Parrot in the Oven

by Victor Martinez

  All in all, I thought it amazing that Lencho even tried to spark up the Chicano guys to join his boxing team. Not that the Chicano guys couldn’t fight or anything. There were a lot of ornery vatos around, but they just hung around and smoked and ditched class and acted like the school was some kind of contaminated nuclear zone. They’d never join any team that wasn’t a gang.

  Lencho did recruit two suckers, though. One was a guy named Chico. A nice guy, but as my brother Nardo once said about him, the only shining he ever did came from his teeth. He could draw a neat picture of a naked girl and follow the numbers in a bingo game, but putting his finger on an algebra problem would probably burn him to ashes. Chico once tried out for the basketball team, but he was too short and couldn’t dribble to save his life. When scratched from the roster, he blamed Coach Rogers, the basketball and boxing coach. The coach wore tortoise-shell glasses and talked in a Marine voice. He had a head that reflected the sun and a blue-black carpet of hair over his muscular arms. Where Chico got the story, I don’t know, but he said the coach once caught a Mexican guy frisking around with his daughter and ever since then he didn’t like Mexican guys.

  The other fish Lencho hooked—and no one could believe it at first, especially me—was “Skinny Boy” Albert Sosa, my friend. I thought this was a pretty sorry thing for Lencho to do, considering Albert couldn’t punch the air out of a soap bubble. Of course, it was a robustly stupid thing for Albert to do, too, since teachers lifted their eyebrows with appreciation when handing back his test papers.

  But Albert wanted to show something about himself. He wanted to impress his dad maybe, who sat around watching TV all day, making fun of the white actors, or maybe he wanted to impress Miss Van der Meer, who you could tell sent fingers of ice down his neck.

  I tried warning him. I tried explaining how ribs crack easy as dry twigs, and how a punch sometimes welcomes paralysis. But he wouldn’t listen. He practically begged to sign up, and you could tell Lencho was disappointed at such a scrawny catch. He wanted guys like Nardo and Sammy Fuentes—dangers known to everyone.

  But I think it was enough for Lencho to know that Chico and Albert would yank in whatever direction he pulled. They hung on his every word, and he could sure pump guys up with confidence. He belonged to this group called the Berets; older guys, mostly, already out of school. Actually, Lencho was only a Junior Beret, him still being in school and all. But to him, being a Junior Beret was still halfway better than a plain nobody.

  The Berets believed that white people were our worst enemy, and if they had one purpose in mind, it was to keep brown people down. We, on the other hand, were descendants of Indians blessed with a color that was as necessary as dirt to the earth, as important as the sun to all the trees. We had treasures buried deep inside our blood, hidden treasures we hardly knew existed.

  This is the kind of stuff I listened to from Lencho, who figured if he made me his equipment manager and handler, then maybe Nardo might change his mind and put on the leather.

  For three weeks, I hung out with the boxers. Training was held after school in the weight room, where the guys bounced around swiveling their necks, skipping rope and running in place until wet as fish. Then, with faces swelling, they’d groan out a few dozen sit-ups. (Lencho didn’t let them lift iron because he said weights make muscles bulky, and they needed to be quick and springy in the exchanges.)

  For equipment, we had an old, hobo-looking punching bag and one of those rubber tetherballs suspended on a bungee cord. On the first day, Albert hit the ball with a left, then came over—or tried to come over—with a right. The ball snapped back in a wobble and the cord gashed his fist. Between his two big knuckles, a flap of skin the size of a postage stamp opened a jagged eye.

  Unwinding a jump rope in his hand, Lencho told him to skip the day’s training, but to stick around for the pep talk. He didn’t mean that, of course. What he really meant to say was that Albert should show his fireball commitment by toughing it out. He didn’t say this, exactly; Lencho never said anything, exactly. Instead, he coolly started jumping rope and talking about how real fighters never let little chicken stuff like cuts put the coward’s bite on them. After a long stare at the blood creeping under the Band-Aid he’d put on, Albert wrapped his hand in a T-shirt and began shuffling his feet around, jabbing at the air.

  One of the fighters in Coach Rogers’s stable was a black guy named Boise Johnson. During training Lencho took particular attention to stink up his name. Clapping his hands, he’d roughen his voice and say we were going to pluck him like a chicken, crush him like a pasta shell. These put-downs were meant to lift the guys’ confidence, but both Chico and Albert blessed their skinny bones they weren’t going to fight Boise.

  There was also a feud going on between Lencho and Coach Rogers. The coach didn’t appreciate him mavericking fighters on his own. He was a former Golden Gloves boxing champion, and he considered that a big deal. I think every student at J. Edgar Hoover High knew the coach was a Golden Gloves boxing champion. Even in junior high I remember knowing, and I think even my dad knew, and my dad didn’t give a rat’s ass about anything that happened in my school.

  Coach Rogers selected his fighters from those who scored highest on the school’s physical exams, which included climbing the high rope and squat-jumping and running windsprints until our lungs collapsed; but he depended, mostly, on who could lift the heaviest weights, or repeat the lighter weights the longest. This torture of selection dragged on for about two weeks, after which the guys who scored Excellent were given free gold trunks to wear and were invited later to join the football, basketball and boxing teams. The guys who scored Average could buy purple trunks with silver trim to announce their standing. Those who scored Poor, like me, had to wear those gray gym trunks like a flag of shame.

  What mostly fired us up, though, was Lencho’s inspirational talks. He spoke with braids of lightning in his voice, saying stuff he’d learned in the Berets about Mexicans and Chicanos being a special people, how power slept in our fists and we could awaken it with a simple nod of our heroic will. He piled it on about being proud, about how marvelous it was going to be after we pulverized those other guys. Lencho could really swell the chest muscles.

  After a couple of weeks of watching punches pop deeper into the bag, and guys skip blurs on the jump rope—Albert actually hit the tetherball four swipes in a row!—I began to get a little swell-headed about our chances. Sure, at first I was a bit leery, since those other guys were bigger and could cross their arms when jumping rope, but they weren’t any better than us, not really.

  One day, while walking over by B Hall, I was surprised to hear my name called from behind. “Oh, Manuel! Manuel!”

  It was Miss Van der Meer, bustling over, a pile of books shoved up against her breasts. She was walking in that cute, pigeon-toed way that used to make Albert and me do crazy rolls with our eyes.

  “Do you think Leonard will win the contest?” she asked, stopping in front of me. She began to busily shuffle the order of her books on her chest.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “He’s pretty confident.”

  “Yes, I noticed that about him,” she said, waving her finger in the air. “He’s a regular Hotspur.”

  “A hot what?” I asked. I thought maybe she was talking about some kind of bullsticker or thorn.

  “Hotspur, in Shakespeare, you know.”

  I must have looked blank, because she got this disappointed frown on her face.

  “Well, it’s not important,” she said, matter-of-factly. Her face was sprayed with sun freckles, and with her finger she delicately crooked back her bangs. She was beautiful, with swirls of glowing sunlight floating on her hair.

  I was going to grab her free hand and shake it, but she started fiddling with the bindings of her books.

  “Anyway,” she said, “you tell Leonard for me that I wish him all the luck in the world. Will you do that, Manuel?” She made her hand straight as a Ping-Pong paddle and patted
me a couple of times on the shoulder.

  My heart lumped in my throat, and when I said, “Yeah, sure, Miss Van der Meer,” my voice was thick as oatmeal.

  Of course I didn’t tell Lencho anything. He’d probably have spit at my shoes and said, What a bitch! He’d probably say something nasty, too, like why was a dog like me still sniffing after her tail. He talked like that sometimes when he wasn’t getting all glorious about the Mexican race.

  Not until Miss Van der Meer walked away did I wonder how she knew my name. I figured she must have asked someone, or looked it up in the administration files. Whichever way, I could tell by her eyes that she knew something about me. But then, I’d found out some things about her, too. For one, she wasn’t one of the regular teachers, but a sort of extra teacher for the white students bussed in from Alemany High. I also found out about the couches and sofas in her classroom, because I asked the janitor, an El Salvadoran man who once worked with my dad in the onion fields. He scratched the back of his neck, and said, “O sí, allí tienen sofás, láimparas y todo.” He thought it was a teachers’ lounge.

  What all this has to do with the fight, I don’t know. Usually I didn’t like thoughts about teachers browsing around inside my head, but Miss Van der Meer was special. I hoped, in fact, that by some wildcard of luck they’d transfer me over from Mr. Shattler’s class, where all we did was read magazines and play bingo games, to hers, where students read detective books and stuff by that Shakespeare guy. Except for Albert, the guys I hung with thought that if they even flicked through the pages of a book, ink would rub off on their hands and mark them sissies for life. I could imagine them in a classroom like Miss Van der Meer’s, getting all cushy on the couches; throwing spit-wads at her butt.

  The boxing tournament was announced in every home room in the school, and on flyers stapled in the hallways. Hardly a word passed across anyone’s lips that didn’t include the thrill they hoped they’d get when somebody got knocked out cold.

  Being an official trainer, I got a reputation among a couple of girls, Rachel and Mary, who hung over by the baseball diamond. Their attitudes toward me couldn’t have changed more completely. They said hi to me now, whereas before I would’ve died if just one of them had thrown me her eyes.

  The day of the tournament, the basketball gym was packed from hoop to hoop. Waves of nervous anticipation washed like an ocean surf across the bleachers, and there was barely standing room by the push-open doors, where it was so pressed no one dared breathe.

  The boxing ring was four brass stands taken from the school auditorium, linked by a long, furry velvet rope. They were just for show. A fighter would have to be crazy to lean against those ropes. The actual ring was a square of thick brown masking tape in the center of a huge wrestling mat.

  Lencho invited his cronies from the Berets to come witness his spectacle. Decked out in khaki shirts and brown beret hats, their shoes polished to a smooth military sheen, they stood over by the exit doors intimidating anyone who happened to walk into their space. I was surprised to see Miss Van der Meer there, trying not to look excited. Old Mr. Hart, my history teacher, was there too, pacing on the sidelines and bogusly snuffling his nose with a crumpled handkerchief. Being the timekeeper and bell ringer, he was sweating diamonds.

  I waited at ringside. I saw Nardo pump a fist at me as he and his friends Felix Contreras and Johnny Martinez crowded their way to a middle bleacher. He called to me, but I couldn’t hear. The noise in the gym sounded warped, like a blackboard bending, about to splinter and crack. Blood hissed along my temples and my earlobes pulsed like tiny engines. This is the biggest moment of my life, I thought.

  I was supposed to get the ring corner organized, so I gave everything an anxious onceover; Lencho didn’t want to be bothered by details. I had gym towels, water bottles, an already melting ice pack stuffed in a plastic bucket, and three mouthpieces wrapped in a clean white handkerchief. I had tape and Vaseline and those stretch wraps used for sprained ankles, although what I’d actually use them for was a mystery. The Berets paid for all the equipment, so I’d grabbed everything on the shelf.

  The first fight was Albert’s. He was to take on Boise’s brother, Rochel Johnson, and from the look of Roach’s arms, I knew somebody didn’t keep an eye on the weight scales. Albert, if he breathed deep, probably weighed no more than an ounce above a hundred and nine pounds. Rochel looked, not a little, but a lot heavier.

  I saw worry leaking out of Lencho’s face. Unfortunately, Albert saw this too, because he stared at Rochel like he was Godzilla about to trample over Tokyo.

  The fight was lopsided from the beginning, and lasted only about two minutes, although for me it was a hundred and twenty long, painfully slow seconds. Albert kept backing away and backing away until the crowd started whistling. The whistling soon turned to jeering and the jeering into sneering disgust. But that was okay, since the sneers shrunk the noise down enough for Lencho to holler, “Throw a combination! Throw a combination!” He punched his fists in the air to demonstrate, but Albert just looked at him like he’d been slapped on the face with a wet towel. “Charge, then, goddam it. Charge!” Lencho urged.

  Unfortunately, Albert charged. But Rochel saw him coming from a mile away, and with his gloves up and head leaning to one side he moved smartly out of the way. Albert stumbled past him, tripped and smacked his nose on one of the auditorium stands. Everybody oohhed and awwhed and mangled their collars like it was them that got their noses smashed. Coach Mazzini mercifully waved the fight over.

  Albert’s face was awful with defeat; Lencho’s was a torment of disappointment. He stuffed some ice in a towel and roughly pinched Albert’s nose shut. The nosebleed bloomed a rose of blood in the towel, and Albert started to cry in wet, little puppy whimpers. Lencho, with a sigh, told me to grab the towel and take him into the locker room.

  That sure was a mistake. I knew it as soon as I walked into the locker room because there, dressing for his fight, was Chico—late as usual. Before I could tell him it was just a plain bloody nose, Chico took one look at the blood sopping the towel, and his face glazed over with shock.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” I said, reassuringly. I left Albert by his locker. “It’s only a bloody nose.”

  “Only a bloody nose!” Chico cried, clutching at his hair. He was stiff with panic. If somebody at that moment had pushed him over, he’d have landed flat on the back of his head.

  I tried to grab his arm and lead him into the gym, but he shrugged me off and walked like a zombie down the locker aisle. I was afraid he’d suddenly bolt for the exit doors. Oh no, I said to myself. What am I going to do? I ran down the aisle and grabbed him by the shoulder.

  “Hey, you’re not scared, are you?” I said, trying to be peppy.

  Chico stared blank at me for a while, then a little spark of embarrassment flashed in his eyes. “Hell, no, I was just, I was just going to get my towel.”

  “No, no,” I insisted, “I got towels, I got plenty of towels! Hey man,” I said with exaggerated pride, “I came prepared!”

  This seemed to boost Chico’s spirit a little, and he let me steer him through the swinging rubber doors and into the gym.

  As soon as Chico and I walked in, a stampede began in the bleachers. The Mexicans, both guys and girls, began hammering the floorboards and hooting like wild Yaquis. It was a big cheer, considering the school was mostly black, with a few whites bussed in from across town.

  When Chico and I reached the corner, Lencho was clapping these hard, buffeting claps, like he was a thousand times relieved to see us. He practically popped the knuckles out of my hand when he grabbed it.

  I looked over and saw Nardo jamming his arm in the air, and could hear Rachel and Mary screeching Chico’s and my names. The girlish pitch of their voices sliced through the noise like a paper cut. It touched down softly on my heart and opened a tiny slit that spilled sweet and aching all around inside me.

  Lencho hurriedly sat Chico on the stool. “You hear that?” he
said, stoking his courage. “That’s for you! That’s so you can show this guy who the real man is. Now, don’t let your Raza down.”

  I left off listening and glanced about hoping to spot Rachel or Mary. I saw them, hair teased high and stiff, excitedly smacking their lips and rolling gum over their teeth. I saw Nardo again, too, standing on the bleachers. He was winding his shoulders as if readying to fight himself. Feeling proud and nervous at the same time, I flipped the towel over my shoulder, but it landed on the floor.

  Lencho had revved Chico up. When the bell rang, he shot off his stool like a man in a desperate search for dropped money. He started punching at the guy, aiming for his stomach, but mostly hitting arms and shoulders.

  The guy Chico fought was Malcolm Augustus, who was now in my biology class. He was the only one in the whole class who knew the answer to the teacher’s question about how much blood spills when a girl’s on her period. Guys were saying a gallon and girls were acting like they knew it already, but nobody really knew—except Malcolm, who said it was about six tablespoons. Imagine, six tablespoons!

  Surprised at first by Chico’s aggressiveness, Malcolm soon calmed down and stabbed him with some head jabs. When Chico ducked low to avoid getting his head snapped back, Malcolm unhinged an uppercut right under his chin. Chico stumbled back, looking like he’d stuck a fork into a light socket. I thought, Oh no, we’re doomed! But Chico sparked up again and in a flutter of blows drove Malcolm outside the ring tape.

  “You see that, did you see that uppercut!” Lencho shouted when Chico stumbled back to the corner. “That was the stupidest move the vato could’ve done. When he does that, just ignore it and come over the top with a left hook. You’ll knock him out, I’m not kidding, you’ll knock him out!” Lencho grabbed one of the bottles from my hand and splashed water on Chico’s face. He fumbled when handing the bottle back and clunked me on the forehead. “Now, I want you to body punch that bastard until he squirms,” he said, turning to Chico again, “and remember, remember the left hook!”