“Palms,” Toño says with a grin. “A real L.A. thing.”
“Oh,” I say, still gaping.
And all around us blare signs I cannot read. And impossible noise so that we hardly hear each other speak. Cars rushing rushing. Buses snorting out smoke. Motorcycles flaring past. Each time one passes, it is like the roar of The Beast. I cannot help it, I flinch.
In these first Los Angeles moments, fear trembles me. I know I will never be free of The Beast behind me. Or of somebody trying to send me back. But maybe The Angels is a different kind of beast—one that just dazes you to death.
“So, little brother,” says Toño with pride in his voice, “what do you think?”
I cannot think. Truly, I cannot speak.
When we reach where Toño lives the sky-scratchers are gone. Now it is all small houses looking tired and old. Many have roofs of tejas, some already slid off to the ground, leaving gaps. Like teeth gone. These old roofs make me feel the pull of Señor Santos and his tejas, but more the tug of home. Our little adobe. My family. These houses, they are huddled together, so many, so close they are nearly crushing each other. Like the riders of The Beast.
Toño’s is a tiny place in back of one of the squashed-together houses. A bougainvillea bursting with purple blooms climbs up one side of the house, as if holding it up. A bougainvillea, like of our family’s home.
“Wow!” is all I can say. For this is much larger than our little adobe.
“Pretty big, huh,” he answers.
His rented house has one room where he eats and sleeps, one kitchen, and—unbelievable—one bathroom inside. I know I will sleep well in Toño’s home, my brother here with me, a roof of tejas over my head.
My brother, he is not as big as I remember. Like a plant of maíz stretching for the sun, I am taller. But he is still as full of fire as ever. Everything Toño does is urgent, with excitement, as he shows me this place. We must squeeze in many years we have lost. We must squeeze in also the places which are his Los Angeles.
As we walk into his home, comes a solemn moment. With both hands Toño touches my face and looks at me with caring.
“How are you?” he asks.
“I am alive.”
We do not dwell upon The Beast. Too well we both know that story. Once I notice him flicker a look at the palm of my hand. He says nothing, but his eyes go dark. And of my white cloud of hair, the same. He does not blink. He knows how I earned it.
Right away, on Toño’s cell phone, we call our family—together. At the other end the sound is like a great exhaling of worry. At once from Papi, from Abue, from our little brother and sister comes a soft “Gracias a Dios.” Then for a time, from all of us, a small silence—of gratefulness. And then a pure craziness of joyful noise.
XVII
Toño wants to teach me all there is about the United States in one gulp, fast fast. His mustache jumps up and down like a being of its own, as he explains to me Los Angeles things.
The next day we visit a fish market and buy—something. Toño lifts the thing high and, grinning gleefully, slops it in my direction saying, “Here is dinner, little brother.” Even when he is teasing me, I feel the sound of our home language enfold us like a mother’s warm arms.
With fright I look at this mystery Toño holds. Can this be a sign of some kind? Who would believe that God made such a creature? (Who would believe He made the animals who branded me?)
“¡Ay Dios!” I shout and jump back, nearly falling to the ground. “I cannot eat that!” The words just spurt themselves out. “What is it?”
“A pulpo. Oc-to-pus.”
Some limp and dangling things look like slices of our bath mat.
“I cannot eat a bath-mat animal,” I insist.
“You will love it, little brother,” says Toño. “I have learned to cook this dish from my girlfriend.”
Girlfriend! First an oc-to-pus, then a novia. Which is worse?
I am not convinced that Cejas would want this being on her magical camera, but I decide finally that she would be delighted. Click. The creepy creature is forever captured.
On the way back from the fish place, near Toño’s home I see a viejito, an old man, on the porch of a tiny house, sitting in a wooden chair. He is taking in the scene, I think, but without seeming to.
“Who is that?” I ask warily, but not pointing.
“A neighbor. A Japan man. He lives alone. I do not know him.”
Toño does not know him. I gape. “How can you not know your neighbor?”
“This is Los Angeles.”
Poor guy, I think. He might wait forever for somebody to talk to him.
I look in the man’s direction. In a not-staring way, he looks at me. Suddenly I shudder. My mind swings from Poor guy to What if he is a bad one? What if he turns us in?
At home Toño rinses our mysterious meal, grinning grinning with wicked glee all the while.
Maybe I laugh at this thing that at first gave me a big fright. If I laugh I do not recognize that good sound. It has been a long time. . . .
“Look here, little brother,” Toño says. “These are ten-ta-cles.” He stretches the word out, holding up each one as he does. “Now you say ‘ten-ta-cle.’”
“Ten-ta-quel.”
“Now,” like a stiff school teacher Toño says, “we count.”
I wait.
“Hold up a tentacle and say ‘one.’ One is the same as ‘uno.’”
I do not wish to touch the bath-mat animal, but I get used to it. This octopus is so ugly, it is a bit simpático. From one, on we go, for two, three, and the rest. These tentacles they are rubbery and sometimes slip out of my hand.
“So how many tentacles?” asks Toño.
“¿Diez?” I mumble, because I lost count.
“Eight,” says my teacher in disgust. “Again.”
Tentacle by tentacle, in this way I begin to learn English.
XVIII
I do not slide into this new life easily. All things are different from my pueblito. Los Angeles is crazy with noise. And people and cars racing all over the place. At home some people still ride horses and donkeys.
Toño is a magnificent teacher and brother. “Magnificent” is one of my English words and I am proud of it. The trouble is that he is usually not with me. Nights, he works cleaning office-building bathrooms. Days, he sleeps like a big possum. Me, I am a day guy.
Always when I get up, though he is like a stone with sleeping, he has left a Post-it on the floor. A Post-it in a place so I have to step over it and cannot miss it. On this sticky little scrap is written carefully my word-of-the-day, which I must keep in my memory and use whenever the chance pops itself up.
Toño chooses these words by opening a little book he got from an English class. He took lessons to learn this language. He starts just any place, closing his eyes and letting his finger run down the page till it stops wherever it feels like it. As if his finger is choosing! This is how Toño is.
So far some of the words are: “hover,” “flamboyant,” “swoop,” “rind,” “trophy,” “yikes,” “stupendous,” “cheese,” “wyvern.” “Wyvern.” “Yikes” is right. A wyvern is a long-ago made-up creature with wings that is like a two-legged dragon. Just where I will use these strange words I cannot think. Maybe at McDonald’s I could order a wyvern with special sauce on a sesame-seed bun.
“Toño,” I say, “make your finger choose me some normal words. With yours nobody will understand me.”
“Maybe not, little brother,” says Toño, his eyes sparking like crazy, his Pancho Villa mustache in vigorous motion, “but you will have a fantastical vocabulario.”
True. And, apart from other ways, I know from this game of words that my brother loves me.
Like I said, I am a day guy. Toño is nocturnal (word-of-the-day). Only on weekends we do things together, along with his octopus-cooking girlfriend. Even though she is from Durango, this novia is named Sinaloa, for another Mexico state. In a big originality, her parents ch
ose it, she says, for the beautiful sound. I believe they are right. Sinaloa. Beautiful. Like falling water.
These two, they are not married, so Sinaloa has her own place. Through our home she comes and goes, a crisp and sparkling breeze.
Like my friend Cejas from The Beast, this one she has a good smile. One that is open and true, not meaning some other thing. When she smiles at Toño, it is very warm, very loving. When she smiles at me—once she knows me—it is loving but in a different way.
Whenever I am with Sinaloa I think of Cejas. I wonder how her dream is going.
I first know that Sinaloa likes me when she helps me with the dishes. I wash. She dries. Toño, in a big clatter, he puts stuff away. It is a weekend so he is not working. I say nothing, but the hot water hurts my hand. After all this time the scar is still tender.
While we work, Sinaloa teases me a little, but with good humor.
“What crazy hair you have, Manuelito. It is like it has its own all-over-the-place life.”
“Yep,” I say. “It grows however it feels.”
We laugh about my hair’s wildness. But she never mentions the whiteness.
One day, like my Señor Santos, Sinaloa attacks my hair with scissors. Me in my complete clothes, in the bathtub. “So your pelo loco, like clippings of grass, will not disarrange this house,” she says. She talks in a sparkling way, and fast, while the scissors chomp chomp, and I worry she may be chopping chopping big holes where there should not be any. But when she does her inspection of this work, she flares her honest smile again. She pats my face. “Qué guapo,” she says. How handsome.
Another good thing about Sinaloa, she can cook things apart from octopus. Things of my home. My favorite is just plain guacamole which even I can make and which goes like this:
Into a bowl scoop some avocados from their skins. Have ready chopped-up tomatoes, onions, serrano chiles—not in exceso—and sí, an exceso of cilantro. (The cilantro leaves, I pick from the stems with my fingers. Sometimes I crush a leaf and hold it to my nose. ¡Qué rico! How delicious is the smell! Squash the avocados, then toss in the rest. Salt and a little lime juice come last. Then mix mix, but not too much. And there you have your guacamole. (Unless you eat it in one fast craziness, you can put in avocado seeds, so it does not go brown.)
At home, when we had the money, we made tacos of guacamole and little fried red grasshoppers. (Not the big ones whose legs get stuck in your teeth.) Very crunchy. Very tasty. These grasshoppers do not seem to live in The Angels. ¡Qué lástima! What a pity!
When I prepare this guacamole with Sinaloa, the smell of the warm tortillas for tacos rises, perfuming the kitchen. Then real as anything I can name, Abue ghosts into the room. Hold on to my hand. . . . In my heart I do, and I yearn myself home.
Each meal, before I eat these beautiful foods, I remember times of hunger on The Beast journey. As I look at my plate full full—or even at one lone taco—I think of my own luck and of those still struggling, or dead. Like Papi over the simple things of life, I bow my head.
Those two, Toño and Sinaloa, think I should go back to school since here I do not work a milpita. School. A dream. But over me always hovers a gloom, that I will be noticed one day—from my hand maybe—and sent to Mexico again. Fear is always a little bit crawling down my back.
XIX
One Saturday I overhear Toño and Sinaloa talking about going to the movies, a big splurge, so I jump right in and all in a rush I say, “What will we see? ¿Vaqueros? Can we have palomitas?” I think I would love to see a movie, a cowboy one. A sometimes treat, already I love popcorn.
A glance slides between them so quick, if I were not looking right at them it would have skimmed by. I realize they are planning to go just the two of them. Stupid me. So I catch myself and say, “Well, after all, maybe not. I am tired.”
“Sure?”
“Yep. You watch for me.”
“Okay,” Toño easily agrees. “We will bring you popcorn.”
“And a Coke,” Sinaloa chimes in.
Next morning, when I get up, a small paper tub is waiting for me. And a watery Coke. The buttery fumes still rising from the tub, I think that is what pulls me from bed. Here in the United States this treat is called “popcorn.” “Popcorn” is fine, but I call it by its Mexico name which is more beautiful: “palomitas.” Little doves. I eat the palomitas for breakfast. Even cold they taste good. But for some reason they make me feel lonely.
XX
Day in January. The tail end of the month. A year after my river crossing. At dawn parrots pour into the sky as if an unseen hand is opening, letting go a glittering gleam of green. Where do they come from? Who knows? But daily they stream over us, brightly, greenly, noisily, like squawking leaves. These birds are a big gift to the gray skies of Los Angeles.
On the floor, in a place I cannot miss, a Post-it awaits me. Groan. The word-of-the-day—
“Fiesta”!
Somebody has been watching, for at once come gigglings. Rustlings. Shufflings. Then songs bloom. “Las mañanitas” . . . and “Happy Birthday to You”! Yelling “Happy sixteen years!” Sinaloa and Toño burst forth bulging with piñatas piñatas, one for each of my lost birthdays since Toño left I guess. These piñatas, they are all little donkeys. Blue.
Toño. In this great splash of love, he has remembered my dearest childhood wish.
We—and the piñatas—attempt a rustling embrace. Inside I feel swollen like an absolute full moon. The tears of this boy, tears held back these many years, come falling.
By greatest grace, here I am in The Angels holding close close this dear piece of family whom I thought I had lost.
XXI
Trauma del tren, train trauma, that is what Toño says that I have, over these long months with him. Train trauma. Upness, downness, sadness, madness, all-over-the-placeness. These feelings are ever there, like a rat gnawing at the edges of my spirit.
Sometimes I stare at the B on my hand and I cannot believe how I got it. B. Believe. And then I do. I remember all over again. I do not go out much, my mind wanders to ugly events, I sag around, not able to make decisions and I feel tired tired.
I need to get myself out of this. I need a real job, not just work around the house. To help Toño with small costs, mostly food and to make telephone calls to our family. Also to repay some of his heavy coyote money. I find out he had to borrow a lot. Though he says I do not, I owe him that. With the rent I cannot help.
Like teaching me English, Toño gets me ready for job searching. Because my papers are false, I cannot show them to just anybody. That could get me sent back to my pueblito in a finger snap. Instead, in a knot of nerves, I must go to a certain street corner and wait. For this kind of work I need no papers.
Toño tells me what to do. “Stand in front,” he urges, “so you will be seen. Wear a big sombrero, so you will really be seen. Most important, look smart.”
So I practice a couple of smart faces.
Toño says, “You look crazy.”
When I am on the street corner I plan to go for “look awake.”
At first I join other people from other places who do not have the right papers for real work either. They work in spurts, whenever they can. A small job here, a smaller job there. But not full-on steady-money work. In the gloom of dawn they appear like fantasmas, phantoms, and wait—in parking lots, on street corners—looking their best, hoping for work from people who drive by. They will mow lawns, weed gardens, wash cars, windows. Anything. They are patient, this band of phantoms. Even when some people shout things at them like Job-stealers! Animals! Criminals! Scum! Go back where you came from!
These shouters scare me to the bone, they seem so much like the polis and Border Patrol—those bad ones who tried to stop me. Maybe truly they fear for their jobs, but mostly, I believe, they simply do not like foreigners.
Sometimes the polis plunge in and arrest the job-hunters they can catch, to send them home. Then I do not return for many days, my fear of them is so stro
ng.
We hopefuls, we talk a little with each other, but mostly we do not, so eager are we to spot a job-giver and get work.
When I am among the others hoping and waiting, I imagine I can hear each pleading voice, loud as a chorus: Give me a chance. Give me a chance. Por Dios.
One morning ripe with sun a lady drives up to the place where we hopeful workers are waiting. It is illegal for her to hire any of us, but still she is here. She knows she can hire us for cheap. Her car is big and shiny. A one called SUV. She rolls down one window and snaps. “Who can do gardening for me?”
“I can!” I shout above the others, shooting her my most extremely awake look. “No problema. I am experienced.” I am experienced with maíz. Gardening. How hard can it be?
Toño’s tips pay off. I have the magic word “experienced.” I stand near the front, with my wide sombrero. Of course, it does not hurt that I am tall. For this job the lady chooses me and a guy about my same age named Lorenzo. As I walk to the car she jabs the air, toward my leg. She has noticed my limp! My heart drops. “No problema,” I say in a big confident way and keep going. So she orders, “Well, get in.”
We jumble into her car and go to her house. The whole way she says not one word. Then a word-river floods out from her which I struggle to understand. My words-of-the-day—like “stupendous” and “wyvern,” the dragon—are of no help. This work, it seems not to be about dirt and flowers at all. It is chopping down—with machetes—a tree of huge tallness. An eucalipto. A monstruo. “Stupendous” I can use after all.
I hate to kill a tree, especially one as grand as this that has taken many years to reach this size. But I want to help Toño with expenses. The lady and us, we settle upon a price. It is cheap, but what can Lorenzo and I do? We need the work, so we are stuck. The tree lady knows this. I bet there is a big smirk down somewhere in place of her heart.
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