Always Running (30 page)

Some students came up to me, confused. I began to see the plan: Mr. Madison wanted a tug-of-war between Alex and me—and he was betting on his stooge Alex. In fact, the walkout’s strength had waned because of Alex’s misinformation tactic. But still, Mr. Madison implemented Plan B.

I had designated 1 p.m., following the lunch period, for everyone to meet on the lawn. But just before the lunch break, the loudspeakers made an announcement: At 1 p.m. there was to be a special school-wide assembly at Aztec Stadium.

“They’re doing this to stop the walkout,” Esme said.

“I know, there’s nothing we can do now,” I said. “Let’s see what Mr. Madison has in mind.”

Hundreds of students assembled in the bleacher stands. I found a seat at the very top and sat down, my face a mask of indifference.

Mr. Madison made a long-winded speech about cooperation, about harmony and understanding; how certain elements were out to undermine all Mark Keppel High School stood for.

I sat there, feeling the flux and flow of power within me. I had called off the walkout, that much I had to do. But I also knew all this—the school assembly, the address to the student body, Alex’s role—all of this was because of me!

I recalled when I first entered school in Watts, how I had been virtually written off, pushed into a corner with building blocks and treated like a pariah; how in Garvey I had been heaved out of classes and, later in high school, forced to drop out and labeled a failure!

Now I was somebody they couldn’t dismiss—somebody who had to be heard.

“I finished reading all the work you gave me a while back—remember, your poems and stories,” Mrs. Baez said.

“Yeah, sure—they’re no good, right?”

“Luis, how can you say that! They’re wonderful. We should get them published.”

“Great—but how?”

“Well, I picked up a newspaper the other day where they announced a Chicano Literary Contest in Berkeley. It’s from Quinto Sol Publications. Let’s send them the work. But it has to be retyped—your typing is terrible.”

“I know, I know … but who’s going to retype it?”

“I’ll find some help. I’m sure there are people willing to do something. What do you say?”

“I guess okay—I mean, it’s worth a try.”

About the same time, the California State College at Los Angeles offered me an Economic Opportunity Program Grant—despite my past school record, lack of credits and other mishaps. Chente, Mr. Pérez and Mrs. Baez teamed up to help me get accepted.

And a Loyola-Marymount University art professor asked me to paint a mural for the school; he offered some pay and student artists to work with.

My head spun with all the prospects.

But the kicker was when Mrs. Baez returned the newly-typed versions of my writing; I couldn’t believe I had anything to do with it. The shape of the words, the forms and fragments of sentences and syllables, seemed alien, as if done by another’s hand.

The fact was I didn’t know anything about literature. I had fallen through the chasm between two languages. The Spanish had been beaten out of me in the early years of school—and I didn’t learn English very well either.

This was the predicament of many Chicanos.

We could almost be called incommunicable, except we remained lucid; we got over what we felt, sensed and understood. Sometimes we rearranged words, created new meanings and structures—even a new vocabulary. Often our everyday talk blazed with poetry.

Our expressive powers were strong and vibrant. If this could be nurtured, if the language skills could be developed on top of this, we could learn to break through any communication barrier. We needed to obtain victories in language, built on an infrastructure of self-worth.

But we were often defeated from the start.

In my case, though I didn’t know how to write or paint, I had a great need to conceive and imagine, so compelling, so encompassing, I had to do it even when I knew my works would be subject to ridicule, would be called stupid and naive. I just couldn’t stop.

I had to learn how, though; I had to believe I could.

One day, I received a phone call. It was from Dr. Octavio Romano of Quinto Sol. I had been chosen as one of two honorary winners in their $1,000 literary contest. My award was $250, a paid plane trip—my first ever—to Berkeley, and a publishing contract.

At the news, I felt so alive, so intensely aware of my surroundings. After I hung up the phone, I raced out of the house in the rain and danced: an Aztec two-step, boogie-woogie, a
norteño—
it didn’t matter, I danced.

Mama looked out at me and said I had gone crazy for sure. And I was crazy—like my Tía Chucha, who continued to create without recognition, despite being outcast from the family; crazy like the moon which jitterbugged in the night, crazy like the heartbeat which kept pumping its precious liquid when so much tried to stop it.

I won $250—the most legitimate money I’d ever obtained in one chunk. I danced for the ’hood, I danced for the end of degradation, I danced for all the little people who ever tried to make it and were crushed.

Berkeley … my own book contract … 250 bucks!

I finally graduated from high school. Quite an achievement. I didn’t attend the official ceremony and prom because I felt it had nothing to do with me.

ToHMAS had its own celebration where I received a certificate in appreciation of my activities of the previous two years. Mrs. Baez and Chente were among those present, both smiling with perhaps a sense of some accomplishment. They helped make me.

I gave Esme, Flora, Amelia, Chuy, Cha Cha and the others my sincerest hopes for the future. A few of them were continuing as Keppel students and planned to carry on the fight we had begun. Delfina was there and I walked up to her. She was to be next year’s Josephine Aztec.

“Louie, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you,” she said.

“I’m glad—I’m just sorry it didn’t work out between us.”

We hugged, and then I made the rounds embracing and shaking hands with the other students. When it came time for me to say a few words, I told the group: “I believe anything I’ve done, anybody can do—and do better. I’m no exception. Everyone here is a potential leader.”

I managed to go to Mr. Madison’s office and pick up my diploma. Mr. Madison handed it to me without a word and shook my hand, looking ambivalent. I felt he didn’t hate me, but he had never known anyone like me—and I suspected he figured it would be a long time before he’d meet another.

As I left the school, I carried with me numerous scars, but there were also victories: Mr. Pérez got his job back, the school hired another Chicano Studies teacher—and Mr. Humes received an early retirement.

In my last year, ToHMAS members attended Mexican American Leadership Conferences with students from all over Los Angeles County. The Belmont High School teacher Sal Castro, a leader of the 1968 East L.A. “Blowouts,” and other Chicano leaders were key speakers.

We also participated in L.A.-wide conferences with youth of other communities: Jewish students from the Westside, Anglos from the San Fernando Valley, Blacks from South Central L.A. and Compton, sons and daughters of the longshore, refinery and canning industries in the Harbor—many of whom were undergoing similar predicaments. We told our story to enraptured groups and struck a chord.

Most importantly, Anglo students at Keppel began to grasp the significance of struggle and pressed for their own demands.

One of them, Maureen Murphy, ran a controversial campaign for school office on a program of unity and justice. She wrote me a letter following her victory: “You are one of the three persons in this world I term a ‘real person.’ You showed me many times where I was wrong and where I was right, and even where I have to fight and what to give up. I’ll be frank … I’m scared. I need someone to help me. I’m not really that happy I won for if the color of my skin was different, like you, I would have lost.”

Some like Maureen understood that the foundation for the sinking levels of instruction for all students, for their own diminished rights, lay in the two-tiered educational system. As long as some students were deprived of a quality education, they all were.

I began Cal State-L.A. in the fall of 1972, majoring in Broadcast Journalism and Chicano Studies. I even bought my first car, a blue bug with chrome rims and tires which stuck out several inches from the side. A lowrider Volkswagen.

While going to college I had to continue working since the grant I received would only cover part of the cost. I worked part-time gigs as a school bus driver, a warehouse employee and a truck driver for a lamp manufacturer.

I signed a contract with Quinto Sol and worked on the publication of the book, tentatively titled “Barrio Expressions.”

Chicharrón continued to visit, sometimes letting Junior play in the back yard. I stayed in the garage room to save money. Besides, the place carried so many memories; I didn’t want to leave, even when Mama offered to let me stay in the house again.

I became active in MEChA, eventually becoming vice-president and editor of the club’s newspaper. We set up a MEChA Central which trained and organized Chicano students from high schools all over the Eastside: Roosevelt, Garfield, Lincoln, Belmont, Franklin and Wilson. I traveled to these schools talking with youth and serving as liaison to the college.

On one of those excursions, I met Camila Martínez. She was a student at Garfield High School, an almost 100 percent Chicano school with one of the highest dropout rates in the city. I attended a MEChA meeting there and was asked to speak. I addressed issues of organizing, drawing a lot upon my Keppel experiences. But I became terribly distracted by a cute, Filipina-looking, curly-haired, dark-eyed student in front of me. She had on a short skirt out of which emerged some killer legs. I didn’t know it then, but this girl knew what she wanted, and she wanted me.

Camila showed up at all the meetings, gently interrupting my talks with questions and comments, constantly keeping herself in my view. I invited her to study sessions we were starting in various East L.A. homes. She came, participated, picked up readily the concepts and fell in well with the discourse. Before I knew it, I invited her to a dance MEChA was having at Cal State. During a slow dance, she said she liked me. I felt something kindle in my chest. I was falling for Camila.

But I was already seeing two girls who lived next door behind my brother Joe’s house. By then Joe had married a woman he met when he was a truck driver for a company where she worked on the assembly line. Her name was Elvie. They moved in next door and soon had a son they named after me, Louie, and later a daughter, Tricia.

The girls, Rosie and Terry, were runaways who ended up staying with Joe and Elvie. Before long, they moved in on me. Terry used to throw dirt clods at my garage room door in the middle of the night. I’d open the door and she’d jump over the fence and spend the night. My mother asked me about the splattering of dirt on the outside of the room, which I pretended I didn’t know anything about, but I sensed she knew what was happening.

Rosie got involved with me soon after, I believed to get back at Terry. One day Rosie came to my room and knocked.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Rosie, I need to talk with you.”

I let her in. Rosie stood in the doorway, the sunlight behind her, and then she took off her blouse. She had nothing underneath.

“I know this is very forward—but I want to make love to you.”

I also dated girls Elvie hooked me up with, including her Puerto Rican friend Evelyn. There was also a
mechista
who I liked from Cal State.

And there I was, falling for Camila!

One day, a bombshell was laid at my doorstep. A letter. In it, Terry said she was pregnant—and claimed it was my child!

I was stunned. Here I was on the verge of changing my life, in college, with a book about to happen, working in my spare time and possibly getting more mural-painting jobs. I didn’t want this child. But I didn’t know how to respond. Unfortunately, I didn’t talk to anyone before I confronted Terry.

“Listen, Terry, I like you very much. But I’m not ready to have a baby.”

“What are you saying, Louie?”

“I mean, there’s many things happening for me right now. A year ago, I would’ve been game. But I don’t want to stop what I’ve started. I think you should have an abortion.”

Terry looked horrified, then ran off. Soon after everything caved in. Elvie said Terry threatened suicide. Rosie all of a sudden took my side of the issue, causing greater conflict. When word got to my family, I faced divergent pressures: I should be responsible and have this child. I should be responsible and make sure Terry gets an abortion. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to get out of there. I called Chicharrón one night and got dead drunk.

The next day, Rosie came to the room in a harried state.

“Terry’s gone!”

“She’s gone? But why, she’s going to have a baby, no?”

“Louie, I don’t know—it’s hard to tell with Terry what’s real and what ain’t. But she left last night, took everything, and didn’t say where she went.”

“You mean, Terry may not be pregnant?”

“I mean, with her you don’t know if she’s just playing games to get to you, or if she left because she doesn’t want to lose the baby.”

“Shit, we have to find her … but I can’t go now. I’m working and going to school.”

I talked to my brother and his wife to figure out what to do. They offered to look for her. My sister Gloria went along. The next weekend, they went as far as the Mexican border, following on leads Rosie gave them. Terry’s family stayed in San Diego and they tried there. But no Terry.

In two days, they returned.

“Sorry, Louie, we couldn’t find her,” Joe said. “Nobody knows where she’s at. She could be having a baby. She could be living it up somewhere without one—or she could be dead.”

Later, Rosie returned back to her family. I never did find out where Terry went. I never knew for sure if she had a child, and if so, if it was mine.

The peace between the barrios never got off the ground after Santos and Indio were killed; I still maintained the sheriff’s were behind their murders. Regardless, the wars continued, worsening in some cases, extending in others. In one incident, a group of dudes were standing around in front of La Casa when a carload of
locos
cruised by. Tiburón walked out, a handgun in the small of his back.