Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood

  We both laughed.

  “You think in another life we were brother and sister?”

  That made me smile. When she said that. “Maybe. Maybe we were.”

  “We had this huge hacienda in Mexico before the Revolution. And our father was this big badass patrón.”

  “We were probably twins,” I said. “And our dad was a peón who worked for that badass patrón.”

  She laughed. It was a soft laugh. “I got you something,” she said.

  “What?”

  “It’s not much,” she said. She looked in her purse and handed me her lighter. “Here,” she said, “so you can see.”

  I flicked the lighter. In her hand she was holding a small pin of the Mexican eagle. The farm worker eagle. “It’s for people who fight for good things, Sammy.” She kissed me on the cheek, and pressed the farm worker eagle into my hand. When I clutched it tight, I thought of Juliana’s fist.

  “Gigi,” I said. “Do you like my shirt?”

  “That’s a funny question.”

  “I’m a funny guy.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, Sammy, I like your shirt. It’s a beautiful shirt. The most beautiful shirt you’ve ever worn.”

  “I want to give it to you.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s the only shirt I’ve ever bought.”

  “Really?” She laughed. “Estás loco, ¿sabes? You’re one crazy Hollywood guy, Sammy.”

  “Yeah. I guess I am.”

  “You’d give me your shirt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When?”

  “Now,” I said. And so I took off my shirt. Not that I felt too naked. I mean, I’ve always worn t-shirts. My mom, she said a man should always wear a t-shirt. She took the shirt and stared at it. Then she put it on over her beautiful yellow dress.

  And then she started to cry. “Shhhh,” I said. “It’s okay.”

  “I’m scared,” she said. “What’s gonna happen, now, Sammy?”

  We never left the old farmhouse that night. All those plans we had about going to all those parties. Up in smoke, those plans. About three o’clock in the morning, people started wandering off. They played my song on the radio. Frankie Valle singing You’re just too good and Angel came up to me and said, “Sammy, you want to dance?”

  And I said, “Angel, I think I would.”

  And it scared me, the way she fit in my arms. It really scared me. And the way she smelled made me tremble. And I wanted to kiss her. And that scared me too. Because I didn’t really know Angel. I knew Gigi. I’d known Juliana—at least as much as anybody had known her. But, Angel, I didn’t know her. So why did I want to kiss her?

  Because she fit in my arms.

  When the song was over, we looked at each other. And then I felt stupid. She felt stupid too. So that made me feel better. Not much. But some.

  And then we went outside and looked up at the stars. On the radio, Janis Joplin was asking the Lord to buy her a Mercedes Benz. In 1969, she was still alive. And so were we. Angel and I, we listened to her sing. And we didn’t say a word. And I think we were kissing each other in our heads.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  A couple of weeks after I started my job at Safeway, I got trained as a checker. I liked it, punching in all those prices. You had to think, concentrate, and you had to memorize all the prices. It wasn’t bad. I could do this. For a summer. It was only for a summer. René got a job roofing houses. Shit. Hard work. “I like it,” he said. “When I get home, I’m good and tired.” Gigi, she was working at the Rexall Drug Store. “You should see who goes in there to buy rubbers,” she said. Like I wanted to have a copy of the list.

  We hung out. Some. Not a lot. But some. It seemed like it was gonna be a normal, quiet summer. That’s how it started out.

  And then one day, everything changed.

  I woke up that morning. It was raining. And the breeze was cool. Not such a normal day. Not for the desert. I went into work, and half the checkers were out. Everybody had some lame excuse and the manager, Mr. Moya, he said, “Listen, you’re on your own. No more training. That’s over now. Can you handle it?” He’d stop by and watch me, and by the end of the morning he said, “You’re a checker. You’re a real checker.” He said it like I’d done something, like I’d reached this goal, like I had a career. “You’re from Hollywood, right?”

  I nodded.

  “I grew up in Chiva Town.” I knew what he was saying And here I am—the manager of Safeway. That was a good thing. It was good. But I had other plans. What I didn’t have planned was the phone call I got at about two o’clock that afternoon. Mr. Moya called me back to his small office. He had this serious look on his face. I knew something was wrong. He handed me the telephone. I didn’t know the voice on the other end. No reason I should have known it.

  “This Mr. Sammy Santos?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Look, son, your dad’s been in an accident.” Then he waited. The pause was too long. That scared me.

  I could feel Al, my pigeon inside me, and Al was clawing at my heart. I couldn’t say anything. And finally I heard myself say, “Is he dead?”

  “No, Son.” And the pigeon settled down a little and got quieter. But my heart, God, I swear my heart—

  “It’s bad, Son. It looks real bad.” Then Al got up again and was flapping his wings and he was really beating the crap out of me.

  The hospital wasn’t far. Not far at all. Took me a couple minutes to get there. It had stopped raining.

  God, the breeze was cool. Almost cold. For a June day. God, I was shivering.

  They didn’t let me see him before they took him into surgery.

  “He’s not conscious, son.”

  “Is he—?” I couldn’t finish my question.

  The doctor was nice. I didn’t know anything about doctors. I’d never been to one. He was what I thought doctors would look like—looked just like the doctor who’d talked to us when they had taken Jaime in that night. That awful night. He was a gringo, had soft blue eyes. He was maybe fifty—about my dad’s age. He was deciding what to say to me. “I don’t know about internal injuries. Maybe some head injuries. The injuries on his head, they look pretty superficial. It’s hard to tell right now. But his right leg, it’s really bad. Don’t know if we can save it.”

  “The leg doesn’t matter. I want my dad.”

  The doctor nodded. “We’ll do our best, son.”

  “If he dies, Elena and I, we won’t have anyone. Do you understand?”

  He nodded.

  I reached for a cigarette, then realized I was sitting in an emergency waiting room.

  “Aren’t you a little young to smoke?”

  I shook my head. “Mexicans from Hollywood start smoking when they’re twelve.” I smiled. I don’t know why I said that.

  He nodded. “Hollywood?” Then he smiled. “Oh, you mean the barrio on the east side?”

  What other Hollywood would I mean? “Yeah,” I said.

  “How old are you, son?”

  “Seventeen. Eighteen, September first.”

  “Going into the army, are you?”

  He was trying to be nice. I knew that. He didn’t have to be sitting there talking to me. But he pissed me off. He did. “You have a son?” I said.

  “Yeah. He’s nineteen.”

  “He in the army?”

  “No. He’s in college.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  I think he understood what I was saying. “Look,” he said—and then a nurse came out and pulled him to the side. I thought for sure he was going to tell me that Dad was dead, that he’d died, that I’d lost him. And that Elena and I were orphans. Orphans in the world. America was the worst place to be an orphan. That’s what I thought. What was I gonna do? Without him. What were me and Elena gonna do? Without a mother. Without a father. “We’re going in now, Son. It’ll take some time. Maybe a long time. If you need to leave, that’s okay. Or you can wait.”

  “Will he die?”
r />   “I didn’t know, Son. He looks pretty bad. Is he a fighter?”

  “Yeah,” I said. My bottom lip was trembling. It did that sometimes. I hated when it did that. Like my lip didn’t give a damn what the rest of my body thought. My lip and Al, my pigeon who was doing some kind of wild, unstoppable dance inside me.

  I watched the doctor walk through the doors. I walked outside. God, it was cold. For June. June was supposed to be hot. That was the plan. It was supposed to be hot. I lit a cigarette. As I stood there, I realized I hadn’t asked anyone about the accident, about what had happened. He was hurt at work. That’s all I knew. What the hell difference did it make, anyway. His leg? Fuck his leg. I didn’t care about that.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  I wanted to just sit there and cry. But I knew I had to keep it together for Elena.

  I stood and smoked my cigarette.

  Then I went home. And waited. I didn’t think anything. It’s like I’d turned myself off. I didn’t want to think anything. Feel anything. I wasn’t going to think of all the possibilities. Was death a possibility? I was just going to wait.

  I don’t remember what I told Elena. That Dad got hurt. I don’t remember. She wanted to come with me, to see Dad. I remember that. But I didn’t let her. And she got real mad. Maybe I was wrong to leave her with Mrs. Apodaca. But what if something went wrong in the operating room? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to feel. That’s what I really remember. It’s hard not to feel. Try it sometime.

  I remember sitting in the waiting room. Waiting and waiting. I’d go outside and smoke. Then come back in. I don’t know how long I’d been waiting. Hours. And then finally, the doctor came out, and he said, “Your dad’s in recovery.” He shrugged. “His leg, well, we couldn’t save it.”

  I nodded. Screw his leg. I didn’t care about his leg.

  I wouldn’t leave the hospital until they let me see him.

  And finally, they did. Dad was still groggy. Confused, I think. About everything. And his face, it looked beat up, and he had bruises everywhere. “Superficial,” the doctor had said. “They’ll heal in no time. They’re just regular bruises.” How could bruises be regular? Like gasoline.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just took his hand. “Dad,” I whispered.

  “Sammy?” His voice sounded so tired. God.

  “You’re gonna be okay, Dad.” I don’t know why I was whispering. I just was. Then I thought, “He doesn’t know about his leg.”

  “Sammy, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  “Shhhh,” I said, “it’s okay, Dad.”

  I stayed there until he fell asleep. He was sad. But even after he fell asleep, he was whispering my name.

  I kissed him on the forehead before I left. That’s what he always did. Kissed me on the forehead.

  He smelled like blood. And like some kind of medicine.

  It was night when I walked out of that hospital. The rain had washed the sky and the air was clean. It was like the windows had been dirty and now they sparkled. Now, we could start over again. But how many times in a lifetime did you have to start over? Dad. Dad knew how many times. But it was question I would never ask him. I wouldn’t like the answer.

  I knew Elena was waiting, so I went home to her. She read me a story. That’s how we did things now. She woke me up in the middle of the night, screaming. She was having a nightmare. She was a dreamer, Elena, always had been. Had good dreams. Had bad dreams. Always dreaming. I got up and held her. “Don’t leave me,” she said.

  “I won’t,” I said. So I stayed there with her. So she wouldn’t dream anymore.

  The next day, my dad had to have another operation. There were some internal injuries, internal bleeding. They had to remove a kidney. I wasn’t exactly sure why. But I took their word for it. What choice did I have?

  I stayed all day. He didn’t wake. I thought he’d never wake again.

  I called Mrs. Apodaca, told her to keep Elena. I stayed the night, fell asleep, and when I woke, Dad was alive, his eyes wide open. “Talk to me,” he whispered.

  The doctor told me he wasn’t sure if my dad knew what had happened to him. “You’re tired, Dad, you should just sleep.”

  “Talk to me,” he said. He wanted me to tell him.

  I didn’t know how. I didn’t. But he was waiting, and I knew I had to tell him. “What’s worse, Dad, losing a leg or losing a son?”

  “Losing a son,” he said.

  “You still have a son, Dad.” That’s what I said. I waited, watched him nod, and then I said, “What’s worse, Dad, losing a kidney or losing a daughter?”

  “Losing a daughter.”

  “You still have a daughter, Dad.” That’s what I said.

  I took a pizza home. I didn’t have the heart to cook. Elena loved pizza. We ate on the porch, and she asked me a hundred questions about what had happened to Dad and what had happened at the hospital, and I answered them as best I could. Not that she was satisfied with my answers. She never was. She said Dad answered her questions better than I did. “That’s because dads are smarter than brothers,” I said. She shook her head. She knew bullshit when she heard it.

  After we finished our pizza, I gave her a dollar and she and Gabriela went in search of the ice cream truck. I was worried about Elena. She seemed happy enough as I watched her skipping down the street. But she’d had another nightmare. Mrs. Apodaca told me she’d screamed and screamed in the night. That scared me. She was scaring me. And Dad, I didn’t know if he’d make it. He was scaring me too. I wonder if everybody knew that I was scared. I didn’t want them to know. Not anybody.

  Just then, as I was thinking all these bad things, René’s car parked in front of the house. Him and Angel got out. God, his hair was getting long. And his skin was dark from working in the sun. And he’d lost some weight. He was wearing sunglasses and a black T-shirt and I could tell he was trying to be cool. And he was. René was always cool. “Pareces vieja, cortate la greña,” I said. And we all laughed. My hair, it wasn’t so short anymore, but it wasn’t long. Not like René’s.

  “You’re lookin’ like a fuckin’ Republican,” René said. He took his glasses off. He’d been practicing. I swear that René. He cracked me up, that guy. “¿Y tú jefito? How’s he doin’?”

  “He’s okay.” Now I understood why people said thanks for asking. Now, I understood. “They’re gonna give him a prosthetic leg.”

  Angel nodded. “I’m really sorry, Sammy.” She was sweet. Her voice. Really sweet. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said, “moving to Tucson.” It just came out. Just like that. I’m leaving.

  “Oh,” I nodded. I wanted to tell her I’d miss her. But it sounded stupid and awkward and dull. But it wasn’t as if I was so damned creative with the words I used—even on a good day. I spoke like everyone else. I kind of stood there, and wound up saying nothing but, “Oh.” What a fucking pendejo.

  “We’re going out. We’re gonna meet Gigi and Charlie. We thought maybe—”

  “I can’t,” I said. I thought I saw something in Angel’s face. Like she was hurt. I stood there. I smiled at her. “I have something for you,” I said.

  I walked in the house and wrote something in a book I’d special ordered. Leather cover, the works. It was a beautiful book. I’d wanted it so bad. But it was just a book. It wasn’t a kidney or a leg. And I wrote, “Be something, Angel. Be something for all of us. Love, Sammy.”

  I walked outside and handed it to her. She looked at the book and smiled. “Great Expectations,” she said.

  “Yeah, Great Expectations.”

  She kissed me on the cheek, and then she pointed softly at my chest, at the place where I had my heart. “Keep that, will you?”

  A few days later, my dad was looking better. I didn’t lose him, my dad. That was what mattered. He’d thought about a lot of things, I could tell. He was looking less tired, but he didn’t look like the dad I knew. He would never look that way again. He aged after that. He’d always look
ed young. But not after that. “There was a truck full of lumber,” he said. “And all of a sudden, it was raining two-by-fours on your old man.” He tried to laugh. He never said another word about that accident. Later on, he’d sometimes talk about his leg, not the accident, but his leg. Talk about it like it was a friend he’d lost. Me and my leg, we used to do this. Me and my leg, we used to do that. He was consistent, my father. He didn’t spend a lot of time licking his wounds.

  I spent that day with him. He slept a lot. He was still tired.

  I watched him sleep. And thought about things. Him and me.

  Before I left, he said, “Go back to work.” I knew what he was saying. Go back to your life. But he was my life. He and Elena. He kissed my hand. “You have your mother’s hands,” he said. Maybe another guy would’ve been pissed off to hear their father say that. But not me. I was happy to have anything that had belonged to my mother.

  I’d had plans. Plans change. The summer was slow. I read a lot. René met some girl roofing a house. She’d given him a glass of cold water. He’d taken the water and her phone number. Her name was Dolores and she was one of those Mexicans who didn’t speak any Spanish. God. With a name like Dolores. Okay. No Spanish. That was cool. This was America. Except she couldn’t talk to her grandmother. All she said was, “Well, she’s old, anyway.” I didn’t like her. Not because she didn’t speak Spanish, but because of what she’d said about her grandmother—like an old lady didn’t matter. But René liked looking at her. Who wouldn’t? Take a picture. Last’s longer. Yeah, yeah. Gigi rolled her eyes when she met her. Right in front of her.

  “That was so fucking rude,” René told her afterwards. We were sitting on my porch.

  “Taking a girl out just cuz you want to get laid—that’s what’s fucking rude, René. So don’t talk to me about rude. ¿Qué me crees? ¿Pendeja?” Gigi, now she knew Spanish.

  “Lay off, Gigi, why can’t you be nice to her?”

  “What for? Like I should make nice to that pendeja when I won’t ever see her again once you get finished screwing her?”

  “Shut up, Gigi.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t like her. And you don’t like her either, René.”