Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood (10 page)

“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.

“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 an 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.”

“The world’s not worth changing,” I said.

My father looked at me and shook his head. “A veces no te conozco.” He’d switched to Spanish. That meant he was mad. Not good. Sometimes, I disappointed him. “Estás muy joven para pensar así.”

He was right—I was too young to be so cynical. I was tired. I was sad. Pifas was going off to the Army. Pifas was right about me, about what I felt. I hadn’t liked him before, but now, everything was different. I liked him. He’d grown on me. Had a good heart even though he could be a real pain in the ass. Didn’t mean any harm. And here he was, off to get himself killed. I wasn’t in the mood for thinking good thoughts. Blood on the streets of Chicago didn’t do anything for my bad mood. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“The world’s a good place, Sammy.” He shook his head. “Even though this damned country’s falling apart, I’m telling you the world’s a good place.” He laughed. “Me estoy volviendo loco.”

“No, dad, you’re not crazy.” I hated when he got down on himself. I wanted to kiss him. He kissed me all the time, my dad. So how come I couldn’t get my ass off the couch and kiss him? I got up, walked into the kitchen and brought him a beer. “You want a cigarette, Dad?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Give me one.”

I handed him one. He lit it. “Summer’s almost over.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Next year you’re going to college?”

He asked that about once a week. He wanted to be sure.

“Yeah, Dad.”

“And Pifas is off to the Army?”

“Yeah, Dad. There’s a party for him tomorrow night.”

“His mom told me. This is going to kill her, Sammy. She loves that boy.”

“Yeah, Dad,” I said. “She’s a nice lady.”

“Ese muchacho, yo no sé. He never made one good decision in his life.” He just kept shaking his head. “No sense, he just doesn’t have any
sense.” My dad took a long, slow drag off his cigarette. “Don’t ever join the Army.”

“I won’t.”

He looked at me. “Never. ¿Me entiendes?”

“I understand, Dad.” Joining the Army had never crossed my mind. He knew that. I’m not the Army type—I’d told him that a hundred times. But I understood what he was trying to tell me. He was afraid. Of losing me—just like Mrs. Espinosa was losing Pifas.

“My brother was killed in Korea,” he said.

We had a picture of my uncle in the living room—next to the picture of John Kennedy. “I know, Dad.”

“He was all I had.”

“I know, Dad.”

“They threw me out of the Army, did you know that?”

“Yeah, Dad, you told me.”

“They said I was retarded. That’s why they threw me out. That’s what it says on my discharge papers. My commanding officer thought Mexicans were about as smart as dogs. That’s why, that’s the real reason. Desgraciados. Just threw me out. Like I didn’t belong. Retarded.”

I’d heard the story too many times. That hurt in his voice. I wanted it to stop. But I knew it would always be there. I hated them for that. For giving him a hurt he’d carry for a lifetime. I was starting to know a lot of things about hurt. I thought about the dead wings lying somewhere inside me. They were kind of rotting by now, I guess. And my father, well, he must’ve had those dead wings inside him, too. Only I figured, because he was a lot older, he had a whole dead bird buried somewhere and it was making him old. Maybe that bird died the same time as my mother. Yeah, that was it, that’s how I was beginning to see the whole thing. I don’t
know. I think a lot about stuff. Anyway, I just looked at my dad and said, “Screw them, Dad, it doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t ever let them treat you like that.”

“I won’t.” I watched him smoke his cigarette. “Dad,” I said. “You’re the best, ¿me entiendes?” He smiled. I loved to see him smile.

Pifas’ party was
at his brother’s trailer house. They’d cleaned it all up for the occasíon. All kinds of people were there—Gigi Carmona and Susie Hernandez and Frances Sánchez and Angel and Jaime Rede and Joaquín and René and Reyes, and all of Pifas’ brothers—all five of them. Hatty Garrison was there with her friends, Pauline and Sandra. They were both Mexican, but they didn’t look Mexican. That happens. Lots of other people I didn’t know so well were there, people I knew from Hollywood, some of Huicho’s brothers whom I hated. I had my reasons. And some other people I knew from high school.