Growing Up Ethnic in America: Contemporary Fiction About Learning to Be American (9 page)

The owner was a short, round, excitable man with the wrinkles and quavering voice of a person in his seventies but with black, black hair. We kept trying to figure out whether it was a toupee or not, and if it was, how we could snatch it off.

For all his wrinkles, though, he could rush up and down the aisles and grab an unruly kid by the collar and march him out like nothing you ever saw. So fast that we nicknamed him Flash Gordo. We would explode into fits of laughter when one of us saw him zoom down the aisle and whispered “Flash Gordo” to the rest of us. He gave us almost as many laughs as Chris-Pin Martin of the movies.

I counted out my money that first Saturday. I was nervous, knowing what I had to do, and the pennies kept sticking to my sweaty fingers. Finally, in exasperation, Flash Gordo’s long-nosed wife counted them herself, watching me like a hawk so I wouldn’t try to sneak in until she got to ten, and then she growled, “All right!”

Zoom! Past the candy counter and down the aisle like I said, looking for Flash. I didn’t see him until I got right up front, my heart pounding, and started to move toward the door. That’s when this circular shadow loomed in the semi-dark, and I looked up in fright to see him standing at the edge of the stage looking at the screen. Then he turned abruptly and scowled at me as if he could read my mind. I slipped into an aisle seat and pretended I was testing it by bouncing up and down a couple of times and then sliding over to try the next one.

I thought Flash was going to say something as he walked
in my direction. But he suddenly bobbed down and picked something off the floor—a dead rat?—when a yell came from the back of the theater. “Lupe and Carlos are doing it again! Back in the last row!”

Flash bolted upright so quickly my mouth fell open. Before I could close it, he rushed up the aisle out of sight, toward those sex maniacs in the last row. Of all the things Flash Gordo could not tolerate, this was the worst. And every Saturday some clown would tattle on Lupe and Carlos, and Flash would rush across the theater. Only later did I learn that there never was any Lupe or Carlos. If there had been, I’m sure Los Indios would have kept very quiet and watched whatever it was they were doing back there.

“Oh, Carlos!” someone yelled in a falsetto. “Stop that this minute!”

I jumped out of my seat and rushed to the door to let Los Indios in. By the time Flash Gordo had shined his flashlight over and under the seats in the back, we were all across the theater at the edge of the crowd where we wouldn’t be conspicuous. Later we moved to our favorite spot in the front row, where we craned our necks to look up at the giant figures acting out their adventures.

While the movies were fantastic—the highlight of our week—sometimes I think we had almost as much fun talking about them afterwards and acting them out. It was like much later when I went to high school; rehashing the Saturday night dance or party was sometimes better than the actual event.

We all had our favorites and our definite point of view about Hollywood movies. We barely tolerated those cowboy movies with actors like Johnny Mack Brown and Wild Bill Elliot and Gene Autry and even Hopalong Cassidy. Gringos! we’d sniff with disdain. But we’d watch them in preference to roaming the streets, and we’d cheer for the Indians
and sometimes for the bad guys if they were swarthy and Mexican.

They showed the Zorro movies several times each, including the serials, with one chapter each Saturday. Zorro drew mixed reviews and was the subject of endless argument. “Spanish dandy!” one would scoff. “
¿Dónde están los mejicanos?
” Over in the background hanging on to their straw sombreros and smiling fearfully as they bowed to the tax collector, I remember.

“But at least Zorro speaks the right language.”

Then somebody would hoot, “Yeah, Hollywood
inglés.
Look at the actors who play Zorro, Gringos every one. John Carroll. Reed Handley. Tyrone Power.
¡Mierda!
”

That was what Zorro did to us. Better than Gene Autry but still a phony Spaniard, while all the
indios y mestizos
were bit players.

That was no doubt the reason why our favorite was the Cisco Kid. Even the one gringo who played the role, Warner Baxter, could have passed for a Mexican. More than one kid said he looked like my old man, so I was one of those who accepted Warner Baxter. Somebody even thought that he was Mexican but had changed his name so he could get parts in Hollywood—you know how Hollywood is. But we conveniently leaped from that to cheering for the “real” Cisco Kids without wondering how
they
ever got parts in that Hollywood: Gilbert Roland, César Romero, Duncan Renaldo. With the arch-sidekick of all time, Chris-Pin Martin, who was better any day than Fuzzy Knight, Smiley Burnette, or Gabby Hayes.

“
Sí
, Ceesco,” we’d lisp to each other and laugh, trying to sound like Chris-Pin.

We’d leave the theater laughing and chattering, bumping and elbowing each other past the lobby. There Flash Gordo would stare at us as if trying to remember whether or not we
had bought tickets, thoughtfully clicking his false teeth like castanets. We’d quiet down as we filed past, looking at that toupee of his that was, on closer inspection, old hair blackened with shoe polish that looked like dyed rat fur.
Hasta la vista
, Flash, I’d think. See you again next week.

One Saturday afternoon when I returned home there was a beat-up old truck parked in front of the empty house next door and a slow parade in and out. In the distance I saw the curious stare of a towhead about my age.

When I rushed into the house, my three-year-old brother ran up to me and excitedly told me in baby talk, “
La huera. La huera, huera.
”

“Hush,” Mama said.

Uncle Tito, who was Mama’s unmarried younger brother, winked at me. “Blondie’s wearing a halter top and shorts,” he said. “In the backyard next door.”

“Hush,” Mama said to him, scowling, and he winked at me again.

That night when I was supposed to be sleeping, I heard Mama and Papa arguing. “Well,” Mama said, “what do you think about that? They swept up the gutters of Oklahoma City. What was too lightweight to settle got blown across the panhandle to New Mexico. Right next door.”

“Now, Josefa,” Papa said, “you have to give people a chance.”

“Halter top and shorts,” Mama snipped. “What will the children think?”

“The only child who’s going to notice is Tito, and he’s old enough, although sometimes he doesn’t act it.”

But then my eyelids started to get heavy, and the words turned into a fuzzy murmur.

One day after school that next week, Chango decided that we needed some new adventures. We took the long way home all the way past Fourth Street Elementary School,
where all the pagan Protestants went. “Only Catholics go to heaven,” Sister Mary Margaret warned us. “Good Catholics.” While her cold eye sought out a few of us and chilled our hearts with her stare.

But after school the thaw set in. We wanted to see what those candidates for hell looked like—those condemned souls who attended public school. And I wondered: if God had only one spot left in heaven, and He had to choose between a bad Catholic who spoke Spanish and a good Protestant who spoke English, which one He would let in. A fearful possibility crossed my mind, but I quickly dismissed it.

We rambled along, picking up rocks and throwing them at tree trunks, looking for lizards or maybe even a lost coin dulled by weather and dirt but still very spendable. What we found was nothing. The schoolyard was empty, so we turned back toward home. It was then, in the large empty field across from the Rio Valley Creamery, that we saw this laggard, my new neighbor, the undesirable Okie.

Chango gave a shout of joy. There he was. The enemy. Let’s go get him! We saddled our imaginary horses and galloped into the sunset. Meanwhile, John Wayne, which was the name I called him then, turned his flour-white face and blinked his watery pale eyes at us in fear. Then he took off across the field in a dead run, which only increased our excitement, as if it were an admission that he truly was the enemy and deserved thrashing.

He escaped that day, but not before he got a good look at us. I forgot what we called him besides Okie
gabacho gringo cabrón.
In my memory he was John Wayne to our Cisco Kid, maybe because of the movie about the Alamo.

That then became our favorite after-school pastime. We’d make our way toward the Fourth Street Elementary School looking for our enemy, John Wayne. As cunning as enemies usually are, we figured that he’d be on the lookout, so we
stalked him Indian-style. We missed him the next day, but the day after that when we were still a long block away, he suddenly stopped and lifted his head like a wild deer and seemed to feel or scent alien vibrations in the air, because he set off at a dogtrot toward home.

“Head him off at the pass!” Chango Cisco shouted, and we headed across toward Fifth Street. But John Wayne ran too fast, so we finally stopped and cut across to Lomas Park to work out a better plan.

We ambushed him the next day. Four of us came around the way he’d expect us to, while the other two of us sneaked the back way to intercept him between home and the elementary school. At the first sight of the stalkers he ran through the open field that was too big to be called a city lot. Chango and I waited for him behind the tamaracks. When he came near, breathing so heavily we could hear his wheeze, and casting quick glances over his shoulder, we stepped out from behind the trees.

He stopped dead. I couldn’t believe anyone could stop that fast. No slow down, no gradual transition. One instant he was running full speed; the next instant he was absolutely immobile, staring at us with fright.

“You!” he said breathlessly, staring straight into my eyes.

“You!” I answered.

“
¿Que hablas español?
” Chango asked.

His look of fear deepened, swept now with perplexity like a ripple across the surface of water. When he didn’t answer, Chango whooped out a laugh of joy and charged with clenched fists. It wasn’t much of a fight. A couple of punches and a bloody nose and John Wayne was down. When we heard the shouts from the others, Chango turned and yelled to them. That was when John Wayne made his escape. We didn’t follow this time. It wasn’t worth it. There was no fight in him, and we didn’t beat up on sissies or girls.

On the way home it suddenly struck me that since he lived next door, he would tell his mother, who might tell my mother, who would unquestionably tell my father. I entered the house with apprehension. Whether it was fear or conscience didn’t matter.

But luck was with me. That night, although I watched my father’s piercing looks across the dinner table with foreboding (or was it my conscience that saw his looks as piercing?), nothing came of it. Not a word. Only questions about school. What were they teaching us to read and write in English? Were we already preparing for our First Communion? Wouldn’t Grandma be proud when we went to the country next Sunday. I could read for her from my schoolbook,
Bible Stories for Children.
Only my overambitious father forgot that
Bible Stories for Children
was a third-grade book that he had bought for me at a church rummage sale. I was barely at the reading level of “Run, Spot. Run.” Hardly exciting fare even for my blind grandmother, who spoke no English and read nothing at all.

Before Sunday, though, there was Saturday. In order to do my share of the family chores and “earn” movie money instead of accepting charity, my father had me pick up in the backyard. I gathered toys that belonged to my little sister and brother, carried a bag of garbage to the heavy galvanized can out back by the shed, even helped pull a few weeds in the vegetable garden. This last was the “country” that my father carried with him to every house we lived in until I grew up and left home. You can take the boy out of the country, as the old saying goes. And in his case it was true.

I dragged my feet reluctantly out to the tiny patch of yard behind the doll’s house in which we lived, ignoring my mother’s scolding about not wearing out the toes of my shoes.

I must have been staring at the rubber tips of my tennis shoes to watch them wear down, so I didn’t see my
arch-enemy across the low fence. I heard him first. A kind of cowardly snivel that jolted me like an electric shock. Without looking I knew who it was.

“You!” he said as I looked across the fence.

“You!” I answered back with hostility.

Then his eyes watered up and his lips twitched in readiness for the blubbering that, in disgust, I anticipated.

“You hate me,” he accused. I squatted down to pick up a rock, not taking my eyes off him. “Because I don’t speak Spanish and I have yellow hair.”

No, I thought, I don’t like you because you’re a sniveler. I wanted to leap the fence and punch him on those twitching lips, but I sensed my father behind me watching. Or was it my conscience again? I didn’t dare turn and look.

“I hate Okies,” I said. To my delight it was as if my itching fist had connected. He all but yelped in pain, though what I heard was a sharp expulsion of air.

“Denver?” The soft, feminine voice startled me, and I looked toward the back stoop of their house. I didn’t see what Tito had made such a fuss about. She was blond and pale as her son and kind of lumpy, I thought, even in the everyday housedress she wore. She tried to smile—a weak, sniveling motion of her mouth that told me how Denver had come by that same expression. Then she stepped into the yard where we boys stared at each other like tomcats at bay.

“Howdy,” she said in a soft funny accent that I figured must be Oklahoma. “I was telling your mother that you boys ought to get together, being neighbors and all. Denver’s in the second grade at the public school.”

Denver backed away from the fence and nestled against his mother’s side. Before I could answer that Immaculate Heart boys didn’t play with sniveling heathens, I heard our back door squeak open, then slam shut.

“I understand there’s a nice movie in town where the boys
go Saturday afternoons,” she went on. But she was looking over my head toward whoever had come out of the house.