​I’ve just returned from my very first visit to Magdalena de Kino, Sonora, México where I attended the most spectacular birthday celebration for the miraculous San Francisco, the town’s patron saint. Magdalena was the town where both my mother Dolores and my grandmother Conchita had been born and raised. And in this same town in 1923, my Nana Conchita busted my grandfather’s antique black clock with a hammer, divorced him and with just my ten-year-old mother and a mochila, came to Nogales, Sonora where my grandmother’s two sisters, Carmela and Dolores, lived. After a short stay, my Nana Conchita found work as a laundress in Arizona and she and my mother ended up in Barrio Anita, one of Tucson, Arizona’s poorest barrios, and that’s where my four older sisters and I were born.
 
I sincerely believe that if you’re very lucky, in your life there is someone whose words you will never forget, and for me, it was my Nana Conchita. She may have never told me that she loved me, and I may have never told her that I loved her, but in both of our corazones, in our hearts, without these words, we knew. So, right here I have to declare that I truly love and remember everything that my grandmother told me and I will never forget her words. I no longer have her in my life, and I do not remember exactly when she gave me this advice, but here it is: She said that when a very esteemed person in your life leaves this earth and you can no longer see them, their spirit, their essence, will continue to visit you in your dreams, your memories, and they will even walk right next to you even though you will probably never actually see them; but if you’re really lucky and have faith, sometimes you can feel their presence.
 
And if you find yourself all alone in a desperate, dangerous situation and in need of guidance and help, that’s when you will hear and maybe even see them because they will always come to help you. When she said this, I almost wanted to ask her if she would be by my side and come to help me if I ever needed it, but I thought it would be disrespectful so I didn’t say anything. She did not say anything either, but she looked intently at my face and the next thing she did was smile and pat my shoulder, the very same shoulder that she always used to hoist herself from any sitting position.
 
I thought that with my crazy imagination I would surely see spirits like Lola, my mother, sees Dusty, her best friend long gone, but I never saw any until tonight. And it could very well just be a myth, but like I read somewhere what a folklorist wrote about myths: If you believe that they’re true, then they’re true. So, for me, this is true: I believe that my grandmother will always be by my side forever, and she will come to help me if I need her just as she did tonight when she appeared and helped me save that little girl at the dry riverbed in Magdalena, Sonora, Mexico.
 
And tonight, right before I go to bed, I am remembering very clearly my grandmother’s precise description of the fiesta that she told me about over fifty years ago when she was around sixty years old; I was around twelve, newly-arrived from Salinas, California where I had lived the last four years speaking only English. But even so, my grandmother and I had many long conversations because she understood my English perfectly and I, slowly, eventually, learned her Spanish.
​
In my saved-memories, very vividly I can picture my Nana dressed in a faded flannel nightgown and robe and praying the rosary every single night before she went to bed. She would slowly kneel next to her dresser where she had an improvised altar with her eight favorite saints. In between the rosary’s misterios, she would abruptly stop her praying and with her soft, sleepy voice and in great detail, she would describe Magdalena’s wondrous fiesta and the authentic Sonoran culinary delights that no other state in Mexico or Tucson restaurant could ever hope to duplicate or beat.
 
These two were her fondest memories and she never stopped telling me this. “¡Pos sí, Quinta, créyemelo o no, pero de veritas, anque hiziya un pinchi calor de la tiznada—y esto anque juera o no juera ya en el mes de octubre—no cave duda que la fiesta del milagroso San Francisco en mi pueblito de Magdalena de Kino, Sonora, era la fiesta más grandiosa de todo el mundo y con la mejor comida en todo México!”
 
Yes, these were my grandmother’s exact words in her very own distinctive and unique “imperfect” Spanish which included a truly impressive range of misuse, mispronunciations y las muchas malas palabras that I surely hope won’t offend anyone. And guess what? I now have to totally agree with my grandmother: The fiesta for San Francisco is the grandest celebration in the whole world and with the most delicious dishes in all of Mexico, especially the pozole de gallina pinta which is made with beef, pinto beans and hominy, and it is absolutely not a painted chicken! ¡Pero, híjole, Chihuahua, it was just like she’d said, for it being the month of October, it sure was tiznada HOT!!! 

​What you will never ever imagine when you see me standing anywhere looking toda rascuachita, chamagosa, y cochambruda, holding onto my notepad, my beat-up and battered famous quotations book, thesaurus, and Spanish and English dictionaries in my hands, is that I have the audacity to call myself a writer; but honestly, I do!!! I do!!! I mostly write about my good, bad, joyful and sad memories; lots of descriptions of my days, music that I love, my crazy relatives, my typing clients and all of our inane nonsense and shenanigans. I started writing the day that I got my book of famous quotations and my English and Spanish dictionaries sometime before my twelfth birthday. I remember when I told my Grandmother Conchita that I wanted to be a writer, she told me with her usual enigmatic words whenever I came up with an impossible, quixotic goal: “Ay, Quinta cabrona, ¿pos cuantas veces te voy a dijir que ‘del dicho al hecho hay muncho trecho,’ eh?” Which crazily translates to something like this: From the saying/statement to the action/deed there is a very long distance/space.
 
My Nana always felt that my writing (grouped along with my reading, daydreaming and my obsessive counting) was nothing but another one of my “puras bavosadas y pendejadas despilfarradas,” saliva-drooling nonsense that would make me waste and fritter away an entire day doing absolutely nothing. But anyway that didn’t stop me. First chance I’d get I would sneak away somewhere to write, but without fail my grandmother would find me, then she’d sigh, sniff and snicker, and—THUNK!—right there’s when she’d smack me on the head with her shoe or with the end of the broom or with whatever else was in her hands.
 
Well, believe it or not, in spite of the literal and figurative chingazos that life and my grandmother gave me, I still continued to write every chance I got because I wanted and needed to make some sense of my life that was filled with empty blank areas and horrific nightmares and of course this has turned out to be a super-long and difficult endeavor without a final resolution in sight.
 
Well, besides claiming to be a writer, I have another delusion of grandeur: I could’ve become a photographer like the woman who went around 14 La Quinta Soledad taking pictures of very sad and very poor people during the Great Depression. I forget her name—but it’ll come to me when I least expect it—anyway, just like her, I would have plenty of these gloomy subjects around here, except that I would prefer to take photographs of smiling people if I could find any.

And I would’ve been a good photographer because I have a tendency to view life like as if I was holding my hands out in front of me, my two thumbs together making a square, but missing the top line, and I am always checking out the lights and shadows and colors. For dramatic and most gripping effect, I especially like either the stark blacks and whites like in negatives, or a kaleidoscope of the latest-invented eighty-four Crayola rainbow colors to place over people’s heads.
 
With the camera in my mind I can very expertly create the most riveting dramatic images and scenes to either photograph plainly or to film with plenty of freezes, slow and fast motion speeds, super-impositions, compressed times with rolling white meringue clouds, deliberately out-of-order flash-backs to the past, flash-forwards to the future, intentional blurs for dramatic effect, and instant replays for the dumb ones who missed it the first time.
 
And because I like to write, I can even write the piquant and racy dialogue and deep-voiced narrative voice-overs, or else the people can talk sentences with just their eyes or with their words in bubbles over their heads like in the comic books. Or in contrast, I can even imagine the most tranquil inky-dark absolute silence like in a black bottomless abyss where a giant octopus awaits with its eight lazy floating tentacles.
 
Plus, not only that, but to accompany these scenes or images, I always then select the background music that will perfectly fit the mood, themes, or even the wild pacing of my photographs or films like from the most soporiferous sleep-inducing gringo classics like from Brahms’ “Waltz in A Flat Major, Op. 39, No. 5,” to any of the raunchiest and liveliest Mexican corridos norteños like from Los Alegres de Terán, or even the beer-drinkers’ favorite anthem: “Volver, Volver,” sung loudly by just about any drunk chorus of borrachentos desentonados right before the serious fistfights begin.
 
Needless to say, if you’re going to have delusions, you might as well go to the very top pinnacle, like up to Mount Everest, and that’s precisely why, in all of my daydreams and fantasies, I myself could’ve become a famous photographer just like Dorothea Lange—somewhere in my memory bank I found the answer that I needed: Dorothea Lange was the Depression photographer’s name and the name of the woman in her most famous photograph was Florence Thompson.
 
Or, you know, I could’ve even become a movie director like Alfred Hitchcock and I would give myself lots of cameo roles, and then I’d unobtrusively stroll in and out of all the different murder scenes, like maybe I could be a detective taking copious notes in a red spiral notebook, and plus I would get to mingle with the real actors and eat the fabulous catered meals under a rented tent.

At present time, I am a typist for my relatives, friends, felons, juvenile delinquents and a few law-abiding citizens, and I like to introduce myself as a “writer” to them. Although to be sure you could rightly say that calling myself a “writer” is quite a hyperbolic exaggeration because I truly believe that my command of both the English or Spanish languages is almost non-existent due to the fact that I have a very wonky manner of speaking and writing in a very mixed-up hodgepodge manner with improper bad English, pocho-mocho Spanish, Spanglish and code-switching.
 
But before you know it, like an uninvited intrusive comadre mitotera butting into the conversation, my Past always inserts itself into my Present every chance it finds, and then I can’t find margins or seams to separate the two. At these times I even think that I could be like Joanne Woodward in the movie “Three Faces of Eve,” where she had multiple personalities because when she was a little girl she was forced to touch her dead grandmother. But I know for a fact that I never touched my Nana Conchita to give me this kind of trauma because I never even went up to her coffin. And besides, to be honest, sometimes I think that I don’t even have one personality, much less three!!!
 
And added to that is the bad habit that I have of always hesitating before answering anything because I have to first, calmadamente, translate the words in my mind, Spanish to English, or English to Spanish, until I form a mental picture of them like as if I was going to take a photograph of them for my favorite Graphic Arts class at Tucson High way back in 1955 to 1956 when I was almost sixteen years old, in the ninth grade, and right before I dropped out of school for the first time.
 
Because of my high vocabulary score on my last exam when I ended the eighth grade at John Spring Junior High in 1955, I was mistakenly placed in Miss Benvenuto’s Advanced Reading and Writing English Class at Tucson High School where I surely had no business being there. In Miss Benvenuto’s class I had to read novels and short stories, write essays, and learn grammar and punctuation. Of these, what I did learn to enjoy the most was the reading of the assigned short stories and novels and then writing what I thought about them.
 
But learning the punctuation and the grammar gave me the worst headache that not even my Nana’s sliced raw potatoes on my forehead could take away. Las desgraciadas commas, I just tended to willy-nilly insert them like as if they were raisins in the oatmeal cookies, and I walked out of the class before I learned what a semicolon or a colon was really good for. But I do love the dashes that interrupt whenever and wherever they want—just like I do—and the parentheses that I stick in anywhere and anytime always remind me of those know-it-all viejas chismoleras that you can always count on to give you that extra, sometimes trivial, information. As for the exclamation marks, Miss Benvenuto insisted that only one was needed, but sometimes if something’s exciting, frightening or terribly important, I use three!!!
 
So without any nalgas huangas excuses or apologies, in April, 1956, I walked out of Miss Benvenuto’s class and dropped out of school before I even finished the ninth grade. In September, 1956, I did start the ninth grade all over again at Belmont High in Los Angeles, but I only lasted almost two months and around the end of October I dropped out for good this time and I returned to Tucson. And to be honest, I can sincerely say that in both of those ninth-grades, except for maybe the Typing and Gregg’s Shorthand classes, I didn’t learn anything even remotely worthwhile.
 
But now, in my writing, like as if it was a fence separating any of the feuding barrio neighbors, I just stick a semicolon in wherever I want; and the colon I use like as if it was a trumpet announcing a list or something important, or else it’s right before a famous quotation. To this date I still forever use the sacred punctuation marks without respect or boundaries or even omit them completely, but, really, put simply, what almost anyone really needs is two things: a question mark that wants an answer and a period that stops everything in its tracks, like this: period.
 
There’s lots of things that I’ve forgotten, thrown away or left out intentionally, and there’s still many more things that I’ve confabulated, obfuscated, sugar-coated and glossed over and which surely proves or confirms why Miss Benvenuto called me an unreliable narrator who had no form or structure!!!
 
And sorry, here I’m not “copping a ‘tude,” an expression that my juvenile delinquent clients always use, but I don’t even give a tiny rat’s pizzle about my sentences that tend to run-on untethered like cucarachas when you turn on the kitchen light with a can of Raid in your hand, and I ignore all of the rest of that boring English chicken-cuacha which included all the pendejadas like predicates, split infinities, dependent and independent clauses, sentence fragments; past, present and future tenses, transitions, points of views, diction, active and passive verbs and all the other chingaderas that never agreed and that I either violated, abused, mis-used, mis-placed, or like as if they were limp huevos boludos, I just simply left them somewhere dangling.
 
Right off, no matter how much I try to learn what Form and Structure means in writing, I obviously have no grasp of whatever that is. So, I do have to admit that I am just like as if I was a chapulín hopping around with all the other grasshoppers in a green alfalfa field. I have a tendency to either over-write or under-write and I do repeat a lot of senseless things or jump forward and backwards with the subject, point of view, time, place, mood, transitions and dates all out of order. I also create a very confusing syntax where the arrangement of my words inevitably either leads to muddled confusion or to scornful disdain. I don’t know how or why, but I even somehow manage to turn my statements into questions. Like this, you see?
 
But anyway, who cares what I violated to my heart’s content and even though I may not have learned the perfect punctuation and grammar before I walked out of Miss Benvenuto’s class, for sure what I learned was how to take very good notes because to this day I sagely and diligently follow the advice of an Italian man named Dante Alighieri who in my battered book of famous quotations wrote: “He listens well who takes notes.”
 
I have a perfect photographic memory (eidetic is the exact word in my English dictionary and in the newspaper’s crossword puzzle). So, with my notes I can recall anything with the most exquisite details in either English or Spanish, and I can describe, almost word for word, the things that I see, hear, touch, smell, taste, or feel. And of course, inevitably, to spice things up, I add my own music, imagery and dialogue. Well, sometimes I do forget the names of famous people or movies or words to a song, and I mix up a few places on the map, and some dates and even some years. But when I really need or want to remember something, it just comes to me, and conversely or reversely, when I don’t want to remember something, it doesn’t.
 
To be honest, with any one of my stolen pens or pencils that I have an overwhelming compulsion to steal, I can fill up pages and pages with my writing. When I am finished, I put them in a folder and label them as “Chapter” and I add a number and a few descriptive words to help me find something without going through all the pages. Some of these “chapters” are long, some are short, and most are choppy and wacky! Then I stuff them into my Salinas suitcase along with the stash of pens and pencils that I bundle into groups of hundreds.
 
On my “feeling good” days, I take out some of what I’ve written and I try to bring things up to date or to provide more information. I label it with capital letters: “UPDATE” and add descriptive words like I do on the “Chapters.” I think it’s like when you write postscripts in letters or film flash-backs and flash-forwards in movies. Some of these are brief and some are long with more details, but still not counting as a chapter.
 
This, of course, wreaks havoc with my past and present tenses, and in some of the dizzying transitions where I jump from there to here or from here to there, and get my dates mixed up, but I believe that’s exactly how people talk, so why not in writing? Anyhow, in my defense, all I can say is that when I’m not purposely avoiding something or else leaving out important information, I try my very best to stay truthful and really, aside from the lies in the letters and forms that I have to type for my quasi-law-abiding or my truly-felonious clients on another one of my client’s stolen electric typewriter—and these surely don’t count because I only type what they tell Mack or me—I never knowingly tell a lie, and so, on this you can trust me completely and implicitly.
 
But not to brag, I really think that if anyone will give me a word and its meaning, I can easily write a sentence with twelve or more words and it will be perfectly coherent and intelligent-sounding even if I can’t pronounce the word itself, and which is why I never could appear on “Jeopardy,” and that’s irregardless—yes, I do know that’s not a word—of how much I adore the handsome Alex Trebeck, but there really wouldn’t be one solitary interesting thing about me that we could discuss when he comes back after the break to chat with the contestants.
 
And although I’ve probably been speaking English all my life, I still speak it with an accent, and this I only know because when I was a student at Belmont High in Los Angeles, I applied for some kind of student/worker telephone operator job, and after the woman extolled my high test scores, she told me I couldn’t be hired because I had an accent! Well, I don’t know where the accent came from, but I suspect that it is in the genes before we are even born. So, yes, it’s an example of bitter irony at its best because when have you understood what any foreign telephone operator in New Delhi tells you nowadays? And sometimes, can you believe this, I’ve even been asked by some jackass what country I’m from?!!!
 
Well, if my English is horrid, you can bet for sure that my gobbledygook Spanish comes close to jack-shit, and I always like to make jokes about it because I surely cannot explain all that baloney about the assimilation and acculturation process; I just know that I am a product of a school system where speaking Spanish was forbidden, Treaty of Guadalupe or not.
 
So, anyway, pues, here’s where I think that I started to speak Spanish. In July, 1952, at age eleven and seven months, I came back from Salinas, California to Tucson, Arizona to help take care of my grandmother at 937 North Contzen in Tucson’s Barrio Anita. My Nana Conchita had just had an operation on her hips, and she had a cast on her left side from her waist to the beginning of her thigh, and on the right side, the cast went from her waist to her knee. Since she couldn’t move up from her bed for around six weeks, I was there to attend to her needs which were quite extensive, but the main one was to keep her entertained with lively conversations so she wouldn’t get into a bad mood or all sad and melancholy about the Mexico she’d left behind in 1923.
 
I don’t remember what language I spoke the first eight years of my life here in Tucson, 1940 to 1948, because those years are a total blank, but for the next four years, I had lived in Salinas, California from 1948 to 1952, where no one would be caught dead speaking Spanish for fear of being mistaken for a piojoso bracero field-worker from Mexico. In turn, my Nana Conchita was from Mexico and in the United States since 1923, but she wouldn’t be caught dead speaking English and be mistaken for an officious social worker from the welfare department even if it meant being called a guacha, or one who still wore guarachis on their feet and the cotton calzones de manta underwear, like as if she was a peasant soldadera in the revolution with Pancho Villa.
 
At first my Nana’s Spanish, even before her sleeping or pain pills started to work, had sounded like plain gibberish to me, but it seemed as though since my arrival that hot and windy afternoon, by pure force, but most likely because I had spoken Spanish in the first eight years of my life when I had lived before in Tucson, already I was re-learning Spanish by the minute, and by constantly interrupting and asking questions and forming mental images with the answers, I could instantly translate to English the gist of what my Nana was saying in Spanish, and somehow she always understood what I said in English.
 
To me, young as I was, some things that my Nana said made sense, others didn’t, and some I may have invented as the years went by because my memories always tend to jump around like pork chicharrones on the hot grill. In some strange way, I managed to memorize most of what she told me, and that’s why even now I try to write her words exactly as I heard them, and I don’t care who objects to them or who dares to correct me. And for sure, I really don’t care if someone tells me that they are “imperfect,” or that they don’t know what they mean because like I always like to say: that’s precisely why dictionaries were invented. (Hint. Hint.)
 
Anyway, I could talk to her and jabber away as much as I wanted to in English and she would answer me in Spanish, and if ever I had become a movie screenwriter and had written the dialogue for the scenes with my Nana Conchita, the actor portraying her would only speak Spanish and my grandmother’s words would be shown in English subtitles at the bottom of the screen, like in those foreign movies where you have to read really fast so you won’t miss seeing the actors’ dramatic facial expressions or subtle movements, and her bad words would be like this: @#%$^&*%# like in cartoons where someone smashes their fingers with a hammer!!!
 
I never really wanted to speak any Spanish, but not understanding my Nana when she told me that when I’d gone to California I’d left Guatemala for Guatepeor, made me resolve to pay more attention to the Spanish because, who knew, maybe, unlike the people in Salinas, California, here in Tucson, Arizona they were so backwards that that’s all the people spoke. But still, my Spanish must’ve been good enough because anyone in Barrio Anita that was allowed to be my friend spoke the same “improper and rascuacho” Spanish that I did, and so without going into details, that should tell you enough.
 
So, in less than a month after arriving in Tucson, I start to speak Spanish effortlessly—well, almost effortlessly—and soon I could easily switch from English to Spanish and from Spanish to English. Maybe it was like I remember René Martínez, the dishwasher in Salinas who started to speak English from one day to the next like as if he always had the English stored in his brain without his even knowing it; or maybe it was because I must’ve spoken Spanish earlier in my life; or maybe it was just because I was surrounded by it, here in this Tucson Barrio Anita.
 
That same summer when it was raining so hard that I could not go outside, not even to feed the chickens, and I only had the “Confidencias” magazines that my Nana Conchita’s two sisters sent to her from Nogales, Sonora for reading, so I taught myself to read in Spanish, slowly and by mouthing the words. In these “Confidencias” magazines, my Nana detested the monthly horoscopes that she called “puras brujerías fraudulentas,” but which I avidly devoured. Eventually, though, I believed these horoscopes had to be the most stupidest things I’d ever read, because even if the “Confidencias” had been up-to-date, and even when I cheated and tried three different Zodiac months, the actual December, and then November and January, none of the horoscopes even came close to fruition for me.
 
These magazines consisted mostly of what my Nana called las vaquetonadas y sinvergüenzadas indecentes, but which really just described nicely and circumspectly the latest escapades of the beautiful movie star María Felix and the results of the latest crooked political elections and what the newly-elected officials were already planning to steal next after they dedicated a new dam for the applauding campesinos. The two things that my grandmother really liked to read were the maudlin and soppy advice for the lovelorn, but only if she agreed with it and if it didn’t call for any of the forgiving “mierdero,” and the recipes that didn’t require strange ingredients like plantains and alcaparras and habichuelas, ingredients that were unknown to the Chino grocers, so she never made any of these dishes.
 
Well, I did manage to learn Spanish, as the saying goes, something like this: “de el trote y al moche,” and today I can brag that I can speak, read and write Spanish, albeit very badly—so, go ahead and call it an “improper and rascuacho” Spanish. And even so, by stretching the definition somewhat, you could say that I’m bilingual, which supposedly is a good thing to put down on any employment application, especially here in Arizona where probably over half the population speaks Spanish, or at least until some tapados get it outlawed.

​A native of Tucson, Arizona, Silviana Wood received her M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Arizona and has been involved in the local theater community since the 1970s. She is known for her bilingual comedies and dramas as well as for being a professional storyteller, actor, director, and teacher of literature and Chicano theater. Silviana has twice won the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize from the University of California, Irvine: once for short story, and once for drama. She has also received playwriting fellowships and done several residencies at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio, Texas. She has been a member of TENAZ (El Teatro Nacional de Aztlán), Teatro del Pueblo, Teatro Libertad, and Teatro Chicano and is a founding member of Mujeres Que Escriben, a Latina writers’ group that was formed in 1991 and is comprised of professional women whose poetry and fiction have been published in various anthologies. In 2016, Barrio Dreams: Selected Plays by Silviana Wood was published by the University of Arizona Press.

by Tommy Villalobos

Giggles walked like she was dancing to Oldies But Goodies, Volume One. But she also looked sad all the time. It was like she wanted to be sad. Her friends already had a Sad Girl so they called her Giggles.
 
People called me Gordo. I wasn’t fat. Maybe just a little.
 
But let me get back to Giggles. She was the finest one in the Projects, 1950’s.
 
One day, Lil’ Chango, skinny with a face that not even a madre could love, tried talking to her. He was barking like a seal up the wrong playa. I looked at her face when she was listening to the bato. Her lips were twisted. Like he was making funny noises with his nariz.
 
He walked away with his head looking down, like he didn’t care if a carucha hit him. She looked at me and I made a serious face. Inside, I was laughing like when I saw that cartoon where the coyote gets hit by a giant rock when he’s chasing the pájaro loco.
 
Giggles started walking again with that special wiggle. I wanted to tell her something like a priest. I walked fast.
 
“Hija, you can tell me,” I said.
 
She turned to look at me like I was a cucaracha walking around her sopa.
 
“I don’t know you.”
 
“I want you to.”
 
“I like someone.”
 
“Never saw you with someone. Never saw you with anyone.”
 
She looked at me like I was another cucaracha but this time in her sopa.
 
“Are you following me around?”
 
“Even when I sleep.” I was trying to sound romantic like in a song.
 
“Don’t!”
 
“All girls like being looked at.”
 
“Not me.”
 
“We’re meant to be.”
 
“Uh-uh.” She walked quickly away. Almost ran.
 
People could ask me why I didn’t give up. You know, chase other girls who liked gordos.
 
I would tell them that girls act in different modos. They can hate you but then you say or do something they really like, they grab you and put your arms around them. You feel like an octopus wearing a Pendleton.
 
“Where have you been, Felipe?” said my mother as soon as I walked in the door.
 
“Getting fresh air.”
 
“There isn’t any.”
 
I wanted to tell her about Giggles but she might not like her walk.
 
“Áma, I like this girl and—”
 
“She won’t be the last.”
 
“This one is the first and only. She is special.”
 
“She lives in Beverly Hills?”
 
“Huh?”
 
“Take out the garbage.”
 
I took the garbage outside. A chavalo called Freddie saw me.
 
“Hey, Phillip,” he yelled. He was the only one who called me by my name.
 
“What?” I said to the mocoso.
 
“You want to play baseball?”
 
He didn’t see that I was grown up. Baseball was for chavalos. Girls were more fun now.
 
“Freddie, I like girls now,” I said like I was confessing to a priest.
 
“What?”
 
Freddie was stunned, making a cara like I said I liked wearing dresses now.
 
“One day, you’ll throw your baseball to your sister because you won’t be able not to.”
 
I really thought of saying that because his sister Lydia was a better baseball player than him and she was only seven.
 
“You’re talking crazy, Phillip. Go get your mitt, let’s play.”
 
“Maybe later,” I said, knowing “later” really meant never.
 
He turned and walked away. He turned back to look at me as if he wasn’t sure who I was. Then he disappeared into the Projects. I felt kind of sad. Like my childhood was disappearing with him.
 
Then I thought again about Giggles and I wanted to kick Freddie and my childhood further into the Projects. God made something more fun than baseball.
 
Then my friend since I forget how long, Jimmy, saw me. We were the same age. He was more serious than me. Of course, my mother would say everyone was more serious than me.
 
Jimmy loved math and collecting baseball trading cards. His cards took up most of his life.
 
And the girls all looked at him like he was Elvis. It didn’t seem to matter to him. He spent his time with his math books and cards. Everything else was for other guys.
 
“Gordo, why are you standing there?” he said.
 
“Thinking.”
 
“About what?”
 
“Not sure. Where are you going walking all fast?”
 
“My mom needs butter.”
 
“You still run mandadas?”
 
“Sure. You don’t?”
 
I nodded slowly.
 
“Jimmy, oh, Jimmy!” said a high voice belonging to a running flaca with flying pelo.
 
It was Lorna Ritas. She was in a race for Jimmy with Sally Lomenez, Linda Mistasosa and Maria Lobermie. They had a better chance with the real Elvis. Jimmy barely said “Hi” to them but each time they took it like he wanted to make out with them at Belvedere Park.
 
Like that song, Jimmy only had eyes for Rachel Apenuz.
 
Rachel Apenuz had no personality I could see. Jimmy saw something the rest of the world didn’t, like in those spooky movies.
 
Compared to Rachel, Giggles was a shiny pair of spit-shined calcos. Rachel was like my sister’s paper dolls she used to play with. She was like cardboard. Her hair looked tired. In fact, she looked tired.
 
But I was glad Jimmy didn’t see Giggles. Then I panicked, my mouth turned dry. Maybe he hadn’t seen her glide like a lowered carucha down Brooklyn and Mednik.
 
“So, are any new girls waving at you?” I said, my mouth even drier now.
 
He looked at me like I said something in Chinese real fast.
 
“New girls?”
 
“Yeah, like hot off the comal?”
 
“What are you talking about?”
 
“Is Rachel still your, you know…?”
 
He nodded with a strange smile.
 
“I still like Rachel.”
 
I could breathe normal, again.
 
Jimmy’s sister whistled for him from away off. She had the loudest whistle in the Projects.
 
Jimmy ran off. I went back inside.
 
I played “Earth Angel” by the Penguins on my sister’s record player. I played it over and over. The title said what I wanted to sing to Giggles. Then I fell asleep on my sister’s cama. The record player needle was stuck on the end of the record.
 
“What are you doing?” my sister screamed, making me jump. My heart wanted to leave my chest and jump out the window to find somewhere better to live.
 
“Man,” I screamed back, “you nearly gave me a heart attack.”
 
“And I hate to fail. Now I’m really mad.” She got good grades in school. I think that’s why she said that. But she also had a big mouth my mother was always trying to slam shut.
 
Hearing my sister’s big mouth, my mother came running like my sister was on fire.
 
“¿Qué está pasando?” she screamed louder than even my sister.
 
“I have to wash everything,” my sister said, looking around the room like I spread pulgas all over.
 
“Don’t exaggerate,” my mother said.
 
“He’s a pestoso,” she screamed in her chavala voice so all the Projects could hear. I think all the people in the Projects were smelling the air.
 
My mother was quiet as if my sister said something like the president.
 
“I was only playing a record,” I said, explaining things to the judge, my mother.
 
Like a bailiff, my mother escorted me out of the room. My hermana had a crooked smile. The door slammed behind us. I would aim pedos into her room next time she wasn’t home.
 
To feel better, I went back outside. In the Projects you always ran into someone who either made you laugh or was madder than you.
 
Right now, it was Pete. He never made you laugh or mad. But he always had a problem to share. I tried telling him that was why he had a mother. That’s how they got gray hair.
 
But today, I think I caught him at a moment when people feel like unloading a problem on the first person they catch.
 
“Gordo,” he said, “I have a problem.”
 
“You’re the last bato I would guess had one.”
 
“What?”
 
“What happened?”
 
“I met the finest weesa ever made.”
 
“Ever?”
 
“Ever.”
 
“Why?”
 
“When you see her walk, it’s like seeing the ocean at Long Beach.”
 
“Go write a poem.” I said. It sounded like he was talking about Giggles and I didn’t want to hear.
 
“I have to win her heart first.”
 
Pete wasn’t a bad looking guy like some of the truly ugly ones around, but right now he looked like the ugliest feo of all time.
 
“I love Giggles,” he continued and I wanted to give him a Popeye-sized cachetada.
 
“Who is ‘Giggles’?” I said with a shaky voice. I was a nervous liar.
 
“She is a walking angel, like in the song, ‘Earth Angel’.” He said this with a stupid, faraway look.
 
“You okay?” he then said.
 
I felt mad then sick then mad again.
 
“Sure.”
 
“Are you sure-sure?”
 
“Sure.”
 
“My problem is that she is related to Jimmy and likes Loco.”
 
I sat on the sidewalk. I saw Loco’s crooked right eye. I think he hated the world and everyone in it because of that eye. He was born that way. God wanted him to look loco so he took the hint and became one.
 
“You look weird, man.”
 
“Why Loco?” I croaked.
 
“That’s what I want you to tell me. He is one ugly bato with an even uglier way with people.”
 
“And she is Jimmy’s cousin?”
 
He nodded weakly.
 
“How do you know that?”
 
“My sister.”
 
“Oh, yeah. Your sister Rosie talks with everyone about everyone. The Queen of Maravilla Chisme.”
 
“Hey, that’s my hermana.”
 
“Everyone knows Rosie, Pete.”
 
“Yeah, but you’re wise.”
 
All those times talking to Pete, I was mostly trying to get rid of him.
 
“So, what do you think?” he said. He wasn’t going nowhere till he got an answer.
 
“Loco has that name for a reason. Jimmy is probably thinking of a way to stop his prima from getting hooked up with him.”
 
I said that for myself.
 
“What do you mean?”
 
“He wants to stop him.”
 
“Oh.” I always liked hearing Pete say “Oh.” It meant he was accepting what I said and would go away. Not today.
 
“You know, Jimmy invited Loco to the show with Giggles?”
 
I lost my words and thinking.
 
Pete batted for me. “I saw them walking back to the Projects after they got off the Kern bus. Loco was laughing like a hyena.”
 
My mother said life has surprises. One just kicked me in the head.
 
“Should we jump him?” said Pete.
 
“He would wrap you around me like a pretzel.”
 
“So, what are you going to do?” he said.
 
What I wanted to do was pluck Loco’s good eye out and do a pachuco hop on it.
 
“It’s up to you.”
 
“Then what should I do?”
 
I felt like I was running his life when he should be running his own.
 
“Find another one.”
 
“Another what?”
 
“Chavala.”
 
“There ain’t no other around,” said Pete, looking around as if to prove it.
 
“All good times don’t lead to Giggles.”
 
At this point, I think I was again giving advice to myself.
 
“Yes they do.”
 
“What if she hates you? And your family? And your dog.”
 
“She don’t know me. Or my family. And this is the Projects, we can’t have a dog.”
 
“Maybe she has a drinking problem. She’ll start making ojitos at other batos.”
 
“How do you know she has a drinking problem?”
 
“Just looking at all angles.”
 
“She could wet her bed, chew food with her boca wide open, have a voice like Jimmy Durante, and I would still like her.”
 
“What if she has a record?”
 
“Even if she was serving life at juvie, I would still visit her every day.”
 
He was almost as crazy over her as I was.
 
“Don’t you have a girl you liked? What about Edith?”
 
“Edith was in the second grade. Her family moved out of the Projects when I was nine.”
 
“Too bad.”
 
“Huh?”

He looked at me real let down. He walked away.
 
I went and sat on my porch. I saw a girl coming toward me on the sidewalk. She was walking like a wave at Long Beach, like Pete said.
 
It was Giggles.
 
“Hello,” I said, trying to sound like some actor I heard in a movie.
 
She kept walking like I had been a squawking perico.
 
I was hoping for a “Hello” back or at least her head to turn up all conceited. But she kept walking.
 
But then for a little bit, she turned her head toward me. Not mad or happy.
 
Jimmy would make everything right. He would talk to his cousin and tell her that he and I were closer than gum under a zapato and she should grab me, crying.
 
Jimmy said that they were cousins when he came to the door.
 
“So, she just likes him like a cousin?” I said.
 
“She and Loco are closer than gum in your hair,” said Jimmy.
 
“So she likes him like a favorite cousin?”
 
“She likes him like she likes to kiss him.”
 
“That’s all?”
 
“He kisses her back.”
 
“You know Loco. You know what he’s like.”
 
“Since we were babies.”
 
I swallowed hard. Then I swallowed hard again. Then a third time and maybe a fourth.
 
“You look like you swallowed a moco,” he said.
 
“Why do you even know him?”
 
“He’s my step brother.” Jimmy didn’t even say that like he was sorry.
 
“Why?”
 
“I don’t make the rules. Loco’s dad married my mom years ago. My mom had kids. He had one, Loco.”
 
“So he can’t love Giggles?” I said.
 
“Why can’t he?”
 
“Because.”
 
“She is my cousin but she is nothing to Loco. Well, that could change, but that doesn’t keep them from liking, maybe loving each other and making a whole bunch of kids to spread around Maravilla.”
 
“That shouldn’t be allowed.”
 
“What?”
 
I walked away, stomping on the ground like it was Loco’s ugly ojo.
 
I went to Pete’s house to report.
 
He opened his door then smiled like if I was going to say that Giggles loved him.
 
I broke the news over his head. But it was my own cabeza that hurt.

by Scott Duncan-Fernandez

There’s more Aliens out there—the franchise has put out more video games, comics, and books—but it's the connected Predator franchise movie Prey that has people talking about Native women characters and representation in sci-fi lately.
 
There's already been a famous bad ass brown woman in sci-fi—Jeanette Vasquez from the 80s movie Aliens. Some might point out the actress who played her wasn't a Chicana and the writer wasn't either. I recall some claiming she was a chola stereotype.  My rewatch of Aliens as an adult showed the character was capable, brave, and dealt with typical racism despite her not being written or depicted by a Mexican American. Yet the character needed more.
 
V. Castro in Aliens: Vasquez gives Jeanette Vasquez a Chicana soul and a past and goes beyond a plastic sheen of culture. The story pulled me in hard on the life Jeanette Vasquez and then her daughter Leticia living on Earth and as tough Chicana marines in space. Not only does the character from the movie Aliens get a real deal Chicana soul in this book, the Aliens franchise gets a Chicano outlook. The way Vasquez sees the world, how she lives, and how she fights xenomorphs is filtered by who she is. She is a brown woman who is connected to a chain of warrior women, particularly the Soldaderas from the Mexican Revolution, whose coiled hairstyle was famously borrowed by Princess Leia.
 
The Aliens franchise has thematically been about women fighting patriarchy, dealing with the monstrousness of reproduction, sexuality, parenthood and inheritance of roles. As we all know Vasquez doesn't make it in Aliens, though tough to the end, and the book eventually hands her story off to her daughter, who also aspires to be an elite marine. Her corporate ladder climbing twin brother and she eventually meet up again on a mission involving the heads of the Weyland-Yutani corporation on a planet little is known about. 
 
The life of these two women, Jeanette and her daughter, is a struggle against the system, a patriarchy like many stories in Aliens, but compounded by poverty and racism. Chicano culture comes through as they honor Santa Muerte in xenomorph constructions and make ofrendas and a native weapon, a macuahuitl out of xenomorph bodies.
 
The author V. Castro knows Aliens. There are allusions to other Aliens media throughout the book, some characters are ancestors, some places get mentioned. This is Jeanette and Leticia’s story, as much as Alien was Ripley’s story. Jeanette and her daughter have more against them, they are working class Chicanas, but they are tough, they inspire and finally represent in the way Chicanos want. 
 
Aliens: Vasquez isn't Aliens with taco sauce packets. It's a Chicana story that everyone can appreciate. This is more than representation, this novel is one of our stories, both in space and on Earth, in the future, something us brown sci-fi nerds always want. Of course, I want more and want to see sequels of Aliens: Vasquez and more from V. Castro. 
​
 

Scott Duncan-Fernandez a.k.a. Scott Russell Duncan’s fiction involves the mythic, the surreal, the abstract, in other words, the weird.  He is Indigenous/Xicano/Anglo from California, Texas, and New Mexico and is senior editor at Somos en escrito Literary Magazine.  In 2016 he won San Francisco Litquake’s Short Story Contest. His piece “Mexican American Psycho is in Your Dreams” won first place in the 2019 Solstice Literary Magazine Annual Literary Contest. His debut novel will be published with Flowersong Press in 2023.

​
​V. Castro was born in San Antonio, Texas, to Mexican American parents. She’s been writing horror stories since she was a child, always fascinated by Mexican folklore and the urban legends of Texas. Castro now lives in the United Kingdom with her family, writing and traveling with her children.

“¿Puede venir Guillermo?” Silence from his mother as Miguel rode shotgun and I sat in the back of his mom’s green 1996 Honda. I could never make out what she said.

“No, Miguelito.”

“¿Pero, por qué mommy?”

Miguelito’s mom then went on a short rant on why the dark-skinned pocho with divorced parents who didn’t know any Spanish could not come over today. Sí, at this time of my life, I knew little to no Spanish. My parents, who were both Mexican-American, spoke perfectly good Spanish, and whose parents can be traced back both to Zacatecas and Michoacán, never spoke to me or my sister in Spanish. The story of my acquisition of Spanish will come later, but for right now, I was ass hurt because for one, I did not know why Miguel’s mom said no so often and two, I could not understand “why” because of my lack of Spanish.

“Pero, mommy…” Miguel would then go on a short rant of his own on why it was imperative that I come over to play soccer and PlayStation. I mean, after all, both of us were quite close, played handball and soccer during recess and lunch, and had a couple of classes together.

All throughout elementary school, if you played outside, you got recognized for your athletic prowess by the girls. You know how boys always wanted to impress the girls in the yard, at least, that was my conception as a youngster. Eventually, we ignored the girls, and the boys did what we did in the field during recess because it was fun. In first grade, tag was the game to play, if others were not playing hopscotch or jump rope, or reading outside their teachers’ classrooms. I remember that I was one of the “fastest” kids next to my Korean friend Benson. Now, Benson was fast as fuck. Every time I was “it,” I would go directly to Benson since I knew he would be a challenge. I almost never got him, but when I did, he knew it would be almost no different when he came after me. We would run through the play sets that were accompanied by monkey bars and slides and us elite tag players would use them like obstacle courses to escape our pursuers. This was the upper field where the younger kids would play at Wilcox Elementary School, adjacent to Schur High School. The lower lot of my elementary school is where the real fun was.

The lower lot was where the basketball courts, handball courts, and soccer field were. These were my stomping grounds, and I was now known for being one of the best handball court players. Throughout second and third grade, you could find me here hitting the side of a bouncy burgundy ball. Handball in my school was basically hitting the ball downward to where it would bounce off from the ground to the wall and back to the opponent. After the ball hit the wall, your opponent was only allowed to let the ball hit the ground once before they needed to hit it again. The challenge was to trick your opponent into missing their chance to hit it back or with trick shots.

This one trick shot called “slidies” or “sliders” everyone tried to master, and I was one of them who did. To do this trick, you had to bend your knees and spread your feet to shoulder length. From there, you then brought your palms together as if you were praying and positioned yourself as if you were about to bat a homerun but being very low to the ground. Timing was everything. Once it was your turn to hit the ball, you got in this position and if performed with precision and power, your iron palms became an instrument that would smack the ball like a speeding bullet leading you to sheer victory. The ricochet from the wall made this executed shot so difficult to hit back. Not for me and many like me though.

Some games would last for seconds to minutes (quite long when you are moving in all directions trying to defeat your opponent). This is the particular game where and when I met Miguel, my dear friend.

“Guillermo and Miguel are playing!!” Some kid screamed. An audience formed around us.

I knew of Miguel at this point but never got to know him. Apparently, Miguel would play handball from time to time too and won quite often but we were on different handball courts until now. He is on my court. A light skinned Mexican-American who had short buck teeth and a high hairline. He always wore a white uniform shirt with navy blue pants that complimented his dark blue shoes. He looked confident and ready. We were about to do battle.

Winners served the ball first and I won the last two games. Not everyone asked, but I saw it as a courtesy to ask if he was ready. He nodded. I served the ball with two iron fists.

WHAMM!!

I struck the ball as hard as I could to see if his eyes could grab the ball’s location on where it was going to fall next. He did.

WHAMMM!!

He did the same! He made me chase the ball that almost escaped the reaches of the handball court line. A legal shot! The ball bounced on the ground, and I could not let the ball hit the ground again or I would be out! I got behind the ball with ninja speed and struck the ball back making the hit legal but barely. My opponent then hit the ball lightly, making me dash to the wall to save myself from losing. I crashed into the wall while simultaneously hitting the ball the other direction as the ball nearly hugged the wall. I anticipated his next move. He was clever but not as sharp as I was. Because he was ambidextrous, he swung both of his hands as fists, shuffled to the left, and struck downwards, causing the ball to fly backwards again, which made me sprint away from the wall again.

This guy. He was going to gas me out. A sheer skill that would guarantee victory. Not today in my court.

Because I anticipated his next move, I quickly recovered from running into the wall and back to the court line well before the ball hit the ground. I found the ball’s trajectory and awaited the ball’s return back to Earth.

“He’s going to do a slidie, watch out!” Some kid obviously on Miguel’s’ side screamed.

“Hey, no helping, shut up!!” Some other kids obviously on my side screamed back.
I spread my feet, squatted, and put my hands together to time the shot just right.

BOING!! SWISHHH!!

My slidie was virtually unhittable. But with the right kind of eyes and reflexes, you could catch it and hit it back. Miguel was one of the few who could catch my trick shot.

WHAM!!

Miguel hit the ball, breaking the sliding trajectory of the ball. No time to stop in awe. The audience of our classmates “ooh’d” and “awe’d.” This time the ball landed in the middle, to where I was. I repeated my same position for a slider, but this time, rather than aiming straight to the wall, I aimed at a slight angle, an even harder shot to catch. 

He caught it again! But how?! I muttered to myself.

Miguel caught my angled slider, but he slightly lost his balance. He was near beside me in the middle but to the left. I shot it in his direction to the left corner of the wall, giving him a very brief window of reply to hit back. As he did, and because of the angle, he backhanded the ball, making it a legal shot. This is my chance.

I struck the ball hard, making the ball go back to the end of the court just within the line. My soon-to-be friend could not make it, and I won the game. He dusted himself up as I approached him, and he gave me props for my angled slider shot. Nobody was able to hit that shot, but he did so; I gave him props for that as well. The bell rang and it was time to go back to class.

“That was a crazy game!”

“I know, I thought Guill was going to lose!”

“Guill got lucky!”

“Miguel is the one who got lucky!”

“You are crazy, Miguel took it easy on him.”

Our classmates spoke in admiration for both of us. But see, Miguel was not really a handball player like I was. His dad played soccer and in turn, got his son to play. Miguel was damn good too. As I was the fastest on foot in tag and in the handball court, Miguel was skilled in tricking you in the field with a soccer ball. The beginning of our friendship happened after that handball game we played.

“¿Juegas fútbol?”

“Umm, do I like football?” I always felt moderately embarrassed when someone talked to me in Spanish and I didn’t know how to respond back.

“Sorry,” he chuckled as he asked the same question but in the tongue that I first learned to speak.

“Do you like to play soccer?”

“Oh! I mean, I never really played, but I did play kickball a few times.”

“Nah dude, soccer is different. Picture it like basketball in a way, except you cannot use your hands and the point is to shoot the ball with your feet into a goal.”
I’m not an idiot; I knew what soccer was.

“I know all that. Dude, I thought you asked me if I liked football.” I chucked slightly, changing the subject with minimal embarrassment.

He knew I was one of “those” kids that was most likely Latino but didn’t know Spanish. He was kind though. Not prejudiced like other kids might have been who spoke Spanish and didn’t feel comfortable befriending a pocho who only spoke English. It was definitely vice versa where I grew up too. Most kids in my school spoke English and hung around the other kids who spoke English like themselves.
​
Many Spanish-speaking kids at my school stuck with themselves too. I don’t blame them either. I remember a lot of English-only-speaking kids making fun of the Spanish-speaking kids since they were placed in ESL (English as a Secondary Language) classes, and kids being as cruel as they can be, thought they were placed in there because they were slow and couldn’t speak the “right” language.

“Why don’t you speak English?”

“Is it too hard for you?”

“You sound so goofy when you speak Spanish!”

“You look like an Indian!”

These were just some of the common statements kids would say to the Spanish-speaking kids whose parents and grandparents spoke Spanish and practiced their custom diligently, not willing to be watered down by the Americanization that has been taking place for decades, if not, centuries.

Many Latinos y Latinas who grew up as Mexican American, especially in the San Gabriel Valley, were not only attacked for speaking Spanish, but were taught in their schools that Spanish was “bad” and that it would hinder the acquisition in learning English. I learned this as I got older.

Miguel invited me to play soccer with the other Spanish-speaking kids and they were mostly cool with me playing, just as long as they didn’t have to explain every rule to me. There was probably a handful of white kids in our entire elementary school, at least that I was aware of, and one of them would play with us. Everyone would shout out in Spanish when we were in the middle of our games.

“QUÉDATE CON ÉL!!”

“PASA LA BOLA!!”

“NO SEAS TONTO!!”

“BLOQUÉALO!!”

“MANO!! FALTA!!”

Slowly but surely, I began to understand what they meant, not the language itself, but the phrases. I was never as good as Miguel, Joshua, or Matthew, but I held my own. When I played defense, I covered whoever I was on like a fly on shit. When I played offense, I did my best to get away from the better players that could easily steal the ball from me and pass it to my teammates that were the shooters to make a goal.

“GOAAALLL!!!”

That was the word that everyone from either team wanted to hear. This one time, Miguelito and I were playing a rough game with Jaime and his twin brother Jefferey. Jaime and Jefferey looked pretty much identical and were both tan like me. They each had a high hairline and had their hair combed to the side (almost all of us chicos in that time had our hair combed to the side in elementary). They were enthusiastic about soccer and would have conversations about soccer with Miguel and others when we all sat down for lunch.

But back to this epic game that I last remember. There must have been about eight of us on each team, including a goalie. Miguelito was as good an offensive player as he was a goalie and would switch with our other classmate, Joshua. Joshua was shorter than the rest of us. He was one of the few boys that did not comb his hair because of how wild it was. Josh must have had four cowlicks on his head that made it impossible to tame, even with the strongest hair gel. He had crooked teeth like me with a sharp pointy nose and small ears. As short and skinny as he was, the kid could run fast. When he sprinted, I swear, both of his legs would be exactly horizontal in the air when he took off. He always reminded me of a mouse.

Matthew was probably the second or third best player out of our bunch, including Jaime and Jefferey’s friends. Matthew was not as dark as me, but not as light as Miguelito. We knew each other from our earlier years of playing tag and handball. A humble friend whenever he won or lost a game, he’d have a smile that was instantly contagious. Matthew was known on the soccer field for running towards you if you were defending him and with the graces of his own abilities, he would grab the ball with the inner sides of his shoes and catapult the ball over his own body and the person in front of him, making the defender stop in his tracks to see where the ball was going, only to see the ball and Matthew were driving full speed to its destination.
The epic game we started was 2-2. Lunch was almost over, and we wanted to settle the score to see who was the better of our teams, Jaime and Jefferey’s, or Miguelito’s. Joshua had the ball in his possession and was ready to kick off to the field so that either of our teammates could safely receive it. We did! The only white kid with red hair on our team, John got it. John dribbled the ball down the field but a kid on the other team slid, tripped John, and stole the ball out of our possession. Out of frustration, John pounded the ground with his fist. Jaime and Jefferey’s teammates passed the ball to Jaime and faked Miguelito out, kicked the ball toward our goal, potentially ending the game. But our goalie Joshua saved the day. Josh dived for the ball, knocking his air out, as he landed hard on the dry grass field. His face was in the ground and looked up only to see that he caught it! We all shouted out in cheer on his defense as a goalie. But we only had a few more minutes left before lunch was over.

“Hurry! Do it now!” Miguelito commanded.

Joshua, with a red face from his goal save, kicked the ball, and Miguelito received it this time. Miguelito dribbled it right down the field. Jefferey ran right at him, making Miguelito pass it to John. John did not make the same mistake of losing our ball again and sprinted across the field into our opponent’s side of the field. John faked out one, two, three kids. John was on fire and his red hair complemented how fast he was moving. John then stumbled as his right foot landed awkwardly on the field causing him to lose his stride and almost the ball.

“I’m open, pass it now!” Matthew screamed as he ran behind him.

Three of our opponents were on John and he had to make a move, fast. He pretended to kick the ball, only to kick his foot forward without hitting the ball purposefully and with precision, kicked back with his heel passing the ball to the approaching Matthew. Jaime was now on Matthew, and they were elbow to elbow pushing and shoving, one trying to maintain the dribble down the field, while the other was trying to steal it.

“I’m open!! Pásala!!” Probably the first time I ever screamed in Spanish.

Matthew saw me and scooped the ball, directing his body toward the direction I was at. The ball shot from the right side of the field to the left, right where I was. I caught the ball with my forehead, giving me a slight stun of lights and stars by the sheer speed and accuracy of Matthew’s powerful kick. It felt like all of Jaime and Jefferey’s team rushed towards me like a pack of pissed off tigers and I was their prey. I was near the goal with the goal and goalie and a small army right behind me.

“Kick the ball! Now!!!” Everyone shouted from our side.

I did. But Jefferey got in front of his goalie and deflected my shot by mere inches. The ball shot back at knee height right in front of me. Jefferey sped like a jet to where I was, since he knew he could quickly take the ball away from me.

He stole it! My new friends were depending on me as they were not near Jefferey and me. I knew I had to act fast.

I learned this trick to slide and steal the ball in a scoop-like motion and I did just that. We were running right beside each other with elbows grinding against each other like two racecars trying to bump each other off the racetrack. Running as fast as we were, I dropped my left knee, twisted my entire body towards the left of where Jefferey was and scooped the ball with my right foot out of his grasp. He did not expect it, as he was about to kick the ball to his teammates on our side of the field. Miguelito was right by the goal post, and I had to make a split-second decision. I was to either try my “not-so-great kick” against a skilled goalie or pass it to my teammate who was wide open. Jefferey was right behind me, so I had to move fast.

I pretended to wind my right leg for an attempt to shoot at the goal, but I feigned the kick. I kicked the air as hard as I could, causing Jefferey to stop in his tracks to see the outcome, giving me an extra second or two. I retracted and planted my right leg down and tapped the left side of my shoe to the ball, allowing me to pass the ball right to Miguelito. Miguelito stopped the ball with his left foot and feigned a kick of his own. Jefferey’s brother Jaime was on Miguelito and aggressively covered any shots Miguelito attempted. I ran to the goal to anticipate a victory only to see something had gone very wrong. We were going to lose if they got possession of the ball!

Miguelito struggled and wrestled with Jaime while Jefferey and their entire team rushed in. I was the only player by our opponent’s goal at that very moment. Miguelito took one look up and saw me open.

KICK!

Everyone’s attention was on Miguelito, including our opponent’s goalie. The ball streaked across the patched grass, and I made no hesitation to catch the ball. I timed the ball’s destination to my right foot and kick…

“GOOOOOAAAAALLLLL!!!”

Miguelito raised his hands and arms to the clouds above like a bird and ran toward me. I had no idea what was going on. We didn’t do this prior to making the two goals before. I saw our teammates do the same, while the other team we were playing looked disappointed. The contagious and enthusiastic energy drew me in, and this sudden surge of euphoric joy permeated throughout the field. Suddenly, I was raising my hands and arms like the rest of our comrades as we soared across the battleground back to our side of the field. I soared along with my camaradas like proud Mexican eagles in victory and chanted in unison.

“GOOOOOAAAAALLLLL!!!!!” “GOOOOOAAAAALLLLL!!!!!”

“GOOOOOAAAAALLLLL!!!!!”

That day was a time I will never forget. I saw what a band of players from different homes, different skin colors, and different languages could do when we worked together as a team. I felt mighty for those last seconds before lunch was over, and it was that much better because I shared this feeling with my classmates and friend, Miguelito. After this, I began to play more and learn additional Spanish words so that I could communicate with the other Spanish-speaking kids, but they mainly taught me all of the malas palabras. But besides so many feelings of acceptance and comradery I felt that day, I began to feel like this was the beginning of my identity as a Chicano, even though I was not familiar with the word at that age. I knew I wasn’t one of the white kids, and I barely knew any Spanish – I was somewhere in between these two worlds and the bridge to my identity was built on this soccer field.

Miguelito then began asking his mom to allow me to come over after school so we could play soccer in his backyard. She did allow it from time to time. A beautiful light-skinned Mexican woman with gorgeous green eyes, she always smiled at me and in her accent always greeted me.

“Hello, Guillermo. ¿Cómo estás?”

I would always smile back awkwardly since my Spanish was pretty much non-existent. “Bueno. How are you?”

I had the innocence of a child with no full understanding of our mother tongue. She looked at me with sorrow, it seemed, when she learned that my parents were divorced. Until then, Miguelito and I would play soccer in his backyard, sometimes with his dad, who actually played in an amateur league. Miguelito’s papá was a tall, darker skinned-Mexican man whose head reached the clouds. He actually played goalie and always showed his son and me new tricks to use when playing against others.

When I was allowed to sleep over, Miguelito and I would always have a blast. We would stay up watching Dragon Ball Z movies that I brought over since I was a huge fan. Since Miguelito brought me into the world of soccer, I wanted to bring him into my world of Japanese cartoons, anime. We would watch Dragon Ball Z and then criticize who was better between characters, Goku and Vegeta. If we weren’t watching Dragon Ball Z and debating what character was stronger, we would play Gran Turismo or Final Fantasy 7 on his PlayStation console. If we weren’t playing video games or watching our favorite shows, we were playing Yu-Gi-Oh cards. We became really close friends, Miguelito and I. But then something terrible happened.

Miguelito’s family was Catholic. Their being Catholic was not the terrible part, as my family was Catholic as well; we just didn’t practice it. They moved to another city called Menifee, about 75 miles away from our hometown, Montebello. They converted to the religion of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons. I was crushed. Not crushed because of their change of religion, after all, I knew so little about religion and the talk of God at that age. No. I was crushed because I did not have a friend to play and hang out with. No more sleepovers, no more debates on whether Goku or Vegeta was stronger, no more soccer playing in his backyard. No más de nada.

I already moved to my old barrio at around this time and the one guy who had a “normal” family without dysfunction like my own, was gone.

               *                       *                       *                       *                       *

When I got in touch with Miguelito a few years ago when I was 25, I was shocked! He knew I got into smoking weed, however, he never knew about the barrio I lived in nor the things I did in my neighborhood throughout my teenage years.

“Hey Miguel! It’s me, Guillermo! Hope you still remember me, man. Wilcox Elementary, soccer, Dragon Ball Z? I’m sure it will come back to you. Anyway, I hope all is well, man. It has been many years. I tried reaching out to your mom and sister by email, but not sure if they got my message. Reach out when you can.”

That was my message to Miguel through social media. I was never really on social media, and at that time I was already planning on getting off social media for good, since I didn’t see the point to it. After the message I anticipated his response. One day passed, nada. Second day, still nothing. Third day, radio silence. Fourth day, he probably moved on. Fifth day…

“Hey, Guillermo! Of course, I remember you! You were my best friend…” I choked up a little reading that. “We had so many good memories. How have you been, dude? I tell my girlfriend about you all the time actually. I always tell her about my friend Guillermo and how close we were.”

He was right. We were. But friendship doesn’t just end, does it? I mean, friends are friends for a reason, right? All the time we spent together, it doesn’t have to stop even though we haven’t spoken in so many years, does it? But why? Why now? Why back then?

I shared what I accomplished over the years. Graduated from adult school, got my Associates degree at Rio Hondo College in philosophy. I also shared that I was working on my B.A. in both philosophy and English. I was proud of myself, and I think I was also proud sharing these milestones with my old and close friend. The friend that I played soccer with almost every day in elementary school. The same friend that shared our victory of that one game against Jaime and his twin brother Jefferey. I knew he was proud.

“That is so cool, Guillermo! I am proud of you, man.” I knew he would be proud.
But then I told him about my upbringing. Not everything. Not the time I was there when Iggy’s primo was shot and the homies thought he died after fainting from blood loss. I did not share all the drugs I did or the way I rebelled, nor the way I spoke to my mother. I would not dare tell him I used to borrow my mom’s car without her knowing to drive around East Los Angeles by myself or with my homies from the barrio. It would break his heart if he knew I used to go and steal beer from the local Superior Supermarket. He would bemoan it if he knew I used to sell half-pounds of weed when I was fifteen years old. And he would certainly curse me if he knew I had driven someone to kill a rival gang member in my black 1996 Explorer. So many more things in between that I could not tell him.

But I did tell him the time I went to juvenile hall. I figured he must know something about me, and well, going to juvi really affected me. I was sixteen years old, and I had to pay for all the shit I was doing. I did not tell Miguel what I did to get there but told him I went.

Why?

Why did I have to tell him?

¿Por qué? I wanted to. He was mi amigo after all, verdad? I wanted him to get a small glimpse of the troubles I went through but to then see the hole I dug myself out of.
He stopped replying to me right after that. I am not sure if juvi was too taboo for his new religious beliefs or if he thought I was some deranged lost soul. After all, my parents were divorced, he knew some things I shared of me witnessing how my parents would fight, and he also knew I smoked weed after he moved to Menifee. Maybe just knowing those things were enough. Maybe juvi was the final straw. Possibly, he just grew out of our friendship and did not want to know or remember his childhood.

Was he ashamed of me? Ashamed that I didn’t know Spanish. Maybe he felt that I was a dysfunctional person. I mean he wouldn’t be wrong on that last notion, but I had evolved, transformed. Haven’t I?

I waited for his reply for days to weeks. I decided to follow through with another message, but nothing again. As a few weeks passed, I stuck with what I wanted to do and deleted my social media like I had previously planned.

Why didn’t he reply back to me? Why?

¿Por qué?... ¿Por qué, mommy?... ¿Pero, por qué, mommy?

I can feel his words within me when I was in the backseat of his mom’s car. The same words that long to understand why his mom would say no to me coming over to hang out or sleep over. The same universal question that almost everyone asks when someone or something does not make sense: why?

Some truths we may never find out in life. I am coming to terms with understanding this in addition to learning to accept myself, my past, and my ever-evolving identity as a proud Chicano.
​
What I do know is this. That for those twenty-five minutes of playing soccer during our lunch break at Wilcox Elementary, we were good friends, we were champions of that soccer field, nosotros éramos niños del sol. This is a truth of a time and place that will never, ever, drift away.

by Armando Gonzalez

Fernando was in the living room, sitting on the couch and watching T.V. He was watching iCarly, a show he knew he would get made fun of for watching if he ever admitted this to others at school. Although he had already seen the episode where Carly finds out the cool, hot kid likes to collect peewee babies, he wanted to watch T.V. because he did not want to get a haircut.
 
He had done everything that morning very slowly. He took a slow shower and let his thoughts wander. He did this often, and liked doing this because in part it was relaxing, but he felt there was some other reason why he liked doing it but he could not figure out the reason. Of course, that morning when he took a shower, he really let his thoughts wander so far beyond himself that it was as if his mind was slowly leaving his body, so that when his thoughts eventually returned back to him, he felt like he was in someone else’s body that just so happened to be called Fernando. He would annoy parents when he did this, most particularly his father, who wanted to avoid using too much water for the fear that the landlord would tell him something. Since he always locked the door, his father would have to pick the door lock with something that looked like a small metal cane.
 
When he went inside, he would tell Fernando, “Cuando no vas usar el agua, apágalo.”
 
Fernando would just say, “Okay.”
 
Fernando had done everything he had to do that morning. He had even brushed his teeth. Now he just had to leave the house, go over to the beauty salon that was about a block away, and get a haircut.
 
His mother, who was in the kitchen washing dishes, began to call him, “¿Fernando, qué hora es?”
 
“Son las tres.”
 
“Ya se está haciendo tarde. Vete a la peluquería antes que tu papá venga, o se va a enojar.”
 
“Okay, okay.”
 
He went into the kitchen where he knew the semi-wrinkled ten dollar bill would be, waiting for him on the kitchen table. He picked it up and looked at it. He looked at Alexander Hamilton’s hair, which was a wig, but Fernando was unaware of this. Although he didn’t really like the way Hamilton’s hair looked, Fernando was jealous because his hair looked longer than his. He wondered for a short time why it was that men back then were able to have long hair but now had to have short hair.
 
He said goodbye to his mother and started heading over to the beauty salon, slowly walking. But it didn’t matter how slow he walked because it took little to no time to reach the beauty salon. He stood in front of the beauty salon and hesitated to enter. He touched the tips of his bangs. It wasn’t long or anything, about medium length size to be exact, but it got long enough for his father to tell him to get a haircut. He knew that he would have to get a very short haircut and would be angry the whole day. He also knew that if he didn’t get the haircut, his father would get angry at him and would force him to get one. It didn’t seem like there was any room for compromise. He did not like fighting with anyone, especially grownups. He felt adults for the most part knew more than him, but sometimes he felt adults were just as clueless as him.
 
He finally went inside and went towards the glass counter. On the glass counter there was a yellow legal pad with a list of names crossed out and others that were not. It was the sign-in sheet. He picked up the black pen next to the yellow legal pad and wrote his name.
 
Fernando walked towards a chair and sat down. It was a Saturday, a popular day to get a haircut, and just after noon, so the wait was going to be a little longer. In the beauty salon were mothers who had brought their children to get a haircut, one that was presumably going to be short. He saw men there, too. They looked like they were by themselves and all had short haircuts. The men who sat in the beauty styling chairs were getting their hair cut and looked like they enjoyed having short hair. Some of the hairdressers, who were mostly women, had a variety of haircuts. Some of them had long hair, medium hair, and even short hair. Some of them even had their hair bleached or dyed another color like red.
 
There was one gay hairdresser, or at least he appeared so. Fernando noticed that most men, if they were not in any kind of hurry, did their best to avoid having their hair cut by him. His father told him once, after he had his hair cut done by the gay hairdresser, that he thought that that man was weird.
 
The beauty salon had gotten more packed since he walked in, and now every chair was taken. With so many people the hair salon had now gotten hotter. One of the hairdressers went to turn the air conditioner on, but it was going to take time for the place to cool down. Fernando decided it was probably better to wait outside, even if there was a chance he would not hear his name called out. He just wanted to get out.
 
Fernando got up from his chair and waited outside. There were two men standing outside, too. He leaned against the wall of the beauty salon and as usual began to get lost in his own head. Across the street was the field of the middle school he would soon attend next year. From what he understood from movies, middle school was usually not a great time for most kids. He wondered what he would be like when he was in middle school. He had typical middle school self-conscious thoughts: Would he be popular or unpopular? Cool or uncool? Outgoing or shy? Smart or dumb? Funny or unfunny? Interesting or boring? Mysterious or unmysterious? Handsome or ugly?
 
Regardless of these thoughts, Fernando fantasized about having a good time. He was also getting to that age when he started to notice girls sexually and how he liked being around them a lot more than most boys. He thought of having a girlfriend, but then he wished he had not thought of this because he did not know whether he was fit to get one. He felt boyfriends had to be strong enough to get into fights. He did not feel he was this kind of strong.
 
Maybe I am strong in other ways, he thought.
 
Just then a hairdresser opened the door.
 
“¿Está Fernando aquí?”
 
The two men looked at the hairdresser. Then the two men and the hairdresser looked at Fernando. Since he was lost in his own thoughts, it took him a couple seconds to register what was going on.
 
“¿Qué?” said Fernando.
 
“¿Usted es Fernando?”
 
He was about to say yes when the thought of being strong in other ways occurred to him. In the moment he was driven by emotions instead of reason.
 
“No.”
 
The hairdresser said okay and went back inside.
 
Fernando immediately regretted what he had done. His heart was beating fast. He tried to calm himself down and thought of going back inside and telling the hairdresser that he had misheard, that he was in fact Fernando. But he was too ashamed to do even that. In reality, there was nothing to worry about. If he had simply gone back inside and told the hairdresser that he was in fact Fernando, she would most likely think nothing of it. But this was a big deal to him, as it was the first time he had ever truly done something for himself.
 
As if he was no longer in control of himself, Fernando’s legs began to slowly walk away from the beauty salon. 

***

He was walking on a sidewalk, unsure of where he was going or what he was doing. He came to a crosswalk and pressed on the traffic light button. As he stood there waiting for the white walking man sign to come up, he began to think where he should go. All he knew was that he did not want to go back to the beauty salon or home.
 
Am I running away? Fernando thought. No, I can’t be running away. I have nowhere to go. I only have ten dollars…But it feels like I am running away.
 
The white walking man sign came up. Fernando walked to the other side of the street. While he thought about where he should be going, he mindlessly walked straight ahead, as if turning right or left would be wrong or be too much effort.
 
He arrived in a part of the city where there were many homeless people on the sidewalk. Some of them were either sleeping on a piece of cardboard or a mattress. Others were leaning against the wall of a dollar general store, thinking who knows what. It did not matter if one wanted to walk to the other side of the street because they would be there as well. Fernando had no choice but to walk on another street in order to avoid them altogether. He decided to take a right.
 
But even when he made a deliberate effort to avoid them, he saw one coming his way. He was a lanky homeless man with a blond and entangled, stiff beard. He had long blonde hair that looked like it had not been washed for days. Fernando wondered what his parents thought of his having long hair. He was shirtless but had a shirt hung around his neck like a shemagh. Fernando tried hard not to make eye contact with him. When the man finally got next to Fernando, he asked him if he had any change. He smelled extremely sour, so it was hard for Fernando not to make a disgusted reaction.
 
For a split second Fernando thought about giving the ten dollars to the homeless man because he felt sorry for him. He remembered what his father told him about homeless people, that they were all lazy people who didn’t want to work. He decided against giving the homeless man the ten dollars. Maybe if he had a dollar he would have given it to him. 
 
Fernando shook his head. The homeless man, with a blank expression, said nothing and walked away.
 
Eventually the sidewalk ended and he was now facing a street divider, which to him almost felt as if it was demanding Fernando to make a choice, to either go left or right. Since he still had no idea where he should go, he thought it best to go somewhere where he can rest so he can think about it better. To his right he saw a McDonald’s. He thought McDonald’s would be a good place to rest and walked towards it.
 
In the McDonald’s he walked towards a table near a window and sat there. Once again, Fernando had to think about what he was doing.
 
Do I ever plan to go home? he thought. I know I have to go home at some point. But I still haven’t gotten a haircut. I know my father will get angry with me and probably force me to get one. There is still time to go to the hair salon to get a haircut. As long as I come back home with shorter hair I don’t think my parents will care too much if I come home late. 
 
Fernando looked out the window for a while, staring at nothing in particular. He understood the simple fact that boys were supposed to have short hair and girls were supposed to have long hair, but at the same time he did not understand.
 
So what if I do have longer hair? It’s not the end of the world.
 
He touched his bangs.
 
Why does it matter so much to my father that what I am touching is a little long?
 
For some reason, Fernando had the strange feeling that someone was staring at him. He looked up and noticed that a woman, who was sitting with a man and two boys, and was a table away from Fernando, was staring at him. He assumed she was the mother of the children and the man sitting next to him was her husband and the father of the children. When Fernando made eye contact with the mother, she looked quickly away. Fernando thought nothing of this. But he then noticed other people, other parents, and even the cashier, were giving him stares too, as if he was strange looking. Their stares creeped Fernando out.
 
Do they know I didn’t get my haircut? he thought despite knowing how such a thought was nonsense.
 
Then he knew why. He was the only child in the McDonald’s who was all by himself. The other children were probably with parents or an older relative. Fernando thought maybe they thought he was homeless and was perhaps watching other people eat, although he did not exactly have the look of a homeless child. He felt his face grow a little hot. He wanted to leave as soon as possible. But, as soon as he got up to leave, he felt his stomach grumble. He was hungry. He remembered he had a ten dollar bill. His hands trembled as he took the ten dollar bill out of his right pocket. There was Hamilton once again with his long and white wig. This was the bill he was given to get a haircut, but now he was thinking of using it to buy something to eat at McDonald’s.
 
At first he was reluctant, but he realized that as long as he did not spend more than five dollars, he would still have plenty of money to get a haircut because it was exactly five dollars. But he wondered what his parents would think when he didn’t give them any of the change back.
 
I can say that after I got my haircut, I got the sudden urge to eat something at McDonald’s, thought Fernando. He figured it was such a simple reason that the worst that could possibly happen is his parents telling him he should have let them know before he went.
 
Fernando went to the cashier and ordered himself two cheeseburgers and a meal. It was $4.89. He now had $5.11. Just enough to still get a haircut. He ate his two cheeseburgers and fries and small coke without feeling too much guilt.
 
After he was done eating, he decided it was probably time to go home. If he still wanted to get a haircut, it was his last chance, that is, if he did not want to be dragged by his own father to the beauty salon. Images of his father yelling at him and grabbing him by the shoulders formed in his mind. He no longer hit Fernando, but nevertheless, he was still afraid of him. Even though he knew others would find this a little silly, to Fernando, yelling and hitting almost felt like the same thing. He asked someone in the McDonald’s for the time and she told him it was about to be three. He started to feel anxious again. He walked quickly out of the McDonald’s and planned on going back to the beauty salon. 

***

He stood in front of the beauty salon. The place was much more packed with people since it was now later in the afternoon. He entered again, this time with shame, and avoided eye contact with any of the hairdressers that might have seen him enter the first time. When he walked towards the counter and looked at the names written on the yellow legal pad, he saw his own name was crossed out. He wrote his name on the yellow legal pad again.
 
He looked around to see if there were any empty seats. He saw one, but it was between two seats that were occupied with people, an older man with a grown out buzz cut to the left and an older woman to the right with a long ponytail.
 
When he went to sit down on the chair, he noticed how fast his heart was beating. He started to wonder what his parents were thinking. The thought formed in his head that his mom was probably thinking why their son was taking so long to get a haircut. He could picture his mother being worried at the moment and his father either driving home from work or having just arrived home. He could picture his worried mother telling his father that Fernando had not come home. His father would most likely get furious. “¿Cómo que no ha llegado? La peluquería está muy cortita.”
 
He was shaking now. He wanted to get his haircut right away. The walls to his right had pictures of men with combovers, tapers, undercuts, buzz cuts, short spiky hair, spiky quiffs, fades, etc. He didn’t even bother to look at any of them because he thought maybe if he got the shortest haircut that his father would not be so mad at him.
 
“Fernando,” a hairdresser called his name.
 
Fernando stood up immediately and walked over to the hairdresser that called his name. Luckily she was not the same hairdresser that called him the first time, or that would have been embarrassing. The hairdresser was a short, skinny Mexican woman who had a pixie haircut with highlights. She led him to the stylist chair. He sat down and looked at himself in the mirror. He had an overgrown hairstyle and, at most, his fringe barely passed his eyebrows. He secretly wanted to have long and flamboyant hair like a male anime character.
 
Only after the hairdresser put the hair cloth on Fernando did she ask him: “¿Cómo quieres tu pelo?”
 
Although he was feeling anxious before about his dad yelling at him if he arrived home late and without a haircut, Fernando did not respond right away. The hairdresser stared at him and asked him again.
 
Fernando told her to give him a short haircut, a number four on all sides.  
 
Just then, his father came into the beauty salon. Fernando could feel someone staring at him, hard, to his left and turned to see his dad standing near the entrance. His father, while looking noticeably angry at Fernando for taking such a long time to get a simple haircut, at the same time had an expression on his face of approval. He walked over to where Fernando was seated.
 
“¿La lista de gente era larga?”
 
Fernando nodded his head.
 
“¿Qué tipo de corte de pelo vas a agarrar?”
 
“Un número cuatro en todos lados.”
 
“Eso está bueno.”
 
Fernando just looked straight ahead and said nothing.
 
“Voy a estar sentado. ¿Okay?”
 
Fernando nodded again.
 
The hairdresser reached into a counter drawer for the hair clippers and turned it on. As soon as he heard the buzz, Fernando went stiff, and suddenly he remembered once again what he had told himself earlier in the day which made him run away for a short while: Maybe I am strong in other ways.
 
When the hair clippers got near his hair, he moved his head away, which surprised the hairdresser.
 
From where he was seated, he heard his father yell “¡Fernando, quédate quieto!”
 
Fernando did not listen. Without having to think about it, he got off his chair and made a run for the door. When he got near the door, his father, who was so caught off guard by what was happening, had to register what was going on, and because of this, he had lost a second or two that would have enabled him to grab Fernando. This resulted in his father’s failure to catch Fernando, as he only managed to snatch the hair cloth off him.
 
He ran as fast as he could without ever looking back. His father kept calling out his name. Without looking both ways, Fernando ran across the street to the middle school’s chain link fence. Cars honked at him and the wheels of cars screeched on the pavement and people yelled things at him, mostly in Spanish. He did not have a second to think where he was going to turn when he got near the chain link fence. He turned right. Soon after he made the turn, he almost ran into a short Mexican lady selling flowers to cars. He kept running straight ahead. He no longer heard his father calling out his name. Either he was too focused on chasing him or he had stopped chasing him.
 
Now I’m going to get it, Fernando thought. 

***

About an hour or so had passed since he last ran away from the beauty salon. He was back to running away, except now it felt much more official. Whereas before he was scared enough of his father to return back to the hair salon, now he was too scared to even go back home. He had no idea what he was going to do now. All he had in mind was to be as far away as possible from his home.
 
By now he was walking by the Santa Ana riverbed. He stopped walking and looked down at the riverbed, which was bone dry. He decided to walk down the riverbed, where he could hide easily and sit down in some shade under the overpass. There was a homeless person sleeping at the very bottom of the riverbed and using a black backpack as a pillow. He had a blanket, coated with some dirt, wrapped around himself. Fernando made sure to avoid stepping on any broken glass bottles or any sharp object. The place smelled like piss and shit. Fernando sat down on an incline. And once he did, he realized just how tired he felt. Altogether, he had been practically walking the whole day, and because he felt very tired, he thought of absolutely nothing. For about half an hour he simply listened to the cars pass him from above. Occasionally people on bikes would pass by him and some would look at him with a concerned face.
 
Despite how dirty and smelly the place was, just listening to nearby sounds and sitting underneath the overpass was extremely peaceful for Fernando. It was something he didn’t know he needed.
 
However, he got the sudden urge to take a massive dump. The McDonald’s had finally wanted out. He had about three options: he could go back home, find a nearby place with a restroom, or take a dump where he currently was. Fernando knew he was too tired to walk long distances, so the first option was out. Besides, he didn’t want to face his father, at least not yet. He wanted to do everything he could to avoid the last option so he tried hard to think of restrooms that were nearby. He noticed there was a park next to the riverbed, so he figured that was probably his best option.
 
He walked slowly to the park so as to not let the poop come out. He got near a lake in the park which smelled of duck poop and saw a young looking couple sitting on a bench and thought about asking them where the nearest restroom was. Once he got closer, he realized it was two women who were sitting very close to each other, almost like they could kiss each other on the lips at any moment. Fernando was slightly uncomfortable when he saw them, but at the same time he didn’t really care if it was two women who were sitting so close to each other, he needed help, so it didn't matter who it came from. Also, by this time he really had to  go to the restroom and had no time to be picky. When he got near them, he said, “Excuse me.”
 
Both women turned their heads around to look at him. They appeared to be hispanic. The one on the right was wearing a septum piercing. Fernando noticed that they smelled like something but couldn’t identify what exactly the smell was though. For him, it neither smelled good or bad. He noticed their eyes were very red, too. He had never smelled marijuana before. They also didn’t look like those kinds of women, the kind to get close to other women. They had long hair, wore tight jeans and both spoke in feminine voices. In a few words, they basically looked and sounded like normal women.
 
“Hi,” the one sitting on the right said. Both smiled and laughed a little more than was necessary. They seemed pleasantly surprised to see a child, all by himself, approach them.
 
“Do you guys know where the nearest restroom is?”
 
Both had to think for a few seconds. Then the one on the right pointed with her finger in a direction and said: “If you keep going that way, you will see a dirt track. There is a public restroom right next to it.”
 
“Thank you.”
 
As Fernando walked over to the public restroom, he heard the two women talking silently and laughing. They were probably talking about him.
 
Once he saw the dirt track, it was easy to find the public restroom. When he entered the public restroom, he noticed there were no doors for the toilet. There was just a wall to cover yourself on one side and that was it. He was scared that someone might walk in on him while he was taking a shit, but he had no time to worry about that, so he walked over to the toilet and sat down and did his business. He wasted no time.
 
After he was finished, it dawned on him that, once again, he had no idea what to do next. He figured he needed to find a place to sit down and think for a little, just like he had done when he was at McDonald's. He saw a ledge nearby and walked towards it to sit down, which was in front of the dirt track. He watched people jog. When he noticed how golden the people’s skin appeared, he realized that it was soon going to be dark. It was going to be dangerous for an early adolescent like him to walk the streets during the night when different kinds of people came out. He thought about how this might be his first time ever walking in the dark.
 
Fernando’s stomach rumbled. He was getting hungry again. The thought of buying food with the five dollars he had occurred to him. If anything was going to force him back home, it was going to be food.
 
Suddenly, the idea of buying a bus pass occurred to him. He remembered that he passed by a bus stop near the riverbed. He knew the one-day bus pass cost five dollars from the times he took the bus with his mom to places like the pediatrician when his father could not take them. If he took the bus he would definitely be able to get home before it got fully dark.
 
He walked over to the bus stop. When he got there he noticed that there was no one sitting on the bus bench. He chose not to sit down because he did not want anyone to sit next to him, especially since it was getting late.
 
It didn’t take long for the bus to arrive. When he saw the bus coming he saw on top of it bright orange letters which read “Golden West Transp Center.” He took the five dollars out of his pocket before the bus pulled up next to him. For a second he thought how it was a little funny that the money he was given was used for anything but a haircut. Who knew what his father would do to him when he arrived home with no money at all? At this point though, Fernando was tired and hungry and just wanted to get home, so he sort of didn’t care what his father did to him anymore. It was a bit of an amazing feeling, to not care at all anymore, he thought.
 
The bus pulled up next to him, the doors opened, and he got in. He inserted his five dollars into the fare box. He felt like the bus driver was staring at him, but he chose to ignore this feeling. Few people were on the bus. He sat on the seat all the way in the back on the right side of the bus, which was right next to the window. When he looked out the window, his mind wandered. He had many thoughts, and they went deeper than usual, almost like he was at home showering again. He expanded on a thought he had earlier, which was why his father wanted him to get a haircut so badly. Of course, he was not a stupid child. He obviously knew that his father wanted him to have shorter hair so that he looked more like a boy than a girl. But what amazed him is the fact that this simple thing of having longer hair, which was really nothing to get upset over, was something that made his dad uncomfortable, like he was a child like him, who was uncomfortable with the dark.
 
Although he felt that he was becoming less and less scared of his own father, he still wanted to avoid a harsh clash with him, as hopeless as that sounded.
 
What can I say to my father? Fernando questioned himself. How can I convince him that there is nothing wrong with a boy who wishes to have longer hair?
 
The bus was getting close to Main street, where he knew he had to get off. He thought of staying on the bus until he knew what to say to his father. Fernando thought and thought, but it seemed like there was just nothing he could say to convince his father that long hair was just as good as short hair, regardless of whether you were a boy or a girl. He knew his father was a very stubborn man and wanted things his way. He vowed to himself to never be like his own father.
 
He pulled on the yellow string to get off at the bus stop on Main street. As the bus stop wasn’t that far away from his home, he decided to walk the rest of the way home.
 
The walk home was a quiet one. He did not walk fast. There didn’t seem to be any good reason to do so other than to make his parents worry one less minute. He couldn’t imagine his father being worried about him at the same time being angry at him. He just couldn’t for some reason.
 
As he walked home, he passed by a church called Saint Anne’s. He looked at the bell tower and wondered what it was like to ring the bell. Fernando was not very religious, but he was not entirely against religion either. He had some questions about religion, whether one needed religion to be happy. Anytime he had a question like this, his mother always insisted that you did need religion to be happy, as if this wasn't obvious enough to Fernando that any free moment she had, his mother would devote that time to praying. Or when his mother would be in the kitchen cooking dinner, meanwhile she would have her phone on the kitchen table playing loudly some YouTube video of a catholic priest giving a sermon. In stark contrast to his father, his mother was a lot gentler and timid. He remembered once he asked her what it was that made her want to marry his father. Besides some other characteristics, the first thing that came to her mind was that he was a very hard worker. Fernando wasn’t sure if being a hard worker was something he liked enough in a person to want to want to marry them, but he understood.
 
He was now standing below the green Old Mcfadden and Main street sign. In just a few more steps he would be home. He stood below the street sign for a few minutes, getting himself prepared for his parent’s reaction. It was eight thirty p.m. Once again, his heart was beating fast. All kinds of thoughts about his father were going through his head. It was easy not to care when he was away, but now that he was a lot closer to his home, all his worries came back to him and he felt the tension in his shoulders, as if someone were squeezing them.
 
He started walking. He was scared but he continued to walk. As he got closer to the front window, he saw lights coming through a gap in the curtains. They were home. He walked up the red steps towards the black steel door and knocked on the metal screen. He heard footsteps. The knob of the door turned, the door swung open and before him stood his father. 

***

The next day he was at the beauty salon again, this time with his father standing by his side. His father did not say anything to him when he arrived home. But the next morning he gave him a short, but assertive and even threatening sounding lecture.
 
“Ese si quieres quedarte en esta casa, necesitas obedecer lo que te digo que hacer. No quiero que vuelvas a correr porque solo te digo que te cortes el pelo.”
 
“Pero nada más es pelo.”
 
“¿Ese nada más es pelo, por qué no te lo cortas?”
 
Fernando only nodded his head and said okay, making little to no eye contact. His mother stood by, saying nothing.
 
“Vamas ir al peluquería. ¿Estás listo?”
 
He nodded his head.
 
So there they were again, in the beauty salon. His father told the hairdresser to give him a number three on all sides of his head.
 
“Por fin ya se va a cortar el pelo,” the hairdresser said.
 
“Sí, ya era tiempo.”
 
Both the hairdresser and his father chuckled. Fernando did not chuckle.
 
The hairdresser took the hair clippers out of the drawer and started. It was an easy haircut and of course no scissors were needed. It didn’t really matter where she started. She started on the top. Fernando saw his father in the mirror, with his arms folded, and with a satisfied look. He could have killed his father right there and then. He had all the necessary emotions boiling inside of him. 

Armando Gonzalez was born in Santa Ana, California and continues to live there. His parents migrated from Mexico and met here and married. He has no schooling in creative writing, and “Haircut” is his first published story. He is Mexican American/Chicano. 

by Jacob Teran

The block was not as active tonight. Olympic Boulevard is one of the gateways to enter our urban domain known as South Sapro Street and, on this night, it is absent of travelers and hostile combatants.
 
You can hear the last metro bus making its way down the Boulevard to the depot drop off—final destination. A long day of picking up hard workers, tweakers, cholos, and dropping them off to where they need to go.
 
Neither juras pass by with sirens, nor local tweakers roam the block looking for a potential vehicle to break into, just, the calm and quiet sound of the wind and train that makes its presence known to our barrio. These nights seldomly visit my barrio and when the sweet sound of silence makes its way to Sapro, the tranquility is always welcomed.
 
I am in my messy room of my mom’s 2-bedroom apartment that I have not cleaned for days, lying in bed. I can feel the temperature drop from my open window as the smell of rain and burnt cannabis roaches permeates my room. I slip on my already tied DVS skating shoes, grab my hoodie, and make my way out into the abyss of my barrio.
 
I head to the local Valero Gas Station to pick up a blunt wrap to indulge with my homeboy, Iggy. A light haze of cool droplets penetrates the dark sky making the lonely night that much colder. The smell of wet asphalt is refreshing with each sloshing step that I take. The local Valero was the place to buy a 3-pack of some cheap beer if no one was in the mood to go to Superior Market. The fluorescent lights beam blue and yellow, and read, “Valero Gas Station” with the “o” turned off or perhaps, dead. The people inside know me and even though I am still a minor by age, they never card me when I buy a pack of frajos, especially blunt wraps.
 
As I make my way back on the wet asphalt of the Boulevard, I can smell and hear all sorts of familiar elements that ignite my senses. Across the street from the Valero was Cedar Ave. Someone was always washing their clothes on the corner of Cedar and the Boulevard in the evening. An old steel clothesline is engulfed with colorful socks, white t-shirts, and blue jeans. Probably a small family since I always see a group of three to four kids playing in the street just before the sun sets. The scent of Suavitel Fabric Softener always reminded me of my Abuelos in Boyle Heights, as their neighbors used a similar product for their clothes.
 
The next thing I immediately notice is the fresh scent of cannabis burning nearby. It must be the homies from my block congregating at Cheddar’s pad since he lived two houses from the corner of Cedar. The thick skunky aroma of indica burning in the street at night always felt like I was home—a comforting feeling. Suavitel and marijuana were the telltale signs I am home.
 
Between Cedar and Sapro, an area on the Boulevard, is where I feel the most alone as I walk. As I walk pass Cedar, I look to the left side of the Boulevard stretches to its desolate side of abandoned buildings bathed with graffiti. To my right was a long fence of white wood that closed off the side of an apartment. This wooden canvas is marked “SLS,” for SAPRO LOCOS, the acronym for the locotes on my street. Other times, they were crossed out by the rival barrios in the surrounding area and down south of us, passing the railroad tracks, beyond the Boulevard and away from the domain of Sapro.
 
The spray on walls, scribes on windows, markings on wooden fences, trees, light posts, and curbsides, are all voices without faces that speak. A language that only people that live here understand.
 
I walk under the streetlight between Cedar and Sapro, probably the most remote section of the Boulevard where peculiar occurrences would take place. In this desolate part of the Boulevard, voices could be heard with not a single person around, tall, shadowy figures have followed people only to disappear in a blink of an eye, and the streetlight itself would flicker violently when someone walked under. I could never account for the first two things that homies and neighbors have spoken of, but the streetlight flickering, that was real. Probably some glitch with the wiring under the asphalt, but, whatever rationale could explain, it always made me feel like some ominous entity was following me.
 
I walk under it tonight. It does not flicker.
 
I pass by the streetlight and eventually the Cliff to walk across Sapro to a dark grey Astro van. I could see the radio’s light slightly brighter as I approach the van’s sliding door. I knocked on it twice before opening it to be greeted by my homeboy, Iggy,
 
“Fuckin’ Guill! Finally! Ah Ah! Ah!” Iggy’s laugh was always amusing. Iggy or Iggs, always sounded like his laugh was backwards.
 
“’Sup G, was’ crackin’?” Coming into the van, we shake hands.
 
“Nada güey, posted trying to get faded. ’Sup with you? Where da bud at?”
 
“Shit, I thought you had it.”
 
“Lying ass vato! Ah! Ah! Ah!”
 
I pop out the grape flavored swisher I bought from Valero as I come in slamming the sliding door after me.
 
“Firme! Grape will go good with this shit.”
 
Iggy starts cutting up the swisher with a dull razor as I begin to break up the sticky indica from the baggie I was clenching since the odd streetlight. Iggy hands me a ripped Home Depot cardboard he used to dump out the tobacco from the swisher. Bone Thugs’ “Resurrection” is playing in a CD player he installed for his mom’s van’s radio. The music suits the quiet night and the session we are about to have. The dank bud begins to stink up the van with a skunky aroma as I break up the sticky flower that sticks to my fingertips.
 
We start conversing about the extracurricular activities that have been making the block hot: South Siders and Veil Street have been coming through our block and hitting up their placas in our area. A few tweakers from a few blocks away stealing the vecinos’ recyclables. Really typical mamadas that occur in our barrio. Sometimes we laugh about it. Sometimes we get into heavier conversations.
 
I hand the cardboard with the potent shake I just broke up to Iggy, “Trip out G, isn’t tonight quiet as fuck?”
 
“Fuck yea, Guill…but…” Iggy licks the wrap’s end to seal the blunt, “…it’s firme, I like nights like this. Don’t you?”
 
“Yeah, it’s just trippy,” I kept looking down the Boulevard from the second-row window of the van. Usually, a suspicious car or jura patrolling would pass, but nothing.
 
Iggy hands me the lighter, “Do the honors and spark it up, Guill! Ah! Ah! Ah!”
 
I light one side of the blunt and roll it around slowly as if I’m hot roasting a pig, making sure the cherry got an even burn. I take a couple of light hits as if I was smoking a cigar to get the cherry just right. As the smoke enters my lungs, I can feel it spread throughout my chest making me want to cough. I hold it in and exhale through my nostrils, feeling the euphoria of both weed and Krayzie Bone’s lyricism.
 
Iggy is chain-hitting the blunt and seemed like he forgot I was in the session with him. He looks halfway towards me from the driver’s seat, “…Guill, I wanna tell you some shit that some OG told me a while back. This vato was a firme ass foo, a real one. The shit he said was the truth dog, palabra, and I still believe this shit to this day.”
 
I looked at Iggy thinking ahh shit, this foo is faded. “Handles, G.”
 
Iggy put the blunt down to his chest as it continues to burn, “And I don’t give a fuck what anyone says, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise either. You gotta believe this shit, Guillermo. You’re gonna have foos try to press you, call you a bitch and all that…but fuck that.”
 
I was thinking, Iggy is never going to get to the point, “Yeah Iggy, handles, I hear you foo.”
 
Iggy turns as much as he could to the seat behind him where I’m sitting, “You don’t got to be from nowhere and still be G wid’ it. A lot of foos think you gotta be from somewhere to be hard, claim a hood, get into mamadas and put in dirt, and all that bullshit, but chales, güey.” He pauses and takes another rip from the blunt.
 
“Escucha güey…Just be you dog…and that’s keeping it gangster.” A bit of mota and street wisdom Iggy shares as he takes one big rip and lets out a huge cloud of smoke that makes him start choking and laughing.
 
Iggs passed the almost finished blunt back to me as he was coughing all over the place. “Damn, foo, you aight, haha!” “Hit that shi…that shit…Mem…” Iggy kept coughing and all I could think about was why he was telling me this.
 
I sit there as Iggy is coughing his lungs out and felt this was the most genuine thing my homeboy ever told me. Growing up in the hood, I always thought I would eventually get jumped in the hood when the time came. But what Iggy just confided hit me profoundly. I couldn’t stop thinking about it during our session.
 
We kill the blunt and hear a few of Iggy’s primos coming back to interrupt our private hotbox. Fuck. Who is this? There are a chingo of us on the block and whoever comes to a session either has weed or none.
 
“Eeeeee, look at you scandolosos right here,” Iggy’s primo Fat Boy always loves putting people on blast.
 
Iggy looks up and blasts back, “fuck you dick, where were you when I hit you up earlier to blaze it?” Fat Boy smirks. “Don’t even trip, I share my shit homie, not like you assholes,” Fat Boy starts opening up a bag with his own weed that he had.
 
Looking to me, Fat Boy laughs, “’Sup Memo, where’s all da bud at? You and Iggy are straight holdouts.”
 
I smirk and laugh. “Dick, you foos had your own VIP sesh, so Iggs hit me up. Got ends? Still have some leftover yesca.” Fat Boy ignores me as his brother Scraps and Cheddar come through pushing themselves in the van talking mumbling and complaining that Iggy and I were smoking without them, although they just smoked without Iggy and me.
 
“Hey dick, my Jefa is gonna come out trippin’ with all you foos in here being all loud and shit,” Iggy always snapped when unexpected dudes came, even if they were his primos.
 
“Don’t even trip, my Tía loves me,” Fat Boy said as he was breaking up some of his bud nudging me for the cardboard with the leftover bud on it.
 
“Not you fat ass, you’re burning the spot,” Iggy capped back as he was looking for a track to play on the van’s CD player stereo. Scraps, Cheddar, and I all started busting up laughing from the exchange between Iggy and his primo, Fat Boy. DJ Quik’s “Pitch in On a Party” surrounds the van’s speakers as the van gets louder and I kept thinking about what Iggy told me.
 
Fat Boy looked back at Scraps and Cheddar, “Shut the fuck up turkey and you too cheddar.” Fat Boy’s hermano Scraps was chubby like Fat Boy, but shorter. Everyone called him “Turkey” or “Danny DeVito,” which he hated. Cheddar had pretty poor hygiene when it came to his teeth. He never brushed his teeth, and the result made his dientes look like picante corn nuts.
 
“Dick, you’re fucked up,” Cheddar shakes his head.
 
“You’re a scandalous vato too, ‘Gay-mo,’” Fat Boy looks to me. The homies would either call me “Guill” or “Memo,” short for Guillermo. Other times, “Gay-mo,” because it sounded funny to them, and I also hated it.
 
“Just be you dog,” I pat Fat Boy hard on the back of the shoulder.
 
“Fuck, let’s go finish this shit out in the front of your pad Fat Boy, you burned the spot.”
 
“Fuck it, let’s bounce then,” Fat Boy said as we all get up to leave the van.
 
We all walked to the front of Fat Boy and Scrap’s pad. Their mom was asleep, so we had to creep and crawl if we didn’t want to get kicked out of the yard. Fat Boy and Scrap’s oldest brother Beaker wasn’t home either, probably getting all pedo with some lady that he would always say he was going to marry but then break up with weeks later.
 
We all post up on the bed of Beaker’s 1987 El Camino, laughing quietly, talking about how cold the night was. We start packing bowls from Cheddar and Scrap’s weed pipes and begin a new rotation. Iggy’s stomach was bothering him, so heads to the restroom. The four of us, without Iggy, sit in the back of the El Camino getting faded as the night continues to get colder and quieter.
 
Suddenly, a car comes out the cut from the corner of the yard where we are posting up, on the Boulevard. Fat Boy and Scraps lived at the corner of our street and had thick bushes that made it hard to see who was walking or driving by, especially at night.
 
      *                              *                              *                              *
 
We then see four shadows running around the corner of Fat Boy and Scraps’ pad outside the fence. The moonlight was our only aid in seeing through the darkness. One shadow stood at the corner keeping trucha, while one other dude stood outside of the gate. The other two shadows came up to us in front of the fence where we happen to be sitting.
 
“Where the fuck you from, Ese?! This is big bad Southside Greenwood Gang! Fuck ‘Scrape’ Street!”
 
The bald shadow brandishes a .45 cuete and points it to each of our stunned skulls. All of us with our sweaty palms open, shield our chests, afraid and frozen in an already cold evening. The nefarious shadow, only three feet away from the silver diamond-shaped fence that separates us, stands fiercely. The streetlight reveals his inked face, a black spider web trapped his entire face with the center of the web starting from the shadow’s nose. Eyes as black as obsidian, stabbing us with his soulless glare, listo for anything.
 
“Hey dog…we’re from nowhere…we don’t bang. I live right here,” Fat Boy being the oldest of us speaks, shaken up, choosing his words carefully. The shadow looks at him with disdain and then all of us. He points his cuete at each of us asking us individually if we claimed Sapro Street. With our arms raised, palms open, not knowing what to think or do, we deny because we are in fact not from the hood, yet.
 
“I don’t give a fuck! You’re caught slipping out here! This is Southside Territory! Fuck Sapro Street! Bitch ass levas! The spider webbed shadow looks to his homeboy for confirmation to off us right then and there. The shadow raises his less dominant hand and cocks his cuete. Coming back from the restroom, Iggy comes out to a situation he was somewhat familiar with.
 
The second shadow by the fence gate sees Iggy and hails out, “Who the fuck are you?! Southside Greenwood Gang, ese!”
 
Iggy opens his palms towards the second shadow, “Hey, I don’t bang dog. I live right here in the back, this is my Tía’s pad. These are all my primos, we’re just right here burning some bud. My primos are kids G, they ain’t soldiers. We are family right here.” Iggy being much older than us already knew the street lingo—along with his street intellect and rhetoric, Iggy’s response disheartens the shadows.
 
Although this was a typical night in my barrio, we never had a neighboring group roll up on us like that. This night made me realize the brevity of life, the choices I make and the words I choose influence what can happen next. Iggy’s words echoed in my mind and made me realize a lot of shit—life is short and can be taken in an instant. I want to change and do better, but it’s difficult when you have no direction or positive influences. But Iggy made me think and that was perhaps one of the most impactful things someone ever told me.
 
The dude with the cuete throws up his insignia, claims his hood one last time so we could all remember it, and dashes off to the car with the other shadows and drove off into the abyss.
 
The rain never came but the smell remained…Some fuckin’ quiet night.

​Jacob “Jake” Teran is a proud Chicano living in the San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles. Jake is a 2nd generation Chicano who was born in Montebello, Los Angeles, east of Los Angeles. He has published one short fictional story at his community college at Rio Hondo College and a master’s thesis for his graduate program, where he obtained his Masters Degree in Rhetoric and Composition. He is currently teaching composition to several departments in two colleges that include indigenous and Chicanx literature. Jake currently lives in the San Gabriel Valley where he is working on a novel based on his experiences growing up in his barrio that deals with gang lifestyle, drugs, violence, and finding one’s identity in a chaotic concrete jungle. 

​by Shaiti Castillo

My grandmother would tell me about the little bug people that would roam her garden back in her small pueblo deep in México. This was only when Mamá wasn’t in the room because she’d scold her from spreading tales of brujería in a house that worshipped God. Even as the disease ate away at what was left of my grandmother’s brain, her stubbornness had continued to grow. Rooted deeply within her like an oak tree. I would trade cups of cafecito for tales of the little bug people while Mamá was out running errands.
 
“Who were they?” I would ask in a whisper, as if Mamá would barge in at any moment and catch us exchanging sins.
 
“They didn’t have names. They didn’t speak either.” She would reply. I’d sit there patiently, processing the information before asking another question. Time with her was precious. The more questions I asked, the more lost she seemed to get.
 
“How do you know they weren’t just normal bugs?” I’d ask. She would sit there for a moment and take a small sip of her hot coffee, surely burning her tongue.
 
“Because they looked like people.” The answer was simple, but it wasn’t enough for a curious child like me.
 
“How so?” The slight tapping of my feet against the tile floor exposed my growing impatience. She didn’t seem to notice.
 
“They had faces. Eyes, a nose, a mouth…” She would go on to list general anatomy. I bit my lip.
 
“Bugs have faces.” I interrupted and she stopped speaking. Then a hoarse laugh escaped her thinning lips. It was an unpleasant sound, like tv static. Her childhood spent working in factories had caught up with her lungs.
 
“Smartass,” She said just loud enough for me to hear in her thick accent. It caught me by surprise.
 
“Nana!” It was my turn to scold her. She never cursed, always said it wasn’t very lady-like.
 
“As I was saying,” She paused to let me settle down. “They had faces. But not bug faces. They looked like you and I. Except they were little.”
 
She slightly pinched her fingers together to show me an estimated size of the bug people. I nodded.
 
“They had the body of the bugs, but they all could stand on two feet. Like you and I,” she explained, pushing herself off her seat. I scrambled next to her in case she fell but she swatted my hands away. She set down her mug and proceeded to put her hands on her hips. Stretching her back just a bit to stand proudly. I couldn’t help but giggle at her display.
 
“How’d you find them?” I asked as she slowly sat herself back down. Retreating back to her caffeine.
 
“They were stealing,” She shook her head in a feigned disappointment. “I had planted some sweet grapes for the summer and I caught them in the act!”
 
“Maybe they were hungry, Nana.” I said in defense of the bug people. It’s not a crime to be hungry.
 
“That is no reason to steal.” She sighed. “I forgave them, of course.”
 
“Then what?” I began to grow eager. This was the most I had gotten out of her in a while.
 
“Then we became friends. I would visit them every day after work and bring them whatever I had left over. Even if it was a few beans.” She smiled to herself. “I would make them little chairs and tables out of sticks and leaves I found around the yard. I would sew together little dresses using paper magazines. I left them gifts, and they would leave me some as well.”
 
“What did they bring you?” My hands were resting under my chin. Eyes wide like an owl at midnight.
 
“Random trinkets they would find. Shiny stuff. Sometimes it’d be silverware, sometimes jewelry. Sometimes it’d be a coin or two which made a big difference at the time.” Her smile grew, but stayed closed. Her wrinkles stretched themselves across her face, but the glossiness in her eyes brought a sense of youth.
 
“Then what, Nana? Where are they now?” I jumped up a little in excitement which startled her. She dropped the mug and it shattered across the floor, spilling what was left of the brown liquid. She stayed silent.
 
“I’m so sorry! Be careful and stay there while I clean it up, there’s glass!” I stood up immediately. She sat there, unfazed. I slipped on the sandals that were beneath my chair and stepped out back to grab the broom. When I slipped back inside, Mamá had made her way into the kitchen.
 
“What happened?” She let out a dramatic breath. Throwing the groceries she had carried inside onto the counter. She ripped the broom from my hands and began to sweep. “¿Estás bien, Ma?”
 
There was still no response from my grandmother. She sat there, frozen in time. Her frail hands still shaped around the non-existent mug.
 
“What did you do?” Mamá turned to face me and I stuttered. “Her mind is very fragile right now, you know this.”
 
“I didn’t do anything, I swear! We were just talking.” I aimed to defend myself but the weight of guilt sat itself like rocks, heavy in my stomach. I had asked too many questions. “I’m sorry.”
 
My grandmother spoke a few words for the rest of the day. Simple responses that would please Mamá. I had refrained from speaking to her in fear of only hurting her more. She would trade sweet glances and small smiles with me over dinner. Her way of letting me know things were okay.
 
That night I joined my grandmother in her bed. The window was open and it let a cool enough breeze in that encouraged us to be under the covers. I laid my head on her shoulder, adjusting my weight so as to not crush her feeble body. We laid there in silence as we usually did. There was a full moon out and the sound of crickets chirping lulled us to sleep. As my eyes grew heavy and my breathing became steady, she spoke.
 
“I’m going to die,” She faintly said. My eyes became watery saucers at her sudden statement. When I gained the courage to look at her, she had already fallen asleep. Her eyes were closed, thinning lashes falling over her cheeks. Paired with the same small smile she had given me earlier. To her, everything was going to be okay.
 
She didn’t wake up that morning. The doctor said she had died peacefully in her sleep and that in her position it was the best way to go. I stood at the doorway as Mamá wept at the foot of the bed. A blanket had been thrown over my grandmother’s body as we waited for someone to take her.
 
My puffy eyes looked out the open window. The sun was bright and it was a beautiful day. Something that my grandmother would have appreciated dearly. She hated sad events. The sounds of chirping crickets had transitioned into the chirping of sparrows. Light and airy.
 
At the corner of my eye, I noticed a pop of color. I tilted my head in curiosity, walking over to hover over the windowsill. Sitting there were two red grapes. Perfectly ripe and gleaming. I looked up to the sky and smiled.

La elotera swung by the brown condos, the ugly ones by the 101 freeway in So Cal, flanked by decaying but still fragrant eucalyptus trees. It was night as she figured that was the best time for her to make a sale. Her shopping cart with dual blue Igloo coolers and a shiny aluminum tamalera pot rising like Medieval towers from its interior squeaked into the noisy complex stifled with chants of playing children and tamborazos of ranchera music.
 
Two squeezes from the rubber ball from the horn attached to her carrito salute the complex and the murky night. A gust of wind quivers the leaves of the eucalyptus trees, making a resonance like a flow of a river. The aromatics of the suddenly alive leaves smell like Vicks VapoRub. It opens the tamaleras nostrils, expands her lungs. She inhales deeply.
 
La elotera opens the lid to the cheap swap meet tamalera pot liberating a vapor of sweet corn scent that swirls and embraces the complex in a heavenly fog like a kiss from the marine layer. The familiar smell of boiled elotes attracts her first customer.
 
A cholo, todo pelón, wearing a Dallas Cowboys E. Smith 22 jersey, with two purple bullet holes to the dome materializes like a Vegas show hologram from aside a dry manzanita shrub embedded in crusty cracking soil. The cholo stagers towards her like a drunk. La elotera sees the entity approach but doesn’t seem frightened. She seems pleased and welcomes the pelón with a smile. Her first sale of the day!
 
“¿En qué te puedo ayudar joven?” the older elotera asks the spirit as she irons her brown checkered mantil with her hands. Pues, she is a classy lady.
 
“I can’t rest. I need something to go to sleep,” complains the cholo with his brains blown out. La elotera can see his tired white eyes floating in a sea of black like lifeboats waiting to be rescued by the Coast Guard.
 
“I have something that will help you rest,” she responds in English. She reaches deep into the tamalera pot, pulls out a steamy white and yellow corn on the cob. The vapor expelled from it swirls and rises to the heavens like a serpent in retreat. The elotera slaters the corn with mayonesa using her wooden pala, sprinkles crumbling white cheese all over that stinks like patas. All while twisting the palito she jabbed at the bottom of the sweetcorn. She then spritzes the corn with artificial neon yellow butter from a farting blue plastic jug, sprinkles earth red chile piquín until the elote is covered with a red furry blanket.
 
“Ya mérito, mijo,” she tells the lost soul. La elotera reaches for a mason jar with a sticker of the Virgen Maria on one side and La Santa Muerte on the other. She tightens the lid with the tiny nail size holes to make sure the valuable greenish-black powder inside doesn’t spill out. She sprinkles some of the unprocessed-looking emerald powder onto the elote and hands it to the cholo ghost. He takes a bite.
 
Three miles away in the neighborhood beyond the tracks, the vatos Sleepy and Chato are sitting in rusted lawn chairs drinking cheap beers and listening to ‘80s style corridos on their ‘80s style boombox. The big grey ones with twin woofers in the front and a cassette deck serving as the hocico. The grease from their too full grease collector on their grill steadily drips grease to the dirt, accumulating into a thick viscous puddle. That is unless the wind carries a rouge drop here and there to the neglected lemonade grass.
 
“Hey, carnal. You’re burning the tri-tip,” warns Sleepy lazily pointing to the flare-up charring the piece of meat. “And you’re going to set the grass on fire, just like the carne.”
 
“What grass foo’?” Chato unzippers his fingers from on top of his head and displays the backyard with a flat hand like a model from the Price is Right. “Y la carne está bien. No pues que you like it well done.”
 
Suddenly the back gate explodes open in a squall of splinters and rusted bolts. “Get the fuck down,” barks a gabacho cop with a nervous trigger finger. He points his Glock at the brothers, nervously alternating between all four of their concha bread eyes. Four more swat officers rush in like Clint Eastwood from Dirty Harry, .40s in hand. One of the police officers tosses the back door breaching a battering ram onto the dirt. It rolls and knocks down the BBQ. The mesquite embers splash out like neon rubies when the asador hits the ground. The tri-tip lays in the yellow and scorched grass like a slaughtered rhino in the African savanna.
 
“We’re taking you guys in for murder,” says the lead swat officer holstering his hand cannon. The brothers get zip-tied by the wrists and are taken away to an idling Ford Explorer police car. The detectives that figured out who were the perps watch from their Crown Vics a block away. Cigarette smoke rises from the half-open windows like a grey aura. It gets swept up by a gust.
 
Back at the brown complex, the cholo is finishing his corn. He is so into it; he doesn’t notice the white goo building up in the corner of his mouth like yeso. He takes his last bite of the corn.
 
“Man. That was the best corn I’ve ever had,” he says yawning widely like a lion that has cemented his future cubs with his pride of pussies. “I feel sleepy now,” he tells la elotera. He raises his arms into the heavens, begins to stretch his thin torso. El cholo begins to fade and turns into dust. His powder conforms to the laws of the wind and is swept up in the gusty breeze. La elotera sees his purplish blueish particles fly between the dancing eucalyptus trees, twisting and dodging bug-eaten leaves. His hue shoots into heaven like blue smoke from a vape.
 
“Ojalá que ya puedas descansar, mijo,” la elotera whispers starring at the crescent moon. She sees her next customer materialize from under the stairs of the crumbling second floor of the complex. An older lady, not too old, with a cord around her stretched-out neck, a swinging plancha at the end of it like a pendulum, walks up to la elotera. Her tight black leather pants let go of a chirrido every step she nears la ex curandera turned corn entrepreneur. Her round and too big for her small frame tits hit her chin like dribbling basketballs.
 
“Hola Doña.” She kisses la elotera’s bony, spotted brown, and loose-skinned hand. “¿En qué le puedo ayudar?”
 
“Mi marido. Ya no me quiso and cheated on me. Look at my clothes.” She raises her arms and whirls like a slutty amateur ballet dancer. The plancha almost bangs la elotera in the hips when she twirls. “He wanted me to dress like this. Like a hoochie. He stopped looking at me the same way. He didn’t touch me the same. Y yo ya estaba harta y cansada.” She cups her hands, places them on her face, and wails into them like an Irish banshee.
 
“No llores, criatura,” says la elotera. “Eres preciosa. You should never have to change who you are. Y menos por un puerco.” Like an ‘80s homicidal movie killer, she busts out with a huge chef’s knife from underneath the shopping cart and the blade shimmers like platinum in the sharp moonlight. She reaches into the pot; pulls out a sweaty elote, begins shaving the kernels of the cob with the blade too big for a viejita. The kernels tumble into a short but wide Styrofoam bowl. She wields her trusty wooden pala in the direction of the mayonesa jar and drops a big spoonful of the white oily condiment into the white bowl. She farts out artificial butter again from the farting blue bottle. Following her method to a tee, she sprinkles stinky pata cheese on top. But this time reaches for a Ziplock baggy containing crushed red hot-Cheetos. She sprinkles some of the jagged neon-red rocks on top. One last ingredient. She sprinkles some of the emerald powder gingerly on top of the esquite she lovingly constructed for the older fox. Wha-la, her pièce de résistance.
 
“Tome,” she says handing the resented lady her esquite. She takes it in her right hand, grips the plastic fork with her left, tight. The nails on her thumb and index finger bleach to white from the death pinch she has on the fork. She begins to scarf down the esquite like she hasn’t eaten a meal in a lifetime.
 
Meanwhile on the other side of town, at a grimy motel where the rate could be paid by the hour or the day, lays her husband on a lumpy mattress with its fitted sheet unfitted. His half-naked mistress sits on the edge of the bed with her arms behind her back hooking her bra back up.
 
“That felt incredible,” says the cheater laying with his hands behind his head as an extra pillow layer. “When can I see you again?” The sancha gets up and sparks up a cigarette next to the window overlooking the freshly repaved parking lot. She stares at a rouge cheeseburger wrapper kite in the gusty wind.
 
“Hey. Is that your S-Class on fire?” she casually blurs out pointing at a car engulfed in flames with her smoldering menthol frajo. She takes a long puff of her cigarette como si nada pasara.
 
“What!” the cheater roaringly shouts out. He lunges the sheets clinging to his sweaty body like saran wrap, jumps up from the bed as if a compressed spring on the mattress was liberated from the weight bearing down on it from above. He runs to the window. He sees red-orange and blue flames ravaging his interior. The flames flicker with tormented life. “My car!” he yells gripping the last few hairs he’s got on his head with his shaky fists. He pulls them out. His sancha takes another menthol drag, como si nada pasara.
 
The cheating husband runs out of the motel room tying his robe to make sure his wrinkled balls don’t make an appearance. He stops dead in his tracks upon walking outside to the parking lot. He can’t believe what he’s seeing. Between red flashes and the buzz of a neon sign advertising vacancy, he sees his adult son holding a red plastic gas tank. His daughter hugs numerous road flares. She waves to him with a road flare. The S-class blows up in a spectacular release of kinetic and chemical energy behind them. The bubbling hood lands in front of the cheater. A tire rolls by minding its own business.
 
“That’s for mom,” says his son with savage eyes. They are more alive than even the fire.
 
“I hate you,” spews his daughter with a scowl. “Mom killed herself because of you. You bastard!”
 
Meanwhile, in the complex’s courtyard the fork the neglected fox was holding falls through her grip. It lands in the dirt. The mayonnaise and butter concoction on the fork is like a magnet to the pebbles of dirt que se comportan como nails. The lady with the plancha around her neck begins to dematerialize. Her aura turns into floating spheres that in-ribbon la elotera for a moment, go over her head like a flyover from the Blue Angels at a ball game, and disperse into the heavens.
 
La elotera has enough time to check her cell phone when a señor walks up dragging his feet. He’s wearing a tan cocodrilo suit ready for the baile. He floats through a tirade de empty beer bottles and decomposing couches and mattresses with yellow stains left for dead in the complex and trash.
 
“Señora,” he cries bringing his hands together as if rezando El Padre Nuestro. “I need your help. I can’t stop thinking about my daughter’s quince and the father daughter dance I’m going to miss.”
 
“Ya ya, joven,” responds the old lady to the ghost of a gordito, ya middle-aged señor. His chaleco can barely contain his Mexican beer belly.
 
“I will give you something to calm your thoughts and guide you to the light.” La elotera fixes up an elote, but not a normal elote. A blue one. She puts the usual fixings on it but instead of putting chili powder on it how she usually does on corn on the cobb, she dredges it with crushed Taquis. She sprinkles some of her emerald powder on it but this time before handing the specter the mouthwatering elote, she hands him a pickled jalapeño. A dark green veiny mean-looking motherfucker. Cosa de maravilla!
 
“Toma,” she says handing him the jalapeño. Then the elote. “Take a bite of the chile first. Then the corn.” She turns her back on the ghost in the cocodrilo suit, begins rearranging her messy carrito, confident the elote will do the trick.
 
“Oh, shit this thing is hot,” dice el specter, fanning his hand towards his burning mouth trying to induct oxygen from the cool night. He makes duck lips, sucking in air like a vacuum.
 
“It’s supposed to be hot. To get all the endorphins going,” says the elotera leaning on her now organized carrito with her elbows.
 
Dela is nervous about her quinceañera dance. Her dad was her pillar of granite, her cheerleader, her guiding light. Y ya no está. “You were supposed to be here to dance with me, dad. You promised me,” she mutters starring into her glossy eyes in the mirror. A door bursts open from behind her. A lady wearing a purple ruffled cocktail dress sticks half her body into the dressing room. Dela wipes the tears from her cheeks and chin. Sniffs a little.
 
“We’re ready for you, mija” the lady with the ruffled dress announces to the down quinceañera. She shuts the door gingerly. Dela pulls down her white princess dress that keeps riding up. She takes in a deep breath, grudgingly gets up. She heads for the door of the salón’s dressing room, steps out, and shuts the door behind her.
 
“Your attention please, ladies and gentlemen,” announces the spiky orange-haired DJ. “Your aplausos to the pista, por favor.” The chatter fades to a whisper. The lights go black except for a spotlight in the middle of the dance floor. “Tennesse Whiskey” bumps out of the JBL speaker set up by the DJ. Dela and her chambelán, her older brother, begin their choreographed walk towards each other, like marching soldiers. The fog machine makes them look like they’re floating on wispy clouds. They reach each other and Dela’s brother takes the lead. He holds her by the hips, she puts her arms around his neck. She begins to cry.
 
“No llores, Delita. I’m here like I promised.” Dela lets go of the hold she had on her brother’s neck and shoves him in the chest.
 
“You mother fuc...,” she begins saying but is unable to continue her tongue-lashing because before her eyes are not her skinny brother but her deceased thick father in the tan cocodrilo suit they had picked out together for her day of transformation from a girl to a woman. “Apa,” she half whimpers. She rushes to her dad and hugs him; he picks her up and spins her around as he used to when she was only to his knees.
 
“Un aplauso para la quinceañera y su hermano, por favor,” the obvious DJ advises the uncaring crowd. “Que bonito. ¡Que bonitas memorias!” Dela rests her head on her dad’s shoulder.
 
A beam of light resembling the glare from the transporter in Star Trek begins to dematerialize the man in the cocodrilo suit enjoying his elote. A police officer rushes into the courtyard with a beaming flashlight that punctures the dark of the night like a knife versus skin. What was left of the spirit gets skewed away by the coned LED light of the flashlight. The half-eaten elote falls to the floor.
 
“What are you doing here?” the jura questions la elotera with the tenacity of a junkyard guard dog. He shoots his beam of LED light at her face. Then without letting her respond, illuminates her shopping cart with Medieval towers. “This place is off-limits. This is a crime scene. Can’t you see the crime tape up?” He shines his light on a unit with yellow crime scene tape tacked to the door. “What are you doing here? This place has been abandoned for years.”
 
The elotera grips the rubber handle to her carrito tight. The playing children’s laughter and cries and the tamborazos of music fade like a distant memory.
 
“No hablo pitinglish,” she says, looking into the blue of the cop’s eyes.
“Well, it don’t matter. This place is off-limits. Get your cart and get out of here before I give you a ticketo,” he acts like he’s filling out a phantom ticket in his phantom ticket book with his phantom white right hand,” for not having a seller’s permit.”
 
“Sí, sí,” the elotera responds, shaking her head up and down like a bobblehead. She begins to push away from the center courtyard. She looks around the complex and there are broken windows and tagged-up walls and empty syringes and sliver spider webs and a few abandoned rusting shopping carts with tall grass growing from between their steel mesh. The cop finds the half-eaten elote and holds it from the palito. He looks at it, scrutinizes it.
 
La elotera stops at the end of the abandoned property. She looks back at the brown condo complex. She sees the bouncing white light from the cop disappear and reappear behind the corners of the dead complex. She takes one last deep Vicks breath and mumbles, “All cops are assholes.”​

​Chicano. Lisiado. Storyteller. Enrique C. Varela hails from Oxnard, California, the land his parents immigrated to from the state Guadalajara, Jalisco, in Mexico. He holds a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Writing minor to accompany it like a solid friend. Two of his short stories have been published in Chiricú Journal & The Acentos Review, respectively. His upcoming memoir, twisted: Tales from a Crip(ple) is slated to be published by Between the Lines Publishing in the coming year. He is beyond excited. His ethnic background is Mexicano. Though his skin pigment tells another story. 

​Heading into Los Angeles, Cisco activated the channel to Gus. “Gus, what do you have for me? I’m fifty miles east of downtown Los Angeles.”

“Nada. I don’t have an exact address yet, but I’m working on it. The old area is setup weird with common garages on the street,” Gus responded. “I know it’s near Sunset and Echo Park. The area will be like Old Town. They can still drive on tires there.”

“Traffic is crazy. I’ve had some weird looks from people. This ranfla sticks out like a sore thumb.”

“Oh yeah, something you need to know. I’m getting cross-reference blips from some source I think is trying to track you. I can’t get to the source because it keeps moving around, but will keep trying,” Gus continued sounding a bit worried.

“Is it security headquarters?” Cisco asked.

“No. It is some other source, a low-level old-fashioned scanner. I can’t isolate it.”

“Keep trying Gus.”

The news that someone was tracking him was not a surprise, however it made him uneasy. When Comsys alerted him to his destination, he descended from the aeropath and found himself hovering over the dilapidated baseball stadium. The open air baseball stadium with blue seats sat in a large ravine surrounded by an empty parking lot. A weathered large blue and white sign was still legible as Dodger Stadium. The Los Angeles Dodgers were big rivals for the Chihuahua Cubs and Cisco had seen them play at the Chihuahua stadium numerous times. Apparently, this was the old stadium and no longer in use.

Flying west, Cisco caught his first view of the older area of Echo Park. Surprisingly, he found it hilly with lots of green vegetation. Small houses dotted the tree covered hills. Circling the area again, Cisco looked for a place to touch down. He got lucky and a spot opened near a busy eatery. Parking the red car not too far from the Pioneer Chicken Ranch on the corner of Sunset Blvd and Portia Street, he sat watching lines of people waiting at the restaurant for their food.

The gaudy neon lights of the Chicken Ranch were lit even though it was daytime. Reflections from the neon lights sparkled on ranflas parked around it. They all had a similar style, though very different than the red one he drove. Six or seven ranflas were parked near the restaurant and dozens of young men dressed in an unusual style were standing nearby.
 
Arturo and his gang tailed Cisco into Los Angeles, keeping close as they followed the blip from the red car. They saw him park near a busy corner, but they had to park around the corner and down several streets.

“Flaco, go keep an eye on him,” Arturo demanded. The area worried him. Perhaps the driver had brought the red ranfla to L.A. to sell.

Flaco jumped out quickly, heading in the direction of the red car parked several blocks away. The intersections were busy with people, and he was surprised by functioning traffic signals for both pedestrians and ground-level vehicles.
 
Sitting in the red car Cisco activated the Pcom and heard Gus pick up immediately. “What’s the matter?” Gus asked.

“I hope you got something for me, cause it is not good here.”

Gus had told him the area was rough, though this was not what Cisco expected. The Chicken Ranch seemed a hangout for gangbangers and lowriders. Small groups of young men gathered at the corner whistling and yelling at passing cars and flashing hand signs. A row of decked-out motorcycles were parked near each other and several men in heavy boots and jackets stood near them. They were definitely Hispanic and all wore the same color bandana tied around their foreheads.

Another group of young men were dressed in karate-style clothes. Two were pushing each other, while several others egged on a fight. The situation made Cisco cringe. When Gus said it made Old Town look like Disneyland, he was making an understatement.

“I’m in the middle of a biker and lowrider convention and it doesn’t look good for me,” Cisco said.

“Oh, those must be some of the gangs that control that area. During the financial collapse of the United States, gang wars started in most of the large cities. Los Angeles was overrun by several ethnic gangs who sectioned off the city, running drugs, and taking protection money. The gangs or locals invented names for themselves. The bikers are the Mayans, if they are Hispanic,” Gus explained.

“Yes. I can see that name on one of the biker’s jacket. The lowriders look different. They look more Asian to me,” Cisco said.

“Those may be the Kudo kai, a minor arm of the Japanese Yakuza syndicate. Lots of people just refer to them as japovatos.”

“Japovatos?”

“The Japanese word for mixed is japa, so the locals just started calling the downtown Asian gangs, japovatos. Mostly they are a mixed race of Hispanic and Japanese families who have lived in the area for ages,” Gus explained. “They speak some weird mixed Spanish and Japanese slang.”

“How dangerous are they?” Cisco asked.

“The Mayans are more dangerous. The japovatos can cause trouble, but now the gangs in Los Angeles are more like our Old Town gangs and most of it is show. They usually don’t make serious trouble outside of their area,” Gus told him.

“Well I hope not, because here comes four of them.” Cisco terminated the call.

Cisco watched four japovatos approaching quickly. They wore skin tight shorts with gray silk tops that resembled karate tops. Two wore an orange silk belt wrapped around their waists, another one wore blue, while the man in front had a black sash.

Cisco briefly thought about lifting off and leaving, then decided to get out of the car to meet them instead. In an instinctive move, he removed the Chihuahua Cubs baseball cap.

“Ano, ese, doko vienes?” the black belted japovato asked Cisco as he walked up. His speech was deep and guttural. He pulled at Cisco’s t-shirt saying something else to his friends and laughed. Cisco figured they wanted to know who he was and where he came from. The one wearing a blue belt walked around the red ranfla nodding his head up and down.

“Española, New Mexico,” Cisco lied, forcing a wide grin. At least the car was from Española.
 
As Flaco rounded the last corner, the neon sign of the Pioneer Chicken Ranch blazed in the afternoon sun. Parked on one side of the restaurant was a line of motorcycles. Bikers dressed in leather jackets and black boots stood nearby. On the other two sides, odd looking ranflas gleamed in the sunshine. They were nothing like the lowriders of Española or Old Town Dublán. These were sleek and streamlined. Young men wearing tight-fitting outfits milled nearby. Four of them were talking to the driver of the red car. Turning around, he walked quickly back to where Arturo had parked.

Leaning in the window he said, “Crazy shit, ese. There are crazy-looking ranflas. Some of their gang are talking to the vato. This is not so good. We need to get out of here.”

“You’re a culón,” Arturo called Flaco a chickenshit. “Go back and keep an eye on him,” he growled.

“I’m telling you, we got to get out of here. There is a biker gang and a bunch of weird looking ranflas. There are four of them talking to the driver of your car.”
 
Blackbelt’s dark slanted eyes turned into long slits. “Nani ases koko?” He demanded to know why Cisco was here, making hand gestures when he spoke. Cisco noticed calloused formations on the first two knuckles of each hand.

As Blackbelt continued to express his displeasure at Cisco’s presence, his three cohorts walked around the car making comments and touching it. Cisco was not sure if they liked it or thought it was weird.

“Mi primo vive aquí en Echo Park, ese,” Cisco told him he was he here to visit his cousin. Very slowly he slid his right hand down to the side of his pants and felt for the tiny laser in his pocket. “¿Ese, tienes problema con eso?” he asked calmly if that was a problem. He tried to speak in street slang like a lowrider and made no threatening moves.

Blackbelt’s lips tightened and his right hand retracted to his side into a fist. “Anata wa koko no eres bienvenido aquí debes irte,” he hissed in his lingo near Cisco’s ear. The odd mixtures of Spanish and Japanese slang told Cisco he was unwelcome and should leave, now.

“No problema,” Cisco assured him, “I’m just visiting my cousin, ese. I’ll be gone in the morning.”

“Horale mishiranu hito,” BlackBelt hissed. “¡Ano ne, vamonos!” Blackbelt called to his friends to leave.

As the four japovatos strode away, Cisco watched them jump into a sleek silver and black aerorider. It lifted and headed west above Sunset Boulevard. He got back in the red car and sank low into the seat. Slowly he breathed in and out, trying to relax after the encounter with the strange japovatos. He activated the channel to Gus.

“Hey Cisco, you okay?” Gus asked.

“Yes, so far. The japovatos spoke in a mix of Japanese and Spanish, good enough for me to understand. They told me to leave now. I need a place to go.”

“The car is still parked on Echo Park Ave. I just can’t figure out for sure which house they might be in. I’m searching the utility records and stuff like that to try to figure it out. Is there a shopping center or parking lot where you could chill for a while?” Gus asked. Cisco thought and remembered the empty Dodger Stadium parking lot and told Gus about it.

“Good. Go there and I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

Cisco started the ranfla and drove ground level on Alvarado Street. Staying on ground level seemed like a good idea with the japovatos patrolling the sky. Shortly, he found Stadium Way and wound toward the stadium parking lot. The parking area’s gate was ripped from the hinges and hung as a twisted reminder of a bygone time. The asphalt was cracked with humps of pavement buckled in a long ridge across a wide area. Weeds and small bushes pushed up through the cracks. Cisco wondered why the old stadium had not been demolished. Parking in the shade of a large tree, he opened the windows and stretched out his six-foot frame as much as possible and tried to relax.
 
Flaco headed back toward the corner of Sunset and Portia. He was a block away when he realized the red car was gone from the parking space. “Mierda,” he cursed. Running back to Arturo, he was out of breath when he jumped into the blue car.

“He’s gone!”

Arturo glanced at the scanner, which had not blipped. “Fuck, he’s on the ground. You fucking let him get away you idiot,” Arturo cursed.

“He can’t be far, ese, he’s tire level. We’ll find him,” Flaco whined.

Arturo lifted the blue car and headed down Sunset Blvd hoping to spot the red car driving on ground level. The hand held scanner showed nothing. Not a very powerful scanner, it could only locate the beacon if it was airborne and within about ten miles. He crisscrossed Echo Park Lake, flew back over the Chicken Ranch, and hovered over a large park. The red car was nowhere. Arturo lifted higher and flew off west on Sunset Blvd.

A sleek black and silver ranfla came up behind him and one of the passengers made hand signs. Arturo knew the signals were not friendly, but there was no way he was leaving without finding his red car.

“Hey,” Flaco said. “I saw that ranfla at the chicken place. It’s the same guys that talked to the pinche vato.”

Flying above street level, the late afternoon traffic was getting heavy, forcing Arturo’s car to slow down. The silver and black ranfla was on his tail. After several blocks, Arturo grinned when he saw Comsys light flash red to indicate an impending stop. Accelerating, he deliberately flew through the intersection and made a sharp left turn. The traffic infraction set off an alarm on his Comsys. The black and silver ranfla tried to follow, but was stopped in the middle of the intersection.

“With luck the police will get them and not us,” Arturo said hoping the traffic control police were the same here in Los Angeles as most of the rest of the Jalapeño Republic. With any luck, the traffic police would assume the local gang was the source of the problem. Arturo circled another corner and landed on a street not too far away.

It did not take long for the LAPD’s traffic control officers to recognize a familiar ranfla stopped in an intersection. The LAPD officers forced the Comsys of the black and silver car to land. The japovatos were not surprised by the turn of events. They knew the procedure well.

“Baka, pinche vatos, los mataré,” the driver swore, vowing to kill the fucking vatos in the blue car.
 
Cisco groaned bumping his knee on the dashboard as his body stretched on the uncomfortable seat. Disoriented, his brain thought he was back on Mars in his small sleeping pod. The single bed in the pod was barely enough for his large frame and how he and Monica managed to have sex took a bit of contortion. Dozing off again, he pictured Monica’s face, but it quickly morphed into Vivian’s. Images of stripping the rose-colored bodysuit from Vivian’s firm body were etched in his brain. Her body had only aged in a good way from when they were teenagers. Her breasts and hips slightly plumper, while her body tone was tight and muscular.

Suddenly the Pcom chirped him out of his visions. “Shit,” he cursed shaking his head as he opened the channel on the Pcom. It was after 6:30 PM and deep twilight shadows cut across the Dodger Stadium parking lot.

“Did you have a nice sleep?” Gus asked and laughed. “I was going to wake you, but not much is happening, so thought I’d let you sleep.”

“You got the address for the sedan yet?” Cisco asked trying to shake the sleep from his brain.

“The car is parked in a single garage on Echo Park Avenue between 2225 and 2227 on the west side of the street,” Gus answered. “It’s moved twice today, but always comes back. I checked the satellite records. The satellite signal from 2227 had 97 calls for 245 minutes, 2225 had one. My guess is that’s the house, but you’ll have to check it out from the ground.”

“You sound groggy,” Gus said.

“Still a little space weary, I guess. Have you picked up anything from security headquarters?” Gus had told Cisco he would monitor the secure channels of the Republic for any chatter about the case or anything he thought odd.

“No. Nothing much. They sent out two operatives in opposite directions, maybe as subterfuge or maybe on legit assignments. Not sure. I saw your report to headquarters go through. The beacon is not working, so they are most likely confused.”

“What about the tracking signal you noticed?”

“It stopped. It was probably nothing.”

“Thanks. I’ll call you when I get to the location. I just want to get the girl and get out of here.”

Starting the car, he lifted from the old Dodgers Stadium parking lot and turned northwest. Flying low he told Comsys the address and let it map the route. According to Gus, it should not be far.
 
Arturo had almost given up finding the red ranfla. It was like finding a needle in a haystack without the use of the scanner. They had been cruising for several hours and the rush hour traffic was getting crazy and busy.

“This is stupid, Chingon,” Oso whined. “It’s getting late and I’m hungry.”

“Me too,” Flaco chimed in. “Drop me off and I’ll pick up some chicken. That place on the corner is always busy, so it must be good.”

Turning back toward the Pioneer Chicken Ranch, Arturo landed nearby and Flaco jumped out. About ten minutes later, he returned with three bags and sodas.

“Damn this is good,” Oso said as he devoured the crispy chicken. The breading of the fried chicken had a spicy kick.

Suddenly the scanner chirped. A blip was moving and it was nearby. Throwing his bag of half-eaten chicken on the seat, Arturo lifted the blue car and headed toward the blip. “I got you now vato,” he grumbled.

​Robert Alvarado is a native of Phoenix Arizona. His award-winning saga, The Young Pistolero Series, won several first place finishes in The Latino Author top-ten list and the International Latino Books to Movie Award. Three of his recent works, Jalapeño Republic, Just Vanished and The Spanish Sword were finalists for an International Latino Book award in several categories. He holds an Engineering Degree from Arizona State University, although spent most of his career representing a large computer company throughout Latin America. Proud of his ancestry, Alvarado’s passion radiates in his writing of stories from a Hispanic perspective.

I was sitting in my favorite easy chair, rocking back and forth to some firme rolas, thinking about the Dodgers, my next meal and the llantas my ’64 Chevy Impala needed. I looked over to Tío Juan who was sitting on the hardest chair in the house and in the same room, which is our sala. I share it with the old bato who helps pay la renta. I knew he saved a lot of money, only spending a lot of feria for books. In fact, he was reading one, lost in some thought from some writer who lived back before gente had TV, laptops and iPhones. Half the people now living would go crazy if they had to live only with those three toys. Me? I’m Old School. As long as I have my ranfla, the Dodgers on radio, Oldies, and decent menudo now and then, I’m happier than any one of them.
 
Tío Juan’s iPhone let out a few notes of classical music by some guy wearing a wig wrote before anyone could stop him. Tío Juan made a face because he was being taken away from his book just when he was going to make a juicy mental note, it looked like. When he said “Hello,” a voice roared from the tiny box that told me it was my Tía Rosa who talked as if she was trying to summon her dead marido, the first one, del otro lado. The viejo jumped like some malvado lit a cuete under his silla. His book flew out of his wrinkled copper-colored manos like a spooked gallina. The libro, a thick one, landed at my feet making a loud noise.
 
“It’s your Tía Rosa,” he said all serious as he walked over to hand me his phone and retrieved his fat book.
 
“Hello Tía,” I said, sounding all happy. She promised to leave me her ‘39 Packard. She hadn’t driven it since her viejo Richard died, the Indio from Washington State with the genio of a wart hog. The carrucha had under 40,000 miles. No dents or scratches. The clock even worked.
 
“You sound triste,” she shot back and I moved my ear the standard six inches when talking to the Mejicana bullhorn.
 
I had to think since I wanted to make her feel happy so she would call me her favorite sobrino y gordito.
 
“No, no, I feel happy like it’s your birthday.”
 
“Gordo, I want you to do something for me.”
 
There was a pause. I thought she would then follow through like always with her rapid fire of words like so many balas.
 
“Well?” the tía vieja then said. I guess she wanted some kind of reaction from me.
 
“Uh, what is it?” As much as I wanted to be there for her and live up to her expectations, her idea of favors tested my ‘tude.
 
“You don’t sound too enthusiastic for someone in line to inherit my rancho in El Monte and my 1939 Packard.”
 
“I’m trying to hold my ganas so I can talk.”
 
“I’ll do the talking. My brother Fulgencio’s son Candelario from El Paso is crazy over some muchacha. He is lavishing her with money he doesn’t have, buying her this and that. He’s up to his usual tonterías.”
 
“I say leave well enough alone in El Paso. They take care of their gente, we take care of ours in East Los.”
 
“Listen fat head. That other fat head, the flaco, isn’t in El Paso.”
 
“That, too, is your brother’s problem. Did he run down to Mexico?”
 
“I should disown you and then put out a contract on you, that’s what I should do. No, if you would listen, maybe you too can put your life together. That other sobrino without any common sense is in L.A.”
 
“Why?” My stomach began to churn the enchiladas Tío Juan made for dinner. He is the best cook in our familia although not officially a member but an honorary hanger-on. Showed up one day looking for yard work and sort of grew on me like a grano. But that’s for another story.
 
“For love. Or what his distorted thinking calls love. He fell for some muchacha in El Paso and proposed to her.”
 
“Another one?”
 
“Yes, he collects these females like others collect botes.”
 
“It seems like he falls in love once a month. Like a novia-of-the-month club.”
 
“So now you can see why your Tío Fulgencio is concerned about his only hijo. Candy will spend all kinds of dough on her only to see it broken off by him and/or her.”
 
Candy was the family name for Candelario. I never thought it fit him since even as a chamaco, he had a sour look on his face like he was weaned on a pickle. I guess he eventually rearranged his face in order so he could hit on all these girls.
 
“Someone should remind him of all the other females he has gone through,” I said.
 
“His father did.”
 
“What did the loco say?”
 
“This is the one.”
 
“He said that with the first one, what’s her name?”
 
“Christina. She turned out to be married and went crying back to her husband from whom she was separated from for over two years.”
 
“Candy has that effect on women,” I said.
 
“So, I want you to track him down there in L.A. and pal around with him. Make him see he has no business chasing a woman in show biz.”
 
“Show biz?”
 
“Yes, she has aspirations of getting onto the stage or movies. I hear she is a looker.”
 
“I don’t see how I can help?”
 
“I do!” she said with a slam of the phone, a Chicana force unequaled by man or beast. I stood there, wondering what her next move would be.
 
“Did your Tía slam the phone on you again?” said Tío Juan from his silla.
 
“How can you tell?”
 
“The agitated look on your face, chubby cheeks and all. Did she say she was charging over like a mama bear after a biologist innocently swatting at butterfly specimens near her cub?”
 
“She didn’t get into that much detail. But that is usually her modus operandi. She’ll be rudely rushing into the house without a hello and a lot of do-this-and-do-that’s.”
 
“You better pull up the drawbridge because she can walk through walls by knocking them down if she is agüitada.”
 
“I can’t say no to her. I have too much invested in her being agreeable.”
 
“You can tell her that you have a bad muela that is dark, rotten and painful.”
 
“Even then, she will make my life very dark, very rotten and very painful.”
 
“What is she asking of you?”
 
“Part of my life.”
 
“She needs a transplant? One of your kidneys?”
 
“I’d take that over what she is demanding. She don’t ask. She wants me to babysit her nephew Candelario who, I hate to say, is also my primo.”
 
“Doesn’t he pass the time away in El Paso proposing to every other muchacha?”
 
“That was my reaction, a logical one. But you know Tía Rosa.”
 
“Like the bottom of my chanclas. How many names did she call you before she explained?”
 
“Just a few choice ones. She seemed in a hurry. Candelario is in L.A. chasing some loquita who thinks she is the next Eva Longoria. And, of course, he wants to marry her.”
 
“Why does your aunt care whom he marries. She don’t seem to care whom you marry, her favorite punching bag.”
 
“She says I got no worries. Women don’t like gordos who sit around listening to the radio, eating nonstop and letting out smelly pedos.”
 
“Your aunt is direct with you, isn’t she?”
 
“Yeah, but she wants me to be thin, happily casado.”
 
“Those are two demands for the ages.”
 
“Here’s the problem Tío Juan. I can’t stand being around the bato.”
 
“Why?”
 
“I knew you’d ask that.”
 
“For every action, there is a reason.”
 
“Yeah, you read all those books.”
 
“Actually, I got that from a fortune cookie at the Eternal Garden Chinese place on Soto near First. They went out of business soon after. No one cried. With good reason, like that cookie said. Their food was bound to kill their business if they didn’t kill a customer first.”
 
“I don’t like the way Candelario chews food, talks about himself and his love life nonstop, and sings those songs he claims he writes. Well, he can’t sing and he can’t write songs. And he always has something to say about the way I live, how much I eat and how much time I waste riding around and hopping my ranfla.”
 
“And he has the short list. Your Tía could give him the official list.”
 
“How come you’re always giving me patadas? You should be telling me stuff from all those books you always have your nose in. You know, how Aristotle, Casanova and them handled cosas.”
 
“I apply them and other minds I have absorbed in libraries and cantinas to your daily gripes. I guess you weren’t aware of that.”
 
“What do you say about the payaso Candelario?”
 
“An interesting case study.”
 
There was a pause. I was heaving as I inhaled and exhaled.
 
“Well, what should I do?” I said. “Should me and some homies jump him and FedEx him back to Tejas?”
 
“I take it you are trying hard at a chiste.”
 
“Not even.”
 
“Your Tía Rosa would disown you, not to mention your other tías. They work as a team during a crisis. Like a herd of elefantes protecting a valuable water hole during a draught in the Serengeti.”
 
“Then tell me the way.”
 
“That is for another counseling. I will make a suggestion regarding your current pickle after I have my Té de Canela.”
 
“Yeah, get that egghead of yours on the problem.”
 
I went outside to sit in my ranfla. I knew Tío Juan would think of something with that oblong head of his once he had his canela. He has saved me from all kinds of trouble, including girls, money, bills, stomach aches, headaches, plumbing, neighbors, and, of course, my tías who can be pushy.
 
I went back inside like I needed to get something important. I walked past him and he didn’t stop his musing, ignoring me like I was a passing mosca on a hustle.
 
I went back to my Impala to play some firme rollas, the background music to my vida. The first rolla that came on was “You’re No Good” by Betty Everett. I took it personally. Felt like she was singing to me and no one else. I could see her dedo touching my nose, making me cross-eyed right there in my driveway.
 
I was in that pickle Tío Juan talked about. I saw no way out. My Tía Rosa had heard my standard excuses, several times. I had used a dolor in every part of my body. And every part of my ranfla. I was lucky to be living with a man like Tío Juan who had the mind of a master criminal. He always found a way to cheat fate. I’d bet Candelario’s right leg he would find a way.
 
I fell asleep. Then I heard a knock on the window as “Workin’ On A Groovy Thing” by Patti Drew was playing. Tío Juan was signaling me with his arms flailing sideways. Someday I have to tell him the signal for lowering a car window is down.
 
I rolled down the window but then he again waved his hands in that sideway motion. I guess he now wanted me to lower the music. I also have to tell him that he has to point to the music with one hand and make a downward motion con la otra.
 
When I shut off the music, he cleared his garganta with a lot of noise I didn’t think could come out of the human cuerpo. He didn’t say anything so I gave him my So? mirada.
 
“I thought of something. Actually, it’s multiple choice with all the answers being right.”
 
Then came another pause. I gave him another So? mirada, this time punctuated with my hands raised to face level and to both sides of my head, palms up. He studied my gesture for a few moments, like he found the gesture amusing. I guess that’s what happens when your only entertainment is libros.
 
“Here’s the deal. Listen up.”
 
I waited this time, poker faced. He studied my face for a bit then spoke.
 
“You can introduce him to someone more feasible.”
 
“He would find any jaina feasible.”
 
“Not a problem. Your aunt is also his aunt and would probably find any girl too good for him.”
 
“You’re right. Tía Rosa is funny.”
 
“Hilarious. Okay, the second option is to introduce him to a decoy.”
 
“Like a pato?”
 
“No, too risky. He is not beyond proposing to a duck, wooden or otherwise. I mean, a real good looking female with even odds and ends of intelligence who he would propose to on first sight.”
 
“Heck with him. I’d keep her for myself.”
 
“That’s the problem I see here. You have as many character defects as Candelario and any other bato with hanging tongue in the 7.47 square miles that is East Los. And there are over 125,000 folks trotting around those square miles. A whole bunch of those guys like you and Candelario, guys getting wide-eyed and tongue dripping at the sight of any beauty who smiles momentarily at you, even by accident.”
 
I calculated that 125,000 was two fair-sized Dodger crowds. Tío Juan had slipped silently away and back into the house while I was calculating.
 
The following morning, Tía Rosa was at the foot of my bed as I opened my eyes. She was like a fantasma lleno do corajes. Before I could say, “What The Fudge!” she started to evaluate my life.
 
“You’re going to sleep right through your existence.”
 
I looked at the clock on the rickety nightstand near my pillow. It said quarter to six.
 
“Who let you in?” I said.
 
“That skinny viejo.”
 
Tío Juan rarely slept past 5 a.m. He had his morning tea and one scrambled egg burrito, chewing serenely at the kitchen table.
 
“Oh, yeah,” I said.
 
“I have a plan. Join me in the sala when you get dressed and brush your teeth. You know I don’t like bad breath.”
 
She left with a slam of my bedroom door. Where is the privacy in East L.A., I said to himself. I dressed quickly and brushed my teeth even quicker, knowing my Tía to have no patience when anyone made her wait. I guess she always had to feel like the most important person in a room.
 
I headed for the kitchen in search of coffee, but like a mama grizzly annoyed by a mocking visitor to Yellowstone, she growled then waved a paw toward a chair opposite where she was holding court. I responded submissively by sitting right away where she had pointed to.
 
She stared at me as if I was a chunk of questionable pancita de res she was going to toss into a pot of menudo.
 
“Candelario is a tonto. The only thing that keeps him fed is his good looks. His family doesn’t have the money to sponsor his viajes of tonterías. But they are proud and want us to lasso him and send him back to El Paso. When he first texted his family, they were happy. He said he finally met a girl they would love, too. He followed that with more texts. The last one said that she was going to be a movie star and was dancing to support herself. He knew that they would understand.
 
“Well, they didn’t. They called me and told me they were sure she was a stripper in some barrio who knows where. Do they have strippers around here, Gordo?”
 
“I heard they might,” I said, trying to sound like I didn’t know.
 
She looked at me as if to say, Mentiroso.
 
“I’ll bet Tío Juan knows a few,” she said.
 
“Only if they have an exceptional reading room,” Tío Juan said as he had silently appeared, as usual, like a gato sneaking up on a ratón. He sat in a corner, stirring his tea, observing me since Tía Rosa had her back to him. She kept talking to me like he had been Hip-Hop coming from a passing car.
 
“From what the familia put together from his jumbled text, much like his mumbled speech, is that the girl’s name is Latina Destiny. At least her stage name. They’ve yet to hear her Tejas name. According to Candelario, she does something called a Banana Split on a pole. What that name means, I don’t want to know. He went on in his text to say that she had them all loco at Mr. Zapp’s. Who she or Señor Zapp is I never want to find out.”
 
For a person who knows everything, I found it hard to believe she didn’t want to know those things, too.
 
“It’s messed up, huh?” I said.
 
“More than that, payaso. He would be the shame of all the familia, both sides of the frontera.”
 
“Every family has one of those. We just have to take hold of our chones and still walk proud.”
 
“No seas ridículo, Arturo.”
 
“Tía, I remember hearing that Tío Fulgencio met his wife Claudia in Nogales, Mexico. He was stationed across the border at an Army base. She was a singer in a nightclub. So Candelario might have his father’s DNA and is attracted to women on stage. He can’t help it. His father grabbed his and took her home to El Paso. The familia worked on her and she became a domesticated Mejicana stirring frijoles on the stove. You could never tell she sang and moved her hips for a living. Mejicanas go with the flow since that one who whispered in Cortez’ ear and helped him jump our people.”
 
“What are you driveling about, Gordo?”
 
“Our history according to Tío Juan. He knows all that stuff about our gente going way back.”
 
“Well, right now we’re talking current affairs. And you are part of it. So, open up those oversized ears of yours. You will come to the aid of your primo.”
 
“It may be a family disorder or whatever it’s called. Maybe his chavalos in the future will be chasing and marrying ruckas like this Latina Destiny. We shouldn’t try to stop it.”
 
“The only disorder I see, Artie, is in your thinking. Wiggling around on stage while yodeling doesn’t make a good match for a man. Do I need to whack you on your chaveta to bring you back to the problem facing the family? This is a family crisis and you’re going to find Candelario and steer him to what is right.”
 
“Why me?”
 
“Why do you even ask? You are too difficult, Arturo. What about familia? Your sangre. You are too flojo to accomplish something meaningful en esta vida. You should jump for joy to help stop Candelario from bringing shame on the family for generations to come. You will find your primo. Besides, you used to be pals when growing up. You are the only one on both sides of the family who has nothing to do but ride around in that jalopy and hang around with cholos on Whittier Boulevard.”
 
“My car is not a jalopy. It’s a classic bomba. And my friends are not cholos. Not full time, anyway. And I listen to the Dodgers on the radio. Good, clean fun.”
 
“My point. You’re just sitting around that radio, getting fat eating and doing nothing else. Besides, I’m asking you to do this as a favor from a person that can determine your future way down the line.”
 
I know she was telling me that if I didn’t go along peacefully, she would show me what a malvada she could be by messing up my life forever. Her eyes focused on me like a spider she was about to swat with a wave of her chancla. She reminded me of La Llorona on a bad day.
 
“So you will jump on this right away, right, Artie?”
 
I thought quickly.
 
“Simón.”
 
Tía Rosa left like a drill sergeant, confident her orders would be followed. I almost saluted the rucka.
 
I looked over to Tío Juan who had his nose in a book like always.
 
“Tío Juan, we have to find Candelario and tell him what’s what.”
 
“Might have to slap him around some,” he said while slowly turning a page.
 
“I will text him and tell him to meet me on the corner of Sunset and Vine, like in the movies.”
 
L.A. can be confusing and if some bato gives you an address, even with GPS, it ain’t easy. And I didn’t have GPS.
 
I did receive his address in a text on Tío Juan’s phone from Tía Rosa. It was a bungalow on a residential street on the edge of Hollywood. I rang the doorbell, knocked on the door and pleaded with Candelario to open the door because I wanted to save his life. He didn’t come to the door and it sounded like no one ever would.
 
It was a letdown. I was in a strange part of L.A. and Candelario was nowhere to nail. Walking around, away from my ranfla, I couldn’t think smoothly. My Impala and me are a team, like a charro and his horse. I didn’t know where to go. I started to walk around and something told me to go to the front bungalow. There a sign said Manager, Knock First and I guess the same thing in a list of words below that in four other languages. I rang the doorbell not once but four times. Out of habit, I thought I’d see a Chicano brown face and had to step back when the pinkest dude I had ever seen opened the door. He was also one of the skinniest dudes I’d ever seen. He was tall and looked down on me as if I was an abandoned perro.
 
He grunted something. I said, “Huh?” He cleared his throat and said, “What you need?” in some accent from somewhere. I told him and he brought me up to date regarding my person of interest, Candelario.
 
He laid out Candelario’s schedule as if he had planned it himself. He said Candelario was like a trained something—I couldn’t make out the word—and did everything at the same time every day. It was a long schedule the bony bato had memorized. I remembered that he got home at six, stayed for an hour then went out. After that, he said he got back to his bungalow at all hours, sometimes after midnight.
 
The streets around here were full of fast cars and people walking like they were going to meet someone with lots of money. The buses were packed with Raza going to work in Westside restaurants and homes, working from morning till night.
 
I felt a strange new respect for My Gente as they travelled from East Los, Maywood, Downey, and other lugares miles away to provide for their familias. I couldn’t wait to get back to Tío Juan to see what his take was on all this. He always has something to say about everything I see and do.
 
Then something hit me like an electrical shock I once got when I plugged in a lámpara while I was desnudo and wet. I felt like Dios himself was smiling down on me and everything around me. Why? Because I was safely miles away from Tía Rosa, the big mandona.
 
Back to Candelario. Reminds me like when you’re looking for something and you start getting mad at everything and everybody but yourself. It’s like Tío Juan looking for his iPhone, he doesn’t find it until someone calls him. Could be days. I was hoping for something quicker in my search. Seeing the fine jainas walking and driving around, I didn’t care if I ever found Candelario, but then I saw the bato walking in front of me at a red light.
 
I honked but he kept walking and bouncing as if he heard music no one else did. And he did. He had ear buds on. I pulled over in a red zone, the only spot nearby that was open and saw him bouncing down the boulevard like he was rengo since, like I said, he couldn’t dance. I then saw him go into an office. It took me about ten minutes to find parking a block away. I half walked and half ran toward that office.
 
I tried the door but it was locked. I called out his name. The name on the door said Alphonso Bolinso, Agent For New Talent. From the other side of the puerta, I heard all kinds of voices, some in Spanish, some in English and one in some language that I never heard in the barrio.
 
I pounded on the door. Appearing in a small window was a face I didn’t like but had to look at. It was Candelario. My suerte was kicking in, the good kind for a change.
 
He unlocked the door after several turns, the last one sounding like an industrial strength bolt lock. “Artie, what do you want? How’d you get here? Did you make a wrong turn and finally make it out of East L.A.?”
 
“I went to where you lived and the manager and all those other things gave me your schedule. I didn’t remember most of it and I didn’t expect to see you hustling across a street.”
 
“I gave him that schedule but I really don’t have one.”
 
“Why?”
 
“Well, people around here are all nosey and want to know what you’re up to. Like they’re ready to call the cops. You feel like you’re being watched all the time from behind windows and from rooftops. And I have more reasons, ese. I might tell you later. No, I’ll tell you now, Artie. I fell for a girl. It was like Canelo hit me with his left hook. She is the finest jaina in any barrio you can name.”
 
The loquito looked at me like a bato who has just lost his mind, a hideous smile on his face, waiting for me to give him un abrazo. I had to tell him all he was telling me was already family chisme flying around Texas, and that I was sent by our Tía Rosa to slap him back to his senses.
 
So, I didn’t hug him or anything, but just gave him the standard Órale.
 
“Thanks, you’re true Raza from way back,” he said. “I may be jumping the gun, pero I think it will turn out right. Come in. I’ll give you all the happy details.”
 
“What are you doing here? It looks like a dump.”
 
“It’s part of the deal. Let me tell you how it is.”
 
He opened the door and I followed. There were people packed into the room like when you go to a firme party in the Hood. But these people didn’t look like they knew how to have any fun. They talked all serious. They were talking and talking, not even paying attention that I was watching them, like they were all high on a new droga going around.
 
Candelario saw my face, probably looking all confused so he gave me some details.
 
“Performers of all kinds,” he said, “waiting to see Alphonso Bolinso. It’s summer so clubs need people with even a little talent to sell drinks and demand a big cover charge. Summer is Christmas to club entertainers. All over this city, as June sets in, standups stand up, blood gushes in the veins of dancers, and hypnotists make their eyes big to make people believe they are dogs barking in a junkyard. It’s time to book your act and people are paying tribute to the legendary Bolinso.”
 
“What’s all this have to do with you, a flojo from El Paso?”
 
“Plenty. If you see a skinny bato who looks homeless come from that office, jump him because that will be Alphonso. The more money he makes, the more he dresses like he don’t have any. Years ago, they said he was mugged because of his flashy dress. If you do corner Alphonso, he might not remember me.”
 
“You said you’d tell me about some deal that brought you here.”
 
“Okay, man, I got into—”
 
Suddenly, Candelario’s eyes opened as if he just saw a twenty waving at him. He jumped and sprang at this frumpy-looking dude with hair shooting here and there. Candelario got to him before the others even turned their heads. The singers, dancers, standup comics, piano players and comedy teams had the look of defeat as they saw Candelario get into the face of Alphonso Bolinso as if he wanted to kiss him. Alphonso turned and Candelario followed closely as they walked by me.
 
Mr. Bolinso lit a cigar, sat then looked at us like he wanted to throw us back into the streets. “Let me tell you something Candel” he said. “And listen.” Candelario sat, then put a fist under his chin as if to signal he was hanging on every syllable. Mr. Bolinso studied Candelario for a few seconds then shot an imaginary basketball at an imaginary hoop.
 
“Let me tell you,” he then spoke again. “I saw you do your act as I promised La Destiny. You got a hint of talent here and there. You got a long way to go but you are on the road. I can get you into a club if you accept seventy-five per cent. I don’t have to offer you even that but the young lady kept texting me. It’s yours for the taking. Do I hear a ‘sure I’ll take it’?”
 
“You sure do, I accept,” he said in the deepest voice I ever hear come out of the bato.
 
Outside on the sidewalk, Candelario laughed all crazy and waved a hand for a high-five. I waved a hand sin ganas.
 
“Oh, yeah. I was saying when Alphonso came out that L.D.’s mother used to be in entertainment. She was from back in the old days but I think I heard of her somewhere from somebody. She sang but also danced. Muy sexy. I met her and I could see she must have been fine when she was young. But she says I don’t sing and then added that it doesn’t look like I do anything. She told Destiny that I didn’t look like I could support her for a week. Said no to our joining hands like she meant business.
 
“You remember how great I sing and write songs, so Destiny got hold of the sloppy viejo Bolinso and got him to say he would spare me a few of his precious moments and put me somewhere if I showed him. She can make him listen. He then said he would get back to me. Well, today, I made him get back to me. You heard him. I get to keep seventy-five per cent of what I make and he will find a place for me to sing.”
 
“He’s taking a lot,” I said, “but that’s better than the IRS if you win the Lotto.”
 
I felt weak at the knees. I could see Tía Rosa’s cara when she heard Fulgencio’s hijo was not only still chasing the loose woman but also was going to get on stage, too. Tía Rosa felt nothing came before familia, not even someone’s happiness, including mine. She’s always telling me that our family tree goes way back on both sides of the border and that we had all kinds of history that had important people doing all kinds of things everywhere. She tells me in detail but she talks so fast that I can’t remember everything. She tells me when I do something to make her agüitada so that’s why she says the family stuff so fast. What she would say when she heard this breaking news, I don’t even want to think about.
 
“Let’s go back to East Los, Candelario,” I said. “Tío Juan can fix us some comida to make you think right. I could eat a dozen of his tacos right now. And hold on while I call somebody.” I walked a few feet away.
 
I knew at the start that Tía Rosa shouldn’t have picked me to get this tonto away from someone he wanted to marry. I needed backup. I thought of Tía Rosa herself but that was like asking for problemas on top of all the current ones. I thought things out and thought I would text Candelario’s father and tell him he needed to show up as fast as he could.
 
“Who were you texting?” asked Candelario when we got to my car.
 
“Just Tío Juan to find out what he was preparing for cena,” I said.
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On the following Tuesday, Candelario appeared at a Mexican restaurant in Pasadena that had singing on a stage right next to where people ate, which was risky for the restaurant. He had practiced in his bathroom with a neighbor banging the wall after two hours. I drove around with the ventanas all the way up so he could let out his lungs. I was encouraging him, which encouraged me since he sounded worse with every mile. I wanted his first gig to be such a relaje that he would never again try to inflict his singing on anyone; and that would end his chances of being Latina Destiny’s marido. So, I stepped to one side.
 
But the bato was determined. On Saturday and Sunday, we almost lived in my Impala as I drove around while he sang all kinds of songs, all out of tune. He had a special CD with just the background music of songs I never heard of. The bato never got tired. It was like he would die if he stopped singing.
 
Candelario makes a strange noise with his tongue, then a stranger noise with his garganta and starts:
 
“There’s a streetcar at the corner.”
CANDELARIO with a deep voice: “Why?”
CANDELARIO in a high voice: “To take me to my destiny.”
CANDELARIO with the deep voice: “To your destiny?"
CANDELARIO with the high voice (staying with his goal): “To take me to my destiny.”
CANDELARIO with the deep voice (not believing him): “No kidding?”
CANDELARIO with the high voice: “I’m from the stars.”
CANDELARIO with the deep voice: “I’m from Eagle Pass.”
 
He repeated those words over and over. I told him ya trucha, I’m going to drop you off on the corner. But the bato said this is what performers do, even in opera. This would get him Destiny. I said he needed all the getting he could get. And then the bato said to me, “So you have my back, ese!” And he sang on.
 
He then switched to some song about lovebirds. He told me that that was a song Destiny sang at a Hollywood club. It was like he was telling me a miracle performed by a saint.
 
No lie, but the restaurant expected Candelario to be there in time to start crooning at 12 noon for the lunch crowd. I said they had to be delusional since he was still snoring at that hour, but Candelario said if he was to eat while in L.A. he had to be there. I was nodding like what he said really made sense, until he made it plain that I was supposed to be there with him. I had expected just to go to his bungalow at night to see him all sad because he had bombed. But I never let a homie down. So, I had to drop plans to go to a Mexican restaurant I found on Cesar Chavez Avenue that has better corn tortillas than even Tío Juan’s. I followed Candelario, instead. They were playing soft instrumental Rancheras over an intercom for atmosphere, I guess. I sat down. It wasn’t much of a lunch crowd that ate in the atmosphere, which seemed to trigger yawns from one table to the next. I didn’t know if it was the bland décor, the food or the music. I was just going to order a taco till Candelario came on. I joined the yawns of some guy who looked like he’d rather be eating a hot dog with plenty of mustard as he forced an enchilada into his boca and down his throat. It was then that I noticed an hermosa for the ages sitting at the next table.
 
Órale. I don’t like lying. When I came in, I saw an hermosa sitting at a table, so I went a de volada to the one next to it. I began to check her out like I was shopping for hydros to put in my Impala. I wanted the lugar to have better lights so I could appreciate her curves and finish. She was small, with big Chicana eyes and the reddest lips I have ever seen. It was a wasted work of art that was sitting in the dark.
 
Then the lighting got better, and the speaker system began to blast a tune which sounded like I’d heard many times before, which I had. Then Candelario came out in a maroon coat down to his knees, pegged black pantalones tucked into high-top calcos, his chaveta topped by a burgundy Fedora hat with a white feather that nearly reached the ceiling or so it seemed to me. He bumped into a chair on stage, turned maroon himself and began to sing that destiny song.
 
It was messed up. The pobre loquito got scared that his voice came and went. Mostly went. He sounded like a bad cell phone connection going in and out.
 
I got relaxed. I saw that he was not going to be around that Destiny girl after today. I felt bad for the pobre, but it now looked like things were looking up. Nobody’s gonna pay good money or any money to see Candelario drive customers into the streets. This would be “one night only” appearance. He would have to sell chicle in the street. The vieja would say, “Lárgate and don’t think about my hija ever again.” And if things go like they’re supposed to, I could see me pushing Candelario into a Greyhound bus with the destination “El Paso Express” then getting an abrazo from Tía Rosa and then the keys to her ’39 Packard. Then I saw myself cruisin’ down Whittier Boulevard with all eyes wide, and fine jainas wanting a ride.
 
He finished his song sin ganas and dragged himself away with deafening silence, como dicen. I was hoping to see him sneak over to me, but he stepped onto the stage again.
 
I think I heard a gasp from a few people eating and that was with comida in their bocas. He started singing. I expected beer bottles and salsa to start flying. It was a normal song about walking under stars with a rucka by some river with a name that wasn’t the L.A. River, with some other words, pero Candelario sang it like it was about somebody dying and soon, leaving an esposa and all kinds of chavalos. Halfway through the song, I wanted to jump on the stage and hug the skinny tonto. It was like everything was messed up and nobody could do anything about it.
 
He got to a romantic part, then it got weird. The girl at the next table got up from her chair, stepped back, spreading her arms and began to join him. I say, “joined him,” but it really didn’t go down like that because as soon as she started Candelario stopped as if he was clotheslined.
 
I never felt so let down since I was born. I wanted to raise the collar of my Pendleton and lowride on my silla. It felt like everyone was checking me out.
 
All embarrassed and hunched in my chair, I saw Candelario. He looked different. He was standing there with an attitude. The chavala was singing pretty good, and it seemed to make Candelario stand straighter with a serious look. When she got to some words, he jumped in, and they sang the song like Johnnie and Joe. He left the stage like he was popular. The few people around told him to come back, and only quit when they piped in some girl singer like Arianna Grande or Lady Gaga.
 
I looked over to the girl but she had disappeared from my life like other girls. I sat up and made the walk toward Candelario behind a curtain. He was sitting on crate full of beer, looking like he just saw the Virgen.
 
“Isn’t she special, Artie,” he said like he was talking about the Virgen. “I didn’t think she’d be around. She has to dance this week somewhere in Montebello, so I think she will get there barely in time for her afternoon performance. She risked it all just to come and see me. She’s my special angel, Artie. My savior. If she wasn’t here, it would have been a disaster. I got rattled, I couldn’t think. I will make it through the next show easy.”
 
I was happy I had texted his father. He would come in handy. I was losing my grip on things.
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The following semana, I saw Candelario and got to meet the chavala. I also shook hands with her mother, a mean looking Mejicana of the old school. She had a real chingona look. She made sure I knew her name was “Mrs. Sanlego.” Then Candelario’s father rode into town. My Tío Fulgencio is the classiest old bato in the familia. He doesn’t have Tía Rosa’s tongue but neither does anyone else. Still, since I was a chamaco, Tío Fulgencio made me feel I was taking in too much oxygen that could better be used by moscas. He doesn’t mess with me like Tía Rosa, especially since he lives in Tejas and has his hands full with Candelario. The way they bother me is different. Tía Rosa blames all problems in the barrio and surrounding calles on me, while Tío Fulgencio just likes to blame me for being me.
 
I know for sure Tío Fulgencio sang Rancheras here and there years ago. He likes the stage himself. He couldn’t sing. So, it’s in Candelario’s blood to be on stage without a reason.
 
Tío Fulgencio is one bossy dude, always telling people to go here, do that and don’t do that. Even other people’s kids, which causes him problems in public. But he looks like a boss of something, no matter where he goes. At Walmart, they always mistake him for the manager even when he’s loading cerveza onto his cart. Still, like I said, I heard he was singing Rancheras and Norteño/Conjunto years ago in bars. They say he played the accordion sometimes but not good.
 
I can imagine a lot of things but I can’t see Tío Fulgencio singing anything in any bar.
 
I prepped for a long abrazo but he backed off as if I was the Diablo wanting his soul.
 
“What are you up to, Arturo? Why did you text me like someone was dying?”
 
“It’s complicated,” I said, “and goes on and on. Con permiso, I’ll tell you in slow, easy parts like a telenovela. Let me take you on a quick trip to a club in Montebello.”
 
The muchacha Latina Destiny was going on her second week at The Flyers club in Montebello. She was that good. And she just sang three songs while she danced around. And by dance, I mean she got a big workout matched by the men’s eyes and lungs. Her outfits and music selection were both thin. Tío Fulgencio just stared like he was watching a magic show up to the moment she dashed off the stage to whistles and howls.
 
“Han pasado muchos años desde que canté con mi grupo.”
 
That’s all he said even though he continued to stare at the stage as if he were watching himself in some kind of spooky flashback. The pariente was making me nervous.
 
Some dude then came out and asked everyone to give Latina Destiny a big applause, which they did along with the whistles and howls.
 
“What do you think, Tío?” I said.
 
He just went on staring.
 
“Muchos años. Did you say something, Arturo?”
 
“You saw her. Tell me what you think of her.”
 
“Who? Oh, the Destiny girl.”
 
“Yes. The muchacha your muchacho is engaged to marry.”
 
He looked away like he had to take in the news slowly, wearing a serious face. Like always.
 
The muchacha came out for more whistles and howls and she heard them with a big smile. The men wanted her to shake some more. Finally, she wiggled off stage and I looked at Tío Fulgencio again.
 
“What do you think?” I said.
 
“She can sing. And dance, although I don’t like the way she dances but she has the moves.”
 
“Okay, Tío, let me take you a few miles from here on the other side of East Los.”
 
I drove him in my ranfla to the restaurant where Candelario was going to get me in good with Tía Rosa after I got him back to El Paso. I could already see the `39 Convertible Coup Packard in my driveway. As soon as we sat down at a table, the bato came out.
 
“Next to solve your problem,” I said, “Candelario.”
 
I didn’t know what the uncle from El Paso was going to do, but what he did confused me—he just sat there, not saying anything. He sat there like a stuffed tío staring at Candelario as he went on about love and all its confusion. I was feeling for the old bato because it had to be a jolt shot through his cuerpo to see his only hijo in a red shirt and purple pants, but it was best he got the details of the problem with his own eyes. I didn’t want to explain to him what was happening to his son’s life and with just words and without living proof. With just words, he would just think that Candelario was marrying someone somewhere for whatever reason.
 
When Candelario shuffled out I couldn’t believe my ears. Candelario was sounding better. He found a singing voice from somewhere and was showing it off like a fine woman. It was like when he went to Garfield High and was wailing, “Let’s take a trip down Whittier Boulevard” over and over on top of the Garfield High School sign. How he got up there and back down is an East Los mystery to this día. He was using the same fuerza now.
 
After Candelario left the stage, my Tío sat squeezed into his seat like he was sitting between two fat borrachos. He then looked at me with narrow eyes like I was trying to trick him.
 
“¿Qué está pasando, Arturo?”
 
He said it in a low voice like juicy chisme, but it sounded like a threat of cachetadas if I didn’t give him the right answer.
 
“He got into show biz,” I said in a low voice, “porque, he wants to do what her mother wants him to do. He can’t marry her unless he does something on stage. Maybe you could talk to the woman. She’s old school with an attitude to match. She is more reason why you should crash this whole party. After you talk to him, I can lowride back to the Hood and let you take further action.
 
The Mother and daughter were living in a part of West L.A. in an apartment building that looked expensive but once you get to their little space in that building, you see it would be just survival space in East L.A. and with minimal rent. Here, they were paying way more than minimal anything. The madre answered the door and seeing me, she let us in, my Tío hidden behind my wide body. We only saw her back as she pointed to two wooden chairs in the middle of the room.
 
“Nice to meet up with you again, Mrs. Sanlego,” I said all convinced I was nearing the end of my journey. She turned at last and I heard a choking racket from behind me, like my Tío had a chicken bone atorado in his throat.
 
“¡Carmelita!” Tío Fulgencio said, then making a sound like air being let out of a llanta. He leaned on me like he was drowning.
 
The Sanlego woman stared at him, then she squealed and her arms went up like Fourth of July Fireworks.
 
“¡Fulgencio! You are Fulgencio, aren’t you?” she said as if she might be wrong.
 
But Tío Fulgencio himself looked like he was almost ready to cry. They hugged like they were never going to part again.
 
I need some kind of legal notice to deal with stuff like this. The look on Tío’s face made me feel like I was seeing him in some kind of altered state like you see in movies. The horror kind. He didn’t look like the all-knowing Tío Fulgencio who never said anything funny, never laughed. He was smiling and acting like a bato on a first date. I don’t mean no disrespect, but the old bato was riendo, like, for no reason. The Señora Sanlego, who always looked like she was ready to pull greñas, was now acting like a chavalita on Christmas morning.
 
“¡Fulgencio!”
 
“¡Carmelita!”
 
“¡Querido Fulgencio! I never thought I would see you again!”
 
“I thought you never left El Paso for anything.”
 
I didn’t know what was going on, but I felt left out of something.
 
“My Tío wants to tell you something, Señora Sanlego.”
 
“I knew it was you right away, Carmelita!”
 
“Ya hace muchos años since I was around you, hombre, and you look the same.”
 
“¡Hay, Carmelita! ¡Soy un viejo!”
 
“¿Why are you way over here? I guess”—Señora Sanlego’s smile disappeared—“¿tu esposa está contigo?”
 
“She died years ago, Carmelita.”
 
Señora Sanlego looked at the suelo. “You should have stuck to your own kind, Fulgencio. I don’t want to talk about the pobre who is dead, you know her name, I forget it, pero it would have been better if you had gone after a singer. I still remember you made muchachas cry when you let out a grito then sang, ‘Me cansé de rogarle, que yo sin ella de pena muero...’”
 
“Qué guapa te veías Carmelita vestida, como una charra,” Tío said like he was choking again. “Do you remember the zapateados you did on the stage? I used to say that you did the sexiest zapateados in all of Tejas.”
 
“I wouldn’t even try now. Dios mío, Fulgencio, you knocked them out when you were on stage, even the bien borrachos,” said Señora Sanlego in the saddest voice I ever heard in a Mejicana, since my abuelita’s on Arizona Avenue who was always saying that the world was pitiful and was ending, which she repeated daily.
 
“Te acuerdas Carmelita how we let them have it at the feria in Luling? The Watermelon Thump Festival? I had to sing most of the songs in English, making up lyrics to keep people’s attention. I think even Mejicanos there didn’t speak Spanish too good.”
 
“We were happy.”
 
“Tell me Carmelita, how come you left Tejas?”
 
“I wanted to watch over my mija Dolores, make sure she is safe. But I shouldn’t worry. She is a strong girl. I heard through the chisme network that your son ran off chasing a girl. Then I heard through more chisme that my girl Dolores ran off to L.A. to act. Then I heard through even more chisme that you followed your son here because he was in L.A. I lied when I asked about your wife. I knew you were single. I had hoped you would look me up but when that never happened, I saw my chance to run into you here.”
 
Tío Fulgencio was looking at her as if he was looking at someone he had never seen before. The viejo still looks pretty good. I could see the dude when he was younger would have made jainas of his time lick their chops, grab their chones and check their hair. I saw uglier batos with good looking chavalas. I figured they had the feria to do that. Tío has that wavy gray hair, trimmed mustache, just as gray, and the right wrinkles to make him look distinguished, like women say they like. And maybe with a few bucks in his pockets they can feel for.
 
“You mean you had the hots for me, like I did for you?” he said.
 
“Por supuesto. Why do you think I let you sing most of the Ranchera and Norteño tunes? I was always around the stage even when I wasn’t doing any dancing or singing just to be near you. ¿Recuerdas how I often had a bag of pan dulce for you after a show? And I always bought extra puerquitos because I found out they were your favoritos.”
 
“Pero—”
 
“And remember when I gave you my half of a burrito at the San Antonio Fair when we only had enough money for one. We performed there but they didn’t pay us right away.”
 
“¡Carmelita!”
 
“And don’t forget the Tlayudas I made you from my family recipe from Oaxaca. Do you think I just did that because you looked hungry? I was working on your estómago until that hip-shaking chavala took you from right under my clay comal. That’s why I wouldn’t let Dolores marry a joven called Candelario, till he went on stage somewhere, anywhere. She’s a rising star—”
 
“Estoy en acuerdo, Carmelita. She has what it takes.”
 
“You mean, you saw her somewhere?”
 
“At the place in Montebello. Gordo there (pointing to me like a witness identifying the alleged criminal), I mean Arturo, drove me there. But if he loves her, Carmelita, you should let him love her. He is singing now just for her.”
 
“Mija tells me he sings at a restaurant that’s not very good with just a few people clapping for him.”
 
“We went through that, Carmelita, remember? We sang at a bar with only two pool players who never looked up from their game then there was pedo between them and they both got tossed. After that, we had no audience. So, don’t make Candelario feel like a pestoso. I can understand you feeling like your mija is going to marry an obstacle—”
 
“How come you want this Candelario sinvergüenza, to go after Dolores?”
 
“He’s my hijo.”
 
“¿No?” she said, sounding like a gato someone was choking.
 
“Así es, Carmelita. I just heard him sing. ¡Carmelita, me dio mucho gusto! He has what it takes. It was meant to be. He’s my son and could one day be singing the old Rancheras. He’s been a cabrón up to now. I really worked hard, almost breaking my back on some jobs. I did it so I had money to invest in him, so he could become something. I wanted to be an example to him. The hours were long and the sudor was constant. I had to eat right, cut out the cerveza, or at least drink less of it, and I was afraid to lose it on a job and be laid up for good. I did it for him so he would work hard, seeing how good we lived, but I, myself, really wanted to be singing on stages everywhere. That’s where I belonged.”
 
Señora Carmelita, not a spring chicken, leaped at him and fell into his arms like he had just won the lotería.
 
“Let’s get back together, like it’s supposed to be!” she whimpered. “Your esposa is buried and gone, your hijo might have some talent. Dolores’s father left one day and never came back. Return to me! Too many years have been wasted, so I am ready to jump back on stages donde sea. I still want to be with you like before as if no time has gone by. Like we’re still young and reckless. We belong singing and bailando together till we reach our sunsets.”
 
Tío Fulgencio made a weird noise with his throat or nose, I couldn’t tell which one, then stared at her.
 
He whispered something that wasn’t her name but something in Spanish that sounded like a pet name.
 
“Estás aquí, muchacho,” said the rucka like a girl. “You returned to me after all these years!...You are here. I’m not going to let you wander off this time!”
 
He fell forward and they fell into another major abrazo. I’m not sure if he was ready to faint or he just lunged at her because he got all worked up. “Ay, Carmelita, mi Carmelita, sweet Carmelita! Squeeze me tight. Tighter. Let me watch over you from now on.”
 
I moved slowly toward the door and snuck out. I felt funny. I can deal with a lot of things, but this was different. It was at another level. I walked like a buzzed bato to my ranfla.
 
Candelario called me at home while I was eating Tío Juan’s specialty, Pozole de Guajolote. Candelario sounded like he was now Number One on the Billboard’s Hot 10.
 
“Artie,” he said, “I’m going to be a big star.”
 
“We all feel that way, sometimes,” I said, and looked at a text message that had arrived ten minutes before from Tía Rosa. I had been reading it then re-reading it since it arrived.
 
“Destiny and me got to her apartment tonight. Guess who we found there? Apá! He was holding hands with Señora Sanlego.”
 
“¿De veras?”
 
“Simón. They were sitting close.”
 
“No lie?”
 
“He is going to marry her.”
 
“Not surprised.”
 
“I’m going to marry Destiny.”
 
“No surprise there either.”
 
“Artie, foo, I feel like un hombre reborn. The fates are working overtime. Apá is twenty years older than her. He and Señora Sanlego want to get back together to sing and dance like they used to, even going all over Texas again with their act.”
 
I stopped chewing.
 
“Candy, ese,” I swallowed then said, “lemme think. I need my space. I think my brain is shorting.”
 
“Sorry, man. So, you are now going to lowride into the sunset?”
 
I looked down at Tía Rosa’s text.
 
“Not even.”
 
He hung up and I read the text again.
 
“What have you done? I should go see you.” And she added a skull emoji that made me sit up, all three-hundred pounds of me.
 
I grabbed a Squeeze Ball in the shape of an aguacate Tío Juan bought me on his last trip to Tijuana, knowing I hate aguacates because I can’t eat them. They give me chorro. I then texted back. I didn’t know what I was going to say but the words came. Maybe that has happened to you, I don’t know. “No,” I texted, “don’t move. Everyone here is singing their cabezas off.” 

hTommy Villalobos  was born in East L.A. and also raised there. He thinks of the lugar daily and love the memories while remembering the tragedies of his neighbors and of his madre. Tommy’s mother had a great sense of humor and he inherited about ten per cent of it. She had a quick wit and response to all verbal attacks, whether to herself personally or to her Catholic religion that she loved. Tommy dedicates all his works to her, knowing she had him when she had no idea how she was going to feed him and his four siblings. She was a single mom until the day she died. He lives in a boring suburb now, outside of Sacramento, but his heart and soul will always be in East Los Angeles where his mother was always by his side to protect him.