Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  I nodded.

  “She doesn’t come from a good family.”

  “I don’t either,” I said.

  “Your mother was a saint. Está cantando con los ángeles.”

  I nodded. Yes, yes, a saint singing with angels, but—

  “I don’t like her.”

  I shrugged.

  “¿Qué no puedes hablar?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I can talk.” I looked at her eyes, black as a night without stars. “I like her. And it was me who kissed her.”

  “I know what I saw,” she said.

  “I like her,” I said again.

  “I can see that. Everyone can see that. She’s not what your mother would want for you.”

  “I don’t think we should be bringing up my mother,” I said. I felt my bottom lip trembling.

  “Juliana’s not the kind of girl—”

  “I don’t want to talk about Juliana,” I said.

  “She’ll bring you bad luck.”

  “Maybe it’s me who’ll bring her bad luck.”

  “You’re a good boy.”

  “No, I’m not.” I wanted to tell her I liked smoking cigarettes and hated going to confession. I wanted to tell her I thought endlessly about sex and that I liked to cuss. I wanted to let out a whole litany of cusswords. I wanted to tell her that I hated her. What kind of good boy was that? “I like her more than I like God,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” I walked out of her house. I wasn’t a political candidate. She didn’t get to sit me down and voice her opinion about the issues she cared about. She didn’t get to vote on who I should like. She told my dad I was disrespectful. I told my dad I was absolutely disrespectful. “I told her I liked Juliana more than I liked God.”

  “You told her that, Sammy?”

  “Yes.” I looked into my father’s serious eyes. I had trouble figuring him out, sometimes. “It’s true,” I said.

  He nodded. “No,” he said, “it’s not true. It just seems that way.” He took my face in his hands and he kissed me on the forehead. He was always doing things like that. “Go on over there,” he said. “Vete. You have to apologize.”

  “I’m not sorry,” I said.

  “Dile que te perdone.”

  I didn’t give a damn if she forgave me or not. “Just tell me what to say,” I said.

  “But you won’t mean it.”

  “No. I won’t mean it.” Adults wanted everything. They thought the world belonged to them. I wondered sometimes why they had children. It wasn’t good enough that you said what they wanted you to say. You had to feel it, too. “If I could thank her for a rake,” I said, “I can tell her I’m sorry for disrespecting her.” I walked out of the kitchen.

  I heard Elena talking to my father as I left the room. “He’s maaaahhhd,” she said.

  The next day, after school, I knocked on Mrs. Apodaca’s door and told her I was sorry. “Favor de perdonarme, Señora.”

  She looked at me for a long time. Then nodded. Her forgiveness was as half-hearted as my apology. And hadn’t she been my mother’s friend? But she had no use for Juliana. I hated her for that.

  Chapter Four

  A few weeks later, I saw Mrs. Apodaca in church again. It was just me and her in that small church on the corner of Idaho and Espina. Juliana hadn’t gone to school that day. I stopped into the church, not really knowing why. I was alone. Maybe it seemed okay to be alone when you were kneeling in the pew of an empty church. I wandered in, knelt, made the sign of the cross. I tried to pray. Really, I only thought about Juliana. I wasn’t fooling anyone. Not God. Not myself. I think I was in the church wanting to ask God to make her love me. Or something like that. It took me a while before I noticed Mrs. Apodaca. She was sobbing quietly near the front of the church. Maybe I should have gone up to her, asked her what was wrong. I should have made some kind of offer. But it would have been an awkward and graceless gesture. I let her cry in peace. I felt bad. I had to admit it.

  One Saturday, Reyes Espinoza and I were playing catch in the empty lot behind Mrs. Apodaca’s house. Not that I liked Reyes Espinoza. He was a complete jack off. The kind of guy who would grow up to be a complete and total pendejo. He didn’t have it in him to be any other way. I felt sorry for him. But I hated him, too. That’s why I always avoided him. But that Saturday, he’d come over to play catch. Guess he was bored. Guess I was too. And right away he made my life miserable. He was good at that. So we’re playing catch, and after about five minutes, he says, “Hey, Sammy, heads up,” and he throws my baseball right into Mrs. Apodaca’s yard.

  He laughed. “Better get it,” he said.

  “You get it,” I said. I wasn’t about to go into Mrs. Apodaca’s immaculate backyard without permission.

  “I’m not gonna get it,” he said. “It’s not my ball.”

  I wanted to pop him one. I did. “I’ll get it later,” I said.

  “Just jump over her fence and get it. C’mon, Sammy.”

  “Hell no.”

  “Chicken. No huevos, baby.”

  “Sí, cabrón,” I said. “If your balls are so big, you get it.”

  “Nah,” he said. “I jump over that fence and that pinche ruca will have me tossed en el mero bote. Not gonna do no jail just for a piss-ant baseball.”

  “She won’t throw you in jail,” I said.

  “Like hell she won’t. That ruquita’s mean. And she hates my ass.”

  We argued for a while. I hated arguing with pendejos like Reyes Espinoza. “You threw it in there. Now you get it,” I said. “Just knock on the door and ask her.”

  “Hell no. You do it.”

  “Later,” I said. I walked away. But I knew if I wanted that ball, I’d have to find my own way of getting it back. Reyes Espinoza didn’t care about it. He didn’t care about anything. Not about me. Not about my baseball. I’d have to apologize, and Mrs. Apodaca would give me a lecture about respecting other people’s property and she’d give me my baseball back and that would be the end of it. I told Reyes Espinoza he was a cabrón and had no huevos and that he was a pinche to boot. He threw me a finger. I pointed my chin at him. That Aztec hieroglyphic thing again. I went home. I listened to the radio. K-G-R-T was playing some okay music. I gave myself a lecture relax, relax. I’d been telling myself to relax ever since I was a kid. Relax, it’s Saturday. My Dad had taken Elena and Mrs. Apodaca’s daughter, Gabriela, to an afternoon movie. They liked movies. Everyone liked movies. Except me. Movies bored me. I listened to the radio for a while, tried to relax, but then I got to thinking about my baseball. I was still mad about Mrs. Apodaca not liking Juliana. None of her damned business anyway. It’s funny how we have arguments with people in our heads. We’re better arguers when the people we’re arguing with aren’t around. And in those arguments, we always win. So that’s why we liked doing stuff like that in our heads. So I lay there in my bed and argued with Mrs. Apodaca for a while. Then I thought about my baseball. I saw it sitting there like a golden egg in the middle of her back yard. I decided to go get it. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I just needed to trespass against her. Trespass. I always liked that word—ever since I’d made my first communion.

  Jumping over her fence wasn’t so hard. It was maybe six feet and made of cinder block. If you took a running jump, you could pull yourself over. That’s exactly what I did. I looked around and saw my baseball. It was right under one of her rose bushes. The yard wasn’t as perfect as I’d thought. Everything was neat and orderly but the rose bushes looked like they needed trimming and the grass definitely needed mowing. I thought that was strange. I’d never known the Apodacas to let the grass grow. Not like that.

  I took the ball. Looked around. It’s a funny feeling to be in a place where you know you don’t belong. I was all in knots. And I thought I was going to throw up. Relax, relax. I wasn’t stealing anything. I looked around again. I looked at the ball in my trembling hand—then tossed it into the empty lot. It was safe now. There.
The world was right again. Except that I was still standing in the middle of Mrs. Apodaca’s back yard. I made my way back to the fence. That’s when I heard the back door opening. I didn’t even bother to look. I could hear my heart. I hated that. It was never a good thing when you heard your own heart. I jumped. I could feel the scrape of the cinderblocks against my knees. I fell to the ground. I don’t know how. Shit, shit. I wasn’t thinking. But I could see the huge pomegranate bush in the corner of the yard. A place to hide. That was all I could think of. Shit. I found myself hiding behind the bush. God. God himself couldn’t have seen me. Not that I was worried about Him. It was Mrs. Apodaca I was worried about.

  I closed my eyes and prayed. And then I heard a wailing, just like the sounds that came out of people when they went to a funeral. And then I wasn’t afraid anymore. It was like my heart changed—went from being scared to being sad. I peeked out from behind the bush and saw Mr. Apodaca raising his fists toward heaven. Tears were falling down his face. And then he started shouting: “No me quiero morir! No me quiero morir!” His face was all contorted. Rage did that, twisted your face and made you look like an animal. He looked completely different. Not passive. Not like a cement sidewalk you stepped on. But like a man. He was challenging God to a fist fight. I swear, if God would’ve come down, Mr. Apodaca would have knocked him to the ground. That’s when I saw him fall on his knees and howl.

  Everything in the world seemed to stop. There was nothing else. Just Mr. Apodaca on his knees wailing like a coyote. I could have watched him forever. It made me sad. But, somehow, I couldn’t stop watching. Then I realized that I was seeing him. For the first time, I was seeing him, Mr. Apodaca, a man. A real man. Not just somebody’s husband. I’d never noticed how small he was. Smaller than me. And skinny.

  He was sick. It was easy to see.

  I lived across the street from him. How could I have not known? I wanted to hold him. I’d never wanted to hold a grown man—except my father when my mother died. And I had held him. My dad. I had.

  His sobs got quieter and quieter. And yet, they seemed to get louder and louder. There was nothing else in the world except the sound of his sobbing. He curled up like a baby in the womb. He cried. And cried. And I thought maybe he’d die right there. Right then, right there. Crying. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to save him but I didn’t know how. I didn’t. I didn’t know how to do anything. I was about to come out from behind the bush. I don’t know what I was planning to do. Hug him, maybe. Take him inside. Take him inside—that wasn’t such a bad idea. That’s when I saw Mrs. Apodaca come out into the yard. She didn’t march out. That’s what she usually did. She walked, slowly. I’d never seen her walk like that. She knelt down next to him. Slow. Careful. She looked at him. I’ll never forget that look on her face. Like she was seeing the face of God. She bit her trembling lip, then took a breath. Then another. And then she held him. She rocked and rocked him in her arms. Rocked and rocked him until he stopped crying and she kept saying, “Amor, no llores. No llores.” Then, as if she was as strong as one of the sentries who guarded the gates of heaven, she picked him up—and carried him into the house.

  I stayed behind that bush for a while. Just didn’t want to leave. I played the scene over and over in my mind. I’d never seen a man yelling at God. I’d never seen a woman picking up a man and carrying him. Everything in the world was bigger than I’d ever thought.

  Something happened in a back yard. Something small. And everything changed.

  I don’t remember how long I hid there. Behind that bush. I half expected to turn to stone. I kept feeling my own skin. Just to make sure I was still flesh. Or maybe I thought I’d changed. I don’t know. I just know that I finally managed to leave the Apodaca’s garden. I jumped the fence. Went back home. But I was restless.

  I called Juliana. She wasn’t there.

  My own house felt strange to me. I don’t know. I wanted my Dad and Elena to come home. But I guess they decided to go do other stuff after the movie. Maybe that was a good thing. Because the Apodaca’s daughter was with them. And the Apodacas needed time to recover. They would be calm again when their daughter walked through the door. It occurred to me right then that my father knew everything about what was happening with the Apodacas. Fathers knew a lot of things. I wondered why fathers kept so many secrets from their sons. Maybe that’s the way it was supposed to be.

  About an hour later I went out and sat on the front porch. I wondered why the Apodacas had never moved to another neighborhood. They never really belonged. I studied their house. The nicest, neatest house on the block. Maybe even the nicest house in the whole neighborhood. Anyone would have thought a gringo lived there—well, except for the fact that Mrs. Apodaca’s house was as pink as a flamingo.

  I suddenly realized that the front lawn needed mowing. I even thought I spotted a weed. It just wasn’t right. I don’t remember walking across the street. I just know I found myself standing at the Apodaca’s front door. I was there—so I knocked. Mrs. Apodaca came to the door. Her eyes were dry. She looked at me. The same face. There was a question on her lips. But she didn’t ask it.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Her question was gone. She looked at me blankly. She looked tired.

  “I can do the lawn,” I said.

  “We can do our own lawn,” she said.

  “Oh.” I shrugged. “I just needed some extra money,” I said.

  “No te necesito,” she said.

  I nodded. “Okay,” I said.

  I started to walk away.

  “How much do you charge?” She asked. “I’ll pay you a dollar. Front and back.”

  I nodded. “A dollar?”

  “No soy una mujer rica. I can’t afford more than that.”

  “No, that’s okay,” I said. “A dollar’s good. I can start now. If you want.”

  She nodded.

  She taught me about rose bushes that afternoon. The right way to trim them. There were rules. There were rules for everything. She knew them all. She pointed at a branch on one of her bushes. “That one,” she said. “See how those leaves are turning brown? There’s always a part that’s dying. You have to know which part of a plant is dying—and which part is being born. That’s the key to trimming. You have to look. You have to see. ¿Me entiendes? Mira.”

  I nodded. I listened.

  And then she starts in with her religious stuff. I knew it was coming. She started talking about Eden, and how we carried the memory of paradise around with us, and that was why so many of us needed to have gardens. “We all have leaves from that original garden in our hearts.” That’s what she said, and according to her, they were there so we wouldn’t forget. “When you work for something good, hijo,” she said, “you’re working your way back to Eden.” So that was her problem. She really believed most people wanted to be pure. She believed we all wanted to go back to Eden. And even though I knew anything was better than Hollywood, I wasn’t convinced most of us cared anything about Eden. Not that I told her what I was thinking.

  Mrs. Apodaca just looked at me. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  I sort of shrugged. “I want to,” I said. I wasn’t lying.

  After that Saturday afternoon, I kept up the Apodaca’s yard until Mr. Apodaca died.

  He was nothing but bone in the end. We begin as water and end up as bone. Brittle bone that breaks. That turns to dust. Nothing anybody can do about it. Not a damn thing.

  Mrs. Apodaca was damned stoic about the whole thing. And every time she got bossy about how I should take care of the yard, well, I kind of just listened. I took it. She was entitled to her bad days. Once, Juliana came over to her house and watched me trim the roses. Mrs. Apodaca offered her a Coke and a novena, and told her, “the Virgin Mary didn’t dress like that.” I looked at Juliana and smiled. I knew what she was thinking: The Virgin Mary never had to live in Hollywood.

  Mrs. Apodaca didn’t change much during the last few months of her husband’s life. Stayed the sam
e. Dressed the same. Her and her hats. Sometimes, she stuck her chin out at me. I liked that.

  I think Mrs. Apodaca was a woman who understood life as a series of burdens. Someone had to carry them. That’s where she came in. That was her job, the one God had given her. That was her sacred duty. That’s where she found salvation. I never thought of her as being pure. But she was. I think she was. She didn’t wear disguises for people like the rest of us. She didn’t. She didn’t soften herself. She didn’t make herself more acceptable to the people around her. She didn’t know how.

  I dressed up nice for Mr. Apodaca’s funeral. I remember how she broke down when she saw me at the church. I felt a little funny holding her. I wished to God I hadn’t been such an awkward kid. I always felt like there was too much of me to stuff into my own flesh. I wanted to tell her something. We, who both liked words so much, we had so little to say. Juliana was right. Words didn’t mean as much as I thought. Still, I wanted to tell her things. A hundred things. That I knew she loved her husband. That she did her best and God knew. That the heart stopped hurting. At least enough to go on living. I knew about that. I did know. But maybe losing a husband or a wife was different than losing a mother. So maybe I didn’t know. Maybe I didn’t know anything. I wanted to tell her I really did believe that God planted leaves in our hearts so we could remember Eden, and maybe Mr. Apodaca could turn in his leaves now, and get into heaven. I wanted to say all those things to her, but I got myself all tangled up in the conversation I was having with myself—so I wound up not saying anything. Maybe I did say something. Maybe I said, “It’s okay,” as she sobbed into my shoulder. What a thing to say.

  I thought about how I’d seen her carry her husband back into the house. It was like watching someone make love. I hadn’t earned the right to see that. Not by a long shot. I’d stolen something from her. From both of them. I wanted to tell her, I saw you. He was breaking and you made sure he stayed whole. I saw you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. And then, abruptly, she pulled away from me. And stopped crying. She looked up at me and shook her head. “You need a haircut,” she said.