The Madonnas of Echo Park (18 page)

I didn't need to be part of a gang to have respect. I've got contacts from here to Laredo, Texas, have my pick of any town to set up shop, but I chose Echo Park because
mi barrio
never sold me out, even when half the LAPD was looking for me. The shit I pulled here, man. People still talk about it, still write me letters in the joint about it. I got papers by the boxful from all the homeboys here asking, When are you coming back to the 'hood, Freddy? That's respect, see? None of us knew it'd be twelve years, but experience tells me time doesn't change shit. Every con knows that. My woman Cristina knows that.

We met at Pilgrim's Supermarket, where she was a checker. She was a dyed blonde who'd spilled an ink bottle in her roots, and had
long fake eyelashes, luminous green eyes, and these perky, upstanding titties that made me howl like
un lobo.
I was trying to sneak out four bottles of Tanqueray under my shirt, but she caught me. Keep the bottles, she said, but come back when I'm off shift. I thought it was some kind of setup with the cops, but she shook her head. As long as you come back, she said, you can have me. I'd finished the second bottle by the time her shift was over. At her house, her teenage daughter, Angie, plugged into her Walkman without being asked while Cristina led me to her bedroom and showed me that pert, dimpled curve of a woman's ass that gets me excited. I moved in her like the rhythm in a seventies rock song—all bang, no shuffle, baby—and then I moved into her house. We were married in an “alternative” religious ceremony by a group that's considered a “cult” in the state of California, and I stayed with her and Angie off and on (I always came back) for almost five years.

Funny enough, my one attempt at a straight job while I was married was what got me sent to Lancaster. This is the parking problem I was talking about. I was working as a valet at a new club in West Hollywood called Reflection. It was a short application process. Could I speak English? Could I drive a stick shift? Could I run (running, it was understood, was always preferred) for short periods of time? And could I work any day, any shift, day or night?

They paired me up with this guy, Javier, from Highland Park. We weren't friends, but we had enough to bitch about in common—the low pay, erratic hours, cheap tippers—that always gave us something to discuss. We swapped shirts, several changes of which we needed to keep in a nearby chest, along with fresh vests, white towels, and lots of deodorant (all this came out of our paycheck). Running in the warm, muggy Los Angeles summer nights drenched us in minutes, and customers would complain if any of our sweat was on their leather seats or steering wheels.

Javier didn't talk much, which was fine with me, because parking these rich assholes' cars gave me a new perspective on things. I ran
these opinions by Javier whenever we had a free moment. Seeing the way these restaurant types fell all over themselves whenever a black Laker or a black Dodger came by, I realized Mexicans' status would change overnight if soccer became a popular sport in America. And the white girls these black guys ran with!
Ay, Dios mío.
These black guys had it all figured out. The first time I saw a black guy kiss a fine white girl, I thought,
Holy shit, can
we
do that?
This was the
real
path to being American—find a white girl and fuck her real good.

Javier didn't have many thoughts on these subjects. He was always angry. His anger rose off him like a fever I didn't want to catch, one that swelled with the length of our shifts and the size of the crowds. That's what happened that night. There was a movie premiere party, the two of us trying to park a line of cars a mile deep. Javier was parking one of those black basketball player's cars while I was in the car behind them, a Mercedes with an open wallet with several one-hundred-dollar bills sticking out of a compartment next to the gearshift. I'd been working on the level for three weeks and gotten screwed in my wallet and blisters on my feet. Wasn't it time for a little bonus? And who better to give it to me than someone who wouldn't miss it anyway?

I tried to pluck one of the bills out of the wallet with my fingertips but missed, knocking the wallet to the floor. I was rusty. In front of me, Javier and the black guy were talking. Something was up because, nine times out of ten, these people don't want to know you're alive, let alone have a conversation with you. Fingers were pointed, voices raced. And there on the floor by my feet, an open wallet with a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill I'd grabbed at, ripe for the plucking.

Peeking up over the steering wheel, I could see the black guy towering over Javier, pointing these massive fingers down at him like he was talking to a small child. I gotta hand it to Javi, though. He didn't back off. He stood there, shoulders forward, looking real dignified, I thought. There was a dignity in the way he stood up to a guy two feet taller than he was. Where does strength like that come from?

I saw the owner of the Mercedes walking over, his one-hundred-dollar bill stuffed in my hand. I ducked back down to pick up the wallet, and in my panic my big, heavy foot punched the accelerator. The Mercedes plowed into Javier, slamming his head into the support bar of the windshield, sped onto a side street with a forty-five-degree-angle incline, then flipped through the air at a center divider, ramming into an island of streetlights.

I remember the EMTs' feet crunching on the glass and pebbled shards of metal. The photos they showed me in the hospital of Javier's contorted body, the impact throwing him fifty feet, unrecognizable except for his uniform, told me the rest of the story.

When I got sent to Lancaster, Cristina told me she'd never stop loving me, unlike the asshole that knocked her up, some
cabrón
named Hector. Of course she'd fuck other men, move 'em in when she got bored, kick 'em out when they bored her, but there was no doubt that she'd leave a spot on her bed for me when I was ready to claim it. Some women you can count on waiting forever. I dreamt about that spot on her bed, and that sweet pert spot on her ass every night I was inside, my body fitting into the curves of her body like the outlines of shadows in an eclipse, one moving across the other, then together as one, blinding everyone who dared steal a glance at us, then pulling apart onto our separate orbits, night turning back into day.

Beautiful, ain't it? I wrote Cristina that in a letter. Cons make the best letter writers because inside every man is a poet. You just have to throw him in jail to find it.

It's the dark half of morning before dawn when I get off the bus at the Greyhound station on Skid Row. You can hear the hum of traffic from the 101 a couple miles away, gentle and constant like a steady rain. The sky lightens to a cobalt gray, and I imagined I'm one of those great ancient Greek conquering heroes returning to his kingdom to reclaim his throne.

On the starting tip of Sunset Boulevard (which is now called César Chávez Avenue—when did that happen?) I survey my territory—the new apartment buildings and stores, the fresh coats of paint on the doors and window frames on abandoned shops, new storefront signs in English covering the old sun-bleached Spanish ones (which themselves were molded over the old English signs from the forties and fifties), the odd presence of young bearded white men with coffee, not six-packs, on the street corners. Where are the
Chicanos
? Or the
Chinos
? To keep me going, I picture Cristina's robin's-egg-blue kitchen and my face buried deep in a big home-cooked breakfast of
chorizo con huevos,
and a warm pair of loving thighs. Then I call my
carnals
, who must love all the fresh money walking around here, and by this time tomorrow I'll be up a hundred? Five hundred? Hell, maybe a thousand dollars, enough to relax on for a couple months.

Cristina's house is a flat bungalow atop a hill with a straight staircase pointed down at the street like a gun barrel. My stomach and dick throb in unison at the homecoming I'm expecting, one that'll be more exciting for Cristina because I didn't write ahead and tell her when my parole date was. It's been about four years since we last exchanged letters. (Through a prison “pen pal” newsletter, I'd started dating a forty-seven-year-old woman in Canada who sent me cigarettes, money, and pictures of her standing next to a nickel-plated lake, but why would I freeze my fucking ass off in Alberta?)

When Cristina and I were living together, I'd go out for days at a time, wouldn't call or send word where I was, then when I'd drunk and scored and fucked as much as I could handle, I'd creep up the stairs at three or four in the morning, tap on the security gate, and shout out
“Hellooooo!”
drawing out the
o
's into
aww
s, like a drunken crow. Her daughter, Angie, would open the door, tell me to “die in the gutter,” then slam the gate in my face. Man . . . what a bright kid she was.

Then Cristina would storm out onto the porch in one of those skimpy white nightgowns with a slit up the front that didn't—hell,
couldn't—cover her breasts, yank me into the house, and unleash a shouting tirade that'd go for thirty minutes. She'd tire herself out, which is when I'd moisten her up with a few promises and a neck massage. By morning I was between her legs and good in her eyes for another two weeks. She liked it better when I didn't make excuses about where I was or who I was with anyway. Stay here or stay away, she'd say. God, what a woman. I hope she hasn't gained too much weight.

It's an easier climb up the stairs than I remember. The gaping cracks in the hillside foundation that ran up and down the uneven staircase like varicose veins have been filled in, the threads from my old patch-up caulking jobs paved over with a smooth frosting of flat, even concrete. Potted plants arranged in neat rows line either side of the staircase, and there's a wicker sitting bench on the porch, both new additions. The security gate's been removed and replaced with a separate front door with a stained-glass inlay. On the brass mailbox next to the door is a different last name than Cristina's, which I assume is her new husband, a man I've never met and almost feel sorry for. Whoever he is, he'll never be in my league. He'll have to accept his demotion; I was here first.

I knock and see a rustling of blinds before the door opens. A white woman with short black hair and a tight T-shirt that somehow makes her look like a man answers. I speak first, because when you're on the locked side of a door you're trying to open, you always speak first.

“Morning. I'm looking for my wife, Cristina. Are you a friend of hers?”

“There's no Cristina here,” the woman says.

“Is she out?” I say. It's time to apply a little grease to the situation. “If she's shopping, I'd love to come inside and cook up a warm meal that's waiting for her when she gets back.”

“Nobody named Cristina lives here,” she says.

“Did Cristina tell you not to let me in? Cristina's a forgiving woman, and if she told you otherwise, she was saying what comes
natural to a woman that hasn't seen her man in a while. What's your name?”

“There's no Cristina here,” the woman says and, through the crack in the door, looks me over. “I need you to leave.”

“Miss, there's no cause for that. I'm scruffy because I've been on a bus all night. Been visiting my sick brother in Bakersfield. He and Cristina are real close. She'll want to know how he's doing.”

“Please leave,” the woman says. She closes and double-bolts the door. I knock again, harder this time. She's not gonna get rid of me this easy.

The door flies open, like in the old days. Cristina's going to let me have it. That old fire's still burning in her!

The woman reappears with a phone in her hand. “If you don't leave,” she says, “I'm calling the police.”

“Miss, let Cristina speak to me for five minutes.”

“I'm dialing,” she says.

“Lady, you're making a big mistake.” I laugh, backing away and staring over my shoulder, wondering how far this will go. I could force my way in, but trouble with the cops on my first day out of the joint is the last thing I need. And I'm a gentleman about certain things; I don't like getting rough with a woman I've just met.

I'm down the stairs and on the sidewalk before she closes the door. Cristina must be angrier than I thought. Looking up and down the block for another staircase I can sit down and think on, I see Julianne's old bungalow, tucked at the rear of a driveway adjoining a house that's being renovated by some Mexican day laborers. Julianne was one of the last white women who lived here, a holdover from when her mother bought a place here in the 1950s. We used to smoke out, get drunk, and fuck at her place when our spouses were working. She had two kids back then and was proud—get a load of
this
—of never having lived more than five hundred feet away from her mother. That kind of shit almost sounds like it makes sense when you're high every day.

That thick, caked-on skunk stench hits me through a punctured screen door. She comes out in a sweatshirt and ripped, pissed-on cutoff shorts. Her stringy hair's a ball of earthworms, and there's thirty pounds more of her; she leans out of the doorframe heavy, like a tottering pole that's been bent in a hurricane.

“Helloooo!”
I bellow. “Julianne, it's me. I'm back.”

“Oh, hello, hello. Come on in and sit down,” she says and offers her sofa, its plastic slipcovers dotted with cigarette burns.

“So which one of Pete's friends are you?” she says.

“Julianne, it's me. Freddy. I lived across the street a few years ago.”

“You did?” she asks. It's no wonder her memories of this period of her life are vague; the bitch got high so many times you can't find Acapulco gold anymore because she smoked most of it herself. Then her creased face unravels into something soft, feminine, and it hits her, who I am, the moments we shared lost for these many years. Those times come flooding back, and she's not happy that the dam couldn't hold back that much water.