The Madonnas of Echo Park (15 page)

Daybreak was washing the night away off the sides of the horizon.
I parked in front of a gas station, shut down the bus, and rested my head on the wheel. I don't know how long I was out for, but the sound of someone pounding to get inside woke me up. The man kept knocking and didn't seem to care about the blood smeared on the doors.

When I opened them, he climbed the steps and emptied his pockets into the fare box before I got a word out.

“I'm out of service,” I said. I could see why he didn't notice the doors. He was bruised and bloodied himself, had been in one hell of a fight.

“I am too,” he said. “But here we are.”

“No, this bus is out of service.”

“Okay,” he said. “When you going to be ready to roll?”

“No, mister, the bus, totally out of service.” I wasn't sure he understood English, and I was too exhausted to stand by my principles.
“¿Comprendes? Tienes que coger otro autobús.”

“I understood you the first time,” he said.

“Then why are you still here?” I asked.

“I have somewhere to go and no other way to get there.”

“Why is that my problem?”

“Because that's your job, right?”

He held himself with a swagger but had this faraway stare in his eyes, that look you get when you've had enough pain for one day and aren't sure whether you'll be able to take on any more tomorrow. And he was right; it
was
my job. It didn't take me long to decide what to do.

“You're right,” I said and glanced at the fare box. “You put in too much.”

“That's okay, man,” he said. “It's a first for me.”

Yes,
I know many of the facts as I've remembered them don't match the numerous eyewitness reports on file, and
yes,
they never located the truck that caused me to swerve into that kid. And nobody's been able to find this guy, this “Freddy” I picked up, the last passenger of
the night, and maybe of my career, but I'm telling you this
did
happen.

“How do we get to where you're going?” I asked.

“I don't know.”

“How far away is it?”

“I'm not sure.”

“How will you know when we've arrived?”

“I'll know.”

“Okay,” I said. “I will get you there.”

He took a seat about halfway back in the empty bus, picked something off the floor I couldn't see, and rested his head against a window. It was several long blocks on Sunset before we hit our first red light, one of those lights that take forever to change, but I could wait. I would get him where he needed to go no matter how long it took me. I would learn a new set of rules. I would find another way home.

W
e used to own these streets. From Echo Park Lake, up Echo Park Avenue, and into the green hills and avocado trees of Elysian Park, home to the Los Angeles Police Academy, up to Dodger Stadium (built in the 1950s on top of the 'hood that used to be Chavez Ravine), down to the whites' six-lane escape route to the San Fernando Valley, Glendale Boulevard, under and through the freeway interchanges downtown, across the big Victorian mansions of Angelino Heights, then back to Sunset Boulevard—this whole part of Rampart belonged to the Echo Park Locos. I'd been a Loco since I was fourteen; my father, Manny Mendoza, Sr., before me a legendary Loco who'd taken on nine members from 18th Street who dared cross out of their territory on a Friday night. Or was it eight members from 13th Street on a Saturday night? I never could be sure how true those stories my father told me were.

Most of the gangs around here didn't take the Locos seriously before my old man. My
abuelita
was a Zooter in White Fence, and even she didn't respect the Locos. “Why don't you join a gang
con huevos?
” she asked and laughed at my dad. We were considered
teeny-boppers before he did shit that made us legit in the eyes of bigger and harder gangs. He was the most respected
veterano
the Locos had; even during his final bedridden year, when he had to wear a diaper, homeboys from as far as Temple Street held their noses and came to
“el maestro”
for counsel. In a respectful voice he never used with me or my pussy brother Efren, who ran off because he loved his faggot books more than his own
sangre,
Dad broke it down for the younger
vatos
. How you use rubbers, the right way to “jump” someone into the gang (never kick the head or the balls—you don't want to be stuck with a brain-damaged
maricón
), and the trick to taking apart a Chevy Impala carburetor. Manny called it
“cholo
school.” (This was back when
cholos
still cared what us OGs had to pass down.) There were lessons on how to handle fights with junkies and drunkards, when to fuck or be fucked in the joint, the best place on your body to hide shanks, where to go after you've shot someone (not your mama's or your bitch's house,
pendejo
), and what to do if some
puta negra
gave you what my old man died from
at forty-seven, “permanent pneumonia” (AIDS)—these were the perils of our streets.

Turns out we didn't own these streets at all. One by one, the houses on my block of Laveta Terrace sprouted For Sale signs on their front lawns like tombstones, each one taking away a friend or an enemy, but neighbors all, cashing out homes that had been in their families for decades for hundreds of thousands of dollars, taking with them
veteranos
and future
veteranos
alike. There's a handful of OGs left in the neighborhood. You can spot 'em by their tattoos, etched black letters spelling
LOCOS
across their knuckles and crosses in the soft spots on their hands where their pointer fingers and thumbs meet, not these bullshit white-boy rock-star tattoos of make-believe tribal bracelets on their forearms or random Chino characters on their lower backs. Our tattoos weren't fashion statements. They were marks of fidelity, to our streets, our homeboys, and our allegiance to hate those born
on the other side of town. Now they were bitter reminders of a war neither won nor lost but redeclared, with new opponents who carried not knives, guns, and family grudges but hammers, contracts, and measuring tape. There is no elegy for those who have been dispossessed of their anger—what remains is a future carved out of banality instead of blood.

“Do you want bean sprouts, sir?”

A girl with dyed cotton-candy pink hair and metal spikes decorating her collarbone jabbed an impatient finger at my paper plate. “Bean sprouts or kettle chips?” she asked.

“Bean sprouts,” I croaked, ashamed I'd reached a point in my life where I had to make decisions like choosing between bean sprouts or potato chips (and then going with fucking bean sprouts!). They were a side dish for my lunch, a grilled cheese and soy bacon sandwich, made on seven-grain bread with organic, grass-fed, raw-milk cheddar and, at my request, heart-healthy mayonnaise.

Somewhere I thought I smelled, wafting into Membo's Coffee Shop on Sunset Boulevard, an outdoor hibachi cooking thick steaks and ribs slathered with honeysweet barbecue sauce. I paid for my sandwich with a ten-dollar bill and received a handful of nickels and pennies. My son Juan, holding a miniature coffee cup and saucer, claimed two chairs under a canvas umbrella amid a cluster of street-side outdoor dining tables.

“We were lucky to get these,” Juan said.

“It's hot out here,” I said, sinking down into a cushioned patio chair made for pampered
jotas.
“Don't understand why everyone wants to sit outside. Tables are right next to the street. Eat a mouthful of dust and exhaust when the lights change and a bus roars by.”

“What'd you get?” Juan asked.

“The one thing they had with fake meat,” I said.

“You have to watch that because of your . . . ,” Juan said, pointing to my chest.

“I asked for the good mayo.”

“Good,” Juan said. “And stay away from these, too,” he said, raising his cup. “These espressos are addictive.”

I took a small bite from my sandwich, leaned back in the chair, and wiped my mouth with a coarse brown napkin made from recycled paper.

“I don't know why we keep coming here,” I said.

“It's in the neighborhood,” Juan said.

“I don't know anybody here,” I said. “Nobody who works here, nobody who sits and eats here.”

“They don't know you either, Dad,” Juan said. “Give it time.”

“I should have gotten a beer.”

“It's not a restaurant anymore,” Juan said, sipping from his cup. “I keep reminding you they don't serve beer here.”

“Won't be a problem where you're going,” I said, biting into my sandwich. Juan nodded, sipped from his cup. “How much more you need to get done?”

Juan set down his cup on the saucer. “Got my clothes, gym bag, towels, toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, shower shoes—everything at Target. I need to make copies of my birth certificate and papers.”

“You got a mailing address yet?” I asked.

“No, Dad, not until I've been processed.”

“So you're not official yet?”

“Dad, we've been through this.”

“Have you signed anything?”

“Dad . . .”

“You don't have to do anything if you haven't signed anything. Have you signed anything?”

“Yes, I've signed something.”

I thought about this, pushed my sandwich away. “Aw, signed papers don't mean shit. I signed a bunch a parole papers in my day. Never followed up and nothing ever happened to me.”

“Okay, Dad. My mistake.”

“I'm glad you admitted you were wrong. You're ready for married life,” I said, and we both laughed. “Mom would have liked Angie.”

Juan nodded and lowered his eyes. If Ofelia had been here, she'd've been equal parts thrilled that Juan was marrying a Mexican and not an Oriental girl (he went through a phase) and furious he'd enlisted in the Army.
“Yo soy el Army?”
she'd've screamed. If she'd been here, she'd have figured a way to make him stay.

“Mom would have
loved
Angie.” Juan smiled and took another sip from his cup.

In the gang, I treated women like unexpected gusts of cool air on a hot, dry day, a soft westward breeze (westward because the sun sets and disappears in the west, where all women head to sooner or later). Then I moved on. Ofelia was different from the start. We met in the parking lot of what used to be Chief's Auto Repair in the first mini-mall on this stretch of Sunset. She was picking up a replacement battery for her Volkswagen bug but had no idea how to install it. Man, she was beautiful; had a mouth so smart it had a Ph.D. in insulting your ass. Her body didn't move so much as it cut through air that didn't have time to get out of her way.

I ended up with acid residue that ate through the knees in my pants, and her phone number. The first time we made love, after her special high school graduation dinner with her folks at El Cholo, her hands brushed the nape of my bare neck, caressing a gentle swirl that spelled out my name with the tips of her press-on fingernails. No one had touched me that way before. She told me later she was spelling out a rumor she'd heard about me:
tú eres maricón.

“It's just for money,” I said, “not for love.
Tu sabes?
”

She went to L.A. City College in the fall, a firebrand majoring in Chicano studies and an intent to help
“La Raza.”
We continued dating, but it took her longer to return my calls. On the phone, I spoke picking up right where we left off, the way guys do when their
feelings for a girl haven't changed but they don't realize that their girls' have. There was something cold growing in her voice, brutal, monotone in its inflection. What had been warm and comforting in her personality had hardened into something that resembled pity but was closer to indifference. When spring came, she told me that being in a gang was “detrimental to our people” and that she couldn't have anything more to do with me.

Six weeks later, she called me with news of her pregnancy and, being a good Catholic, the date for our upcoming wedding. I'm not sure how she felt about our child derailing her plans for
La Raza,
but she was a great mother, a much better mother than a wife. She spoiled Juan, read to him from the time he was a baby, and tried from an early age to indoctrinate him with that Mexican pride bullshit. Whenever I got hauled down to the Glass House for some piece of shit violation, she'd have him memorizing
La Raza
catchphrases and slogans, the only things Brown Power groups and MEChA were good at if you ask me. Her plan to raise the next César Chávez didn't pan out, but she converted plenty in the neighborhood.

Ofelia lectured the Mexican women in her supermarket shopping circle on the latest real estate gossip. A Jew bought that building near the bank and will turn it into a Jew-only gym. That store where we buy our milk was bought by a German financier and will be converted into a warehouse. It'll be World War II around here! Her angriest comments, though, were about the Orientals. She'd drag Juan to the Bank of America, lean over the counter to tell her favorite teller, a young, sassy
gordita
with mushroom-cloud hair named Duchess, about the new mini-malls destined to take over Echo Park. More Oriental stores and restaurants, she whispered, exactly what we need around here, another Chinese restaurant. They paid no taxes, she said. Was Duchess aware of that? Of course she must be, because she worked in a bank. They got free money from the government because of the Vietnam War. Then she'd cast an eye at Juan and say, “Beautiful girl like you has to be on the lookout. They take
all
our young men away,
one way
or the
other
.”

On weekends, they argued next to my TV couch, more bickering couple than mother and son. By this time, Juan was in high school and I was a part of the gang in name only. Their fight over that Tran girl was the worst. When you talked to Ofelia, you were walking across a lake of frozen ice, and a misstep could plunge you into water cold enough to kill you in thirty seconds. That's where Juan learned his patience and diplomacy. God knows he didn't learn it from me.