Always Running (15 page)

The whites in school brought in dudes from out of the area. They were tall, wide with long blonde hair. Two carloads cruised by where the Mexicans assembled by the gnarled tree. Santos, Chicharrón and Tiburón were there to challenge them. The white dudes got out of their cars, armed with bats. But it didn’t stop the homeboys from Lomas. I saw them attack the dudes while I looked out the window of a classroom. I rushed out with a few others, even though the class was still in session.

As one white guy swung his bat to strike Santos, Chicharrón came from behind and hit him over the head with a tire iron. Lencho and Wilo also showed up and went blow to blow with the others. I jumped on one guy. Soon the police came. As usual, they went after the Mexicans. The white dudes got into their cars and split without any trouble. But the rest of us were pulled to the ground, hands forced behind our backs. Guns pointed at our heads.

School officials had the police take us to the office. The police left after they had resumed some order. Santos and Tiburón, who were drop-outs, were dragged to the police station. Those of us still in school were expelled. This was fine with me. I hated school. And I loved fighting.

I worked as a bus boy in a Mexican restaurant in San Gabriel when I was 15 years old. My hours were in the evening until closing, which kept me up until 2 a.m. most nights. The father of a former Southside Boy managed the restaurant, which is how I got the job. It was kicking, hard work. Sometimes I’d be practically asleep while walking the dining areas—but we had to keep moving. We carried thick plastic trays heaped with dirty dishes, cleaned up tables, poured water into glasses, provided extra coffee—and took abuse from the well-to-do people who came there.

“Hey boy, clean up this mess.”

“Hey boy, how about some more water.”

“Hey boy, this steak is too well done.”

Hey Boy became my new name.

The clientele arrived in suits and evening dresses. They ordered the margaritas, considered the best in “aallll Caliiforniaaa.” They ordered and ordered. Even before dinner arrived, they were already pushed back against the chairs, ties undone and stupefied.

Before the night finished, white-haired women tried to do Spanish fan dances on the dining floor as businessmen called everyone “pancho,” holding dollar bills in our faces for more service.

We had our ways of getting back. The usual: putting snot and piss in their food before it got to their tables or “accidentally” spilling ice cold water on their laps or backs.

“So sorry,
señor.
How clumsy of me. A thousand pardons.”

But there were some fringe benefits. These people would order the best steaks, lobsters, and Mexican specialties and leave almost everything when they left. We stuffed the food in bags and later had feasts. Every once in a while I took home cooked lobsters and two-inch thick prime ribs!

My best friends were the waitresses and waiters. One waiter, a gay dude from Mexico, actually protected us younger guys from the cooks who ordered us around. I always thought it was because he wanted to get to me, but even so I must say he never raised this issue. One time he let us borrow his X-rated 16-millimeter films. After work, the bus boys got together for a marathon viewing of his films while dropping pills and chasing them with tequila.

The waitresses were cool and understanding, considering they had to endure even more abuse since they were women—dressed in peasant blouses which had been plunged down to reveal their shoulders and short
poblana
skirts with ruffles. They helped make sure I didn’t get cheated on the tips, something the waiters were less inclined to do.

But the most interesting part of the job involved the raids. Almost everyone who worked in the restaurant was an undocumented immigrant. Every so often, the immigration authorities assaulted the place. They would close doors and pull out badges.

“This is the United States Border Patrol,” they’d yell. “Nobody move …
nadie se mueve.”

Cooks flew out of kitchen windows.

They tried to pull me into their detention vans, but I carried a food-stained and slightly torn copy of my birth certificate in my pocket. It saved me from being deported, although there were times I thought it wouldn’t matter and I’d have to call home from Tijuana.

After about a week, the ones they threw across the border were back at work.

Not going to school meant a lot of free time. Sniffing became my favorite way to waste it. I stole cans of anything that could give a buzz: carbono, clear plastic, paint or gasoline. Sometimes I’d mix it up in a concoction and pour it on a rag or in a paper bag we sniffed from.

Behind the school, on the fields, inside the tunnel, at Marrano Beach and alongside the concrete banks of the San Gabriel River: I sniffed. Once I even climbed on top of a back hoe at a construction site, removed the lid off the gas tank and inhaled until somebody checked out the noise and chased me away.

Spray was dangerous; it literally ate your brain. But it was also a great escape. The world became like jello, like clay, something which could be molded and shaped. Sounds became louder, clearer—pulsating. Bodies removed themselves from bodies, floating with the sun. I sought it so desperately. I didn’t want to be this thing of bone and skin. With spray I became water.

Once I sniffed with Chicharrón and Yuk Yuk behind the “Boys” Market in San Gabriel. I don’t remember the trip, but they told me I suddenly stood up and proceeded to repeatedly bang my head against a wall. Pieces of hair and skin scraped on the brick. Chicharrón walked me home; refused to give me any more spray.

While on spray I yelled. I laughed. I clawed at the evening sky. I felt like a cracked egg. But I wouldn’t stop.

Then another time Baba, Wilo and I gathered in the makeshift hideout we had alongside the Alhambra Wash, next to the drive-in. We sat ourselves down on the dirt, some blankets and rags nearby to lie on. We covered the entrance with banana leaves and wood planks. There were several cans of clear plastic—what we called
la ce pe—
around us. We each had paper bags and sprayed into them—and I had already dropped some pills and downed a fifth of Wild Turkey. I then placed the bag over my mouth and nose, sealed it tightly with both hands, and breathed deeply.

A radio nearby played some Led Zeppelin or Cream or some other guitar-ripping licks. Soon the sounds rose in pitch. The thumping of bass felt like a heartbeat in the sky, followed by an echo of metal-grating tones. I became flesh with a dream. The infested walls of the wash turned to mud; the trickle of water a vast river. The homeboys and I looked like something out of Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer. With stick fishing poles. The sparkle of water below us. Fish fidgeting below the sheen.

Dew fell off low branches as if it were breast milk. Birds shot out of the tropical trees which appeared across from us. Perhaps this trip had been the pages of a book, something I read as a child. Or saw on TV. Regardless, I was transported away from what was really there—yet it felt soothing. Not like the oil stains we sat in. Not like the factory air that surrounded us. Not this plastic death in a can.

I didn’t want it to end. As the effect wore thin, I grabbed the spray and bag, and resumed the ritual. Baba and Wilo weren’t far behind me.

Then everything faded away—the dew, the water, the birds. I became a cartoon, twirling through a tunnel, womb-like and satiated with sounds and lines and darkness. I found myself drifting toward a glare of lights. My family called me over: Seni, Mama, Papa, Tía Chucha, Tío Kiko, Pancho—everybody. I wanted to be there, to know this perpetual dreaming, this din of exquisite screams—to have this mother comfort surging through me.

The world fell into dust piles around me. Images of the past pitched by: my brother tossing me off rooftops, my mother’s hearty laughter, my father’s thin and tired face, the homeboys with scarred smiles and the women with exotic eyes and cunts which were the churches I worshipped in. Everything crashed. Everything throbbed. I only knew: I had to get to the light, that wondrous beacon stuffed with sweet promise: Of peace. Untroubled. The end of fear.
Don’t close the door, Mama. I’m scared. It’s okay, m’ijo. There’s no monsters. We’ll be here. Don’t be scared.

No more monsters. Come to the light. I felt I would be safe there—finally. To the light. The light.

Suddenly everything around me exploded. An intense blackness enveloped me. A deep stillness. Nothing. Absolute. No thinking. No feeling. A hole.

Then an electrified hum sank its teeth into my brain. Hands surrounded me, pulled at me, back to the dust of our makeshift hideaway.

A face appeared above me. It leaned down and breathed into me. Images of leaves, crates, stained blankets came into view. Wilo pulled back and looked into my eyes. A haze covered everything. I felt dizzy. And pissed off.

“Give me the bag, man.”

“No way,” Baba said. “You died Chin—you stopped breathing and died.”

I tried to get up, but fell back to the ground. A kind of grief overwhelmed me. I was no longer this dream. I was me again. I wished I did die.

“You don’t understand,” I yelled to the homeboys. “I have to go back.”

I crept toward a paper bag but Baba kicked it out of my reach. Later I found myself stepping down a street. Baba and Wilo had pointed me in the direction of home and I kept going. I hated being there. I didn’t know what to do. God, I wanted that light, this whore of a sun to blind me, to entice me to burn—to be sculptured marble in craftier hands.

Wilo’s sister Payasa liked me and told him. She was okay, I guess, a real
loca
when it came to the ’hood. She had the high teased hair, the short tight skirts, the “raccoon” style makeup and boisterous presence. I ended up going with her. Mostly for Wilo’s sake at first.

After I got expelled from school, Payasa and I spent time together during the day since she refused to go to classes herself. We’d walk to Garvey Park. She would hand me some
colies
which I’d drop and soon start to sway, talk incoherently and act stupid.

“Oh, you’ll get over it,” Payasa said. “Eventually.”

She always said that.

After a time, whenever a car crashed, a couple argued or somebody tripped and fell, we’d look at each other and say at the same time: “Oh, you’ll get over it … eventually.”

When Wilo and I sniffed aerosol spray, sometimes Payasa joined us.

“Why do you let your sister do this?” I asked.

“That’s her,” Wilo shrugged. “I can’t stop her.”

Payasa was always high. The higher she got, the more bold she became. One time we were sniffing in the tunnel beneath the freeway. I started tripping: Snakes crawled from the sides, as well as melted faces and bolts of lights and a shower of shapes. She brushed up to me and pulled off her blouse. Erect nipples confronted me on firm breasts. I kissed them. She laughed and pulled me away.

“Oh, you’ll get over it,” she said. “Eventually.”

I was too fucked up to care.

One time in the park she said she wanted to take her pants and underwear off.

“Right here? Right now? … in front of everybody?”

“Yeah, why not?” she responded. “You dare me.”

“Sure—I dare you.”

She did.

Sniffing took the best out of her. Sometimes I’d walk through the tunnel and she would be there, alone, with a bag of spray, all scuffed up, her eyes glassy.

Payasa became a
loca
because of her older brothers. They were Lomas
veteranos,
older gangsters. Because Wilo and Payasa were younger, they picked on them a lot; beating them to make them stronger.

Payasa fought all the time at school. Whenever she lost, her older brothers would slice her tongue with a razor. She wasn’t ever supposed to lose. This made her meaner, crazier—unpredictable.

As a girlfriend Payasa was fun, but she couldn’t be intimate unless she was on reds, spray or snort.

I had to break with her. I loved the spray and shit but Payasa became too much like the walking dead. So I told her I didn’t want to see her anymore. She didn’t say anything, just turned around and left. I faintly said to myself, “Oh, you’ll get over it … eventually.”

She was later found in a daze, her arms with numerous deep cuts all the way to her elbows. Nobody would let me see her after she was taken to a rehabilitation hospital for teenage addicts. Wilo suggested I let it go.

“That’s Payasa, man,” Wilo said, and shrugged his shoulders.

I sank against the wall, my naked back splattered with grit. A razor glistened in my hand. A pail of water sat next to me. The room was stuffed to the top with junk I had accumulated, including stolen stereos and car radios which Yuk Yuk had stashed there for safekeeping.

The blade touched the skin and each time this song became louder in my head, a song which wouldn’t let up, as the melody resonated through me and the emptiness inside compressed into itself. Soon I filled up with a sense of being, of worth, with a clarity that I belonged here on this earth, at this time. Somehow, some way, it all had meaning. I made sense. There in the garage. Alone but alive. I barely made it. I almost got to the light. And somehow I knew the light wasn’t all the great feeling, hope and desire I thought at the time it would be. I stumbled upon the blackness; I had dared to cross the light, to enter the other side, beyond the barrier, into the shadow. But I had been yanked back just in time. Wilo and Baba for some reason were able to respond fast as I lay unconscious, unbreathing, there by the wash.

I put the blade down, peed into the water and fell asleep.

In my mother’s kitchen, I tried to recall the song of the night before, the one which stopped me from wasting myself, that said it was all right, but I couldn’t. I walked up to Mama. She refused to turn around and face me, although she knew I was there.

“Can I stay here and eat this morning?” I asked her in Spanish.

She turned around, hard eyes encircled by wrinkled skin. Then a smile filled her face and she became like a young woman again.

“Of course,
m’ijo,”
she said as she turned back to the stove to toss over a tortilla. “When you’re ready to visit, with respect to our house, you can come to eat.”