Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood (13 page)

“So, tell me, Sammy. What am I supposed to do about that?”

“Write two speeches,” I said.

“Two speeches. I can barely write one.”

“Write two, Gigi. One for the principal. And one, well, say what Gigi would say.”

“What am I gonna do with two speeches, Sammy?”

“I have a plan,” I said. “Trust me.”

For two weeks, we lived, slept, and ate Gigi’s campaign. We passed out flyers. We plastered the school with posters on butcher paper. Charlie Gladstein and Eric Fry and Jaime Rede—who seemed to be a changed man—made all the posters. They hung them up everywhere. Even in the boys’ bathrooms. We had three opponents. I thought we had them all on the run. I was beginning to think we might win. Maybe. Maybe was one of those words like okay. Those two words alone could kill you. Stay away from those words.

Every night, I went over to Gigi’s and made her practice her speech.
She wrote it herself. It was great. Really. She’d wanted me to write it. She’d begged me. “No,” I said. “Look, this is you, Gigi. It’s gotta be all you.” Okay, so I did a little editing. I swear, not a lot. It was all her. And I made her practice every night. “This is stupid,” she said.

“No,” I said. Not stupid. No one won an election by accident. Every night she practiced. It was like preparing for a concert. That’s what I told her. “Pretend you’re singing. Remember that night when you sang for us at the river? Do that. Okay? If you can do that, then you win.”

Two days before the election, Gigi turned in one of her speeches to the principal. That same day, we marched—Gigi’s twelve—that’s what we called ourselves—we marched down the hall between second and third period shouting, “¡Viva Gigi! What? ¡Viva Gigi! What? ¡Viva Gigi!” It wasn’t a great idea to do that. Not really great. But Angel said we should do it. So we did it. Beautiful Angel. And guess what? We were so hip. We were hip. The twelve. Viva Gigi.

The night before the election, Gigi called me. “What should I wear?”

“Not my category,” I said.

“C’mon, Sammy, no seas así.”

“Chingao,” I said, “I’m a guy. Wrong sex. Call Angel.”

“Damnit, Sammy, what should I wear?”

I wanted to tell her not to tease her hair. I wanted to tell her not wear so much makeup. I wanted to tell her not to fuck things up. “Wear blue,” I said. “And follow the script. Just like we practiced.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’m really scared.”

“Smoke a cigarette,” I said.

“Cabrón. You’re no help. You’re just a pinche.”

“After all I’ve done?”

“You were drafted.” I thought of Pifas. I’d written him a letter. His
mother gave me his address. I’d sent him a campaign button made of blue construction paper that said ¡Viva Gigi! “Yeah,” I said, “I was drafted. But I might have enlisted, anyway.” I thought of Pifas again.

We talked for a while. Me and Gigi. That’s all she needed. To talk. I liked her voice. And she was funny. And smart. And I still hated Eddie Montague for saying those things. I would never forgive him. I wouldn’t. I was becoming hard. That wasn’t a good thing. I couldn’t stop what I was turning into.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I thought of Pifas. I thought of Gigi. I thought of them together. In the back of some car, making love. Like me and Juliana. But I knew it wasn’t like me and Juliana at all. Juliana and I, well, we trembled. She never told me she loved me, but I knew she did. But Gigi didn’t love Pifas. There were other reasons to have sex. I knew that. Love wasn’t the only reason. And why was I thinking about Pifas and Gigi together in the back seat of a car?
Focus
, I said,
focus on the election.
I ran through a list in my mind. Was everything done? Had we done everything that was humanly possible? Had we talked to enough people? Had we—and then I stopped. I was doing it again. Relax. Relax. Why did I give myself lectures that didn’t work? I tossed. I turned. Sleep wasn’t going to come. I got up, put on an old pair of cut-offs and went out on the porch. I lit a cigarette. That’s what I always did. I sat there for a while, trying not to think of tomorrow.

I heard the front door open. I knew it was Dad. “¿Qué no puedes dormir?”

“Se me espantó el sueño.”

“It’s easy to scare sleep off,” he said. It was a joke. So I laughed. Not convincingly. But I laughed.

He sat next to me on the front steps of the porch.

“What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

“The worst thing? Lose.”

“Losing isn’t so bad.”

“Sure would be nice to win, Dad.” I flicked my cigarette out on the front yard. “We already know what it’s like to lose.”

I woke up nervous. You know the feeling. Your stomach is churning. You want to go back to bed. Only if you did, you wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. Your stomach feels like you swallowed a pigeon, and it was slamming against your insides, trying to get out. Panic city. I tried to pretend it was a normal day. I fixed breakfast for Elena. Scrambled eggs. “Come back to me, Sammy,” she said.

“I haven’t gone anywhere, mamacita,” I said. She liked when I called her mamacita.

“Yes, you have, Sammy. You’re away.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re doing something for Gigi. It makes you go away.” That meant I hadn’t read to her for two weeks.

I nodded. “I’m coming back. I promise.”

“When?”

“Tonight. Tonight I’m coming back.”

“You’ll read to me?’

“Seguro, mamacita.” She smiled. She had my dad’s smile. My mom’s eyes. A killer combination. I felt better. I walked to school.

The assembly was for seniors only. Since it was a special election, there were special rules. The runner-up would automatically be the vice president. Our classes marched in. There were about six hundred of us in our class—give or take. I won’t lie. I was nervous as hell. My palms were sweating. The twelve—we all sat together. We listened to the speeches,
dull stuff.
I promise to represent the students I promise that our dances will be really far out and the bands will be far out and I promise that I’ll do everything to make our senior year the grooviest year of your life are you fat are you short I want your vote I’m just like you so vote for me that way you’re voting for you.

Every one had their partisans. They made a big deal, like their candidate had really said something. Then it was Gigi’s turn. Stick to the plan, Gigi. Just stick to the plan. The dress was nice. Serious. Too much makeup. Again. But that was Gigi.
Relax. Relax.
She didn’t look nervous. Maybe all the practicing had paid off. She smiled at everyone. She raised the pages of her speech in the air. “This is my speech,” she said. “Mr. Fitz approved it. He approved all our speeches. That’s the system.” She paused—just like we’d practiced. She waved the pages of her speech in the air—then took it in her hands, and ripped it right in half. She tossed the ripped pages asíde. Everyone watched as the pages floated to the floor. She might as well have ripped the pages out of the Bible. You could hear people breathe—that’s how quiet it was. Everyone had stopped. Everyone was listening. “My name is Gigi Carmona and I want to be your president. You know why? Because nobody owns me. Nobody owns Gigi Carmona.” She’d changed the speech. Shit! She’d changed everything. I could hear my heart. Okay, Gigi, okay.

“You know,” she said—just like she was having a conversation, “you know, I don’t care about school dances. Maybe I’d care more if someone actually asked me out.” Everyone laughed. She had them. God. She had them. “I know. I know. I wear too much makeup.” She smiled. “I like it, baby ¿y qué?” Attitude. She was giving them attitude. They roared. They roared for Gigi. She waited for them to stop laughing and clapping—and then she started again. “I don’t care about football games. Maybe I’d care more if the guys who played that game walked around the school with
a little more respect in their walk. The school doesn’t belong to football players—it belongs to us. To everybody. I care about what happens in this school. I think we need to change the way we do things around here. I do. You know what I’m gonna do once you elect me president of the senior class? I’m going to lead the charge to change the dress code. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be a nun. And I don’t want to dress like one. You think if I’d said that in the speech I turned into the principal, that he’d have let me say it? No way!” God, she was going for all the marbles. This was her chance to say something—and damnit she was gonna make the most of it. Gigi Carmona had never stood in front of a microphone. And she was making it count. She pointed at the principal who was sitting next to all the candidates. “He would not have let me say what I wanted to say.” She stopped. She looked at all of us. “This is America. I believe in free speech, baby. Do you? If you don’t, I want to know why not?” She paused again. “My name is Gigi Carmona and I say it’s time we opened our mouths and raised some hell.” As those words came out of her, the senior class exploded. The whole world was yelling her name. The whole world was stomping their feet. Our teachers had lost control. We didn’t belong to them. We belonged to ourselves.

Gigi was happy. God, she was. And we were happy, too. Because we’d seen somebody—and the somebody she was had given us something. It was as if we were the last piece of America that was waking up. And Gigi was the one who was nudging us out of our slumber. It was good. God. Yeah, Gigi! I wondered what Eddie Montague was thinking now. I wanted to find him. I wanted to see the look on his face. I wanted to ask him if Gigi had said anything enlightening. But it wasn’t fair of me to think those things. It was mean. It was small. I knew that. And he hadn’t been the only one to sell her short. I had, too. Me. Sammy Santos. I’d sold her short. I didn’t think she had it in her. I’d mistaken her for the makeup
she wore. And even as I watched her standing in front of us glowing like she was on fire with the same kind of grace that a candle has when it burns in a church—even as she stood there—I was ashamed. For not believing. Gigi had told the truth. I hadn’t enlisted. I’d been drafted. I started yelling, “Gigi! Gigi! Gigi!” Maybe by yelling her name, I could wash away my guilt. And then, like magic, everybody was shouting, “Gigi! Gigi! Gigi!” and she stood there in front all of us, and I knew that the bird she had inside her was free. She had found a way to set it free. She tossed us all a kiss and I thought she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Politics is never easy. This was our first lesson. There would be more lessons. All of them would hurt. We may have won the battle—but we lost the war. Nobody doubted that Gigi had gotten the votes. Even one of her opponents confessed to voting for her. It didn’t matter. Our votes didn’t count. Democracy wasn’t always a simple thing. She’d broken the rules. This was a coloring book, and Gigi had colored outside the lines. They disqualified her. “You’re lucky we’re not suspending you.” They always say that. How undeserving and lucky you were. How generous and virtuous and forgiving they were. You’re lucky. That’s what they told her. They appointed a new president and a new vice president. But everybody knew the truth—Gigi Carmona from Hollywood had beaten them. She’d stood up there and spit at them. They’d forgotten to remind us of that particular rule on the first day of school: no spitting. No spitting in public.

Gigi came over that evening. Sat on my front porch and cried. “They stole it from me, Sammy.”

It was my fault. I was the one who’d given her the advice to switch the speeches. My big idea. But it was Gigi who was paying the price. “I’m
sorry,” I whispered. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d have won. I was supposed to help you, Gigi. I screwed you over.”

“No,” she said.

“Yes,” I said, “it’s true. I shoved you out on a busy street—and a car was coming. I screwed you over.”

“No,” she said. “That’s not right. You know what Fitz said?
You brought this on yourself.
That’s what he said. Don’t believe them, Sammy. If you believe them, then we lose.”

We did lose. That’s what I wanted to say. I put my arm around her.

“I was great. Don’t you think so, Sammy?” She broke down. Right there. Right there on my porch.

“God, Gigi, you were the most beautiful thing on the earth.”

I don’t know if she heard me or not.

Her tears had become a river. We both took a dive and swam there. Nothing else to do but swim.

Right after we’d finished Gigi’s campaign, my father began a campaign of his own. He and Frances Sánchez’ father were working the precinct for Hubert Humphrey. They walked the neighborhood, and not just ours. They handed out pamphlets put out by the Democratic National Committee. Meetings, meetings, meetings. Meetings with the local unions. Meetings with the Knights of Columbus. Meetings with the precinct chairs. Democrats loved meetings. My father was always gone. He’d come home late every night. I’d be sitting at the kitchen table doing my homework. I’d warm up dinner for him. He’d talk politics. I’d listen. I loved his voice.

When Halloween came along, I had to take Elena trick-or-treating. We had fun, me and Elena. I let her stay up and count her stash. She counted it over and over. But we missed our father. “He’s gone,” Elena
said, “just like you when you were helping Gigi.”

“Yes,” I said. “He’ll be back. Be patient. He’ll be back.”

On election day, we joined my father in front of my sister’s school, Hollywood Heights. Not the real name of the school—but that’s what we called it. That’s where the people of Hollywood voted. Our polling place. My father held his Humphrey sign like he was related to him. He greeted everyone as they walked in to vote. He knew everyone by name. All the men shook my father’s hand. He was acting just like Father Fallon—that’s what he did when people were coming out of Mass, shook everyone’s hands.