Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood (29 page)

He tied the armband on me.

“Give up? Then why the hell am I wearing this?”

We walked through the hallway. Five more weeks, I thought. Five more weeks and I would be gone. I would be a ghost. I wouldn’t matter a damn to these halls. They weren’t built for me, not for Sammy Santos. That’s what I was thinking when Colonel Wright walks up to René and me—right there, right in the hallway. Right there, in the crowded hallway. “What’s this?” he says. And he reached for René’s armband. Like he was gonna rip it right off.

René didn’t say anything.

“I asked you a question, son.”

René pulled away from Colonel Wright’s grasp.

But the Colonel was mad. He was really mad. And he moved right up to René, right in his face. And he looked right at René and he says, “You’re a coward, son. That’s what you are.” And he said it so loud that everyone around stopped, just stopped. And the hallway got real quiet. And then he pointed at René and he looked at all the kids and he said, “This here is what a coward looks like.” And I thought René was
going to explode, but my pigeon came awake right then, and I couldn’t figure out why I’d hated that pigeon because I understood then that he always came around exactly at the right time, and so, me and my pigeon, we knew we had to get to work and do something. I kept thinking that if René lost it, he would take a swing. And he’d been arrested before, and if he took a swing, maybe his life would be over, and I couldn’t let that happen. When the Colonel grabbed René’s arm and tried to rip his armband clean off his arm, that’s when I pushed him. That’s when I pushed the Colonel away.

And the Colonel just stared at me. And I could see what he was holding in his eyes. Fucking good-for-nothing little sonofabitch, ungrateful cockroach who doesn’t know crap, who’ll never understand anything about the business of living. God, I could see everything he was holding there. And it was a kind of freedom to see it. To see all his hate written there, in his eyes, on his face. It was so clear.

“Santos,” he said. “I’ll meet you and your friend here in the principal’s office.”

“No sir,” I said. “I won’t be at that particular meeting.”

“What? Santos? You plan on graduating?”

“That’s exactly what I’m planning.” That’s what I said. There were so many things I wanted to say to him, a thousand things—and then suddenly I didn’t want to say anything at all. I was tired. Damnit to hell, I was tired. It had been such a long year. And I wondered when I would get to rest. God, I was so tired. And I hadn’t even turned eighteen yet. I wanted to look that sonofabitch right in the face and spit at him—spit—just spit and keep on spitting.

He grabbed my arm. I hated the warmth of his hand. “Pifas is dead,” I said. And he let go of me. He knew who I was talking about. He’d read
it in the newspaper, he’d seen a picture of Pifas’ mother kissing his coffin, clutching a flag—clutching a flag instead of clutching a son. God. “Epifánio Jose Espinosa was killed in action. In Viet Nam. Epifánio. They brought him home. Not all of him, Colonel. They couldn’t find his hands. Blown clean off. His hands, Colonel, they stayed in Nam. His hands stayed there, Colonel, but the rest of him, the rest of him, they buried yesterday. Say his name for me, Colonel. Say it. Goddamnit! Say his name for me.” He grabbed my arm again and started dragging me toward the office. But I wasn’t going to let him. I pulled away from him. I was stronger. He knew I was stronger. “Epifánio,” I said. “His name meant epiphany. It’s what happens at the end of story or a poem when something is revealed. It means we’ve learned something.”

He let go of my arm. He stood there looking at me.

“It means we’ve learned something, Colonel.”

He stood there. Lost. He looked defeated, the Colonel. That’s how he looked. But he was standing, and he was alive. And, Pifas, hell, he was dead.

René and I, we just kept walking down the hall.

I hadn’t remembered my dream about Pifas, about all the people who were passing by in front of my house—waving at me. The living and the dead. Waving at me. I hadn’t remembered. But that day, after the incident with Colonel Wright, I remembered. I’d dreamed Pifas’ hands.

That night, before I went to sleep, René called. He just wanted to talk. I lay in bed talking to him. I told him about the dream I had. He said, “Sammy, soon you’ll have better dreams.” René, he’d changed. He was different now. He could have gone either way I think. He was going to live. I knew that now.

When I fell asleep, I had another dream. Juliana was walking down the street—and she had someone with her. It was Pifas. And she left him standing there in front of me. He walked up to me on the front porch. And I could see he didn’t have any hands. And he was sad. And I was sad, watching him. And I couldn’t do anything about his sadness. His sadness or mine. Couldn’t do anything about it. And then as he raised his arms—his hands, his big beautiful hands, they were there. God, they were there. And he was waving. “Hey, Sammy! Hey, Sammy!” He wasn’t waving good-bye. He was saying hello. Pifas, he’d come home.

“It’s better just to forget everything that’s happened.”

“Why is that, Sammy?”

“You can’t change the past, Elena.”

“I don’t want to forget, Sammy.”

“Well, I guess I don’t either.”

Things never end
the way you expect them to.

We start off down one road—toward a place we’ve picked out on a map. A place we’ve spent years imagining. Then something happens. And everything changes. Maybe the problem is that we expect too much. I mean, what did I think was going to happen to me after high school was over? Did I think I was going to wind up in Hollywood—the one in California?

I don’t know why I’d bothered to make so many plans. Eight schools—that’s how many universities I applied to. I planned it all out, all by myself. And I never told anyone. But after the letters started coming in, I told my dad. Well, really, he’s the one that always got the mail—so he figured it out soon enough. Eight schools. And that’s just how many acceptances I got. Well, they didn’t really know me, anyway. If they would have known who I was, they wouldn’t have accepted me. All they saw were my grades and those stupid essays I wrote. So I told myself that really those schools accepted an idea of me.

Berkeley. That was the place on the map that I’d picked. And that school had said yes. And my dad had saved money, and he said yes too. Berkeley became a secret my dad and I shared for a few brief months. For a while, I really started believing that it was really going to happen. Me, Sammy Santos from Hollywood was going to Berkeley.

When my dad gave me the letter, my whole body shook. And when I opened it, I said, “They took me! They took me!”

My dad cried and said, “Of course they did, hijo de mi vida.”

I didn’t know I had that kind of happiness inside me. I thought all I had was that damned pigeon. Anyway, like I said, we spend years imagining and making plans. And then something happens. Something always happens.

Things never end the way you expect them to.

There were lots of parties the night we graduated. That was the plan—go to lots of loud parties. We were the generation of loud. Rock wasn’t rock unless it was loud. What was Jimmi Hendrix if he wasn’t loud? What was Three Dog Night? What was Grand Funk Railroad? Loud, baby, that’s what we liked. Except me. I hated loud. Hated loud and hated beads and hated bellbottoms. I never liked slogans and that’s what everything was. Sometimes, I wonder if I was ever really a part of my own generation. If I wasn’t a part of my generation and if I wasn’t a real Mexican and if I wasn’t a real American, what the hell was I? I was my pigeon. That’s what Elena had decided. I was Al, my pigeon. I’d given him a name. If the pigeon was gonna stick around, he might as well have a name.

Graduation was pretty damned dull for the most part. That was the school administration’s plan. Dull. They loved their plans more than they loved the kids they taught. More than they loved us. They’d warned us about demonstrations. Graduation wasn’t political. That’s what they told us at practice. And it was also no place to demonstrate your egos, your originality, or your sense of humor. “Make your jokes somewhere else.” Yeah, yeah. When Susie Hernandez got her diploma, she raised her gown and showed the world her latest short dress. Here. Here’s my sense of humor. She didn’t care. Her father was in some bar getting drunk. Again.
And Gigi? Gigi threw kisses. Like an opera star taking a bow after the opera was over. Kisses. Kisses for everyone. We all reached out to catch them. Some guy named Brian took out a big sign from under his gown that said, “Love and Grass.” And Charlie Gladstein—not to be outdone—had a sign too, “Peace is a state of mind.” René was sitting in the row in front of me. When Charlie whipped out his sign and showed it to the audience, René whispered, “Yeah, sure, it’s right next to the state of Chihuahua.”

And when it was all over, diplomas in hand, we marched out. And the Class of 1969 was history. Our parting gift to Las Cruces High: a new dress code and a bronze plaque that read: “Love is the Answer. Peace is the Way.” Oh, we were so fucking cool. Only we didn’t know what love was. Peace either. Peace was not something the world taught us about. The only redeeming thing about that plaque was that Colonel Wright and Mrs. Jackson would hate it.

But now the plan was to do some serious partying. Some of us in our class had been born to do just that. And only that.

Me and my friends, we started out at my house—not exactly a center for wild blowouts. Dad had put up Christmas lights all over the porch. Red and blue, our school colors. Dad, he was so straight. And predictable. And steady. I laughed when I saw the lights. Funny. René thought it was really cool. Pifas would’ve said “Fuckin’ A, Mr. Santos, Fuckin’ A.” It was really Hollywood, those lights. Some little kids came by and looked at the house. They laughed. But they liked it. I liked it too. And all the little kids, they brought other little kids. And they pointed. “¡Mira! ¡Mira! And it’s not even Christmas.”

And me, I was all dressed up for the occasion. I was wearing a new shirt. Green. The color of olives. It was the only shirt I’d ever picked out myself. Pure silk. Soft. Like my mom. Like Juliana’s skin. Soft. My dad,
he’d bought me everything I had. I’d never really cared. He’d just pick clothes out for me, bring them home, and he’d say, “¿Te gustan?” And I’d say, “They’re great, Dad.” He knew I didn’t care. But this shirt, I’d picked it out myself. Cost me fifteen dollars. A fortune. And for the first time in my life, I went into a men’s store and gave myself a good look in the mirror. Nice shirt. Fifteen dollars.

Gigi wore a dress the color of the sun. I swear that yellow dress glowed. That dress made you want to touch her dark skin. That was the point, I think. Gigi, she was something. She always had been, always would be, and I hoped one day she’d look at herself in the mirror and say it: “I’m something. I’m really something.” Her and Charlie had broken up, gotten back together, broken up, and graduation night, they were back together. He was crazy about her. I mean, loco, baby. I mean that guy had it bad for Gigi. Gigi liked him too. But really, I think Gigi liked the idea of someone worshipping her. That’s why she got mad at me—because I wouldn’t always go along with her bullshit schemes. Because I didn’t worship her. At least not in the way she wanted me to. Not that she wasn’t great, Gigi. She was. Yup, she was something. But she was also hell.

But graduation night wasn’t about love and dating—it was a group thing. We’d survived something together. A place called Las Cruces High. We were done with it. And it was done with us. So me and René and Susie and Angel and Gigi and Charlie and Frances and her new boyfriend, Larry Torres, who still could still piss me off in ten seconds flat, we all went out together. No fights, I told myself. Keep your fists in your pockets.

We got in two cars. Angel and I wound up in the back seat of René’s car, and Susie and René looked like maybe they had a thing for each other. Bad idea, I thought. Susie didn’t put up with much. Spoke her mind.
René didn’t like that. He said he did. But he didn’t like that at all. No, they didn’t go together any more than Gigi and Charlie. Already, Susie and René were in the front seat arguing about how many beers a girl should drink. “One. Maybe two,” René said. “That’s it.”

“And a guy?” Susie wanted to know.

“Many as he wants. As many as he can handle.”

Angel rolled her eyes at me. I laughed.

I lit a cigarette.

“Gimme one of those,” Angel said.