Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood (34 page)

“I’ve written everything down,” she said. She took out an envelope, the pages bursting out from it. “I want you to give this to Gabriela—when she’s old enough.” She pushed the envelope into my hands then looked away. “Will you?” she whispered. “No tengo a nadie.” I remembered the day I’d caught her crying in the church. “I lost three in the womb before Gabriela. God never let me see—.” She stopped. I hated to see her cry, to see her so weak. I hated that. Sometimes, when I was growing up, I hated her for being strong. I’d wanted to see her just like this. Weak. I’d sometimes prayed for her to break.

I was ashamed.

She tried to keep speaking, but her lips were trembling.

“I’ll be a good brother,” I said. “I promise.”

She fell back on the bed and nodded. I wanted to wipe her tears. But I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do. She closed her eyes and nodded. “I ran,” she said. “But from God? You can’t run from God.”

We all belong to God. That’s what she’d told me once. So that’s what I whispered, “We all belong to God.”

She nodded, and kept nodding until she fell asleep. I sat there, staring at the envelope with the story of how she’d come to the United States. The story for Gabriela, so she’d know.

I sat there for a long time. When I got up to leave, she opened her eyes and smiled at me. “There’s a picture,” she said, “of me and your mother before you were born. It’s in my house. I want you to have it.” She closed her eyes again. “If you see anything else,” she whispered, “just ask Gabriela.”

“No,” I said. “That’s enough.”

I don’t know why, but I kissed her hand. I thought of Pifas, his hands, how they’d stayed in another country. Maybe something was growing there, in that piece of ground where Pifas’ hands lay buried. I wondered if roses grew in Viet Nam.

I kissed her hand.

I came home. I tried to study. I went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night. I was dreaming of my mother. She was wearing a white dress. She was young and she was calling my name.

I got up, put on my pants and walked across the street, shirtless and barefoot. I walked into Mrs. Apodaca’s house and looked for the picture of her and my mother. It was on Mrs. Apodaca’s dresser. They were so young, my mother and Mrs. Apodaca. They looked like girls, like sisters. I never thought of Mrs. Apodaca as being beautiful. But in that picture, she was as perfect as a new moon. I took the picture and held it. I sat in that room for a long time. In the morning, when I woke, I was lying on Mrs. Apodaca’s bed, hugging the picture of her and my mother.

Two days later, Mrs. Apodaca died.

But she and my mother were alive in that photograph.

The day after Mrs. Apodaca’s funeral, I had my truck painted cherry red. I hung up one of Mrs. Apodaca’s rosaries on the rearview mirror. It smelled of roses. After a while, I took to talking to Mrs. Apodaca when I drove that truck. Even now, that rosary is hanging from my rearview mirror. When I drive, I still talk to her. Well, I don’t really talk to her. I argue with her. She still thinks she has all the answers.

I still hear
from Jaime. After everything that happened, he and Eric finally got together, and then, well, Eric was killed in a car accident. Accidents, they happen. They happen all the time. That’s how life is. We have plans. And then something happens. And everything’s gone. Like Mrs. Apodaca’s garden. Like my father, who got up to get a drink of water in the middle of the night, and had a stroke. He hung on for a while, but he was so sick. And he finally let go. “Voy a ver a mi Soledad.” Gone to see my mom. Those were his final words. The day after his funeral, I found a sign he’d painted on a piece of plywood among his things. He’d made the sign a couple of months before his brother was supposed to come home from serving in the Korean War. The sign said: “Welcome to Hollywood. Population 67.” Then the 67 was crossed out and said 68.

But his brother never never made it back. He was shot two days before he was supposed to come home. In Korea. A bullet right through his heart.

Tonight, I’m sitting here, trying to remember the boy I was when I fell in love with a girl named Juliana. We lived in a place called Hollywood. I can still see the streets and the houses—small—all of them. Some of them neat and taken care of, some of them as ragged as the people who lived in them. Some of them, more or less in the same shape as when they
were built. Some of them, with rooms added on in every direction, rooms added on with leftover materials. You didn’t call a builder. You didn’t call an architect. You did it yourself. And it came out like it came out. The one thing you never did was move.

Some of us made it out. Most of us didn’t. Not alive, anyway.

Not fair. Hell no.

When she was a little girl, Elena used to ask me, “If you could be anybody, Sammy, just for a day, who would you be?” I never had an answer. But now, I have an answer. If I could be anybody just for a day, I’d be Jesus Christ, that’s who I’d be. I’d go to all the graves. I would stand there. I would close my eyes and lift my arms. I’d be Jesus Christ—I’d stand in front of the graves of all the people I loved. And I’d raise them back to life.

All of them.

And after they were all alive again, I’d hug them and kiss them and never let them go. And I would be happy. I would be the happiest man in all the world.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz
was born in his grandmother’s house in Old Picacho, a small farming village in the outskirts of Las Cruces, New Mexico, in 1954. He was the fourth of seven children and was raised on a small farm near Mesilla Park. Later, when the family lost the farm, his father went back to his former occupation—being a cement finisher. His mother worked as a cleaning woman and a factory worker. During his youth, he worked at various jobs—painting apartments, roofing houses, picking onions, and working for a janitorial service. He graduated from high school in 1972 and went on to college. He studied philosophy and theology in Europe for four years and spent a summer in Tanzania. He eventually became a writer and professor and moved back to the border—the place where he feels most at home. He lives in El Paso, Texas, forty miles downriver of Las Cruces, and teaches creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso.