of Grandmother’s parents standing before a red rock house. Indians and Mexicans stand before it, holding their horses. Grandma is a young girl in some kind of ceremony because she’s wearing feathers and a doeskin skirt. There’s another photograph of Grandpa’s parents; rough-looking Mexicans with dark copper skin. Grandpa is standing next to his father, a solemn-faced man wearing a black sombrero with a thick mustache. About a dozen white mules are tethered to ground stakes with lead ropes. The men and women are dressed in clean jeans and cowboy shirts, probably on their way to a fiesta or mass.