The Madonnas of Echo Park (20 page)

“You're right,” he says and looks at the fare box. “You put in too much.”

He's wrong, but I don't call him on it. “That's okay, man,” I say. “It's a first for me.”

“How do we get to where you're going?” he asks.

The nearest shelter is Downtown, about a mile or two away. I'm not sure what direction I want to go in, though.

“I don't know.”

“How far away is it?”

“I'm not sure.”

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

If we go a few stops and park somewhere, I can crash in the back
and rest up. I can talk to this guy, get him on my side. We're both on the same bus, right? If he drives me to Venice, I can beg enough on the boardwalk for a big lunch. I have a lot of options. Why choose one?

“I'll know,” I say.

“Okay. I will get you there.”

The bus shifts gears as we drive through pools of rusty streetlight blending with a rising sun fighting its way out of a gray, overcast sky. On the floor next to a long bench seat in the back are about a dozen unopened Skittles packets—enough sugar to keep me going at least another day. I can't believe my luck. Isn't it amazing, the things people throw away? Isn't it amazing, the things people leave behind?

I
wish I could be Gwen Stefani. I'm not
cool
enough to have ever become her, or someone like her. I wish I was thirteen again, though, so I wouldn't have to hide my girl-crush on her. If I was young, I'd answer my Hello Kitty cell phone with the “Spiderwebs” ring tone
(“I screeeeeeeen my phone calls!”
) everywhere and not just in my apartment, dance up and down the supermarket aisles with my limited-edition No Doubt iPod because only kids can dance in public without embarrassment, and wear things from her clothing line L.A.M.B. (Love. Angel. Music. Baby.) to school every day. Have you seen the cool things Gwen designs? I have every Gwen top and hoodie she's created—the ones with that classic
chola
-style writing on them are my faves. Then there's the limited-edition handbags in leopard print or glossy, pimped out lowrider colors; rows of sneakers,
slip-on scuffies, the supercute high-heel sandals and peep-toe oxfords, penny-loafer wedges and those “Chiquita banana” pumps with the blue labels on the heels, and the limited-edition “Rock Steady” wool Rasta hats, which is silly because it never gets cold enough in Los Angeles to wear a wool hat. Juan told me I was a “completist,” one of
those people who, when they like someone, have to own everything they do.

If Gwen Stefani was born in my zip code, she could have been my best friend Duchess. Sounds like a
chola
nickname, doesn't it? That's what I thought when I met her. She was part of White Fence for a while, whose roots go back to the Zooters in the forties, but didn't do much more with the gang than hang out to get away from her mom and stepdad. Thugging was boring, and their colors—black Raiders Starter jackets, baggy khakis, or ass-riding jeans, and crisp as the morning wife-beaters—why would
any
girl wear that kind of shit? They were supposed to be badasses, so why did they dress like middle-aged sports fans? Duchess was too stylish for that, and could've designed new
chola
outfits if they'd let her. She could look at a department store dress, find the exact same fabric the next day in the Garment District downtown, measure out a pattern, cut, sew, hem it, and have a dress impossible to tell from the one that cost eight hundred dollars. Her own designs were inspired by her Mexican grandmother's zoot-suiter clothes: tight around the bust ruffled blouses, drape skirts with vertical black and white stripes, and bow-box ribbons for her long, curly hair that ran down her back like melting licorice. She sketched on big white pads and carried a constellation of colored pencils with her. Bright reds, icy blues, fiery greens, and milky blacks fleshed out her neat and perfect lines, freehand compositions that could pass for patterns traced out of a book.

Duchess had looks, too; five ten, busty, with a simmering butterscotch complexion and a foundation-free face that wasn't torn up by acne or chicken pox. (I had pasty skin, and my face was cratered like the Moon's Sea of Tranquillity.) Her forearms and upper lip weren't hairy. That lilt in a Mexican girl's accent, the way it rises and falls, like a surfer riding a choppy wave, sailed out of her mouth at an even monotone, her voice sounding clean and plain as a cup of yogurt. She always did her own hairstyles and makeup, and not even her mother sending her to the Las Bonitas hair salon on Sunset
for what she thought would be a thoughtful gift—a first day of spring makeover—could change that. Duchess was so appalled by the breast-popping blouses and short denim
Guess?
skirts the girls wore there to attract men for haircuts, she ran home and came back with a homemade picket sign. Luring the girls outside, she lectured them on how they could dress and put on makeup without looking slutty. For the rest of the afternoon, Duchess gave
them
makeovers.

Duchess had this effect everywhere, on everyone she met. If she came to school on Monday a platinum blonde, by Friday a dozen shimmering blond heads (a rare sight in Echo Park) charged through the halls like a marching band. To the boys she was sexy, irresistible, and sweet natured; her maturity didn't intimidate them but encouraged them to defer to her out of a mix of respect and desire. She carried herself with a grace and elegance you'd never see in a high school, where we stole what we passed off as sophistication and coolness from what we saw on TV. I've seen Gwen carry herself the same way in her videos, interviews, and at that award show where Snoop Dogg grabbed her butt and in one swift, firm move placed his hand above the equator. Total Duchess move.

Yeah, she could've been a Mexican Gwen. It's not so far-fetched to believe, except there's always a seed of a fatal flaw in someone who you think could be a famous person but isn't. Some hairpin curve in their personality that keeps them right where they are, instead of where you think they could be. Thing is, Gwen acts like a badass
chola,
but you can tell she's a straight-up rule girl at heart; she wants to hang with the bad boys but doesn't want to
do
anything bad. I think that's why I like her. I didn't think you could make that kind of choice. I never believed you could live in two worlds at once.

Not to change subjects, but did you ever notice how friendships are a lot like pop songs? They are for girls, anyway. First there's the newness of it, the melody that streams into your head and makes you wonder—will I like this song? Then come the vocals, what the song's heart
truly
sounds like, and with it the song's purpose, its lyrics—will
they say something meaningful about my life? Will these words help me through a difficult time, or create a memory that will make me smile whenever I hear this song again? And then you keep hearing that song—in a department store, on the radio on your morning drive, from a rooftop window walking down the street—and you know that you are in love with this song, and
only
this song. You can't live without it, and have to play it twenty times a day for the rest of your life. But the rest of your life
doesn't
last the rest of your life, because once you've memorized the song and can't imagine a world where this song doesn't exist, you discover you've grown tired of it, are bored with its melody, and wonder how and why did that happen? Will I fall in love with another song the same way? And, after falling in love with a thousand other songs in the exact same way, will I fall in love with this one song I cherished so much again?

I think about weird things like this when it's late and I can't sleep, stuck in that place between the night and the dawn. When I close my eyes, I dream I'm back in my high school bedroom, the one Duchess and I had a hundred sleepovers in, staring at the water-damaged ceiling, its skin bubbling like hot milk froth.

On the nightstand, underneath my cell phone, is a sheet of drawing paper. Sketched on it is a young girl, on the cusp of becoming a woman, in a red dress. I'm listening to a bootleg recording of a Gwen Stefani concert (like Juan said, I gotta collect everything) to help me go to sleep, and as my eyes get heavy, Gwen starts singing a cover version of a song that was popular in high school:

My cell phone whirs like a windup toy, stops, then, a minute later, whirs again. There are eleven new messages in my voice mail.

*  *  *

We met the winter of senior year of high school, 1991, at the windows of Father Alemencio's
casita,
where he was conducting a practice
quinceañera
ceremony for my then–best friend Rosa's younger cousin. These things can drag on and on, so I waited behind the house in an alley for an hour. I arranged a stack of greasy box crates beneath a window to see if they were finished. While I was inching up on my toes to peek inside, a girl walked by the alley. I tried to duck back down but slipped and fell. The girl slowed, and I could see her head turn as she checked me out, flat on my ass atop broken box crates and split-open trash bags. If her boyfriend, walking behind her, hadn't laughed at me, she might have turned her head and disappeared. He stepped ahead at a determined pace, hadn't noticed she'd walked away from him until she was standing over me.

“It's bad luck to peek in a father's house,” she said.

“He didn't see me,” I said. “I don't know what happened.”

“God knocked you on your ass so you could get a better look at the ground you're standing on,” she said, helping me up.

“That's funny. Did you make that up yourself?”

“Nah, my mom says that. My name's Duchess.”

“Duchess?” I asked. “Is that your real name?”

“Yeah. Because my mother's a princess. That makes me a Duchess. What were you doing looking into his windows?”

“My friend's
prima
is practicing for her
quinceañera
.”

“Oh, I
love
those!” Duchess ran to the window and jumped up to see. Her boyfriend shambled over, grinding the soles of his bright, new Air Jordans. “
Prima
's strutting around in there like this,” Duchess said and, cocking her hips back, waddled around on the balls of her feet. “Bossing her
damas
around. Looks like a real bitch. Let's make faces at her,” Duchess said.

“I thought you said it was bad luck to look in there.”

“We're not looking. We're trying to scare away a demon.”

“We gonna stand around here?” her boyfriend said. “This is boring.”

“You can go,” Duchess said.

“I ain't comin' back,” he said.

“Okay. We won't be here when you do.” Duchess waved me over to the window. Her boyfriend stormed out of the alley, kicking trash cans and cursing.

“Boys are so noisy when they lose,” she said.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“My ex-boyfriend. Come stand next to me by the window.”

“Ex-boyfriend? When did you break up?”

“Just now.”

“Shouldn't you go after him?”

“Why chase a bus when another one's right around the corner? My mom says that, too.”

I was in awe. It was love at first sight, and by
love
I mean “I want to copy everything this girl does and maybe a tenth of her coolness will rub off on me.”

Duchess hopped up to the window again. “She's looking this way. Get ready.”

“I shouldn't. My friend might get upset.”

“Oh, we're not making fun of your friend, we're making fun of her bitchy cousin. C'mon.”

She grabbed my hand and jumped up, rapping her manicured hot pink and emerald sparkle nails on the window. It took us a couple tries to synchronize our moves, but we got an up-and-down trampoline rhythm going. Duchess twisted and scrunched her face, stuck out her tongue, then gave Rosa's cousin the finger.

Rosa pointed at the window. “She's seen us!” Duchess screamed. A door slammed open, and a pair of shoes clicked over to the side of the house.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rosa screamed. Her arms flapped over a fountain of ruffles cascading down her dress.

“The bitch is loose!” Duchess laughed. “Run for it!” We held hands as we raced down the alleyway.

“You cursed outside Father Alemencio's house!” Duchess screamed. “Now you'll never get married!”

When we stopped to catch our breaths, Duchess said, “I had to do that.
Quinceañeras
are so stupid.”

“I didn't have one,” I said.

“That's so cool!” Duchess said. “How'd you get away with that?”

Truth is, I didn't want one, but skipping your
quinceañera
was an indictment of your friends, neighbors, and relations who went through the trouble of having
quinceañeras
for
their
girls, and it could make you and your family real unpopular. And not having enough money, or one parent working, wasn't an excuse. Families on our block didn't have enough money, but that didn't stop them from taking out loans with 50 percent interest rates, second-mortgaging their houses, and maxing out credit cards for stretch limos, banquet halls, photographers, and tailored dresses you wore once. It seemed so embarrassingly . . . 
Mexican
. That's a shitty thing to say, but with my mother supporting the both of us with the same job she'd had for years at Pilgrim's Supermarket, a vanished father who never supported me, and a deadbeat stepfather in and out of jail, why spend money we didn't have to brag about the fact I was “a woman” in a neighborhood full of women-abusing men? To get out of a
quince-
añera
though, you'd need an excuse note from Jesus. Or you could do what I did.