The Chicano/Latino Literary Prize (18 page)

Staring into the vacant cupboard, Rosalba became even hungrier. She closed the cupboard doors then walked toward the kitchen window that overlooked an alley behind their home; the alley was cluttered with burnt mattresses, treadless tires, and weather-beaten furniture.

Rosalba leaned against the streaked glass, fibers of hair dispersed themselves across her face. She looked over the Los Angeles sky, smudged over with smog, blocking out the mountains or greenery in the distance. In a dirt yard, children played and chattered in broken English and half-Spanish, a language all their own like the pidgin spoken wherever cultures merged and clashed.

What a puzzling place, this Los Angeles, Rosalba thought. Factory whistles all day long; the deafening pounding of machinery, with cars and trucks in a sick symphony of horns, tires screeching, and engines backfiring. Added
to that were the nauseating odors from the meatpacking plants. Rosalba felt the air thick with tension, like a huge rubber band hanging over the streets, ready to snap at any moment.

Two
winitos
staggered by. They sat down on the curb's edge; one of them removed a bottle of Thunderbird out of a brown paper sack. Across the way a young woman pushed a market cart down the street, her three small children crowded inside. In front of new stands and shops, women in print dresses and aprons, recently arrived from Mexico or El Salvador, sold food and other times from brightly painted stands—
raspadas
,
elotes
,
tamales
or
pupusas
.

On other days, family quarrels erupted, with children rushing out of houses, intermittent screaming from women and men, and police cars turning sharply around street corners.

Rosalba thought about the Barrio Nuevo Estrada gang: tough, tattooed,
caló
-speaking young men and women with their outrageous clothing and attitudes. They were mostly from the Estrada Courts Housing Projects, always fighting with somebody—rival barrio gangs, police officers, one another.

Although life in Rosalba's village in Nayarit had been full of want and ill treatment, the world she ended up in was far more threatening. But she mulled that over a while and accepted this fact: She could never return. This was her life now, in East L.A., with Pete. Sharing whatever she owned with Sybil, Stony, Chila, and her other three grandchildren. No, she would never go back.

But still, although she tried not to, she couldn't help but recall the images, voices, and smells of her village in Nayarit. As a young girl, she'd walk barefoot down a dirt path with bundles of clothes or baskets of corn balanced on her head. So one day she promised:
When I die, take me back to Mexico. Bury me deep in Nayarit soil, in my red hills, and along the cactus fields. Bury me in long braids and in a
huipil
. Bury me among the ancients, among the brave and wise ones, and in the wet dirt of my birth. I will take with me these fingers that have kneaded new ground, these eyes that have gazed on new worlds, this heart that has loved, lost, and loved again—remembering that I once lived and suffered in North America.

And often Rosalba thought about Pete. A good man, she almost said out loud. Pete was not like the men her daughter seemed to attract. He was also so different from Rosalba's previous two husbands, the one in Nayarit who never saw past his dinner—and an alcoholic in L.A. who lived in the crawl space of her house for a short time until he was shot dead in a barroom brawl.

In Rosalba's eyes, Pete was truly decent. Working nights, gutting steer and hog torsos, pulling out fat-covered organs and yards of intestines, then washing
the blood and gore down a large hole with a monstrous water hose—all for Rosalba. And she knew it.

Today, Rosalba needed to get away. The morning beckoned her to come out—to do something, anything.

She sat at the kitchen table—dirty dishes scattered about the tabletop, with bits of hardened tortillas from the night before—and worked on a plan.

Rosalba could take Stony's dented Ford pickup and visit the old furniture stores and used clothing shops along Whittier Boulevard or First Street. Or she could go around the Eastside, gathering newspapers, cardboard boxes, aluminum cans, or whatever she could turn in for extra money. She did this so many times that the men at the county dump site looked forward to Rosalba's visits, to her bright face and brash approach, and the way she mixed up the words in Spanish and English.

Rosalba dressed quickly, gathering a few loose bills and faded coupons into an old nylon purse. She then worked her way around the bodies on the floor to where Chila was sleeping. Rosalba looked at the child's closed eyes and fingered her small hand.

“Buelita,” Chila moaned as she awoke. “
¿Qué pasó?
”

“Come,
m'ija
, I need you to help me.”

It took a strenuous moment before Chila made out her grandmother's face in the dimness of the room. The last time she saw her grandmother's face like that, she had convinced Chila to help steal old beaten-up lamps and chairs from broken-into Goodwill bins.

“Oh, Buelita, I'm too tired.”

“
Mira nomás
—you're tired, eh? You ain't done nothing yet. Now get dressed and come with me.”

Rosalba got up and made her way into the kitchen. Chila snarled a weak protest, then tossed a blanket off, unmindful of the younger children next to her, and rolled off the mattress. Chila knew that once Buelita put her mind to something, there was no reasoning with her at all.

Chila dragged herself into the bathroom while her grandmother prepared a couple of tacos to eat later from the leftover meat in the refrigerator. A small girl for nine, she had an impish face with large brown eyes.

“What are we going to do, Buelita?” Chila asked, as she attempted to brush her hair into some kind of shape. She had grown feisty at her age and, unlike Rosalba, refused to wear braids—just long straight hair, wild like the tails of stallions.

“
Adio—adónde quiera Dios
. Wherever God desires,” Rosalba said. “What's it to you?”

“Gee, I was just asking!”

Despite such exchanges, Rosalba and Chila were really best buddies; none of the others in the house were close enough to even talk to each other that way.

Rosalba hurried outside to check the pickup truck. The driveway—overflowing with oily engine parts, boxes of yellowed newspapers, and rainsoaked cartons—was in sharp contrast to the empty kitchen cupboard. She managed to reach the pickup and pull herself inside the cab. She turned on the ignition, and the truck began to gripe and growl. Eventually the engine turned over, smoke spewed like a cloud over the driveway's litter.

“Let's go,
m'ija
,” Rosalba yelled over the truck's engine roar. “
¡De volada!
”

By then, other members of the household had awakened. Stony was the first to pop his unshaven face through the window.

“Hey, man, quit gunning that thing—you'll break something!” he managed to holler.

Rosalba pressed the accelerator even more as the exhaust thickened. No sleepy-eyed, ex-con, beer-guzzling boyfriend of her insolent daughter was going to ruin her beautiful day, she thought. It was a day that begged her to do something, anything.

Chila flew out of the house, banging the screen door behind her. Rosalba backed the truck out while Chila screamed for her to slow down as she leaped into the passenger side. The pickup chugged out of the driveway and onto the street.

The truck continued down the block, smoke trailing from behind as Stony bellowed out of the bedroom window, “
¡Méndiga loca!
”

The Ford roared through Eastside streets and avenues, across the concrete river to Alameda Street, where old Mexicanos sold fruit on the roadside while factory hands gathered in front of chain-link fences, waiting for employers in trucks to pick them for day work. Rosalba decided to go to
el centro
—downtown.

They passed the long blocks of Skid Row, with the displaced gathered on street corners or beneath a cardboard-and-blanket-covered “condo” on a sidewalk; they drove past the brick-and-stone welfare hotels of painful rememberance. Past warehouse buildings and storefront garment sweatshops. Rosalba slowly pulled up to the congestion of cars and humanity along what some people called Spanish Broadway.

In the crawl of downtown traffic, Rosalba had time to look out the window at gray-haired Black preacher, who sermonized from the sidewalk with a dog-eared Bible in his hand. She noticed a newspaper vendor on a corner studying the people who walked by as they scanned the latest news in Mexican publications, including the close-up shots of cut-up and bullet-riddled bodies in crime and disaster magazines. Everywhere
norteñas
and
cumbias
poured out of record shops.

“How about a shine … shoe shine?” exclaimed a half-blind man. “
Para zapatos brillosos
.”

The streets bristled with families, indigents, and single mothers shopping. Rosalba spotted a man staggering out of a
tejano
bar, followed by another man. The second man knocked the first one to the ground and repeatedly punched him in the face. Nobody paused or did anything to stop him.

Another man pushed his little boy from out of a group of people gathered at a bus stop and had the child pee in the gutter.

Rosalba and Chila cruised further up Broadway, away from its most crowded intersections.
Cholos
stood deathly still inside brick alcoves, elderly women strolled along cautiously with heavy bags, winos lay in fresh vomit nearby. More stubble-faced homeless pushed shopping carts filled with squashed cans, plastic bags, and cardboard. The scenery carried the rapid-fire Spanish of the Mexican and Central American shoppers, the foul words of workers unloading merchandise out of six-wheeled trucks covered with gang graffiti, and the seductive tones of pretty women in tight pants enticing potential shoppers to check out the clothing racks.

Rosalba noticed an empty space at a curb and swiftly pulled into it. A sign on the sidewalk warned: NO PARKING, TOW ZONE. But she pulled up the hand brake and turned off the engine anyway.

“Buelita, the sign says …” Chila began, but she saw that it didn't matter. Rosalba walked off as if by ignoring the sign, it would go away.

“Forget her,” Chila muttered, and rushed up behind her swift-moving grandmother.

That day burned and bubbled; Rosalba and Chila felt like
chilis
on a hot plate being heated before being skinned. Their stroll became torture, especially since Rosalba would stop here and there to browse and barter over items, the majority of which she had no intention of buying. Rosalba was just glad to get out of the house and interact with the world—just to haggle, if need be. Chila, on the other hand, only thought of the mattress and pillow she left behind.

“It's so hot,” Rosalba finally conceded. “How about a watermelon,
m'ija
?”

“Sure.”

Rosalba and Chila stopped at a Grand Central Market fruit stand. Laid out in front of them, a splash of colors like works of art, were papayas, mangoes, watermelons, apples, bananas, and oranges. Rosalba picked out a sizable speckled dark green watermelon. She argued over the price with a man, who appeared bored; finally, she assembled her change and paid for it.

“Here, Chila, carry this.”

Suddenly, to Chila, the watermelon looked like it was at least a quarter her size. She lifted it with her thin down-covered arms, rested it on her belly,
helped by a hefty push from her knee. They kept walking, but after a couple of blocks, the weight of the watermelon, the cluster of people, and torrent of smells—all the heat and hubbub—became an unbearable boiling stew.

They stopped to rest at a bus stop bench.

Chila glared at her grandmother.

“I'm tired, Buelita. The watermelon is too heavy.”

Rosalba stood up, glared back at Chila—sweat beaded on her nose—but then pondered a way to ease the girl's burden. At that moment, Rosalba's thoughts returned to Nayarit, to a time when she was a little girl and strode for miles, carrying loads without assistance of animal or man. Then she turned toward the watermelon, pressed like a boulder on Chila's lap.

Rosalba wrested the watermelon from the girl; Chila let out a long sigh.

Rosalba walked a little, and stopped. With great care, she placed the watermelon on her head, then slowly removed one hand. The watermelon wobbled a little, threatening to fall and splatter into green, red, and black fragments on the sidewalk. Rosalba steadied the wiggly thing, then let it go. She took a few more steps. This time the watermelon stayed upright, as if held by an invisible hand.

Chila stared at her grandmother—stunned.

Even more stunning became Rosalba's efforts to rumba—keeping the watermelon on top of her head while her feet and hips gracefully shimmied along the cement walkway.

A crowd gathered around the woman as she weaved past the dollar stores, the immigration law offices, and through racks of clothes and CDs near the street, and rows of pirated DVDs on blankets. Merchants stepped out of their shops looking on in disbelief, preachers stopped their exhortations, and bus stop patrons strained their necks to see.

Car horns greeted, hands waved, and some people simply got out of the way.

Rosalba swayed back and forth to a
salsa
beat thundering out of an appliance store. She laughed and others laughed with her. Chila stepped back into the shadows, stupefied, and shook her head.

“Ayyyyy,” Rosalba managed to yell.

Rosalba had not looked so happy in a long time as she danced along the bustling streets of the central city in a loose-fitting skirt and sandals. She danced in the shadow of a multistoried Victorian—dancing for one contemptious husband and for another who was dead. She danced for a daughter who didn't love herself enough to truly have the love of another man. She danced for Pete, a butcher of beasts and gentle companion. She danced for her grandchildren, especially that fireball Chila. She danced for her people, wherever they were scattered, and for this country she would never quite comprehend. She danced, her hair matted with sweat, while remembering a simple life on an even simpler rancho in Nayarit.