Pig Park

by Claudia Guadalupe Martinez

  Map of Pig Park

  Copyright Page

  Pig Park. Copyright © 2014 by Claudia Guadalupe Martinez. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written consent from the publisher, except for brief quotations for reviews. For further information, write Cinco Puntos Press, 701 Texas Avenue, El Paso, TX 79901; or call (915) 838-1625.

  FIRST EDITION

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Martinez, Claudia Guadalupe, 1978-

  Pig Park / by Claudia Guadalupe Martinez. — First edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-935955-76-4 (hardback); ISBN 978-1-935955-77-1 (paperback); ISBN 978-1-935955-78-8 (Ebook)

  [1. Neighborhoods—Fiction. 2. Community life—Illinois—Chicago—Fiction. 3. Bakers and bakeries—Fiction. 4. Family life—Illinois—Chicago—Fiction. 5. Building—Fiction. 6. Hispanic Americans—Fiction. 7. Chicago (Ill.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M36714Pig 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013040645

  Cover and book design by Sergio Gomez

  Another quality electronic edition handcrafted

  by Pajarito Studios

  The year of babies!

  And the internship of Stephanie Amerena and Amber James.

  Dedication

  When I told my father I wanted to write a book, he said I should write two, three or more. This book is in memory of him, for encouraging big dreams.

  Epigraph

  “So a bunch of us want to hang out,

  build a pyramid in the middle of Pig Park and save our neighborhood.

  Are you in?”

  Chapter 1

  I stuffed the letter from the bank back into the drawer and slipped into the kitchen to turn the vent out toward Pig Park. The smell of cinnamon and butter escaped into the street.

  Living above Burciaga’s Bakery—and being a Burciaga—meant it was my job to keep the kitchen spotless and to do any other number of things from bringing in the mail to answering the phone.

  I was sort of the Cinderella of crumbs—minus the ugly stepsisters and the singing mice.

  The last thing we needed was mice.

  “How are you doing over there, Masi?” my dad asked.

  “All right,” I said.

  I grabbed a crusty bowl, ran it under hot water and scrubbed hard, scratching at it like it had the kind of itch that requires a good dose of calamine lotion. I tried not to think about the letter.

  It wasn’t so easy.

  See, my dad started the bakery with nothing but an old box of recipes. He liked to say that the bakery, like most of Pig Park, sprouted in the boom and shadow of the American Lard Company. The company had even donated land right in the middle of everything for the park our neighborhood was named after. That’s why our neighborhood got named Pig Park, because pig fat made lard and lard had more or less made our neighborhood.

  As the company grew, so did we. Hundreds of company employees lived and worked here. They ate and shopped here. We baked twice a day just to keep up. That’s until the company closed down, and people left with the jobs.

  “Economic downturn.” That’s how the big wigs at American Lard explained away how our good old Chicago neighborhood got left behind. My dad said that just meant they didn’t think they were making enough money. So they packed up their jobs and took them some other place—like a whole other country.

  Never mind the irony of American Lard made somewhere other than America.

  I knew from that letter in that drawer that with no one to buy the bread, the bakery would close down for good too. We would end up leaving Pig Park like everyone else.

  This is what else I knew: I’d lived in Pig Park my whole entire life. I still had a few friends left. So—even after everything—I couldn’t wrap my head around the bakery closing and us leaving also. It kept me up at night, wondering about tomorrow and the day after. Maybe I would never see my friends again. My family lived upstairs now. Maybe we’d end up homeless.

  My dad was always saying not to think like that, to leave the worrying to him and my mom, but—I just couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help it about as much as I couldn’t help breathing or just being me.

  My dad tied an apron around his waist, rolled his sleeves up and grabbed hold of the masa resting on the counter. Sweat dampened his shirt across his thick broad back. He pounded down on dough the color of dirt clay. “How about some music?”

  “Music?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like what?” I grabbed a dish towel and dried my hands.

  “Anything.”

  I switched on the radio. My dad sang along to that old song, “Amorcitoooo Corazon.” I imagined him making his way down a cobblestone road on a bike—balancing a big basket of freshly baked rolls on his head—belting out the song like in one of those old black and white movies they used to play in the park to bring the neighborhood together.

  “Dad, I like it when you sing. It makes me feel like I am all wrapped up in a fuzzy blanket,” I said. It made me think of how it was before, when things were good and my dad sang all the time.

  My dad sang even louder and smiled like it made him think of it how it was before too.

  I felt a little better.

  I pulled a sheet of ginger pigs from the oven and put them on the counter to cool. There was no ginger in the pig-shaped treats, just homemade molasses that made the cake-style cookies look like ginger bread when they baked. I grabbed one, broke off a piece, and put it in my mouth. It was perfect—warm, plump and moist on the tip of my tongue.

  Sure, I wanted not to worry like my dad said. I’d spent almost every summer of my life in what felt like a 350-degree kitchen. I wanted to spend my summer with my friends outside the bakery for a change. I wanted a chance at being fifteen and “normal.” I wanted to make like nothing was wrong.

  “Ready?” my dad asked. He untied his apron and threw it down on the counter. I listened for my mom’s footsteps on the stairway.

  “Yeah.” I shoved the rest of the treat into my mouth. Something had to happen.

  Chapter 2

  A family of sparrows scattered into the valley of buildings that loomed large and empty all around Pig Park. I broke away from my parents and walked toward my friend Josefina.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Good morning, Masi,” Josefina said. She undraped the length of her limbs from the bloated slats of the lone park bench that stood among the weeds. I zigzagged through the hodge-podge of folding chairs and plopped down beside her.

  There were twenty-five of us: Josefina’s family, the families from restaurant row—which was what we called all the surviving eateries on the north side of the park—the Sanchez sisters and their mom, Colonel Franco and Jorge Peregrino. Every girl, boy and grown-up left in our neighborhood sat in a circle. Peregrino made his way toward the center of the group.

  I watched with eyes wide open and listened to the only person in Pig Park still making money. “As you all know, Pig Park has reached out for help and for answers. What is it that draws us to a thing? Most often it’s recognition, our senses open up and something in the back of our mind clicks,” Peregrino said. He stroked the thick gold chain that hung around the outside of his turtleneck. He pulled out a large piece of paper from his briefcase and waved his hand in front of it like a model on one of those TV game shows. “Behold the solution to Pig Park’s problems.”

  Marcos, Josefina’s brother, angled his head. Shiny shoulder length hair swept away from his face and revealed a square jaw line and high cheek bones. He snickered.

  Peregrino’s visual aid was a map of Pig Park—the actual park our neighborhood was named after�
�with an oversized cutout of a pyramid from a schoolbook or a magazine taped to it.

  Josefina looked at Marcos with thick brown eyebrows in a scrunch. I looked at my dad. My dad looked at my mom. My mom crossed her arms over her chest, shook her head from side to side and sighed.

  I squinted at the picture just to make sure. “He wants us to fix Pig Park by putting up a giant pyramid right smack in the middle of everything?” I asked.

  “How is this going to help?” my dad asked. He leaned forward on the lopsided legs of his chair, facing Peregrino. My mom reached out and grabbed my dad’s chair to keep him from spilling onto the grass.

  “You have to think of it like the Picassos downtown. Except no one this side of North America has a pyramid. Building a Gran Pirámide right here is the opportunity of a lifetime,” Peregrino said.

  “What are you talking about?” Mr. Nowak, Josefina’s dad, interrupted. Mrs. Nowak squeezed his large white hand with her small brown one.

  Peregrino didn’t miss a beat. “Pyramids are among the most recognizable symbols in the history of mankind, from Egypt to MesoAmerica. Think of the Aztecs, the Mayans and the Incas. People will see it and come. First out of curiosity, then more. There will be so many people, you won’t know what hit you. They will be good people too, the kind who care about history and culture.”

  “That’s your thinking? We’re going to keep from becoming a ghost town neighborhood or a massive parking lot by putting up a pyramid for people to gawk at?” Mr. Nowak didn’t miss a beat either. “THAT’S going to help my grocery store?”

  Josefina turned to me in that way she always had since kindergarten and whispered. “That’s crazy.”

  “Seriously. We’re not Aztecs,” I said.

  “How much is it going to cost?” My mom stood and bellowed over us. It was typical for her to ask about money. The stress of tracking the bakery’s accounts was turning her hair to ash and stamping crow’s feet into the corners of her eyes.

  “You decide how to build it and how much to spend. I didn’t come up with this idea on my own. The man who came up with it, Dr. Humberto Vidales Casal, is a world-renowned scholar and community development expert who cures neighborhoods. He knows his stuff. There is a small fee for his guidance. However, when we are finished, La Gran Pirámide will more than pay for itself,” Peregrino said.

  “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad,” my dad said. He rose to stand beside my mom. “It’s an investment.” Some of the grown-ups from restaurant row, like Mr. Fernandez and Mrs. Sustaita, nodded. Mr. Nowak clicked his tongue. A few of the others grumbled.

  Colonel Franco cleared his throat. “It’s better than doing nothing. We don’t even need that much money. We have other resources.” Despite the Pancho Villa mustache, Colonel Franco wasn’t some long lost revolutionary hero. He was a retired Army man and president of the Pig Park Chamber of Commerce. He didn’t own a business, but thirty-plus years of bravery, leadership and service to the U.S. of A meant something. He had built bridges in Iraq and Afghanistan as a senior officer. “A pyramid is little more than simple geometry. Two triangles here, two triangles there. I can lead the construction project,” he said and waved his hand.

  The grown-ups huddled together. Colonel Franco had hit on it with fewer words: a crazy plan had to be better than no plan at all. After a long while, even Mr. Nowak was drawing short breaths around the thing. They were desperate enough that they decided every neighborhood girl and boy would report to the park to help Colonel Franco with the construction. They said it as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, as if we knew how to do that sort of thing. They less enthusiastically agreed to scrape together what little money we had for Dr. Vidales Casal’s fee and wire it to him by the end of the week.

  Applause came in small bursts like the kernels in a microwaveable popcorn bag.

  Peregrino folded the drawing and stuffed it back into his briefcase.

  What else was there to say? I waved goodbye to Josefina and followed my parents home. I took one tiny step after another. My parents shrunk further and further away. I walked as slow as my body would go.

  I thought hard about the morning’s events. It’d all happened so fast like cars on the expressway, shooting by so quick you wouldn’t want to get caught in the way of one. I didn’t know exactly what to make of it.

  Then something clicked.

  My right leg tap-danced with no direction from me. My cheeks pushed up against my ears.

  I would get to spend the summer outside with my friends.

  Chapter 3

  The small hand on the clock hovered over the six. I pulled the bakery’s blinds and locked the door. I walked upstairs and down the hall.

  “We can’t do this. We won’t even cover our costs this year. We don’t have money for that man’s fee,” my mom said to my dad.

  So much for trying to find the positive in this.

  My mom pushed her fingers through the ash of her hair. She waved the envelope I recognized as the letter from the bank in the air and lectured my dad about money with all the passion of one of those TV preachers.

  “You heard, it’ll more than pay for itself,” my dad said.

  A few things had kept the bakery afloat. My parents owned the building and the equipment—though the equipment was old and worth little more than a cumin seed. There was no payroll since my mom, dad and I were unpaid employees. But we still had to pay utilities, supplies, taxes and permits. My dad had mortgaged the building the year before just to get by.

  “We have enough,” my dad insisted. “We’ll put off some of the bills a little longer.”

  “Dad, Mom,” I interrupted. Both turned to look at me. “Are we going to be okay?”

  Neither answered.

  “We’re working things out,” my dad finally said. “You just worry about getting to the park tomorrow.” My mom shook her head from side to side and chewed on her bottom lip. She walked away.

  Of course, they couldn’t just say everything was wonderful or everything was going to crap. They couldn’t know for sure. The bakery had seen its share of struggles already.

  According to my dad’s stories, my abuelita Carmelita Burciaga—his mother—was a widow who’d made ends meet by taking in other people’s laundry back in Mexico. She’d accepted a baker as a second husband so that my dad would learn a respectable trade. My dad’s then narrow frame, once fragile like the spine of a book, had grown straight and strong from kneading masa and from not toiling in the sun. It had been good going until the torrid summer the baker died. His blood relatives evicted my abuelita and my dad straightaway. They departed with nothing but a suitcase and a box full of recipes.

  My dad took a job unloading and loading corn trucks from dawn ‘till dusk so he could raise enough money for a bus ticket to come north across the border. While he’d dreamed of California or Texas, he’d ended up here.

  He stepped off that bus in the dead of winter—January. The soggy gray city had made dreaming dismal.

  The factories were angry monsters, but a means to an end. He took a job at the American Lard Company and roomed with co-workers. The group of men slept in shifts and rows on the floor of a studio apartment. His wages paid for the necessary with any leftovers tucked away. June arrived, and the humid heat was a stark contrast to the desert of his boyhood. He thought there could be no greater evil than the smell of boiling pig fat. Inhaling the fumes from the hot vats of lard slowed him down. But by the end of his fifth year, he started looking at properties and found a place just across the street from the park.

  My abuelita Carmelita sold everything she owned to come and help him. Together, they raised enough for a decent down payment. They financed the rest with an uncle’s help. As soon as they collected the keys, they moved in. They named the bakery Burciaga’s. My dad hand-carved a wooden sign on rosewood, oiled it and hung it outside the door. They bought equipment, leaning on the building’s credit line as collateral. They invested every last penny they had and then some.<
br />
  They sold everything they baked by mid-morning the first day. They even took orders for the next week. Things seemed to be looking up.

  A few months later, my dad found my grandmother lying on the kitchen floor, dead of a brain aneurism. His world crumbled. Despite the loss, my dad pushed on.

  “Are we going to be okay?” I looked at my dad.

  My dad couldn’t give a simple answer to my question because he was hopeful. He was willing to gamble, but it wasn’t just up to him or my mom or me. Our entire neighborhood was on the line. The Nowaks, the Sanchezes, the Fernandezes, the Sustaitas, the Wongs and everyone else had as much of a stake in this.

  I hurried up the stairs. I walked into my room and threw myself down on my bed. One thing was clear. This wasn’t MesoAmerica. MasaAmerica maybe. Or even MasiAmerica.

  We weren’t Egyptians or Aztecs. As a matter of fact, we weren’t exactly one thing. My dad was as Mexican as a mariachi hat, but my mom had grown up right down the street. Josefina was half Polish. The Sanchez sisters had a daddy no one ever talked about. And so on.

  Despite these strikes against the new plan, I still wanted to be hopeful like my dad. I would chase hope, wrestle it down and hold on to it like him.

  I tried to tuck my worries about tomorrows to the back of my head. I pushed them under a doormat. I locked them in a closet with el cucuy and my other childhood monsters. I put them in my mouth and let them sit there like bites of stale bread until they softened enough for me to swallow.

  Chapter 4

  I scrubbed at the mixing bowls. One of the problems with being stuck inside the bakery all day was that I was sure all the more interesting distractions were somewhere else. I thought myself into a circle—or maybe a knot—like a dog chasing its tail.

  I arrived at an impasse. Like I said, even if things didn’t work out, at the very least my friends and I would get to spend our last summer together.