Let Their Spirits Dance

  Michael’s out of the van, shouting at the officers. “My dad has constitutional rights! You can’t do this to him. You’ll see—I’ll take this case all the way to the Supreme Court. You can’t harass an American citizen!”

  “Shut that kid up!” yells the first officer.

  “No,” my mother says. “He’s a genius, officer. He can’t help himself.”

  Everybody’s out of the vans and lined up around Paul’s van. Irene stands at Mom’s side.

  “Where’s your green card, officer?” Yellowhair asks. “You’re standing on my land. My family’s been here for forty thousand years. I think these cops are descendants of the fuckin’ Texas Rangers.”

  “Don’t you know, Yellowhair,” says Gates, “he’s one of the white masters who wants everybody to bow down to him? They did all this shit in South Africa to Nelson Mandela himself! Mandela had to carry identification papers to travel in his own country! Don’t you know we all look the same to this guy? This guy’s so stupid, he can’t tell his ass from a hole in the ground!”

  “Shut up!” yells the first officer, “or I’ll arrest you for harassing a police officer.”

  “Gee, I’m terrified,” Gates says, laughing. “And to think I risked my life in Nam for your white ass!”

  Willy is snapping pictures. “Wow! Won’t this make interesting news. ‘Kansas State Police Arrest Family on Their Way to the Vietnam Wall.’ Is nothing sacred anymore?”

  “No need for that,” says one of the backup officers. He’s holding a clipboard in his hand. His voice is somber. “The officer, here, just made a little mistake. He acted a little too quick. He’s got you confused with a group of illegals we’re trying to stop from running over the state line. It’s obvious you’re not them, so you can go on your way. You’re the Ramirez family, aren’t you?”

  I ignore his question. “Just like that? You’re gonna let us go after you harassed us and embarrassed us in front of these two elderly women and our own children? I don’t think so!” I turn around and ask Manuel if he’s got something to write on. He hands me a notepad and pen. I start writing down badge numbers while the first officer unlocks Paul’s handcuffs. The Guadalupanas are whispering prayers, anticipating our final escape.

  Chris helps me write down the badge numbers. “You’ll hear from us, all right,” he says to the officer with the clipboard. “That you will!”

  Priscilla’s shouting, “Don’t have much to do out here, do you? Need to play games with people’s lives. Well, you messed up real good today. We’re Chicanos, been here before your grandpappies were born, and we’ll see your asses in court for this! This immigration scam is an old story, man.”

  “Calm down, Priscilla,” Manuel tells her. “These guys should learn their history lessons before they get to be cops.”

  “I apologize to you, ma’am,” the rookie says to Mom. “I hope you don’t think all Kansas state police officers are the same. Trust me, I’m not like that.”

  “There is good and bad everywhere,” my mother says. “I’ve seen this all my life.”

  Paul holds Mom in his arms. She lays her head on his chest. “Mom, why did you do this? Here, let me help you back to the van.”

  “I have to be here for you, mijo. What do you think—that I love Jesse more than you? I love you both, con poder, but different because you’re different people, but you’re both my sons.” She looks into his face. “Don’t you know, mijo, that if you were on the Wall, I would be making this trip for you—yes, I would!” They’re both crying. Paul is stooping down to hug Mom, cradling her in his arms.

  Paul walks Mom back to the van, with Irene at her side. Suddenly, Mom is left with no strength. She used it all up to defend her son.

  At Topeka, I hear Paul and Michael talking about police brutality and the Rodney King case while we’re unpacking. Seeing them together is getting to be normal. I watch them move in unison as they unpack the van, and smile to myself. Michael is almost as tall as his dad. Lisa helps Mom and Irene out of the van. The Guadalupanas are holding on to each other, making their way to their room. The day has wearied them.

  The sun is setting over the horizon, and a veil of gray, wispy clouds appears. There’s moisture in the air. I breathe it into my lungs, aware that I am at the heart of a nation I know nothing about. Rays of the setting sun turn the sky bright orange. Don Florencío used to say Chicanos are descendants of the sun people, and I’m not sure that’s what I want to be. I’d rather follow the moon and hope not to be sacrificed to an angry god. I’m not amused by obsidian knives. I’m baffled by the brutality of my ancient ancestors. Violence and the oppression of others is a mystery to me. Could I have done what the Kansas State Police did? Could I ever be as brutal as the sheriff’s deputies were on the day of the moratorium march? Playing with violence and power is familiar to all of us. That’s another reason we’re on our way to the Wall. We’re victims of the lust for violence and power that led this nation to the madness of Vietnam.

  April 1, 1968

  Dear Sis,

  Thought I’d write you on April Fool’s Day, except I don’t have anything to fool you with this year. I hope you played a trick on Paul and Priscilla, just to keep up family tradition. Remember when I told them I had caught a real alligator in the sewer, then when they paid me a quarter to see it, it turned out to be a lizard I had trapped in the yard? I had them convinced it had shrunk to the size of a mini-alligator because it didn’t have enough water—boy I had them going! Then I yelled “April Fool’s Day!”—and they both jumped me, but I was laughing so hard I couldn’t even push them off of me. I was rolling around in the yard laughing until my stomach hurt. Those were the days, que no?

  I think Don Florencío played a joke on me over here in Vietnam. I dreamed about him on April 1st and guess what? I saw him dressed up like a woman! It was him, I swear it was. He had on this headdress that looked like one of those Aztec warriors, he was smoking his ironwood pipe, but he had on a dress, a long dress. I looked at him and asked him, “Is that you, Don Florencío?” “Yes, mijo,” he said. He looked at me like he always did, like he was looking right into my heart. There was a light shining behind him, real bright, but it didn’t hurt my eyes. “If it’s you, why are you dressed like a woman?” I asked him. “Men and women don’t live where I am,” he said, “only spirits. It doesn’t matter anymore if you are male or female, it only matters how you lived your life.” Then he sucked on the end of his pipe and I swear I smelled that sweet tobacco he used to smoke. The smoke made a big circle around us and held us together, and there we were, him dressed like a woman, smoking a pipe and me in my Army uniform with this light all around. It felt so good, I can’t explain it. I felt powerful, like I had just won a prize. Then I stooped down to clean my boots, but they weren’t boots, they were a pair of sandals, brown sandals, like huaraches. And I thought it doesn’t matter anymore, sandals will get me where I have to go, I don’t need my boots anymore. Doesn’t El Santo Niño wear sandals?

  Write me back real fast. We’re moving out all the time so I don’t know when you’ll get this letter. We’re trying to stay out of the killing zone, but that’s hard to do because we don’t know where it is. It could be ten feet away from here. Charlie’s a guerrilla so the whole place is a battlefield. The other day I passed this little altar set out on the road. It looked so pitiful, a house for wandering souls. Maybe somebody will put one up for me. Don’t worry, sis, it can’t be that bad. I saw a guy die the other day. I didn’t really know who he was, but man he was hurting, then all of a sudden his face got all soft and peaceful, like he was looking through everybody, and then he died. Maybe death is just a change of view. We see things one way over here, and we’ll see them differently on the other side. Do you think God is male and female? I never thought I’d ask anybody that. I know one thing. He understands Vietnamese, cause these people are praying all the time. I haven’t seen the family I told you about lately. I guess they moved all their village out. I’m trying to find t
hem because of their daughter, she’s the one teaching me Vietnamese. I miss her. Any guy would, but I’m the lucky one even though the whole family has to be there every time I talk to her. I’ll tell you more later.

  I’m looking at some farmers working in a rice paddy. These people are unbelievable. They go on working no matter what’s happening. The rice seedlings need lots of work, planting, transplanting, until the rice is full grown. I didn’t know that. So much of the country is destroyed by bombs, Agent Orange, and napalm. It’s weird to see one side of a hill all green, and the other side burnt off. It’s like the U.S. can’t make up their minds to kill them or let them live. I guess maybe that’s peace to our country, that they can go to another country and take over. In other words, let us destroy you, then we’ll have peace. One of the colonels said the other day that the way to end the war was to haul Vietnam out into the middle of the ocean and bomb the hell out of it. They should haul his ass out to the ocean see how he likes it.

  I’m tired, sis, so tired. Maybe I’m not making sense. I haven’t slept for two days, lots of shit happening. Give Mom and Nana a kiss, hug dad. Be sure Priscilla and Paul eat their Cheerios. What I would give for a box of cereal right now. I’d take this letter out to the mailbox for you, but there aren’t any. Sorry if it gets to you late. We’re on a special mission, whatever that means.

  Some old man is waving at me. These people look at us los Chicanos like we’re one of them. We look more Vietnamese than American, that’s for sure.

  Hey, did I tell you, they got rubber trees out here, giant trees. It reminds me of that song, what did it say that an ant can’t move a rubber tree plant, but we’ve got high hopes or something like that. So add that to the list of why we’re here. Rubber trees, another money maker.

  I think a chopper’s coming in. The old man is waving and jumping up and down. We’ll give him some C rations if it’s the relief flight. Tell Espi I’ll write when I get a chance. I’m glad I finished this letter, maybe it’s the last thing I have to do.

  SWAK

  Jesse

  It was May by the time I got Jesse’s letter. I was finishing up my junior year at Palo Verde High. Reading his letter made me laugh and cry. Laugh because Don Florencío was dressed like a woman, cry because Jesse was embracing the other world. He was right, it was the last thing he had to do. After that, his letters stopped.

  Thom ·

  At Topeka it’s all I can do to keep myself from running into Chris’s room to find out what he knows about Jesse. I want to switch the lights off in the room for us so the night can get inky black again. We’re at another TraveLodge built close to the freeway.

  Cisco tells me Chris went out with Willy, Gates, and Yellowhair and said he’d be back in a couple of hours.

  “They went over to the Highlander Lounge, wherever that is,” Cisco says.

  “He didn’t tell me he was going out.”

  “Mom, he doesn’t have to tell you everything. He can do what he wants. Right?” Cisco looks closely at me. “Mom?”

  “Yeah, you’re right, of course he can.” Cisco’s not convinced I mean what I say. “I guess the veterans want their own night out.”

  Paul says we should go to the lounge next door for a drink. Donna, Susie, Priscilla, and Manuel decide to go with him. They invite me and I tell them maybe I’ll go down a little later. Sarah, Yellowhair’s mother, is asleep in her room. Lisa and Lilly have a room to themselves tonight. They say they want to watch movies and call their friends back home. Cisco’s decided he can take care of the two boys and they don’t need to room in with anybody else. I know Michael will be busy for hours on the laptop, answering e-mails. He says the Vietnamese man from Little Saigon is telling him all about the real Saigon in Vietnam. He says his family lived in Saigon during the war.

  I’ve just settled the Guadalupanas in their room. They were saying the rosary the last I heard of them. They set up two veladoras on the dresser and put up photos of Jesse and Faustino. The photos now have plastic gold-colored frames around them. Mom seems like she got over her cough and looks stronger than she has in months. For some reason, the fight with the Kansas State Police has energized us, made us jovial, like we won at a picket line, or finished doing a sit-in and got what we wanted. There’s power in facing something together, a sense that everybody did the right thing at the right time.

  I’m in a room by myself and call Elsa to find out how they’re doing. She was asleep, and I could barely hear her tell me everything is fine. I dial Espi’s number and her answering machine goes on. I have so much to tell her, I don’t say anything. I know she’ll know it was me.

  A restlessness is taking over me. Maybe I should go to the lounge next door. I decide that’s not what I want. I want to find Chris, but there’s no way I’ll hunt for him in Topeka. He has the nerve to leave when he knows I want to know what happened to Jesse. Maybe that’s why he’s gone. Men! Why did I think I’d hear the truth from one of them? I reach for the phone and dial the front desk. A man answers, and I ask him for the address of the Highlander Lounge. He gives me directions, then tells me he’s gotten two calls from news stations in Topeka asking questions about us. He asks me if I want their numbers and I tell him no. I repeat our web site address and tell him to have them send us e-mails.

  The name Highlander makes me think of a country-western place. I take a shower and dress up in black Levi’s, short black boots, and a red silk tank top. I drive no more than a mile before I get to a bar that is probably one step above Penny’s Pool Hall in Phoenix. It’s got strings of white Christmas lights shaping an arc around the entrance. A bronze statute of a cowboy stands on a man-made hill in front of the place. The bar is built to look like a huge log cabin. I’m surprised it’s packed on a Tuesday. I make my way around rows and rows of cars in the parking lot, and finally find an empty spot in the last row. I walk as fast as I can. Two guys whistle. “Hey, baby. Don’t go in there. I’m over here!”

  I’m relieved when I spot a broad-shouldered security guy walking toward me. He’s wearing a T-shirt with huge orange letters: HIGHLANDER SECURITY. A woman at the front counter, dressed in western clothes and hat, tells me there’s a $10.00 cover charge. She explains that it’s a $10.00 charge tonight because the Bronco Brothers, Billy and his brother Buster, are playing. They’re famous all over Kansas, she says, that’s why the place is so packed. Billy and Buster are jamming away on their guitars as I walk in. There’s a woman with them on stage, playing an electronic keyboard. I take a few seconds to adjust to the dim light. Several men are looking at me. One of them almost falls off his bar stool and has to rearrange himself on the seat. I feel like running out, but there’s nowhere to go except back to the motel. I spot Chris and the others at one of the tables. There’s a woman talking to Chris, a brunette with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. She’s wearing a tank top that reveals her midriff, and the smooth, ample curve of her breasts. Chris sees me and motions me to come over. They’ve got drinks on the table.

  “Hey!” Chris says. “What a surprise!” He kisses my cheek. His breath smells like whiskey. The brunette is watching.

  “Did Cisco tell you?”

  “How do you think I got here?”

  “What? I can’t hear you, the music’s too loud.”

  “Yes, he told me!” I’m almost shouting.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “You told me we were gonna talk about Jesse. Don’t you remember? It’s not like we have all the time in the world.” Chris ignores me.

  “Hey, Pamela, this is my friend from Arizona. This is Teresa.”

  “The famous Teresa Ramirez?” Pamela’s got one hand looped over Chris’s neck. She takes a sip of her drink.

  “None other.” Chris looks at me. “Everybody’s buying us drinks, right, guys?” He looks at Willy, Gates, and Yellowhair. They’re talking and laughing. Gates has a small, blond woman sitting on his lap.

  “Yeah, I can tell.”

  “Order a drink, Teresa,” Willy
says. He calls the waitress over. I order a margarita.

  “Loosen up, Teresa. Let’s have some fun,” Chris says.

  Pamela stands up. Her skirt shoots up to her panty hose line. “Well, excu—ooose me! Don’t want to get into anybody else’s action.” She puts out her cigarette in the ashtray, then looks at me and laughs.

  “What action?” I ask her.

  “Oh, no, honey. You got the word fight written all over you! I ain’t been laid in weeks, and I need some—if you know what I mean?” She laughs and walks away.

  “Bitch!”

  “Loosen up, Teresa. Can’t you take a joke?”

  “A joke? I’m not in the mood for jokes.”

  “What?”

  “I said, I’m not…never mind!”

  “Come on!” Chris grabs my hand and we start dancing a country-western polka. “You feel good, girl.” People are waving at us, smiling. I start smiling back. “That’s it!” Chris says.

  Drinks keep coming to the table, compliments of the guests. I take a couple of drinks, and get dizzy right away. Next time the waitress comes around, I ask her for a Seven-Up. I dance with Willy and Yellowhair. Gates is dancing with the blonde. Pretty soon we’re all sweating, and the management sets up huge fans to cool the place down. Yellowhair does a jitterbug with a woman to “Rock Around the Clock,” and wins first place. People are clapping, hooting, and whistling. Yellowhair wins a bottle of tequila.

  “I’m getting out of here,” I tell Chris. “It’s almost midnight. Aren’t you driving tomorrow, Chris? Remember, the trip?”

  “All that’s under control,” Chris says. He’s got a stupid grin on his face. “Stay, maybe tonight? What about tonight?”

  “You’re in love with Margie.”

  “That was yesterday,” he says.

  “You’re sick! I’m getting out of here.”

  I walk out expecting Chris to follow me, but he stays behind. I wonder if Pamela will end up back at his table. As I drive up to our motel, Susie comes out of her room.