Undead L.A. 1 (31 page)

My father forced me to move back home after that under threat of no longer paying my expensive tuition. I was so freaked out at that point; he didn't have to ask twice. Things like that didn't happen in my neighborhood. Usually if there was a murder it was gang related. Women and children were never targeted. One time a black guy tried to move into our neighborhood and started selling drugs to some of the neighborhood kids. He didn't last a week. They killed him in broad daylight in front of the elementary school to send a message to his associates in the Hoover Crips. Later, witnesses refused to speak. Not even a $50,000 dollar reward offered from the detectives on the case could convince anyone to say what they'd seen. It wasn't fear that sealed our lips. We just knew it was business as usual. My sister and I went to see the puddle of dried blood behind the yellow tape the police put up. Later, when my father found out, he yelled at us.

“
You want to be next? Is that it?
Chingon
! Keep your heads down and don't draw unwanted attention to yourself from now on.
Entiendes?
”

But we weren't afraid. We knew exactly what had happened, and why. It was all part of keeping what was ours and protecting our own. The same people my father had been paying his whole life were making sure our community was kept safe from outsiders whose only intention was to bring us harm.

Even though I spent a lot more time in traffic, I was glad to be back home where I could keep an eye on my father. He began to lose a lot of weight and often went all day without eating more than a few bites. I chastised Rosario for not paying closer attention to him and force-fed him
tamales
and
carne asada
. I also redoubled my efforts in school, throwing myself into my studies with a passion that bordered on obsession. I was good and it was starting to show. I had a knack for it. I picked things up easily. With only the slightest instructions from my teachers I began to thrive, standing out among my peers.

A lot of students I went to school with didn't do as well as they'd hoped, and they grew bitter. They complained about the costs and quoted the promise of job placement like it was their right for having paid to attend school, but they didn't have any love in their hearts for it. Cooking is something that has always been in my blood. I am good at it because my family is good at it. It's what we are meant to do on this Earth – to help others by serving them and feeding them and taking away their hunger.

Unlike my whiny classmates, I had several job offers before I'd even finished my degree. When I told my father the news he could no longer hold back his pride in my accomplishments. Tears streamed down his face as he held me tight in his embrace. I could feel the bones starting to poke through his loose clothing from all the weight he'd lost. That night I treated him to a taste of Latin Fusion - fried plantains in coconut oil served up with garlic rice, grilled green onions, jalapeño black beans, and ground yucca. I made sure
Papi
cleaned his plate and then plied him with fried ice cream smothered in simple chocolate sauce.

I took a job working with Wolfgang Puck at first, but then switched to a smaller restaurant on La Cienega that catered to wealthy epicureans looking for a total culinary experience. The quality of the food was like nothing I'd ever experienced in my life. I swear I put on ten pounds the first month I started working there. The average bill for a party of four was over six hundred dollars, excluding alcohol. We served them in four courses. I was in charge of pastries since I'd excelled in that in school, but yearned to learn more about California cuisine and fusion cooking. My father, usually a man of few words, began to openly express his pride in my accomplishments. He'd grown emotional as his health continued to decline, and began talking about our missing mother with increasing frequency – how much he'd loved her, how hard they'd fought to make a better life for our sake. I paid him back the money he spent on my education the first year on the job. It was easy because I still lived at home and had no real bills other than my cellphone. I didn't have a life outside of work and my family, but I was happy. I was out of the truck and doing what I loved.

Over the next few years I had my real education. Nothing I learned in school could prepare me for the experience of working in the real world. I saw personality clashes and found out that most chefs that are any good at their jobs are total assholes. I switched jobs several times. One boss would ride my ass over every little thing. Another would degrade me in front of my coworkers during business hours and then sexually harass me at quitting time, resorting to crass insults and racial slurs when I rejected him. It seemed that no matter what job I took, it was only a matter of time before my boss was trying to figure out how to get in my panties. I was heading nowhere and getting burned out fast. I even considered moving out of the city and making a fresh start someplace like Portland.

Around this time, my father gave the truck to my sister Rosario. It seemed that over night he'd grown old. He moved slower and complained about his arthritis all the time. He fell asleep in the middle of stories he'd been telling and woke up not knowing where he was. The doctors told us he wasn't suffering from anything specific, but that we could expect to see more medical issues occurring now that he was a senior citizen.

“He's in incredible shape, but he's at that age,” Doctor Taganaki told my sister and me. “His eyesight is starting to go and he'll need to watch his cholesterol. I'd like to keep an eye on his blood sugar as well. I'm concerned he might be borderline diabetic.”

“
What does that
Chino
know?” my father later said, still not understanding after all these years the difference between a Chinese and a Japanese person.

“
He's a doctor,
Papi,
so he must know something,” I countered.

“
In my village no one goes to the doctor and they live to be a hundred years old.”

“
Tio Toño died at age sixty of a heart attack,” I gently reminded him.

“
What?! He didn't die of a heart attack. Who told you that?”

“
You did, Papi.”

“
No! I told you he died of a broken heart when his wife drowned. There's a difference.”

“
She passed almost five years before he did.”

It was no use. He'd already fallen asleep. I tucked him in and watched television until I fell asleep, catching the tail end of the George Lopez special and trying not to laugh too hard for fear I might wake him.

The truck did even better with Rosario in charge and soon the money was rolling in. Part of her success was adding breakfast items like
huevos rancheros
and egg and spicy chipotle breakfast burritos. She also stayed open later and sent her assistant, Juan, to get extra supplies from the
carniceria
when they ran low. For the first time ever the truck carried chili lime
carne asada
and red
molé
chicken. Rosario kept up the family practice of paying the bribe. Paco had been taken down by a police sting the year before. It was part of the gang culture to be sent away and do time. No one ever ratted anyone out or ever cooperated to reduce sentences. They did their time standing up like a man. Inside prison, as well as out, they were glorified for their sacrifices. Paco was well known and liked in the straight community and the underworld. From the stories we heard, he was treated like a celebrity in prison and was even brought women and alcohol on request.

Eventually Paco sent his son, Manny, to collect the money and the meal in his place. It was obvious from the way she spoke about his dark piercing eyes that Rosario had developed feelings for him. It made sense to me in a strange way. He was one of us, from our world, but stronger and more powerful than our family. He was dangerous, but also reliable. He understood the value and importance of family, of tradition, of preserving and maintaining our culture. They were married less than a year later. My father treated him like the son he'd never had. He adored Manny. We all did. Despite his jailhouse tattoos and gangland affiliation, he treated my sister with such adoration and kindness it was impossible not to like him. We were all won over by him, even me.

“Pilar,” he said to me one night. “Why don't you come back to the truck? I know you're not happy to be working for all these
pinche güeros,
and your sister could use the help.”

I'd skipped going in to work after my boss tried to molest me in a walk-in freezer the night before. I blamed my father's condition for my absence, saying I needed to take him to the hospital, but it was a lie and we both knew it. I didn't plan on ever going back in again. I'd awoken with bruises on my arms from where he'd ripped off my bra. I couldn't help but think of the smell of red wine coming out of his pores as he violently accosted me – or how close I'd come to being raped. Later as I prepared my fathers lunch of refried beans and chicken
enchiladas
with roasted tomatillo chile salsa, I fantasized about going back into the restaurant with my paring knife and removing his penis, then dicing it into a million pieces. When my father fell asleep I slipped out and headed off to the truck to find Manny working alongside Rosario. They looked so happy together, like a little family just starting out. More than anything I wanted to tell my sister about what had happened the night before, but I knew I couldn't. If Manny found out any of it, even the racial slurs, he'd personally pay my chef a visit and by the time it was over the man would either be dead or wish he was.

“
No, Manny,” I argued. “I can't do it. I need to be on my own and I don't want to be tied down to one place.”

“
Things are good here. You will see. Give it a chance.”

“
You don't understand. I worked hard to get away from here. If I come back now it will be like I failed. I'll forever be known as the Cockroach Girl. That's the last thing I want.”

“
So what? You're just going to keep switching jobs? You're going to run out of places to go.”

“
All I've dreamed about ever since I was a little girl was opening my own restaurant. I've been making menus for it since I was a schoolgirl.”

“
Now is the time to turn that dream into a reality. If you come back, we can add some of your new dishes to the truck and see how they sell. Who knows? Maybe you won't even need to open up your own place. Most restaurants fail and people lose a lot of money. This way you won't have to risk anything.”

“
Thank you, Manny,” I said. “You are a good man. I will think about it.”

“
You do that.”

That night as I sat all alone staring at the ceiling in my childhood bedroom I had an epiphany. I started thinking about Roy Choi. Born in Seoul, Korea, and raised all over Los Angeles, Roy didn't even start to cook until he was twenty-five. One day while lying on the couch watching Emeril he had what he referred to as an out-of-body experience, like something out of
Ratatouille,
with ‘The Bam Bam Man' admonishing him to do something with his life. That set off a chain reaction that lead to cooking classes, working with world famous chef's, and eventually setting out on his own with a food truck. Backed by Mark Manguera, whose marriage inspired the idea to fuse Mexican and Asian foods, and a vision of what might be, Choi set up shop and used social media to foment a foodie revolution on wheels.

At first they parked in front of nightclubs, giving away samples to bouncers. Soon food bloggers caught on to the novelty and began singing the praises of Kogi BBQ all over the web. That led to articles in LA Weekly, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and more. Choi was branded as a chef messiah on the forefront of new flavors and styles. One journalist referred to him as a “post-Abstract Expressionist food artist” while another hailed him as the Banksy of the foodie scene, referencing his Dadaist tweets. His Twitter timeline grew so popular, in fact, he was offered a book deal from Random House.

Soon more trucks were added, named by color code, and the start of an empire was now cemented. Beyond just inspiring the entire food truck craze across the nation, Choi also managed to quietly open several restaurants on the west side, including Chego and A-Frame. His food, like the man himself, was a wild interpretation of traditional and street – edible graffiti that resonated with the melting pot of Los Angeles and its thriving immigrant culture. The cuisine was a spoken word poem on the transcendence of racial boundaries and stereotypes, painted in the vivid flavors of the Caribbean, the Far East, and Latin America.

I sat up nearly all night thinking about what he'd done and what it meant for a woman like me.

“If he could do it,” I said, watching the sunrise out the kitchen window as I prepared
chorizo
for my father’s breakfast, “then so can I.”

A plan was forming, the kind of plan I could only share with my blood. I set up a meeting with Manny later that day and laid it all out. I would need an investment to get rolling, and he knew the kind of people who could float us seed money. At first he took some convincing.

“Think about it,” I ranted as he violently shook his head back and forth like he was trying to clear an Etch-A-Sketch with permanent grooves already carved into it. It was obvious he thought even the mere suggestion of asking White Fence for money to fund my new food truck was wildly inappropriate.