Los Vatos de la Calle San Carlos, or just VSC people called them a gang, with Mario as their leader, but to me they were like family. I had hoped Mario and his men would be hanging out there so I could ask one of them to walk me home. The drugstore on the corner was closed and deserted. Tonight the bus rumbled to the stop on San Carlos Boulevard a few blocks from where I lived. We never found my father, though my mother searched for years, following one dead end after another, until we finally ended up here in the city of sleepless, fallen angels. The glamour soon became tarnished in the gritty realities of life. We left Nabenchauk and rode along the Pan American Highway to Mexico City, what I had though then must surely be a golden paradise at the edge of the universe. The heart-parching loss also decided her after years of struggling with the decision, she went in search for my father, taking Manuel and me with her. My mother took him into her care as she mourned the death of her brother. When I was eight, my aunt and uncle died in one of the earthquakes that hit the highlands, leaving behind my cousin, their eleven-year-old son Manuel. I had never met him, my father, that unknown and long vanished artist. He had visited Nabenchauk only to paint our village, and he had left within a few weeks. She was a traditional woman of the Maya who followed the baz’ior “true way” of life-so how, at age fourteen, had she ended up getting pregnant by an artist from Mexico City? It went against every grain of her life. My earliest memories were of my mother, kneeling barefoot at her metate, grinding maize in the muted hours that came before dawn, when the air felt as clear as the clang of a bell. I missed its cool evergreen forests, its bone-dry winters and rainy summers. I had grown up in the Zinacanteco village of Nabenchauk, the Lake of the Lightning, on the Chiapas plateau of southern Mexico. As hard as I had tried to fit in here, Los Angeles had always felt alien to me. I wondered if they were going home to their families, to a world they understood. The few other passengers seemed lost in their thoughts as they slouched in other seats. Standing by the bench, he waved good-bye, his hand disappearing from sight when the driver closed the door.Īs the bus headed off into the night, I sat in one of its many empty seats and leaned my head against the window. I boarded and paid, then turned to look at Joshua. As we stood up, the bus pulled into our stop. The farther it took us from Nug, the better. “The bus is coming.”įollowing his gaze, I saw the old bus lumbering toward us. “He was watching us.” Joshua glanced in the other direction and his face relaxed. “He can drive down the street if he wants.” “Tina, look.” Joshua pointed across the street.Ī red sports car was turning off San Carlos Boulevard into a side street. I had no idea where the emotion came from, only that it cut like a knife. His eyes had always seemed like bits of sky to me, blue and clear where mine were dark brown, the color of loam deep in a forest.Ī harsh jab punctured the bubble of our mood. He was my opposite in so many ways, his curls sun-bright compared to my straight black hair. Tousled yellow hair fell over his forehead and brushed the wire rims of his glasses. We sat on the bench at the bus stop and he put his arm around my shoulders, not like a boyfriend, which he had never been, but like the best friend I had known for six years, since 1981, the year that Jamaica became the fifty-first state and the Hollywood sign burned down in the hills above LA. The effect faded with distance it would only last until he moved away from me. His calm mood sounded like waves on a beach, smelled like seaweed, tasted like salt. I was used to seeing people’s emotions, but with him it was even more vivid than with everyone else. It spread out from him in a faint rose-colored mist that shifted with vague shapes, the form of unspoken words. Sparse traffic flowed by like sleek animals gliding through the night, intent on their own purposes. Above us a few stars managed to outshine the city lights and pollution, valiant in their efforts to overcome the amber glow that tinted the darkened sky. It had drizzled earlier and a slick film covered the street, reflecting the lights in blurred smears of oily water. Joshua met me when I finished my shift at the restaurant, and we walked to the bus stop together. Although Los Angeles never fully slept, it was quiet, wrapped in its own thoughts.
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