Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood (4 page)

“She said, ‘You’re Sammy’s sister, ¿verdad?’ I said yes. ‘You’re
beautiful,’ she said, ‘just like your brother.’ I’m beautiful, Sammy. Juliana said so. But how can boys be beautiful, too?”

“You’ll have to ask Dad.” I always let Dad handle the questions I had no answers for. I was the brother. Not the father.

That night, I called Juliana. I asked her if she had had a good day. Mostly she said no. But sometimes, sometimes she said yes. And that day, she said, “Yeah, Sammy, I had a good day.” And I could almost see her finger on her bottom lip. We talked. Mostly I got her going. And I listened. That’s what I wanted to do. Listen to her voice. I kept picturing her telling Elena that I was beautiful. No one had ever said that about me. Finally I said, “Hey, thanks for helping Elena out.”

“So she told you, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said.

She changed the subject. She started telling me about a dream she’d had. As I listened to her, I thought about what Elena had said. “Gabby says that maybe Juliana’s an angel. Angels always appear right when you need them.”

1968 was going to be a hot summer. I could tell. The desert had been heating up since March. I was always hot. A week before school let out, Juliana and I went to the Aggie Drive-In. I don’t remember the movie. It wasn’t anything I was interested in, that’s all I know. It’s funny about movies—after a few years you forget everything about them. I don’t think movies ever showed me anything interesting. Maybe I wanted to learn something. And the movies, well, I guess they didn’t make me dream. They did other people, I knew that. Made them dream. But not me. People. People made me dream. And movies weren’t like people.

As we were sitting there in the front seat, Juliana took out a cigarette.
I told her my dad said we couldn’t smoke in his car. Not anymore. A new rule. That’s the thing—there was always a new rule. We got out and sat on the hood. We smoked. Just then, Pifas Espinosa and Jaime Rede waved at us from a car just ahead of us. “That you, Sammy?”

“He’s drunk,” I whispered to Juliana. “Yeah, Pifas, it’s me.”

Pifas stumbled toward us. “Órale, you wanna beer, ese?” He was in a friendly mood. Pifas was okay.

“Yeah,” Juliana said, “a beer sounds good.”

I walked back to his car with him. “She’s alright, ese,” Pifas said. Jaime didn’t say anything. I could tell something was wrong. Jaime was one of those kinds of guys—something was always wrong. “She’ll dump you,” Jaime said after a while. “Same as she dumped me.”

I nodded. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“You’re not so special,” Jaime said.

I wanted to punch him out, but more than that I just wanted to get back to Juliana. “No. I’m not so special,” I said. I took the two beers Pifas handed me and walked back to the car. The beers were cold and I was happy. Juliana and I drank them down slowly. And we smoked. “You like to drink, Sammy?”

“It’s okay,” I said. The truth was that I’d only had two beers in my whole life—and I’d stolen those beers from the bars I cleaned. I didn’t hang out much. Not with anybody.

“Have you ever smoked pot, Sammy?”

“Nope.” I said, “You?”

“People are starting to do that a lot,” she said. “Especially gringos. They’re hippies. That’s what they call them.”

“I know,” I said.

“Do you want to be one?”

“No,” I said.

“You don’t have to be a hippie to smoke pot.”

“I know,” I said.

“I thought that smoking weed would help me forget,” she said, “about stuff. But it didn’t. There’s not anything you can drink or smoke that can make you forget. Not one damned thing. And that’s sad, Sammy.” She finished her beer and looked at me. I think she was waiting for me to kiss her. So I did. And then she asked me if I’d ever been with a girl. “Have you, Sammy?”

I shook my head.

“How come?”

“Just haven’t.”

“Serious?”

“Serious.”

“Do you want to?” She kissed me again. I kissed her back. I was shaking. “Do you want to make love to me, Sammy?”

I think that’s when I first felt the wings. That’s when they woke up and started flapping around inside me.

I don’t know how we did it exactly, there, in the back seat of my father’s car, but it was good. It was good. I was scared. Not too scared. Not scared enough to stop. That’s the thing—I didn’t want to stop. Not then. Not ever.

It wasn’t her first time. I knew that. Not that I cared. I told her I loved her when she wrapped her bare legs around me. I didn’t know anything could feel that perfect. And when it was over, I told her again that I loved her.

“You shouldn’t say that,” she said.

“But I do, Juliana. I love you.”

“Even if you do, Sammy, you shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why not?”

“Some girl might believe you some day—and then what?”

I didn’t say anything after that. We did it again. Only slower. And after, I wanted to lie there, in the back seat. With her. Forever. Finally, we put our clothes back on. She helped me with my shirt. For a long time after that, I felt her fingers on my bare back. We laughed. I kissed her. Then we sat outside on the hood of my father’s car. The movie on the outdoor screen didn’t matter. What mattered is that we smelled like each other. We smoked. We looked up at the stars, and she told me that she was going to leave Hollywood. “Next year, after I graduate. I’m packing.”

“Where will you go?”

“Maybe to the real Hollywood.”

“Nothing’s more real than our Hollywood,” I said.

“That’s the problem,” she said. “I don’t want real.”

Take me with you. That’s what I wanted to say. But I thought maybe I shouldn’t say anything. I looked up at the stars. Right then, sitting next to her, I felt as big as the sky.

Mrs. Apodaca was
always ready with a speech or a sermon. Always. Bet your ass. Or just one of her disapproving looks. She referred to us as
demonios.
Demons, devils, ungodly, unclean. That’s what she thought about us.

She was just another person ready to put us down.

One Saturday afternoon, she stepped out of her house and marched over to the empty lot behind her house where we were playing baseball. Hands on her sides. Shit. Mad. Mad as hell. “Which one of you used that word? ¿Haber? ¿Cuál de ustedes?” She waited for one of us to answer. Hands on her sides. Mad as hell. She’d wait—forever if she had to.

“What word?” Jaime Rede asked.

“No se hagan tontos. You know what I’m talking about. Tú sabes.”

Jaime Rede shook his head. One by one, we all shook our heads. She reduced us to acting like five-year-olds. Shrunk us down with that look of hers. With that voice. God.

But we could wait, too. Yeah. Just like her. We weren’t gonna squeal on who’d shouted out the “F” word. And no one was about to confess, either. There wasn’t one of us on that field who wouldn’t have rather faced his father’s belt than one of Mrs. Apodaca’s penances. She stared us all in the face. We stared back. This was a war we actually had a chance of
winning. Not many opportunities. No, not many. Finally she said. “Play. I want to watch.” She grabbed Pifas Espinosa by the shoulder. “There’s a chair on my porch. Tráemela.” Pifas ran for the chair. When he ran back with it, she sat. As if she were the Empress Carlota. “Play,” she said. We all looked at each other. She’d found a way to beat us. Damn. Not one bad word came out of our mouths for the rest of the game. Not much fun, no fun, nope, no fun at all. Damn. I think that Mrs. Apodaca had the time of her life that afternoon. I swear I could almost see her smile. Except she never smiled.

It is impossible to underestimate the important role Mrs. Apodaca played in the lives of the citizens of Hollywood. We elected her to be hated above all the others. Hers was a sacred and necessary office. By hating her, we created a perfect balance in that small barrio of ours. It was not a question of whether she deserved her fate. And it wasn’t a question of fairness or justice. It was all a question of survival. That’s what I told myself. It helped us to hate her. It helped us to go on living.

One morning she handed out novenas in honor of the Blessed Mother to Susie Hernandez and Francisca (aka Frances) Sánchez as they passed in front of her house to catch the bus to go to school. “Go to the priest,” she said firmly. She pointed at their skirts.

“God made my legs,” Susie said, then slapped her thigh as if with that slap she could make Mrs. Apodaca appreciate not only the danger but the beauty of a woman’s legs.

“But who made the dress?” Mrs. Apodaca shot back.

Actually, it wasn’t so bad living across the street from Mrs. Apodaca. Any time I got bored, I’d wander out to the front porch. Sit. Wait. I was always rewarded for my patience. Something always happened. It was her habit to stop people as they passed in front of her house. She was a
gatekeeper, and now, as I think about it, I swear she would have made one helluva border patrol officer. “Who made the dress?” Even from across the street, I could hear her clearly, could see the deep furrows of her scowl, her face becoming a map of the world. “Who made that dress?”

Susie didn’t shrink. “I did.” She looked Mrs. Apodaca in the eye and stuck out her chin. It was the universal gesture of defiance in Hollywood, a vestige of the ancestors we still carried in our blood and on our faces. She looked like an Aztec princess in a hieroglyphic. “I made the dress,” Susie repeated, “to go with the legs God made.”

“Your mother let you?”

“My mother’s proud I can sew.”

“Proud? Un hombre puede ver todo!”

“God gave men eyes to see.”

“To see the good—not to fall into temptation.”

“God’s glory is a woman’s legs.”

“God will punish you for that.”

“Well, if he doesn’t, you will.”

“Eres una muchachita muy malcriada.”

“I don’t like Spanish,” Susie said.

“Learn to like it. You live in Hollywood.”

“My father’s a gringo.” Susie crossed her arms.

“Your father is a no-good drunk mojado. He’s passed out in some cantina in Mesilla. Hay se mantiene. En las cantinas. Always drunk. Is that what you want? Is that why you wear dresses like that?” Mrs. Apodaca crossed herself.

“Stop that!” Susie yelled. “Just stop it!”

“Necesitas una bendición.”

“I don’t need blessings,” Susie said, “I need money.”

“Money’s a curse.”

“How would you know? How would anyone in this goddamned neighborhood know?”

“No seas tan malhablada. Es falta de respeto.”

“You’re just like the gringos. You think you can tell us how to talk.” She spit on the ground.

I watched as Susie and Frances turned their back on Mrs. Apodaca and slowly walked away. I couldn’t help but feel bad for her. Bad. Bad. Even though Susie was right. There she was, Mrs. Apodaca, standing in her front yard, a large, stubborn figure like a lone tree trying to dig deep enough to find water. Enough water for a tree like that was hard to come by. I wanted to tell her that her morals were useless in the face of a revolutionary like Susie Hernandez. It wouldn’t have done any good if I had told her.

I watched as Mrs. Apodaca turned and walked toward her house, a rosary swaying in her hand. She slammed her door. It sounded like a gun shot.

She would live to fight another day.

She didn’t have a first name. She was just Mrs. Apodaca. Even to her husband. He was always nodding and repeating “Sí Señora,” like a beaten down parrot. I don’t think anyone ever saw him. He was like a ghost.

And she liked clean, Mrs. Apodaca. She had this lawn, not big, not a big lawn, but it was green. I mean green. Green, green. I swear she watched over her husband like a gargoyle as he worked on the yard every week. Not a weed in sight. Not a roach. She cleaned her sidewalk
every damned day of the year. “Así lo hacen en Alemania,” she said. “The Germans are very clean.” She looked at me with that disapproving gaze. She could have made money giving lessons on how to make people feel like shit with just a glance. “In Hollywood,” she said, “there’s nothing but filth. Todo esta desordenado. There’s nothing but chaos.” She studied me for a moment. “You know that word?”

“Yes,” I said, “I know that word.” Words. That’s what we had in common. We both liked them. Every time I used the dictionary, I imagined Mrs. Apodaca doing the same thing. I wondered if she had a library lined with shelves of books in her house. Maybe she just had hundreds of thousands of yellowing novenas piled up in a room full of dusty saints. And somewhere in those novenas was the word
chaos.

“Okay, what does it mean? Give me a definition.”

“Chaos,” I said, “it’s a synonym for Hollywood.” I was proud.

She shook her head. “Yo pensaba que eras más respetuoso. But you’re not respectful at all.” In my rush to exhibit my knowledge, I’d forgotten that she didn’t like anyone to criticize our neighborhood. Only she had earned that right. She was funny that way.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Around Mrs. Apodaca, it was best to apologize. Immediately. For everything. The more often you apologized, the better.

She looked me over. “How long have you been wearing those jeans?”