The Madonnas of Echo Park (28 page)

The fence is too high to scale, and its support posts have been sunk deep, but there's a part of the chain link that hasn't been secured to the posts. A section of metal peels back like the lid of a pull-top can, and I crouch in underneath. On the ground are scattered broken bottles, small but deep holes, and concrete blocks with plastic bottles and take-out boxes laid out on top of them as if they were makeshift dinner tables.

The voice sounds stronger here, as if growing in confidence the farther I tread in. The fence's boundaries dissolve into the glint of a past midday sun, a taut metal wire receding into that graying horizon line of smog that makes Los Angeles appear to be under a perpetual smoldering cloud from an extinguished fire. The field expands beneath my feet, sprawling up to and over the lip of a steep dirt hillside. From the tip of the ledge is a locked-in-a-tower's-eye view of Echo Park. This view will become the sole possession of whoever's house is built here, and they will see every day what I may never see again: cottages and bungalows spread across these hills—these glorious mounds and valleys my mother told me about—like tar paper jam, streets stitched together in Spirograph patterns, and God's footprint, Echo Park Lake. Her geysers rise up like hot sewing needles piercing the smoggy air, and her big toe sprouts a boutonniere of fiery pink lotus blossoms. Boats float in lazy curlicues across her waters while the Ferris wheel's screams and laughter are a collective, buzzy hum, the sound you hear when your ears ring. The din and shuffle of several thousand people down below walking at a window shopper's pace blend in with the faint chanting from Crazy Mac's running school battalion off in the hills.

The song I've followed to the edge of this hill rises in both pitch and volume. It's not coming from a radio, and it's not a
ranchera.
A man's singing in a trilling, echoing yodel, filtered through a crackling PA system, a voice much like . . . Morrissey's! But . . . he's singing in Spanish. It can't be him, then. I've never heard Morrissey sing in Spanish; if he had, I'd have heard it online, or on the radio after
midnight, when they play ironic, novelty, or “joke” records (songs sung by popular musicians in Spanish). Is there a Mexican Morrissey imitator who has mastered mimicking his appearance (the easy part) and his singing ability? Impossible. Where is the song coming from?

Rocks scatter down the hillside as I step on a firm mount on the cliff's edge that juts out over the chasm. As I move onto the lip, a hot, reflective light shimmers in my eyes, making me squint. From what must be over a mile away, I am blinded with a powerful brightness, a brightness so white it turns everything black. Here in this darkness comes that feeling I had in my mother's kitchen when that blond morning glow came through her window, more intense and warm than before. There is a complete and overwhelming feeling of love and acceptance; no sensation of hot or cold, no fatigue or exasperation, no embarrassment or hate. And no fear. I'm blind, standing on a slender mount jutting over a sheer drop, and I have no fear.

In this brief moment, I have faith that I will not fall.

The song, then the light, dissolves into the sound of barking and another vision too miraculous to be believed. Blackjack is sitting behind me, panting with a happy grin, small dirt splotches on his fur the one clue to his day's adventures. Taking his leash out of my purse, I kneel to his level. Why didn't I bring doggy treats with me?

Stepping off the ledge, I whisper his name and edge my hand around to his collar. Blackjack cocks his head, studying me, trying to judge my intentions while I jabber in what I hope is soothing baby talk that will calm him long enough for me to leash him. My fingers graze the back of his neck to grip his collar and attach the leash's metal pull tab to it.

That's when he rears back. I scuttle a few inches on my knees over to him.

Back again he goes. Seeing the leash dangle by my side, Blackjack crouches into a sprint stance, ready to play a game of chase.

I take one step forward, and he's off, running back across the field. Damp clouds of pollen clot my lungs as I pop up and down behind
him like grease on a hot frying pan, trying not to step into one of the many holes that could snap my ankle in two.

Blackjack sprints around the lip of the ledge to the far side of the cliff, reaching a fence surrounded by thick brambles and dead bushes that trap him. He's got nowhere to go.

I lunge at him, but slip on a loose clod of soil, buckling my legs. Blackjack wiggles his body through a narrow opening under the chain-link fence. My body's braided on the ground like rope when I get a whiff of powerful, insouciant, protest excrement covering the plastic soles of my now cracked shoes.

“Dog shit.” I laugh. My exhaustion turns my laughs to tears, and the sound I make rolls down the hillside like the noise of box-sledding
kids screaming for their lives in terror and in joy.

A sharp pain in my ankle—stronger than a sprain but not a broken bone—keeps me from squirming under the fence. Lying on my back and using my hands and one good leg for support, I crab-crawl down the hill to where the fence drops off and ends in piles of rolled-up mesh wire clustered around a large hump in the ground, then claw my way back up the hill on the opposite side of the fence. When I reach the top of the cliff, my hands are covered with scratches and cuts, my pants and blouse are filthy, and my purse has large clumps of dirt in it. I'm dirty and exhausted in a way I haven't been since I used to play outdoors.

It's late in the day. The sky's lost a fight with the sun, beaten to a black, blue, and purplish hue with a thin, smoggy gauze acting as a dressing. On this side of the hill are pockets of run-down bungalows hosting barbecues complete with loud Spanish
rancheras,
racks of meat cooking over tinfoil-wrapped grills perched atop blackened hibachi tubs, large beat-up Igloo coolers stocked to the brim with ice-cold beer and
paleta
ice cream bars, and rows of folding patio chairs where
hijos
and
hijas, abuelitos
and
abuelitas
sit, laugh, drink, and eat from paper
plates balanced in their laps. On both sides of this gully are developers' flags and markings cutting a rough perimeter across the hillside and intersecting at a construction site for a condominium complex to be built next year.

Leading from the spot where Blackjack nudged his way through a dense layer of brush are his paw prints, tracking over a muddy knoll and onto a barren field where, situated like a cross atop a mountain, there is a large shack blaring a Spanish
telenovela.
Through an open door I see a pair of white dress shoes facing a television, with whoever's watching it hidden behind a sheet of compressed aluminum siding. A teenage boy in a baggy white shirt and long khaki shorts with a pockmarked face waves me away.

“You can't cross here,” he says.

“I'm not crossing. I'm looking for my dog.”

“There's no dogs here,” he says and walks right up to me, trying to press me back.

“He came in through the brush,” I say, standing my ground. “I need to check if he's here.”

“There's no dogs here,” he says, louder, more threatening. He stands right up to me, his height bringing him up to around my shoulders.

“I'm not leaving until I check on my own.”

The boy sighs in my face. “You're gonna have to ask the Lord for permission.”

Is it him at last? Is the neighborhood's miracle worker a destitute hermit who has a satellite dish hookup to his tin can of a house in the middle of a barren field so he can watch
telenovelas
? Any faith I'd built up about my experience in meeting the Lord disappears. This is no benevolent spirit. This is an old man with a punk kid for a son.

“I think ‘God's' got better things to do than help me find my dog,” I say.

“I didn't say ‘God.' I said the Lord. The Lord knows. He knows where the dog is.”

“I thought you said he wasn't here.”

“He's not,” the boy says, “but the Lord knows where he is.”

“He does? Okay,” I say, willing to play along if doing so will give me a chance to check the shack. “Let me speak to . . . the
Lord.
”

“The Lord's busy right now,” he says.

“Why did you tell me I had to meet with him, then?” I ask.

“I didn't say you had to meet with him,” he says. “I said he knew where the dog was.”

“So why can't I speak with him?”

“The Lord's busy,” he says.

“Is that the Lord right there?” I ask, pointing to the pair of shoes, which haven't moved since I set foot here. “Is that him, sitting in a chair watching
novelas
?”

“I don't make the rules.”

“Why can't he see me?” I shout. “I need to see if my dog's in there!”

“But it's not your dog,” the boy says and starts walking back to the shack. “And I told you, the Lord's busy.” He pulls out the back of his shirt, flashing the taped butt of what could be a snub-nosed pistol. I back away, unwilling to press further and cursing myself for my cowardice.

“Why are you doing this? Why can't I talk to him?” I shout at the boy, surprised at how the pain in my ankle, and the deliriousness from a daylong, fruitless search, has made me hysterical.

The boy turns and says, “Because the Lord works in mysterious ways. Don't you know that?”

The way back to the cliff is, for some reason, much longer than the way to the shack, and when I reach the ledge, it's black out. Not night. Black—that brief, eerie time right after dusk but before the streetlights and car headlights blink on. How did it get so late? Where did my glorious, unspoiled free day go? How could I have been so
wasteful with one when there are so few to be had at my age? There's chatter and laughter from the several thousand people at the festival, an ominous sound, like approaching thunder. Dim, undulating grill fires dot the hillside below, but the steepness of the climb means there's no way I can walk or crawl back down without a flashlight. Heading to where I think the street is, I wander into a maze of brambles, weed stalks, and eight-foot-high brush. There are no revving engines from drag-racing cars or bass-booming radios to lead me out, no televisions screaming from open windows, no kids yelling down the block to ask their parents if they can stay out five more minutes. With the layer of dirt and sweat caking my body, the exhaustion I feel from walking around without any sense of direction, and the dread at returning to my mother's without Blackjack, it takes my remaining strength not to collapse on my knees and cry.

Yet when this one thought—me buckled over in an emotional meltdown—enters my head, a light cleaves the thick brush, leading me through a jagged thicket of thorns and weeds scratching my bare forearms, digging their way into my jeans. I slash my body forward and follow the light out of the brush and onto another construction site, this one connected to a street that intersects Sunset Boulevard. The light that led me out of the thicket is the familiar and now comforting gaze of Sergeant Sunshine, his sunglasses illuminated by a row of spotlights from the street announcing the opening of a new “space” for artists and musicians in what used to be a drinking bar for off-duty police officers. Was this where the bright light I saw on the ledge was coming from? Was it a billboard advertisement that rekindled my faith?

The streets are jammed with double-parked cars and revelers headed to and from the festival. Wading through the crowd, I'm pushed aside by a mother with her young daughter walking in the opposite direction. Her daughter is wearing red satiny pajama pants, Hello Kitty clogs, and a leopard-print jumper with triangle cat ears on the head; on each of her sleeves is the word
Gwen
in Low Rider
calligraphy script. She's got so much fancy gear on her I can hardly see her face. Attached to her wrist is a purple balloon that, caught on a breeze, flies into a crisscross pattern of low-lying Chinese lantern decorations and tangles around my arm.

“I'm sorry,” the mother says. “She doesn't watch where she's going.” The mother kneels down, working with the girl to free the balloon.

“Here, let me help you,” I say. “Tangled up pretty good, isn't it?”

“Yeah, sure is.” She jiggers the girl's wrist like a broken toilet handle, ensnaring it amid the strings above.

“Ouch, Mommy,” her daughter says.

“Hang on, Maria,” she says. “Mommy's doing her best.”

“It's tied up in a big knot,” I say.

“Sorry, this is a pain in the you know what.”

“It's okay. I think untying this knot is a two-person job.”

“Do you live around here?” she asks.

“No. Um, I mean, yeah, I . . . I know the area.”

The mother stands up, holding the girl's hand tight to get a better handle on the knot. “Lots of changes,” she says. “About time, too.”

“I feel kind of lost,” I say. “I guess it's good for the neighborhood.”

“I love it,” she says. “So many new people to meet and things to do. You should've seen the way it used to be.”

“No, I remember. I remember the way it was.”

“Oh, did you grow up around here too?” she asks.

“I've been in and out. Mostly out.”

“‘No place like home,' though, right?”

“I . . . don't know,” I murmur.

“What was that?”

“I think I can see what the problem is,” I say. “Here, you hold one end, and I'll pull it loose from the other.”

Untying the knot like a bow, we pry the balloon loose. “Wow, that was a workout,” she says. “Thanks a lot. I'm sorry, what's your name?”

“Aurora.”

“Angie. And this is Maria. Say ‘thank you,' Maria.”

“Thank you, Maria,” the girl says.

We laugh. Angie offers her hand. I shake it, then out of sheer exhaustion, lean in and give her a hug. She strains against my caress, out of genuine concern or apprehension, I'm not sure which.