Undead L.A. 1 (30 page)

He would arrive early and park in the usual place in Boyle Heights, just off a side street that leads through the heart of the Los Angeles ghetto, away from East Los Angeles toward the bustle of Downtown. It gave him a spectacular view of the skyline, including the famous US Bank building.

“All those tall shiny buildings,” he'd whisper with reverence, “like art made out of glass that touches the sky itself. There is nothing like that where I am from. Who could have dreamed up such amazing things? And who would place them in the heart of such squalor? It's a sin.”

Though not a deeply religious man, my father always considered himself a good Catholic. He'd just stopped going to church after my mother disappeared one afternoon walking home from the store, vanishing without a trace as if she were a trail of vapors climbing toward the heavens in the summer heat. After all the searching had come up empty, after the desperate pleas on local news to return his wife to her husband and two precious daughters, a sadness sank into him that never fully left, causing him to shrink somehow. I don't think he ever fully recovered from losing her. We didn't have a choice. We had to go on. It hurt but what else could we do? We learned to live with that feeling of dread in the pit of our stomachs, walking around every day waiting to be told the worst, as the days turned into months and still we heard nothing.

Rumors began to circulate that she'd run off with a rich white man, since no body was ever found. I never believed that. I don't think my father ever believed it either. He did his best to shelter us from that kind of talk, but it was all around us in the lingering whispers and accusing stares of the people we saw every day. For a while I grew to hate her for leaving us alone, for making my Papi so sad, but as time went by I learned to make peace with the loss – the empty place in my heart that I knew nothing would ever fill, not even with the passage of time. Eventually I couldn't even remember what her face looked like. All I could remember was the way her hair smelled, like a symphony of chemicals from the cheap shampoo that overpowered you with the memory of fresh green apples.

Once my father was set up and prepped for the day he'd open up for business, propping up the steel windows and locking them into place. He'd sell until the sun went down or he ran out of fish for the day. He always made the same things; either shrimp tacos or
ceviche
from the old recipe his grandmother had taught him as a child in their metal box shack in Sayulita, Mexico. Located less than an hour north of the more active and famous tourist destination, Puerto Vallarta, the quaint fishing village had come to be known in the last decade for its amazing surf breaks. Ex-patriots with money from the United States and Canada had moved in and tried to overrun the town.

Despite their best attempts to transform his beloved place of birth into a bustling gringo paradise, they had failed to do little more than organize weekly meetings to bitch and gripe about local issues. The group, Sayulita Paradisio, also ran a website dedicated to the town which was full of breathtaking photos. My father never understood the Internet so we'd go online and show him the site whenever he'd ask. The images invariably brought tears to his eyes. He'd pointed out the places he remembered from his carefree days as a young boy, promising to take us there one day when things slowed down. Later he'd laughed about how the site worked hard to cover up even the smallest local crimes for fear of scaring off rich investors.

“It's kinda funny,” he said, catching his breath. “All those white people fighting to go where we all fought to escape. It's like
la pelicula negro
, uh? Trading Places.”

It wasn't uncommon for my sister Rosario to have taken over his cleaning duties, while I began a prep station. We'd been working the truck with him since we were old enough to walk. It was, as he said, our real inheritance. I grew up with the smell of cilantro, onions, and limes permanently burned into the skin of my hands.

My father would start making some beer battered fish tacos, whistling along with the
Banda
music as he prepared his best meal for his 'daily guest of honor.' Ultimately a man in dark shades, white t-shirt, and beige work shorts would arrive. We were not allowed to speak to this man, but I heard my father call him Paco. Once he brought us Mexican candies – strawberry and watermelon lollipops dusted with chili powder. As he stuck his hand out to give them to us I saw that he had black ink carved into his arms in funny shapes. There was also a picture of a large breasted woman on his left calf that I came to admire over the years. I dreamed of one day growing such magnificent boobs when puberty hit, but found to my dismay when the time came that my flat chest swelled only slightly by comparison to the cartoon sexual fantasy indelibly set into Paco’s brown skin.

My father would serve Paco lunch with a smile, handing him an envelope with part of the previous night’s earnings along with his meal and a bottle of pineapple flavored
Jarritos
. They'd sit and talk about local gossip, news from back in the mother country, and the ever-sliding economy. When he was finished, Paco would graciously thank my father and remind him to speak up if he had any problems. But being protected meant we never had any problems, not even from the cops.

My father never once showed me any sign of remorse or anger over having to pay protection money to the local gang, White Fence, or as he called them,
Los Pachucos
. After all, it was their neighborhood first and he was using their streets to feed his family. It was only right that he show them the kind of respect they wanted. Back in Mexico, it was common to pay bribes to a host of colorful characters from local thugs to the police department. They called it
La Mordida
or The Bite. When he spoke of the percentages he gave them, he referred to it as rent. I think that made him feel better in some small way about being extorted by his own people.

“
It isn't just for us,” he said once in a rare moment of candor. “It's for all the other struggling immigrants, too. All of us need to stick together to fight off the white man's endless greed.”

I nodded but didn't reply. I knew better. Nothing was going to change his mind. As I got older I came to understand more of what he meant. Little did I know how important it would become in shaping my future as well.

My father loved to cook almost as much as he loved his family. He also loved to tell us stories about the relatives we'd never met back home, and about the place he'd left to build a new life for us. We grew up with all these stories, but when I finally visited his town it wasn't the same. The town had changed radically since my father had left. I was glad in a small way that he wasn't well enough to return by that point. I knew it meant he could keep the beautiful images of his childhood with him as he crossed over to see Tio Toño and Tia Lupe. It would break his heart if he knew how different things actually were – that there was almost nothing left of the place he once knew and loved.

Nothing stays the same,
I thought, staring at the new houses being built all along the water.
Everything is always in a constant state of flux. Nothing is ever how you remember it when you left.

When I was eighteen I decided to attend culinary arts school. My father couldn't seem to understand it. For the first time in my life he wasn't supportive at all. He was nearly irrational at my suggestion that I move out and learn how to cook from white people.

“What on Earth do you need to learn?” He roared, fighting back tears. “I have already taught you everything you need to know to run this truck. It is a family recipe that brings people to this place for hundreds of miles just to taste an authentic Baja fish taco. What else is there to know? They should be paying you to teach them.
Mas puto!
”

“
It's a really great program,” I countered. “Julia Childs even went to one of these schools.”

“
¿Quién es esta vieja?
”

“
She was a famous cook, Papi. She had her own show on television. They made a movie about her.”

“
¿Es eso lo que quieres?
A reality show? Like those
pinche
Kardashian sisters, running around town spreading their legs, flashing their
chonies
and embarrassing their family on television? Making 
¿cómo se dice? Los videos sexo?
Showing everyone their
pepita
?!”

“
No! I want to be a world class chef one day.”

“
Why would you want to leave your family? Are you better than us now? Is that it,
mija
?”

Lowering my head, I flushed with shame at the suggestion but the burning desire in my heart did not subside. Most of the other girls my age were either busy getting pregnant and married, in that order, or making plans to do just that. None of the girls I graduated with had plans to go off to a major university. There was one girl I knew who was planning on taking community college classes, but when I pressed her about it she confessed it was just in the hopes of meeting an educated man. My best friend from school, Maria Lopez, was planning on attending cosmetology school in Hollywood. I was hoping to go with her when she left. I didn't want to be tied down by a relationship – not to a man, and definitely not to a truck. We'd grown up with the other children calling our beloved business a 'roach coach.' My entire childhood I'd heard them singing it behind our backs, making fun of us by switching up the lyrics to the traditional Spanish folk
corrido
made popular during the Mexican Revolution and carried with us to our new home in the
barrio
.

“
La Cucaracha! La Cucaracha! Come and get it while it's hot! La Cucaracha! La Cucaracha! You don't want it if it's not!”

One of the more obnoxious children, a fat kid named Tomas, whose mother sold sweet breads to the local
carneceria
and was missing half her teeth, even took to nicknaming my little sister The Cockroach because of the song. It lasted less than a week. She came home in tears and, after I badgered her for nearly an hour straight, she finally told me what had happened.

“
It's because of my greasy hair,” Rosario cried, burying her tear-streaked face in her pillow. “Now I'm going to be known forever as the Cockroach Girl and there is nothing I can do about it.”

“
No,” I insisted, “you won't be. I promise you that.”

If people started calling her that they were almost certain to call me it as well, and probably something far worse and more sexually derogatory. Once you let them start in on you it would never end. Our future children would inherit our horrible nicknames. It was more than I could bear. I could feel the anger building up in me at the suggestion that we,
The Garcias
, were disgusting insects. We expected this kind of treatment from outsiders, not from our own people. I was nearly seeing red.

“
What are you going to do?”

She looked scared. I said nothing, standing up and calmly walking out of the room. I was half way down the street when I realized what I actually planned on doing. I found Tomas playing soccer in a nearby park. Without a word I marched up and began punching him in the face. The other children with him stood back and watched in terror. I knocked little Tomas over and climbed on top of his fat belly, slamming my fists down into his face as he squirmed. He cried like a little girl the whole time, but made no attempt to defend himself. When it was over I stood up and spit on him.

“Don't call me or my sister a cockroach again, or it will be worse next time.”

We didn't have any trouble after that, but I never forgot it. A tiny part of me still suspected it went on when we weren't around, but no one ever said it again to our faces. Around that same time I read the story by Kafka about the man who turns into a bug. It gave me nightmares for weeks. In the end I wonder which of those two events from my formative years pushed me to dream of escaping the truck more – the kids’ taunts or that creepy story.

I wanted to work in one of the city’s better restaurants downtown, maybe someplace like the Water Grill or Patina. Later, when I knew more about the art of food, I imagined working at Baco Mercat or Bestia or even Mo-Chica. While other girls I knew only dreamed of giving birth to a bundle of joy, I dreamed of giving birth to a five-star restaurant one day.

It took months but eventually my father ran out of steam and gave in. He could never really stop himself from giving me what I wanted, and we both knew it. I attended Le Cordon Bleu in Hollywood. It took twenty-one months and a mountain of debt, but I loved every minute of it. At first I even lived in the city. Maria and I moved over into West Hollywood, renting a place off Fountain on Sierra Bonita. It had hardwood floors and big windows that let in the sun. I wasn't used to freedom, but I loved it. Nights we would hit the bars and then cab our way home. I even had my first one-night-stand there. Those days didn't last long enough. A few months into our lease there was a young autistic girl murdered not far from where we lived. According to the Los Angeles Times, the innocent young girl was sexually molested and strangled to death, then posed out in a kids’ playground in Larchmont. They never caught the perpetrator.