Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood

  1968 was going to be a hot summer. I could tell. The desert had been heating up since March. I was always hot. A week before school let out, Juliana and I went to the Aggie Drive-In. I don’t remember the movie. It wasn’t anything I was interested in, that’s all I know. It’s funny about movies—after a few years you forget everything about them. I don’t think movies ever showed me anything interesting. Maybe I wanted to learn something. And the movies, well, I guess they didn’t make me dream. They did other people, I knew that. Made them dream. But not me. People. People made me dream. And movies weren’t like people.

  As we were sitting there in the front seat, Juliana took out a cigarette. I told her my dad said we couldn’t smoke in his car. Not anymore. A new rule. That’s the thing—there was always a new rule. We got out and sat on the hood. We smoked. Just then, Pifas Espinosa and Jaime Rede waved at us from a car just ahead of us. “That you, Sammy?”

  “He’s drunk,” I whispered to Juliana. “Yeah, Pifas, it’s me.”

  Pifas stumbled toward us. “Órale, you wanna beer, ese?” He was in a friendly mood. Pifas was okay.

  “Yeah,” Juliana said, “a beer sounds good.”

  I walked back to his car with him. “She’s alright, ese,” Pifas said. Jaime didn’t say anything. I could tell something was wrong. Jaime was one of those kinds of guys—something was always wrong. “She’ll dump you,” Jaime said after a while. “Same as she dumped me.”

  I nodded. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “You’re not so special,” Jaime said.

  I wanted to punch him out, but more than that I just wanted to get back to Juliana. “No. I’m not so special,” I said. I took the two beers Pifas handed me and walked back to the car. The beers were cold and I was happy. Juliana and I drank them down slowly. And we smoked. “You like to drink, Sammy?”

  “It’s okay,” I said. The truth was that I’d only had two beers in my whole life—and I’d stolen those beers from the bars I cleaned. I didn’t hang out much. Not with anybody.

  “Have you ever smoked pot, Sammy?”

  “Nope.” I said, “You?”

  “People are starting to do that a lot,” she said. “Especially gringos. They’re hippies. That’s what they call them.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Do you want to be one?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You don’t have to be a hippie to smoke pot.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “I thought that smoking weed would help me forget,” she said, “about stuff. But it didn’t. There’s not anything you can drink or smoke that can make you forget. Not one damned thing. And that’s sad, Sammy.” She finished her beer and looked at me. I think she was waiting for me to kiss her. So I did. And then she asked me if I’d ever been with a girl. “Have you, Sammy?”

  I shook my head.

  “How come?”

  “Just haven’t.”

  “Serious?”

  “Serious.”

  “Do you want to?” She kissed me again. I kissed her back. I was shaking. “Do you want to make love to me, Sammy?”

  I think that’s when I first felt the wings. That’s when they woke up and started flapping around inside me.

  I don’t know how we did it exactly, there, in the back seat of my father’s car, but it was good. It was good. I was scared. Not too scared. Not scared enough to stop. That’s the thing—I didn’t want to stop. Not then. Not ever.

  It wasn’t her first time. I knew that. Not that I cared. I told her I loved her when she wrapped her bare legs around me. I didn’t know anything could feel that perfect. And when it was over, I told her again that I loved her.

  “You shouldn’t say that,” she said.

  “But I do, Juliana. I love you.”

  “Even if you do, Sammy, you shouldn’t say things like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Some girl might believe you some day—and then what?”

  I didn’t say anything after that. We did it again. Only slower. And after, I wanted to lie there, in the back seat. With her. Forever. Finally, we put our clothes back on. She helped me with my shirt. For a long time after that, I felt her fingers on my bare back. We laughed. I kissed her. Then we sat outside on the hood of my father’s car. The movie on the outdoor screen didn’t matter. What mattered is that we smelled like each other. We smoked. We looked up at the stars, and she told me that she was going to leave Hollywood. “Next year, after I graduate. I’m packing.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Maybe to the real Hollywood.”

  “Nothing’s more real than our Hollywood,” I said.

  “That’s the problem,” she said. “I don’t want real.”

  Take me with you. That’s what I wanted to say. But I thought maybe I shouldn’t say anything. I looked up at the stars. Right then, sitting next to her, I felt as big as the sky.

  Chapter Three

  Mrs. Apodaca was always ready with a speech or a sermon. Always. Bet your ass. Or just one of her disapproving looks. She referred to us as demonios. Demons, devils, ungodly, unclean. That’s what she thought about us.

  She was just another person ready to put us down.

  One Saturday afternoon, she stepped out of her house and marched over to the empty lot behind her house where we were playing baseball. Hands on her sides. Shit. Mad. Mad as hell. “Which one of you used that word? ¿Haber? ¿Cuál de ustedes?” She waited for one of us to answer. Hands on her sides. Mad as hell. She’d wait—forever if she had to.

  “What word?” Jaime Rede asked.

  “No se hagan tontos. You know what I’m talking about. Tú sabes.”

  Jaime Rede shook his head. One by one, we all shook our heads. She reduced us to acting like five-year-olds. Shrunk us down with that look of hers. With that voice. God.

  But we could wait, too. Yeah. Just like her. We weren’t gonna squeal on who’d shouted out the “F” word. And no one was about to confess, either. There wasn’t one of us on that field who wouldn’t have rather faced his father’s belt than one of Mrs. Apodaca’s penances. She stared us all in the face. We stared back. This was a war we actually had a chance of winning. Not many opportunities. No, not many. Finally she said. “Play. I want to watch.” She grabbed Pifas Espinosa by the shoulder. “There’s a chair on my porch. Tráemela.” Pifas ran for the chair. When he ran back with it, she sat. As if she were the Empress Carlota. “Play,” she said. We all looked at each other. She’d found a way to beat us. Damn. Not one bad word came out of our mouths for the rest of the game. Not much fun, no fun, nope, no fun at all. Damn. I think that Mrs. Apodaca had the time of her life that afternoon. I swear I could almost see her smile. Except she never smiled.

  It is impossible to underestimate the important role Mrs. Apodaca played in the lives of the citizens of Hollywood. We elected her to be hated above all the others. Hers was a sacred and necessary office. By hating her, we created a perfect balance in that small barrio of ours. It was not a question of whether she deserved her fate. And it wasn’t a question of fairness or justice. It was all a question of survival. That’s what I told myself. It helped us to hate her. It helped us to go on living.

  One morning she handed out novenas in honor of the Blessed Mother to Susie Hernandez and Francisca (aka Frances) Sánchez as they passed in front of her house to catch the bus to go to school. “Go to the priest,” she said firmly. She pointed at their skirts.

  “God made my legs,” Susie said, then slapped her thigh as if with that slap she could make Mrs. Apodaca appreciate not only the danger but the beauty of a woman’s legs.

  “But who made the dress?” Mrs. Apodaca shot back.

  Actually, it wasn’t so bad living across the street from Mrs. Apodaca. Any time I got bored, I’d wander out to the front porch. Sit. Wait. I was always rewarded for my patience. Something always happened. It was her habit to stop people as they passed in front of her house. She was a gatekeeper, and now, as I think about it,
I swear she would have made one helluva border patrol officer. “Who made the dress?” Even from across the street, I could hear her clearly, could see the deep furrows of her scowl, her face becoming a map of the world. “Who made that dress?”

  Susie didn’t shrink. “I did.” She looked Mrs. Apodaca in the eye and stuck out her chin. It was the universal gesture of defiance in Hollywood, a vestige of the ancestors we still carried in our blood and on our faces. She looked like an Aztec princess in a hieroglyphic. “I made the dress,” Susie repeated, “to go with the legs God made.”

  “Your mother let you?”

  “My mother’s proud I can sew.”

  “Proud? Un hombre puede ver todo!”

  “God gave men eyes to see.”

  “To see the good—not to fall into temptation.”

  “God’s glory is a woman’s legs.”

  “God will punish you for that.”

  “Well, if he doesn’t, you will.”

  “Eres una muchachita muy malcriada.”

  “I don’t like Spanish,” Susie said.

  “Learn to like it. You live in Hollywood.”

  “My father’s a gringo.” Susie crossed her arms.

  “Your father is a no-good drunk mojado. He’s passed out in some cantina in Mesilla. Hay se mantiene. En las cantinas. Always drunk. Is that what you want? Is that why you wear dresses like that?” Mrs. Apodaca crossed herself.

  “Stop that!” Susie yelled. “Just stop it!”

  “Necesitas una bendición.”

  “I don’t need blessings,” Susie said, “I need money.”

  “Money’s a curse.”

  “How would you know? How would anyone in this goddamned neighborhood know?”

  “No seas tan malhablada. Es falta de respeto.”

  “You’re just like the gringos. You think you can tell us how to talk.” She spit on the ground.

  I watched as Susie and Frances turned their back on Mrs. Apodaca and slowly walked away. I couldn’t help but feel bad for her. Bad. Bad. Even though Susie was right. There she was, Mrs. Apodaca, standing in her front yard, a large, stubborn figure like a lone tree trying to dig deep enough to find water. Enough water for a tree like that was hard to come by. I wanted to tell her that her morals were useless in the face of a revolutionary like Susie Hernandez. It wouldn’t have done any good if I had told her.

  I watched as Mrs. Apodaca turned and walked toward her house, a rosary swaying in her hand. She slammed her door. It sounded like a gun shot.

  She would live to fight another day.

  She didn’t have a first name. She was just Mrs. Apodaca. Even to her husband. He was always nodding and repeating “Sí Señora,” like a beaten down parrot. I don’t think anyone ever saw him. He was like a ghost.

  And she liked clean, Mrs. Apodaca. She had this lawn, not big, not a big lawn, but it was green. I mean green. Green, green. I swear she watched over her husband like a gargoyle as he worked on the yard every week. Not a weed in sight. Not a roach. She cleaned her sidewalk every damned day of the year. “Así lo hacen en Alemania,” she said. “The Germans are very clean.” She looked at me with that disapproving gaze. She could have made money giving lessons on how to make people feel like shit with just a glance. “In Hollywood,” she said, “there’s nothing but filth. Todo esta desordenado. There’s nothing but chaos.” She studied me for a moment. “You know that word?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I know that word.” Words. That’s what we had in common. We both liked them. Every time I used the dictionary, I imagined Mrs. Apodaca doing the same thing. I wondered if she had a library lined with shelves of books in her house. Maybe she just had hundreds of thousands of yellowing novenas piled up in a room full of dusty saints. And somewhere in those novenas was the word chaos.

  “Okay, what does it mean? Give me a definition.”

  “Chaos,” I said, “it’s a synonym for Hollywood.” I was proud.

  She shook her head. “Yo pensaba que eras más respetuoso. But you’re not respectful at all.” In my rush to exhibit my knowledge, I’d forgotten that she didn’t like anyone to criticize our neighborhood. Only she had earned that right. She was funny that way.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. Around Mrs. Apodaca, it was best to apologize. Immediately. For everything. The more often you apologized, the better.

  She looked me over. “How long have you been wearing those jeans?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Apestan. I can smell them from here.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Just go home and wash them.” That was Mrs. Apodaca.

  My dad said I was too hard on Mrs. Apodaca. He said she was decent and hardworking. Maybe my dad was right. The problem was that she wanted everyone to know it. That was it, that was the problem. She liked to exhibit her virtues same as she liked to exhibit the roses in her front yard. Or her green grass. I think we were all supposed to cross ourselves and genuflect in the aroma of all that virtue.

  She wasn’t mean. Not really mean. Not mean like Juliana’s father. Not like that. But she wasn’t kind either. Just wasn’t her way. When she cared, she’d say things like, “Tell your dad that Elena shouldn’t wear that dress anymore. It’s almost worn out, and anyway it doesn’t fit her anymore. ¿Qué no ven? La gente va decir que no les importa. Is that what you want for people to think—that you don’t care?”

  I think my father liked that she was the clothes police—and the confession police—and the yard police. She did his dirty work for him. He never had to tell me to clean the yard. He didn’t have to. I mean, Mrs. Apodaca gave me a rake as a birthday gift when I turned twelve. My father made me knock on her front door and thank her. She nodded and asked, “You know how to use it?”

  I nodded. “It’s a nice rake,” I said. I remember smiling. I remember practicing my smile. “The nicest rake I’ve ever owned,” I said. I think I went overboard with my gratitude. I must have sounded insincere. But I was insincere. What normal boy wants a rake for his twelfth birthday?

  As it turned out, the first time I took the rake in my hands was also the last. One Saturday morning, a bunch of pachucos were running after Pifas Espinosa as I raked the front yard. As he ran past my house, Pifas grabbed the rake, turned around and broke it over some guy’s back. I’ll never forget the sound of that crack or the look on that poor pinche’s face. Mrs. Apodaca never counted on her gift being used as a weapon. It saved Pifas’ ass. One day she asked me what happened to my rake.

  “It got stolen,” I said.

  She shook her head. “You should learn to take care of your things.” She never bought me another gift. Somehow, I was glad about that.

  Once, I saw her in church and she was crying. I could tell. I watched her from the back row of the empty church. I listened to her sobs for a long time. I think I fell asleep to the sounds of her moaning. I used to fall asleep every chance I got. My job at Speed Sweep Janitor Service was getting to me. She shook me awake. “It’s a sin to sleep in church,” she told me.

  “It’s a sin to cry in church, too,” I said.

  Mrs. Apodaca looked at me.

  “No, it isn’t. And I wasn’t crying.”

  “It’s a sin to lie,” I said.

  “I suppose you’ll go and tell everyone in Hollywood that I was crying in church.”

  “I might,” I said.

  “Go ahead,” she said. Then, I saw her do something I’d never seen: I saw her smile. God. “No one will believe you,” she said. “No one will believe Mrs. Apodaca knows how to cry.” She walked out of the church. A few minutes later, she was standing over me again like an angel about to swoop me up in her arms and toss me into the pits of hell.

  “What are you doing in here, anyway? Haber ¿qué té pasa?”

  “I’m praying,” I said.

  “Why are you praying?”

  “Do I need a reason?”

  She nodded. “Did you do something you weren’t suppos
ed to do? ¿Qué hiciste?

  I shook my head. “Nada. No hice nada. I was just talking to my mom,” I said.

  And then she changed. And for a little while she was someone else. She even looked different. I mean, she looked at me and she placed her hand under my chin. It was warm, her hand. Not soft. She worked too hard for soft. “You look like her,” she whispered. “Era muy bonita tú mamá. Y muy linda.” It occurred to me then that she had loved my mother. And that she missed her. And that she took care of Elena every day after school not for the small amount of money my father gave her, but out of devotion to my mother’s memory. I almost liked her, then.

  “I miss her,” I said.

  Then she changed back to being Mrs. Apodaca. The one I knew. “We all belong to God,” she said. “Just remember that. Así es.” She patted my face and walked away.

  We all belong to God. I didn’t want to belong to him. I wanted to belong to Juliana and to my mother. But it was hard to belong to someone who didn’t have a body, who didn’t talk. I wanted to run after her and argue with her. And after I finished arguing with her, I wanted to ask her why she’d been crying. Not that she would have told me. I would find out soon enough.

  Maybe a week or two later, Mrs. Apodaca called me in when I went to pick up Elena at her house after school. She sent Elena out of the room. “Tengo que hablar con tú hermano.” Elena nodded and walked back to Gabriela’s room. I held my breath. I knew I was about to get a lecture. It was like bracing for a hundred-mile-an-hour Spring wind. “School is going to let out in a month,” she said. “What are you planning to do?”

  “I’m thinking of quitting my job,” I said.

  “Are you just going to sit around and let yourself rot like an apple on a tree someone forgot to pick?”

  I didn’t like apples. “No,” I said, “I put in an application at the University. You know, working on the grounds.”

  She nodded. “Good. It’ll keep you away from Juliana Ríos.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I saw you with her,” she said. “You let her kiss you.”