Always Running (24 page)

A month or so passed and I went to another dance at the El Monte Legion Stadium with my sisters, Shorty and Ana. As usual, the place was jam-packed with
vatos
and
rucas
from barrios all over the San Gabriel Valley. Lowriders graced the rows of cars in the parking lot. Different gang members exchanged hand signs and spray-painted the names of all their homeboys on the walls.

This was a huge hall. I rambled around looking at the people, feeling like shit, but still open to make the most of the evening. Then my heart jumped. Viviana was there, at a seat, by herself. I walked fast to get to her, but before I did some dude came out of nowhere and offered her his hand to dance. She accepted.
Chingao:
I just missed her. My palms were wet. My tongue dry. I felt like there was an oven in my chest.

Then Viviana returned and this time I sat down next to her.

“Baby, how are you doing?” I said.

She turned her head, looked at me and smiled. God, it felt good. She acted coy, diffident, but alluring. There wasn’t much to say. I leaned over and kissed her and she then placed her hand to the back of my neck and I felt her moan and squirm in her seat, taking me back to that night on her porch. We kissed a long time before she gently pulled me away.

“Prieto,
I need to do something, will you wait here?” Viviana requested with her hands on my chest.

“Sure, I ain’t going nowhere.”

She got up from the seat, her hands brushed her dress over the curve of her hips, and then walked out. I felt so much relief. Love leapt out of my ears. Viviana, Viviana—how I prayed to every god known to man for this moment!

I sat there for an hour. Viviana didn’t show. Others were being coupled already. Slow dance after slow dance caused me great anxiety.
Where was Viviana?
I looked around, but wouldn’t leave the seat. It took me longer than most, but it finally hit me: She wasn’t coming back.

I stepped away from that spot, walked through the sweat and cologne, through the stale smoke and wine breath. I made it to the exit. Then Viviana appeared, in a darkened corner, making out with another guy.

By the time I caught up with Shorty and Ana, I was wound up, bumping strangers, talking loud. Challenging everyone. A dude would give me any kind of look and I pushed myself up on him.

“What you looking at,
puto!”

“Louie, come on, let’s go,” Shorty said, pulling me away. “Forget it, man.”

I told my sisters what happened with Viviana. I wanted to kill someone. To help lessen my anger, Shorty and Ana plotted to wait outside of the El Monte Legion for Viviana and jump her.

“We’ll do it for you, bro’, okay?” Shorty said.

At first I liked the idea. I stood outside by my sisters as the place closed up and crowds of teenagers streamed to the parking lot. But the sadness and anger which first overwhelmed me soon started to choke me. All I wanted to do was get the hell out of there.

“Forget it, man,” I told my sisters. “I don’t want anything to happen to Viviana. Let’s go home.”

It was over. Finally, over.

Mr. Madison looked tense, sitting there in short-sleeved shirt and casual slacks. In front of him were about 20 teenagers from Lomas, lying around in a circle on the front yard of my homeboy Alex’s house. Mr. Madison had been persuaded to meet with us about how to improve the conditions at Mark Keppel High School.

“As principal of your school, I plan to make this the best learning experience of your lives,” he said. “But no one man or administrator can do anything unless you decide to put everything behind it.”

He seemed to be open, willing to consider our ideas. Chente told me to give him the benefit of the doubt, but not to let him off the hook either. Chente didn’t want us to be given the runaround or appeased without real educational advances. But he said the students had to play the leading role in insuring those advances were realized.

“I can’t make any guarantees,” Mr. Madison said to finish the meeting. “The wheels of progress turn slowly. But I will promise to do all I can. If you work with me, I’ll work with you.”

He got up and shook everybody’s hand. The next school year, I was allowed to come back.

Chicanos made up almost 40 percent of the student body at Keppel, although it seemed like it was 80 percent. The dark faces under the tree on the lawn, the daily brawls among us, and police coming through the hallways made it seem like nobody but Chicanos attended the school.

The Anglo students plugged along among their own, isolated in the upper-floor classrooms. They were in the journalism club that put out the school newspaper, ironically called “The Aztec.” They were in school government sessions making decisions about pep rallies, the annual Christmas party and the Prom. They made up the school teams, the cheerleading squads and most ironically, they were the school mascots: Joe and Josephine Aztec.

The mascots were always Anglo, cloaked in deerskin, Indian-like garb. They usually acted like clowns, tripping over each other during football games, while “rallying” the team to victory. Sometimes they did tumbling acts—nothing whatsoever to do with being Aztec.

The Chicanos started their own student club called To.H.M.A.S.—To Help Mexican American Students. The other high schools in the district also did the same: San Gabriel High School had M.A.S.O.—Mexican American Student Organization; and Alhambra High School had HUNTOS—which means “together.”

My first few days back in school, I felt like an outsider again. There seemed to be more activity though. I saw some Chicanas dressed in pep squad gear and a few Chicanas were members of the journalism club. The strict demarcation between the whites and Mexicans in some areas appeared to be breaking down.

I spent a lot of time in between classes at the Chicano Student Center, which was an office and lounge space in a bungalow in the middle of the school, next to the lunch benches. Mrs. Baez was the Home-School Coordinator, a woman who lived in Rosemead’s South Side, a mother of teenagers, and active in Chicano affairs; she was also on the board of the Bienvenidos Community Center. Mr. Pérez, the print shop teacher, was the club’s adviser. Two college students were hired as part-time assistants: Blanca Glendon, a Chicana married to a black, and Carmela San Juan, who was part Mexicana and part Filipina.

ToHMAS meetings were held once a week. At the first meeting dues were paid, officers elected, issues of concern raised, and activities planned. The most significant of our activities then were the Cinco De Mayo festivities, including our own float in the annual observances, and efforts to raise funds, like holding dances.

At first the club concerned itself only with benign aspects of school life. But the barrio realities, and the long-standing issues of inequality and neglect, kept rearing their heads. During the meetings, I kept quiet in the corner, not volunteering for anything, until something, I didn’t know what, would snag my attention.

“Mrs. Baez, come outside,” a student shouted through the door of the Chicano Student Center. “There’s a fight.”

Mrs. Baez left the paperwork she was working on and quickly followed the student outside. Bam Bam and another student, Alfredo, were going at it in the courtyard. Before this, the school administration would have automatically suspended or expelled the students. Mrs. Baez now could intervene and try to work out the problems among the Chicanos before the school staff got involved. This meant a lot of gray hairs for Baez and her assistants.

I sat in the lounge area, my hair long and slicked back, with a couple of other students. Blanca opened the door and asked us to step out for a time so a student session could be held. Mrs. Baez brought in Bam Bam and Alfredo and had them sit. I walked out and looked back through the window as an intense argument ensued between Bam Bam and Alfredo, with Blanca and Mrs. Baez trying to work out some solution. This is what they had to deal with every day.

The leading members of ToHMAS were mostly women, among them Esme, Cha Cha, Amelia, Yvonne, and Flora. A few dudes helped, such as Ysidro, Alex, Chuy and myself. But the women ran everything. It was through ToHMAS, and through the example of Mrs. Baez, Blanca and Carmela, that the women from Lomas found a place to address some long-standing grievances. Their leadership found shape and form through ToHMAS, as they took to heart the battle for their respect, and that of their people.

We dealt with two dominant aspects. One was something called Project Student, with Carmela as our sponsor, which targeted the physical deterioration of the school: Walls were cracked, stairwells in disrepair, and the freeway behind the school drowned out lessons from second-floor classrooms. In the summer, the air conditioning system rarely worked, making for long, sweltering days. In the winter, rain accumulated in buckets from roof leaks. Project Student, in fact, involved more than just Chicanos; whites and others also had to endure these conditions.

The other aspect involved the issue of dignity for the Chicano students.

“You don’t mind if I don’t call you Chin do you?” Mrs. Baez asked.

“Chale,
what’s up?”

“We’d like to propose you and Esme try out for Joe and Josephine Aztec.”

I looked over at Esme and then back to Mrs. Baez.

“You’re joking, right?”

“We’re very serious,” Esme said. “We’re tired of them paddies—excuse me—but them Anglos putting down our culture. They make the mascots look like Pocahontas with tommy hawks and then prance around like fools.”

“That’s true, but what are our chances—I mean, how are we going to win when the Anglos do all the judging?”

“We plan to do an authentic Aztec dance, in authentic Aztec dress,” Esme said. “If they deny us, then everyone will know how racist this school is.”

“But I don’t know any Aztec dances.”

“We have somebody willing to teach you,” Mrs. Baez said. “He’s an instructor for a
folklórico
dance troupe at one of the colleges. You look Indian enough with your long hair. And I think it would help involve some of the hard-core Lomas students in what we’re doing if you tried out.”

“What do you say, Louie?” Esme asked.

They knew they had me. I accepted as a formality.

Esme and I went to East L.A. College and met with a Señor Franco, the
folklórico
dance instructor. He taught us some basic steps and helped us find the material and designs for our dancewear. To get it right, we dedicated hours of our evenings to rehearsal.

Esme choreographed the dance routine, based on Señor Franco’s instruction. Our mothers created the costumes, and they were so strikingly beautiful, even Señor Franco was impressed. We added some non-Aztec touches too.

The rehearsals were secret. When the time neared for the tryouts, we walked into the activities office and signed up. A couple of the white students there gave us funny looks. Esme and I signed our names and then left.

The day of the tryouts, all contestants were to meet in the gym. Parents, teachers and students took up some of the bleachers. A row of judges, including some teachers and students, stayed near the performance area.

I entered the gym area in Aztec dress; I had on a leather top, arm bands and loin cloth, with a jaguar-imaged headgear propped on my head and bells strapped around my ankles. And I must have been a sight with tattoos on my arms and an earring. I saw a couple of rows of bleachers filled up with Chicanos; Mrs. Baez had organized the students to attend. As I entered, they cheered and hollered. I considered getting out of there but Esme came up behind me and held my hand. We were both nervous.

Esme and I were the last ones to perform. We suffered through a number of tumbling acts and screwball routines. Then an announcer came on the speaker:

“Now we have the team of Esmeralda Falcón and Luis Rodríguez.”

Silence saturated the gym area. I walked up solemn and straight, a wooden chair in one hand and a conga drum in the other, and sat down in the middle of the basketball court. I paused for 10 seconds, then began the beat. Esme came in slow, purposeful, with a turquoise sequined-and-feathered garment and multicolored headgear that arced around her head like a rainbow; she also had bells.

Esme could have been a priestess from Tenochtitlan, her face pure and brown, with slight makeup that accented her already slanted, indigenous eyes. She danced around me, as if calling forth a spirit; the bells on her ankles swirling around the beat, in time with the rhythm of the drum. At one point, I arose and danced with her, in unison, round and round through various steps, leading up to the climax.

We had to be serious—no laughing, no smiling, in keeping with the integrity of the dance.

A murmur swept through the bleachers when Esme and I crossed our feet together and swung around and around, hooked by our ankles, going faster and faster, the force of our swirling keeping us locked, letting the motion pull and embrace us at the same time, like in a battle. When we finished, one of my knees fell to the floor as Esme stood above me, the victor.

A few seconds passed, then an uproar of applause and cheers burst out of the bleachers. None of the other contestants received the response we did. I even saw white students and some judges clapping. They had never seen anything like it.

Esme and I waited by Mrs. Baez as the judges mulled over their decision. Finally:

“The winners are—and the new Joe and Josephine Aztec mascots of Mark Keppel High School—Esmeralda Falcón and Luis Rod. …”

The yells drowned out my last name. Esme shrieked, threw her arms around my neck and hugged me. Other ToHMAS supporters came over with smiles and handshakes. In other people’s eyes, this may have been a small victory. But for the Chicanos at Mark Keppel High School, this meant another barrier had been torn down and an important aspect of our culture recognized. I surprised myself and felt warm inside. I tried to shake it off, but couldn’t. A flush of pride soon covered my face.
We won!

More Chicanos became involved in ToHMAS. We started our own
folklórico
group in which Carmen San Juan taught the students some basic Mexican and Flamenco dances. Esme and I started a
teatro
group, based on what the Teatro Campesino of Cesar Chávez’s farm workers union were doing in rural California. Our
teatro
group, however, had an urban slant.