Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood

  “I think they did mean harm, Sammy,” she said. She bit the tip of her pen. “And if it happens all the time, then we’re not making any progress here, are we?”

  What did she want me to say? “Turning them into the principal won’t change anything,” I said.

  She didn’t skip a beat. Not her style. “Maybe not. Letting them walk around like they own the world won’t change anything either.” She shrugged. “How’s Jaime?” She asked like she cared. I looked at her. She was young. I wanted to ask her how old she was.

  “How’s Jaime?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t gone to see him.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She looked at me. “I thought he was your friend.”

  “We live in the same neighborhood,” I said.

  She nodded. “He’s a good student,” she said. “I like Jaime.” We were dancing around something. We both knew it—except she was the one who’d called me in. What did you want to see me about—that’s what I wanted to ask her. But I didn’t.

  Finally, she looked at me. “People can be very cruel, Sammy,” she said.

  “I know that,” I said. I did know that.

  We looked at each other.

  “I guess everyone knows about Jaime and Eric—and what happened.” I looked at her. I don’t know what she expected me to say.

  She nodded. “What you and René did—is it true? That you helped them?”

  I nodded. But I didn’t nod like I was proud of myself. René and I, well, we were just there. I followed. We didn’t know—I nodded. “Word gets around.”

  “Words are like fire.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I think I smiled. “You always say that.”

  “Because it’s true. Words are like fire and they burn.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “You did a good thing,” she said. “They could’ve been killed.” She kept shaking her head. Like all of this made her sad. Then she looked at me. I liked what I saw in her face.

  “Not everybody thinks so,” I said.

  “So what?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Well, don’t give me too much credit.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Sammy. You did a good thing.” She stared at the papers sitting on her desk. “You should go see him.”

  I nodded.

  I didn’t go.

  I never went to see him.

  Two weeks later, Jaime showed up at school. His face was still a little bruised. Not a lot. His arm was in a sling. He walked a little stiff. His ribs were wrapped. You could tell. He looked sad. Some people sort of waved at him. Some people just stared at him.

  Mrs. Scott—our homeroom Spanish teacher—she’d hated Jaime. Loved Eric. Hated Jaime. But that morning she was nice. To Jaime. She talked to him before class started. But Eric wasn’t there. Eric, the guy who always had his hand up. Eric, the guy who spoke the best Spanish. Eric, the gringo who wanted to be Mexican. He was absent.

  At lunch, Jaime was sitting alone. He wasn’t really eating. René and I looked at each other. Like maybe we should go and sit with him. But then Gigi and Angel went over to him—Gigi and Angel who weren’t talking to us, they sat with him. They saved us from having to do anything. That’s what we were thinking. They’d saved us.

  René and I didn’t say anything.

  We just sat there in the cafeteria, watching. Some guy walks by Jaime’s table and says loud enough for the whole damn world to hear, “Queer.”

  Gigi gets up, looks right at him—then slaps the hell out of him. “Say it again,” she said, “I didn’t hear you.” She looked at him until he turned away. Eyes. Bullets. Don’t screw with Gigi Carmona.

  René and I just sat there, watching, like the rest of them.

  After school, René and I walked home. No car that day. We saw Jaime walking ahead of us. By himself. Cars would pass him as he walked. People would yell things. We didn’t get too close. He didn’t seem to notice. Not us, not anything. Like he was dead.

  A car went by real slow. And hit Jaime with a water balloon. It broke against him. He hung his head.

  There are times I think, when you know shame. And the shame becomes a part of your knowledge of the world. René and I, we’d helped Jaime and Eric, but it was all instinct. If we’d done something good, then we hadn’t done it on purpose. We knew that. And now, we had a choice. René and I, we were better with our fists and our bodies than we were with our hearts. This fight, this fight was harder. We were lost, afraid of the world and its judgments. The world was cruel. And it was crueler to Jaime than to us. We had a choice. Jaime didn’t. We knew that, too. He was there, alone, taking all the punches as if the fight belonged only to him. But Jaime was ours. That’s what René had known when he’d recognized Jaime’s voice that night—that he was in trouble, that he needed help. He hadn’t needed to ask questions, hadn’t needed to ask why. But, now, the world was telling us something else—that Jaime didn’t belong to us after all. An alien. Foreign. I thought of Father Fallon, and how he’d said we were animals. Maybe we thought that’s what Jaime was. An animal, not like us, not ours. But we knew that it wasn’t true. And so we were ashamed.

  I watched Jaime, his head hanging. He dropped his books. He stumbled. He was crying. He was falling to the ground. It was as if he didn’t care if they beat him until he disappeared. But he wasn’t disappearing, and that made it even worse. I looked at René and I could see tears running down his face, too. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “Tell me what to do, Sammy.”

  I never thought René had tears inside him. I never knew that about him. That night, at the river, he’d been the perfect warrior. Relentless and graceful, afraid of nothing. But now, he was standing still, awkward, waiting for me to say something. I did my Aztec chin thing. Pointing toward Jaime. He nodded.

  We walked slowly toward our friend. That’s what he was. “Hey,” I said. I helped him get to his feet. René picked up his books. “Let’s go to the Pic Quick and get a Pepsi. My treat.”

  Jaime tried to stop crying. He took a breath. Then another. “Okay,” he said. “I drink Coke.”

  “Okay. Coke.” We walked slow. Real slow. We weren’t in a hurry.

  “I’m all wet,” Jaime said. “I hate water balloons. I fucking hate them.”

  “Remember that time we got Pifas when we were kids?”

  Jaime nodded. He almost smiled.

  We kept walking.

  When we got to the Pic Quick, we got our sodas. We drank, lit up cigarettes.

  “Gigi was really great at lunch today,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Gigi’s the best,” and I knew he was going to cry again.

  “You know something, I think girls are braver than guys. Don’t you think so?”

  He nodded. He looked at René and me. I mean, he really looked at us. His eyes were so black. “Thanks,” he said. “I owe you.”

  “No, you don’t.” That’s what I said. “How’s Eric?” Maybe it was wrong to ask.

  I didn’t think Jaime was going to answer the question. I could see his hands were trembling. “They’re gonna have to fix his jaw. It’s gonna take some time. His parents sent him back to Pennyslvania—to live with his aunt. Better doctors there. That’s what his mom said. She didn’t let me talk to him.” He nodded. God, his hands trembling like leaves in a storm. “He’s going back to Pennsylvania—where no one knows.” He took a drink from his Coke. “Me, too,” he said. “My dad, he’s sending me to live with my uncle. In California.” Then he smiled. Like a little kid.

  “Maybe that’s better,” René said. “California. People won’t hurt you there.”

  That’s not what I was thinking. I was thinking that people hurt you no matter where you lived. No matter where you went. They’d find you. And then they’d hurt you.

  Jaime and René hung out on my porch that whole week. It was safe there. We never said anything else about that night. Maybe we didn’t know how to ta
lk about it. Maybe we didn’t need to. One night, they stayed for dinner. I cooked, because that’s what I did. I was the cook in our house. That’s how it was when you didn’t have a mom. My dad and Jaime and René and me and my little sister, Elena, we talked and laughed. “It’s good,” René said. “Yeah, it is,” Jaime said. I felt safe. We all felt safe.

  The Friday night before Jaime left, we all went out—René and Angel and Gigi and me and Jaime. Gigi and Angel were talking to us again. We were all on the same side.

  We rode around. We talked. We laughed. We all told Pifas stories. Everyone had a good story about Pifas. Gigi passed around a picture of him in a uniform. His hair was short. He looked good, he did, took a good picture. The uniform almost made him look like a man. He was waiting for his orders, Gigi said. Maybe they would send him to Germany instead of Nam. That’s what I thought.

  We all knew Jaime would never come back. We couldn’t face that. We knew the score. We understood. But we didn’t. We really didn’t. So all night we talked about Pifas. We had a few beers. Not many. Smoked too many cigarettes. We saw the sun rise. “I love the desert.” That’s what Jaime said. I’d never heard anybody say that.

  The next morning, we went to the bus station. We said good-bye to Jaime. Angel and Gigi were full of kisses. They cried. Of course, they did. We love you. We love you. You’ll always be ours. When Pifas had left, I hadn’t hugged him. So this time, I hugged Jaime. I’d never really liked him. We’d never gotten along. But now, I think, we were friends. Friends who lived in different countries. That’s what we were. But René and him—René and him had always been friends. Since they were kids. René looked at Jaime. “Did you love him?” His voice was cracking. Gigi leaned into me and I felt her sobbing. I never knew René had it in him—to ask a question like that.

  “Yeah,” Jaime whispered. “Not that it matters.”

  “It matters,” René said, “it always matters. When you love someone.”

  They nodded at each other. Gigi was balling her eyes out. So was Angel. But René and Jaime, they weren’t crying.

  Jaime got on the bus. And waved good-bye.

  We stood there until the bus disappeared. “I’m never gonna love anybody ever again,” Gigi said. We all broke out laughing. And then we all started singing that stupid song Dionne Warwick sang about never falling in love again. Gigi kept us on key. That’s what we did—sang and laughed on the day Jaime left us.

  That night, I stayed awake. I couldn’t sleep. I was listening to K-O-M-A., that radio station that only came to us at night. Like it was only a dream. All the way from Oklahoma City. All the way to where I was lying in my bed. I was hoping to hear a song. A song that would tell me everything I needed to know. About love. If only the right song would come on, then I’d be able to sleep.

  I thought about my father, how he said you had to love the world, how you had to find a way to love it. As if that was an easy thing. How did you love a world that didn’t love you back? How did you do that?

  I thought about how everybody at school was so desperate to find a hand to hold. As if we were all about to die. And we couldn’t wait anymore. We’d waited so long already. And they told us that it was coming, at any moment, any moment now, we were going to find it. We were going to turn around and look into the eyes of a girl or a boy and we were going to find everything we had always been looking for.

  Love was standing there, waiting for us, for me. For Sammy. For Gigi. For René. For Jaime. We were all going to find the country we lived in. We were all going to belong. We were all going to be free. And then what? And then—?

  I thought about Gigi and Pifas. And Eric and Jaime. I thought about me and Juliana.

  Love was so public. In 1968, love was everywhere. It was in all the songs, it was on all the posters, it was a flower sprouting in my front yard, waiting for me to pick it. Well, maybe love was supposed to be a public thing, maybe so. But for me it would always be something private. Love was something between me and Juliana—even though she was dead. Love was something between Jaime and Eric. And what we had, if it was love, well, hell, it wasn’t supposed to be on a bumper sticker.

  It’s funny, everyone had always told us love was another word for belonging.

  No one, no one had ever told me that love was another name for exile.

  “Sometimes dreams come true, don’t they, Sammy?”

  I wanted to tell Elena that the bad ones, they’re the ones that come true. But I just said, “Yeah, sometimes dreams come true.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Hey! Hey you! Where’s your belt?”

  I was practically running down the hall, late for second period, hated being late, hated standing there waiting for an unexcused absence, Mr. Romero staring at me like I was a few inches away from landing in prison. Like maybe if it were up to him I would be landing in prison. Such a big deal over unexcused tardies. Tardies lead to chaos, that’s what our teachers told us. As if what went on in class wasn’t chaos. Tardies, hell, and girls, they got away with everything. Boys, they never got away with anything. All a girl ever had to say was “personal.” Personal, that meant it was that time of the month. Lied. Girls were liars. Personal always got them an excused tardy. Guys, what could be personal about guys? Sometimes, when I was staring at the slip of paper that said REASON FOR TARDINESS, I’d get the urge to write: I was zipping up my pants at the urinal and I recircumcised myself. A tragedy, a personal tragedy. Personal. Excused.

  “I said, ‘Where’s your belt?’” I stopped. I looked around and saw Colonel Wright. Everybody hated Colonel Wright. You didn’t have to be in his class to hate him. He was staring at me. I pointed to myself. Like an idiot. Like a complete and total menso. Who me?

  “Yeah you. Where’s your belt?”

  I looked down, shit, no belt. How could I have forgotten my belt?

  I shrugged. I must’ve left it in the bathroom. That’s what I was thinking of blurting out. Yeah, yeah, he would’ve believed that one.

  “Who’s your homeroom teacher?” He said it like he was about to have her court-martialed.

  “Mrs. Scott.”

  “And she didn’t do anything about this situation?”

  It was a situation. The Viet Nam war wasn’t a war. It was a conflict. My not wearing a belt—that was a situation. And they wanted us to learn English. Yeah, yeah.

  “I guess not,” I said. It was hard to say who he blamed more—me or Mrs. Scott. But I knew who he was about to come down on.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Sammy.”

  “You got a last name there, son?”

  “Santos.”

  “Santos, go to the office. Explain your situation to Mr. Romero.”

  “I have a test,” I said.

  “Well, that’s too bad.”

  The bell rang. Shit. It’s a belt, I wanted say, just a stupid little piece of leather. Just a belt. I knew he could see the disgust on my face.

  “What’s that I see on your face?”

  “Mustard,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t like back talk, Santos.”

  I hated the way he said Santos. I nodded.

  He pointed toward the office. I walked down the empty hall to handle my situation.

  Mr. Romero was in the office. He smiled. But it wasn’t a nice smile. Romero didn’t have a nice smile. Crooked teeth. Crooked brain, too, I think. Nope. Not nice. “Mr. Santos,” he said. “Have you and Mr. Montoya gone on any more river patrols?”

  Bastard. “Yeah,” I said. “Last night we beat the crap outa La Llorona. That’s what she gets for drowning her kids.”

  “A comedian.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve never liked you, Santos.”

  “I’ve always felt bad about that, sir.” It wasn’t the first time we’d had conversations like this. He always looked at me the same way. I always looked at him the same way. I wondered what was wrong with me. I was ge
tting an attitude. I’d always had one. Hid it, though. I guess I just wasn’t in the mood for hiding. It’s like someone had lit a fuse inside me.

  He looked me over. “Where’s your belt?”

  “That’s exactly what Colonel Wright wanted to know.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him it wore out. I told him I was too poor to buy another. I’m from Hollywood.”

  “I hate smart mouths, Mr. Santos.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How many days of detention do you think I should give you?”

  “Should I pick a number between one and ten?”

  “That’s it. That’s it. Eight days. Eight days of detention.” When he got mad, he always repeated himself. If he said it more than once, then maybe he was communicating more effectively. I knew about that. Eight days. That was the maximum. He tore out a tardy slip, stamped unexcused on it—handed it to me. “I feel better,” he said.

  “Me, too,” I said. “I feel real good.”

  He just stared at me. “Get outa here before I throw your ass out of this school.” He kept staring at me. I didn’t care. He knew my father. Even my father knew he was a chicken shit. Even my father knew that. And I didn’t give a damn what he thought. And sometimes, when I didn’t give a damn, I shot my mouth off. And lately I didn’t give a damn about what anyone thought. God, who lit the fuse? So, here I was popping off. Not that I was helping myself out here. Eight days of detention. That’s what it got me. For having forgotten to wear a belt. For opening my big mouth. I’d have to tell my dad. He’d say, “Sometimes, you should just be quiet, Sammy. You’re quiet when you should be talking—and you talk when you should be busy keeping your mouth shut.” That’s what he’d say. Yeah, yeah.

  A belt. A stupid belt. This was January of 1969. America was falling apart. Black Panthers, Brown Berets, farm workers were organizing, every college in the nation was on fire. And what were we worried about at Las Cruces High? Boys’ belts. Dress codes. Tucked in shirts. Short hair. Short hair! Not that I wanted to wear my hair long. I didn’t like long hair—and I didn’t like bell bottoms. Me and ten other people in the world didn’t wear them. So what? Guys wanted long hair. So what? Girls wanted short dresses. So what?