Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood

  Just then, I thought I’d light a cigarette. That’s when I heard someone yell, “Fight! Fight!” Somehow the whole party had pushed itself out to the front yard. There was a big circle around two guys who were going at it. I had a feeling. I did. So I elbow my way to the front. And there’s René and some guy who played football named Scott. And they were really fighting. They hated each other. Nobody could fight like that if they didn’t hate. Shit. Shit. And then someone yells, “Cops! Cops!” And Scott and René don’t care. They keep fighting. But I care. And if the cops came, I knew they’d just haul René in again. I hated that. I jumped in. Crazy. I was crazy. “Goddamnit, René, let’s get the hell outta here!” He looked at me—then we just ran.

  I couldn’t believe it, there I was running down some street, didn’t even really know where I was running. And then I start getting mad. This is what I get for saying okay. This is what I get for dancing with the fucking devil—I wind up in hell. What did I expect? Shit, when I get a hold of Pifas—I kept looking back to see if there was a cop car following us. And then I saw these headlights, and I thought, busted. Cabrón, Pifas, when I get a hold of that little shit — busted, busted. My heart was pounding right up to my throat. Right there. In my throat. And then, when I turned I could see it wasn’t a cop car, just an old beat up ’57 Chevy, but that didn’t stop me from running. I just ran, René still running behind me. And as the car caught up to us, I heard a voice, “Hop in.” Gigi! It was Gigi! Thank God. Thank God for Gigi. We didn’t ask questions, we just hopped in the car.

  “You guys aren’t too smart, you know that? How many times have you been hauled in, René? And you, Sammy?” The thing about Gigi was that she was pretty straight. I mean, she played tough, but she wasn’t. Not really. There were some girls in Hollywood that were really tough. But Gigi wasn’t one of them. She was a nice girl trying to pretend she wasn’t.

  “Can I catch my breath?” I said.

  No one said anything for a while. René and I, we just wanted to catch our breath. God, breathing can be loud. In a car. When no one’s talking. I wiped the sweat off my face with the shoulder of my shirt. “Thanks, Gigi,” I said. “You saved our asses.”

  “Yeah, well, look, give me a smoke.” So I gave her a smoke. I watched her light it, then noticed who was driving the car. A girl who lived down the block. Angelina. Quiet. Never stood out much. Everyone called her Angel. Good girl type. What was she doing at a keg party?

  “Hi Angel,” I said.

  “Hi Sammy.” She had a nice voice. Soft. Maybe too soft for a girl from Hollywood.

  “So where we going?” René says. “It’s early.”

  “I’m not taking you anywhere. I’m gonna dump your Raza ass at home—unless you promise not to start anymore fights. What is it with you, anyway? You’re such a bofo. Estás loco ¿o qué?”

  “I didn’t start that fight. That pinche gringo has it in for me. Y yo no me dejo. Hell no. I don’t bow to cabrones like that. No way. Next time I see that cabrón I’m gonna kick his ass all the way to Minneapolis or wherever the shit his people come from.”

  “You know why Gloria broke up with you? Because you think with your fists, that’s why. That’s even worse than thinking with your dick.”

  “Hey, hey, Gigi,” I said.

  “Cállate, Samuel. Just shut up.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Gloria.”

  “Guess you don’t. She loved your stupid pinche brown ass. Did you care?”

  “I cared.”

  “Oye el agua. Está lloviendo. Look, just shut up.”

  “This is fun,” I said. “We’re having fun, aren’t we, Angel?”

  Angel smiles but she’s a good driver. She nods and just keeps driving. By then, we were on El Paseo just cruising. And then René says, “Hey, there’s Pifas! Honk, Angel.” Angel, good girl that she was, does exactly what René says.

  René hangs out the window, “Hey, Pifas!”

  Pifas looks up, and does that Aztec chin thing. We both pull over to a side street.

  “There was cops everywhere! Chingao, and everyone’s running, and I’m thinking, shit, all that wasted beer. And people are hiding all over the house, and Hatty’s crying, felt bad for her, and I’m just tryin’ like hell to boogie, ¿sabes?” Sometimes when Pifas got going, you couldn’t shut the guy up. “Bunch of people got busted. And, cabrones, you left without me. Órale ¿qué pues?” But already, he’d forgiven us. “Let’s go to the river. I got some Boone’s Farm.” And he just takes off.

  “Follow ‘em,” René says. And Angel does what she’s told.

  “Pifas is all screwed up, ¿sabes?” Gigi does this thing with her cigarette like she’s writing a sentence in the air.

  “He’s alright, Pifas.” René was loyal. I liked that. “Buena gente. He’s there when you need him.”

  Gigi was into lecturing. If she didn’t watch herself she was gonna grow up and be Mrs. Apodaca. “He finds trouble. He smells it. Just like you, René. If you could only smell money like you smelled trouble.”

  “Yeah, yeah. If only, if only,” René said. He kind of went away for a second. I could tell. I wondered where he went. He did that sometimes, went somewhere in his head. Just like me.

  At the river, we parked the cars. God, you could see everything in the moonlight. The river looked clean and pure—even though it wasn’t. In the light of that summer moon, everything seemed calm. Even us. Even Pifas and René. God, I liked it there. I think the garden in my head was lit up like this. Better than any party.

  Gigi and Angel and René and Pifas and me, we sat there and drank Boone’s Farm Apple Wine. And we smoked. Mostly Angel didn’t say anything, she just listened. But one thing I noticed about her. She was there. She was really there. Not like me. I was somewhere else. In my heart. Pifas and René were drinking a lot. Gigi and I only drank a little. Then, out of nowhere, Angel says, “Let’s play a game. Let’s play, What-are-we-going-to-do-when-we-leave-Hollywood?”

  No one said anything. Everyone was thinking she was stupid. But before anyone said that, I said, “College. I’m going to college.”

  “Me, too,” Angel said.

  René looked at us like we were crazy. “Not me. No gringo-ass college for me. More teachers and more gringos. No way. I’m gonna go be a boxer in L.A. That’s where I’m headed.”

  “A boxer?” Gigi said. “Estas loco. Te van a matar.”

  “Nobody’s gonna get killed,” René laughed. He took a big swig from the bottle of wine and passed it to me.

  “I joined up.”

  We all looked at Pifas.

  “What?” Gigi said.

  “I said I joined up.” Pifas had this really serious expression on his face.

  “You’re drunk, Pifas.”

  “Fuckin’ A, René,” he said. “¿Y qué? But I’m goin’ in the pinche Army.”

  René had this sick look on his face, like he just couldn’t believe it. “Órale, Pifas, don’t be a pendejo. What are you gonna do in the army? There’s a war goin’ on, ese. Don’t you pay attention? Hollywood isn’t enough for you? Shit, ese, you’re joining the system instead of fucking fighting it. You should join the Brown Berets, not the fucking Army.”

  “Órale, I’m not a pendejo. What the shit am I supposed to do? It’s either enlist or get drafted. Brown Berets, my ass. When they draft me, what are the fuckin’ Brown Berets gonna do? What are they gonna do for Pifas Espinosa? Fight the system, shit! Shit! That’s what I say. Who’s the pendejo, René? What do you want me to do, run through the shithole streets of Hollywood yelling, ‘Come out of your goddamned good-for-nothing houses and fight the fuckin’ system! Come out! Come out!” Pifas got up from the hood of his car and started running around throwing his arms in the air like a bird flapping his wings—a bird that couldn’t fly no matter how hard he flapped. And he kept yelling, “Come out!” like a crazy man. “Citizens of Hollywood, rise up! Rise up against the fucking system!” We all watched him, didn’t say anything, just watched, look
ed at each other like maybe we were supposed to do something. But what do you do when someone loses it? Right there, in front of you. Right there. He threw himself on the ground and just lay there, “Rise up! Fucking rise up!” Then he laughed. I thought he would laugh forever. And right then, the laughing sounded like crying. And maybe he was crying. Then, he stopped. Just stopped. Got up and sat back on the hood of his car. “I enlisted,” he said, his voice completely normal again.

  “Are you okay?” Gigi whispered.

  He nodded. “Yeah. I enlisted. And, anyway, what if they send me to Germany instead of Nam?”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “It could happen, ese.” Pifas looked away from René, then looked at me. “It could happen, couldn’t it, Sammy?”

  “Yeah,” I said. He knew. I knew. Everyone knew. But I said yeah.

  “Nothing’s gonna happen to me,” he said. Then he twisted open a new bottle of wine.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Remember that time those guys were after you, all those pachucos, and you grabbed my rake as you ran by, then turned around and bashed one of those guys with it? Broke my rake on that poor bastard. Right in half, broke my rake. All those vatos after you, and nothing happened. Not to you, Pifas.”

  Pifas laughed, “Fuckin’ A.”

  No one said anything for a long time. We just sat there. Just another summer night. Five of us from Hollywood, at the river, having a good time. We had smokes and wine. We didn’t have anything to be sad about. But for a minute, we all went to our separtate corners, all of us like the boxers René wanted to be, all of us tired, all of us wanting to rest for a minute before we got in the ring again. I don’t know what everybody else was thinking. Maybe they were thinking what I was thinking—that Pifas would go to a place called Viet Nam. That maybe he wouldn’t come back. That maybe we weren’t kids anymore and that last summer’s baseball games in the empty lot behind the Apodaca’s house were something that we’d lost. Lost without even knowing it. That was the problem with growing up—you lost things you didn’t know you had.

  Finally, after a while, Gigi reached over and kissed Pifas on the cheek. Like a sister. “Oh, Pifas, estas mas loco que un perro suelto.”

  They were both sitting on the hood of Pifas’ car. And I could tell Pifas, well, he got a little embarrassed. He was a year older, almost nineteen, but right then, he looked like he was ten. Ten and going off to the Army.

  I don’t know why—maybe I just didn’t want to think about Pifas going off to the military. I don’t know, I just wanted to think about something else. So I looked at Gigi and asked, “Hey, Gigi, what do you want to do when you leave Hollywood?”

  She grabbed the bottle of wine away from Pifas. “What if I don’t want to tell you?”

  “Ah c’mon,” Pifas said. “Tell us.”

  She took a swig from the bottle of wine. “No laughing.”

  “No laughing,” I said.

  “Tell them, Gigi.” Angel said it like she already knew.

  “Okay,” she said. There was that word that got you into trouble. She nodded. “I’m gonna be a singer.”

  “A singer?” René said.

  Angel shot him a look. “You said no laughing.”

  “A singer?” Pifas said. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” she said. She smiled. Gigi had a killer smile.

  “Sing something,” Pifas said.

  “Nah.” But she wanted to sing. We could tell.

  “C’mon,” I said. “Sing something for us, Gigi.”

  Even Angel, quiet Angel, told her to sing.

  “I don’t know,” she said. She was backing down.

  “C’mon, Gigi,” Pifas said, “sing.” He sounded sad. Sounded as if he’d break down and cry if she didn’t.

  She smiled at him. “Okay,” she said. “If anyone laughs they’ll be sorry. I swear there’ll be trouble.” She took a breath. She stopped. Took another breath. Then she started. Soft and unsure. At first. But then clearer and clearer. She sang. God, I didn’t know. I didn’t know anybody could sing like that. And the song she was singing, it was an old Mexican love song entitled La gloria eres tú. I’d expected her to start singing some rock and roll song or something that matched her go-go boots or maybe a Joan Baez tune—but that’s not what she was singing. She was singing in Spanish. She was singing from a different place. In a language that didn’t matter a damn. But it mattered to Gigi. And it mattered to us—to Pifas and René and to Angel. La gloria eres tú. God, she could sing. And in the moonlight, she didn’t seem like a girl at all. She was a woman with a voice. Any man would die just to hear that voice. I swear—just to hear it. I thought the world had stopped to listen to Gigi—Gigi Carmona from Hollywood. I could see tears rolling down Pifas’ face. As pure as Gigi’s voice. I could feel those wings inside me again—like they were coming back to life, like all they needed was just one beautiful song for them to get up and start beating again. Everything was so perfect, I mean really perfect. Maybe this was what the garden was like. Maybe this was the way the world should end. Not with me and my own thoughts, not with high school boys using their fists on each other, not with Pifas going off to war—but with the tears of boys falling to the beat of a woman’s song, the sounds of guns and bombs and fists against flesh disappearing. This is the way the world should end: with boys turning into men as they listen to a woman sing.

  I wish Juliana had been there.

  Chapter Eight

  “YOU think I’m a dumbass, don’t you, Sammy?”

  We were sitting on my front porch one night, a week before Pifas was leaving. Leaving—I’ve always hated that word. It was beginning to thunder. Rain. August was like that. “Toss me a cigarette,” I said. “I’m out.” He tossed me one. I lit it. “No,” I said. “I don’t think that.”

  “Yeah, you do. You don’t respect me. Dime la verdad. I can take it.”

  “No seas pendejo. I respect you, Pifas.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since that night. When Juliana—you know. Since that night.”

  “And before that?”

  “Before that? I thought you were a dumbass.”

  He laughed. We both laughed.

  He nodded. I watched him—then joined in the nodding.

  “I’ve always been a screw up,” he said. “Not you, Sammy. Ever since grade school, you were one serious kid. Always working—puro trabajar, trabajar, trabajar. Mano, tienes que re-laaaaaaax. Even when you play, it’s work for you. Me, I do too much relaxing.”

  “You’re not a screw up,” I said.

  “I didn’t enlist.”

  “What? What are you saying, Pifas?”

  “I got drafted. I didn’t want anyone to know, know what I mean? ¿Sabes? Me dio vergüenza. So I made out like I enlisted. Everyone knows only losers get drafted.”

  “Don’t do that, Pifas. It’s a system. It’s just a system.”

  “There are winners in that system, Sammy. Look, I know the score. Look, we both know, don’t we, Sammy? There’s two kinds of people in this fucking world—those who make it and those who don’t. We’re on different sides of that coin, ¿sabes? And when that coin was tossed, your side landed facing the sky and my side landed facing the fucking ground. And we both know, don’t we, Sammy? And there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. Let’s not waste time cryin’ about what’s never gonna change.”

  “You’re not a loser,” I said. It was storming now. The rain was coming down, the sky crackling like it was a piece of dry wood on fire. “You’re not a loser, Pifas.”

  “You used to think so.”

  “Damnit to hell, I was wrong.” I looked at him. So many times, I hadn’t seen him. “Pifas, listen. Listen to me. I was wrong about you.”

  They were rioting in Chicago. Rioting. Not that riots were something foreign. I grew up watching that sort of thing. Normal stuff. Blood was normal. People exploding like boxes of ammunition—that was normal. The grotesque, twisted faces of men and women shouting, being hit. The reflex of a
n arm going up to protect a face. Faces were sacred. The Aztecs knew that. Not there, don’t hit me there. I grew up like a lot of people—being a witness to all that from the safe distance of my own home. Television did that. Made you far from things. Made you a watcher. Made you believe you were safe. We watched the footage, my father and I, on the news. He was addicted to the news, needed to watch like I had come to need cigarettes. Never missed, not if he could help it. He pointed at the screen. “Look, hijo. Mira. Cabrones. This is not democracy.” My father didn’t cuss much. But he cussed when he watched the news. There was always something on to make him mad. He could get pretty fierce about things. His children. His politics. He looked at me, “Do you think this is democracy?”

  “No, Dad,” I said, “it’s a riot. It’s a bunch of cops beating up on demonstrators.”

  “And you think this is a good thing?”

  “No, Dad.” I’d had these conversations with him before. I knew how they went. He wanted me to think. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t brain dead. You can’t just think about yourself. You can’t just think about school. There’s a world, mi’jo. You have to think about what’s going on in it. You have to figure out your place. That was his standard lecture. Or some variation.

  He shook his finger at the television screen again. “Mayor Daley’s a pinche,” he said. “You watch. Because of this, that sinvergüenza Nixon’s going to win the election.” My dad hated Nixon. I hated him, too. I hated him for my dad.

  “What about the protesters?” I said. “They beat the hell out them, Dad. What about them?”

  My dad shook his head. He had no answer. “Están chingados. Pobres,” he said, “they thought they were going to change the world.”