“Adoro” segues into another slow ballad that keeps us swaying. I feel her body settle into mine a little more as my hand inches further along the small of her back. She’s breathing into my shoulder. I’m not thinking anymore. I’m going to go home and not tell anyone about this ever, and I’m going to hate her sister and be grateful to her at the same time for the mercies tendered, and when I get my picture in the mail from the quince in my tuxedo, I’m going to remember that spot on the shoulder where the girl in the metal brace laid her breath. But now that the song is done, a more upbeat number is kicking in and I’m asking her with all the sincerity I can muster if she’ll dance with me some more. She’s already shambling to the table with a shake of her head, saying, You can’t dance for shit.
THE SISTER
IN THE THICK DROWSE OF summer, that hypnotic Texas heat of mid-June, I take my mother’s car without asking her, to drive by the house of the girl I have an excruciating crush on. I’d sat in my room listening over and over to the grinding wheeze of the air conditioner thinking about how I was gonna make it past summer without seeing her in the halls at school. I tried staring at her picture in the yearbook, but there’s no grainy black-and-white of her anywhere in those pages. I had no choice but to see her. Just a glimpse to ease my pain. So here I go with the radio blasting Grand Funk for courage to the street where she lives.
I turn into her block and cruise slowly past a boy in a plain white tee-shirt idly pedaling his bike. He’s got that look of benign disregard on his face that we all put on in public. Then I see the nondescript little bungalow where she lives. Compact, entirely sealed off from summer and horny sophomores, the blue curtains drawn hard against me. She has to be home. Where else is she going to be on a blistering late afternoon like today? She’s in there contemplating the drone of her own air conditioner. Maybe if I circle around again, she’ll defy all probability and come out in her cut-offs to water her lawn and wave at me like she’s never done before. I turn off the radio and make a hard left and head for her street one more time. As soon as I round the corner, I see the boy lying in the middle of the street next to his bike. Just lying there. He was coasting the midafternoon thermals just seconds ago, and now there he sprawls right in front of my car. My mother’s car. Which she will begin to miss right about now. I look around and wait for somebody to come to this boy, who looks like he’s melted right into the asphalt. The front tire of his bike is spinning like a roulette wheel. I turn off the engine and get out to check on him. His eyes are open, he’s breathing in short rapid gasps, but he seems to be caught in some kind of spell. There’s a deep scrape on his forearm and little bits of grit from the road on his face. I say, Hey. I say, Vato, you okay? I say, What happened, ese? But he keeps staring straight up at that bleached-out sky. I see coming out from under him a small puddling of what appears to be motor oil, but I know it’s not motor oil. I look all around again for somebody to see him, to claim him, to relieve me of this appalling fact of pain. But it’s just him and me. I take his arm and raise him up a little bit to help him to the curb when I see this bloody tear in the back of his tee-shirt. I lift it up a bit until I can see his skin and there I see a long thick gash spitting out burbles of blood. I say, Man, this is not good. His eyeballs roll back into his skull like he wants to take a look at that gash too. And that’s when all these people suddenly appear out of nowhere, yelling at me. Especially this one person who appears to be his older sister. She’s yelling all kinds of curses in Spanish at me, grabbing and glaring at me like I brought this shit down on her brother. I tell her I found him this way and I think he got stabbed, but she’s not hearing me. She’s hysterical, she’s in shock, she knows some bad shit’s happened, and the best she can do right now is take it out on me. People hold her back and I want to leave, I want to get the hell away and go home, but nobody lets me. Some guy goes through my pockets, hoping to find a knife, I guess, and I get pissed when he pulls out my wallet. I snatch it back and yell at them to leave me the fuck alone. The sister screams, What did you do to my little bro! I yell back, BITCH, NOTHING! I yell it so loud in her face, I yell it with such naked ferocity that she stops crying and steps back a bit. Everyone riveted. The sun pile-driving us into the street.
Almost immediately, the cops and an ambulance arrive. The EMTs attend to the boy. I tell the cop about the cut along his back. Probably some fucker in a passing car slashed at him, I say. He says, Did you see it happen? I say, No. I say, I found him this way. Then the boy groans and I know he’s going to be all right. The sister is still glaring knives at me, but the cop pulls me aside and tells me that she’s only scared and confused and to let it go. That’s when I realize that my own eyes have been locking murder on her too. I say yeah and get back in my mother’s car and maneuver carefully, slowly past the bike and the blood puddle in the street, past the sister’s unrelenting glare, past the other girl’s house with the blue curtains and, through my hot tears, drive myself home. Such hate in my heart. Such hate.
FRED’S HERB
LA PLEVE MEANS THE PEOPLE. That much I know. We toss around the terms of our pleve in this niche in the desert like coin of the realm. Ese means hey. La lisa means the shirt. Calcos are shoes. Ranfla means bike, unless you own a car, in which case it means that too. Rucas and vatos are the chicks and dudes of our hood, and they all live in their separate chantes, or houses. To us little shits of twelve and thirteen, command over the jargon of our cultura means we got that much more cool in our mouths. Unbutton your lisa when you ride your ranfla, vato! And wáchale! Don’t scuff my calcos, ese! We are taking English and dropping its chassis, adding some hot rims and sidewalls and detailing it with our own style.
There’s a new word among us now finding favor in the vernacular. Joto. I don’t know what it means exactly, but we call each other that all the time. No mames, joto! You’re such a joto! Don’t be a joto and lend me a bola. I know bola right away. A monetary unit equal to a dollar. Twenty bolas buys you a ticket to the concert, but you can still be a joto if some vato chooses to call you that. My jefe, that is, my dad, he doesn’t like that term. Don’t let them call you that, he says. Why not? ’Cause es falta de respeto. But lack of respect is way too common among us to make any difference. Consequently, I start calling my buddies jotos whenever I want to throw some localspeak around.
But now it’s high school and somehow, most of that idiom has fallen away from our speech, like crumbs of stale bread. But not joto. We may inflect our Spanglish with Shakespeare and Twain and Anne Frank, but joto remains a vital pejorative on our lips. It’s got some color and therms and a healthy dose of coarseness. When we wanna give somebody shit who deserves it, we say, Qué pasó, joto, I heard you were saying things behind my back. It’s a word that exists among us, for us, which means it’s never heard on TV or the radio or anywhere but on the streets and classrooms of the pleve.
But it’s there in the classroom that I get to know Fred. He’s a year ahead of me and one of the better actors in our drama club. Tall, thin and smiley and one of the few white kids in our school, Fred also happens to be the swishiest boy I’ve ever known. He can’t help it. Just like he can’t help but be the kindest sweetest kid in the group, he can’t help but mince when he walks, squeal when he talks, cross his legs in the most effeminate way and swing his arms around with a flourish. There’s nothing sans serif about him. He’s like Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot, except in plaid shirt and jeans. But for all his sunshine grins he’s got a side of burnt toast too. Sometimes, he sulks in a corner by himself, turning red as only a gabacho can, ravenously biting his nails as he pretends to read his Midsummer’s monologue, and sometimes he snaps at people who ask him if he’s okay. I’m FINE, he snarls, his bony shoulder wheeling around his taut freckled face.
This is usually when we let Fred work out his kinks in private. That broodiness is sometimes too much to take. But this day, I feel something for the guy. I dunno what it is. Something outside the vocabulary of my experience. I go to him and sit
down and don’t say a word ’cause I know he’ll shred it in mid-air. I just watch him pick at a freckle on his wrist for a while. Then he says, I hate this monologue. I nod and ask which. Oberon’s monologue about the stupid flower. He wants Puck to fetch it for him. It has a potion to make people fall in love in spite of themselves. But that’s dumb. You can’t make people like you.
It’s a comedy, Fred.
I know, he drawls. He wipes his eye with the heel of his palm and sighs heavy as a dog then laughs ever so lightly to cancel it out. He looks at me at last and with a thin smile says, Wouldn’t it be nice, though?
Did something happen?
Nothing I can’t handle. Some days are just harder than others.
You need anything, Fred, you let me know.
His gaze settles back on his freckle and for a second, I see all his prior smiles tumble into each other, spiral down into some opacity only he has the map for, a place he huddles in for solace and balm. Then just as quick, he’s back, throwing that chin of his in my face with a big smile as he takes up his Midsummer once again.
Well, since you put it that way, junior. Fetch me this flower. The herb I showed thee once.
And he laughs and I show him my middle bird and he laughs again louder. The flighty happy Fred is back and we’re all happy for it.
Later in the day, as the bell rings us out of school, we head for our waiting buses. I see the usual row of matted-haired vatos leaning on the walls or crouched on the floor of the foyer where the halls converge. I know them by their super-flared bell-bottoms and unbuttoned lisas and their dirtheeled calcos, the same rucos who light up their unfiltered frajos in the smoking section of the school. I see them nod their heads and make hurting sounds at the goodness walking by, that is, the hainas shuffling past in their miniskirts. The girls just let their long hair shield them from the stares and catcalls and move on, and my heart sinks for them. Then I see Fred. He’s walking through the foyer with his satchel, eyes ahead, aware of them, only too conscious, but he has to pass through this gauntlet, so he powers on, trying not to swish, but in his urgent need to get past them, he swishes even more, and his throat turns bright red, his hand impulsively bats at some evil cobra in his way, and his mouth tightens to a line as they begin their catcalls. Joto. Oye, joto. You’re so cute. Be my girlfriend, joto. Pinche joto maricón.
Now I know what joto means. Now I understand its proper use. And I guess Fred knows it too. His tight-lipped half smile tells me so. Joto. I wanna tell these jackasses the harm they do. I wanna show them the scum smeared inside the shell of that word. But I can’t. I’ve said it too. I said it this morning. I’ve said it for the last five years, the last five million years, since before I was born, since before Fred even knew what that word meant, since the day someone else came up with that word in another language, in every language, since the ancient word for faggot and manflora and nigger and kike and spic and gringo salado. It’s a slang of its own disgrace, an idiom of idiots, conjugated by ignorance. As Fred thrusts the doors wide to the afternoon sun and goes who knows where, I realize how that word makes some days so much harder than others.
JESUS IN OUR MOUTHS
I WIN AN ESSAY CONTEST when I’m 17. It’s the year of the Bicentennial, and it’s about America and patriotism and God. Two other girls from my school are traveling with me to Brownwood, Texas, to present our essays before large appreciative audiences from all over the state.
It’s a long drive to this place. We go in a rented van, the three of us and our teacher who is in the habit of saying Praise God all the time. In fact, she says it so often, we started saying it too.
We’ll need to stop and get some gas.
Praise God.
The baloney sandwiches are good.
Praise God.
We’ll be there before dark.
Praise the Lord.
That evening in Brownwood, we get a tour of the Douglas MacArthur Academy of Freedom and admire his corncob pipe. American flags everywhere. Then we go to a big ranch house where a huge buffet spread is laid out for us. There must be about thirty people there. And they say Praise God too. After we eat some more sandwiches and mashed potatoes, this man gets up and gives witness, that is, he tells us how he found Jesus and let him into his heart, and then we all stand in a wide circle, hold hands, close our eyes and pray. I hear my teacher leading the prayer, intent and passionate, then someone else’s voice takes up where she leaves off, and so on. My eyes are clamped shut as I try hard to feel the rapture in the room, but I just can’t get into it. I really need to pee.
I’m fairly certain it’s a man holding my left hand because I can feel his big class ring digging into my pinkie, but nestled in my right is a smaller, softer hand. A girl’s hand like a little bird with bird smoothness, warm and tentative. I don’t know who she is, or what she looks like, but it doesn’t matter. We’re two hands randomly clasped together in this circle of faith. I’m not sure if all the overheated praying has anything to do with it, but I sense our pulses quickening. Amen, someone cries. I feel her press against my hand and I send that pressure back as softly as I can. I caress her knuckle with my thumb, slowly at first, imperceptibly, like I’m not even aware of it myself. Then I feel her fingernail drawing circles on the back of my hand. Amen, I hear again. Our palms now moist, fingers caress and lace and chafe against the urges inside. Through her hand I touch every intimate part of her as she whispers oh yes Lord yes Lord oh yes. This goes on for a while obliterating all the prayers in the room and when the last amen of many is uttered, we open our eyes and regard each other for the first time. She’s a pretty Permian Basin girl with large penetrating blue eyes and straw-blonde hair. Pure West Texas loveliness. That’s what I see. What she sees I can’t say. But her neck breaks out in a rash all the way down to her chest.
While everyone goes for seconds at the buffet table, I go to the bathroom and then sneak outside to the large sloping backyard. I find a bench in an arbor and quietly sit in the dark and cry. I don’t know why but the sobs just burble up like they’ve been waiting for this time. Then before I know it, the Permian Basin girl is sitting beside me, holding my hand again just as tightly as before, and she’s crying too. I’m ashamed and I say so, but she won’t let me say anything more. We just huddle in that arbor crying and then kiss like crazy fools for a while, digging our tongues deep into each other, finding Jesus in our mouths.
The next morning, we read our essays in this huge auditorium and I put everything I’ve got into mine. It’s all about Love of God and Country and the righteousness of our Christian nation, but I’m feeling none of it. I don’t want to pray and I don’t want to tell America how great she is and I don’t want to be 17 anymore. I want to get back in the van and go home. Not with Jesus in my heart but the ghost pressure of her hand in mine taking me there.
I get a letter from her a few weeks later, a sweet note saying hello and how much she’d like to see me if I come by town again, and how that night with me has made a difference she didn’t expect. I can feel her Permian Basin heart in every word. But all over the letter, in almost every other sentence, she writes Praise God.
CISCO
MY DAD CAME HOME, PUSHED my homework aside and told me. We had some trouble at work. Cisco’s not there no more.
With his knowing smirk, teen idol hair and blue-grey eyes that twinkle for the girls, Cisco is the coolest guy in our taco shop. There he is, slung over the juke box selecting “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five” by Wings for the third time that day. Tall and slim with his puka bead necklace on a smooth, slightly sunken chest, an easy shuffling gait that can’t be hurried, he’s the picture of everything I want to be. I’m so into that natural cool, but the señoras at work find him irritating. They can’t make him do what they want. Clean the trays, Letty tells him. Clean them yourself, he’ll fire back with a laugh. He always tells me to ignore them. They like to boss people around ’cause it makes them feel important, he says. Sometimes when he makes Letty really sore,
she goes to my dad, who sternly calls him into the kitchen—Francisco!—and Cisco without thinking twice, goes when he’s summoned, composed and respectful. My dad admonishes him but gently, telling him to ease off on Letty, and Cisco dutifully nods. Always that invisible wink between them, though.
It’s good you don’t work the weekdays, my dad says. Porque algo pasó. Algo muy mal.
Even Letty has to confess that work is a lot more fun with him around. She tells me he’s like a kid brother who is just too good-looking for his own good. She nags him all the time, but if you ask me, it’s ’cause she’s got a secret crush on him and he could care less. Cisco’s got his eyes dead-set on the white chicks.
I marvel at his way with them. He’s especially smooth with the blondes on their lunch break from the bank or the girls from the service department at the Western Auto. Las viejas, he calls them. Las babys. I watch him take an order at the counter when they come up. With his eyes lowered to his pad and pencil, he works that trilling accent to his advantage, all while he’s smirking like he knows something they don’t. It’s how he lets the girls admire him undisturbed. Then he’ll look up and pretend he doesn’t know a certain word they just said and he’ll lean in toward them, ask them to repeat it, and then they laugh together. When the orders are ready for pickup, we call out the numbers on the tickets. Not Cisco. He calls out their names.
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