Growing Pains in Summer School

We spend our days walking up and down the rows of cotton, onion and lettuce fields or we pick oranges, lemons and peaches from the sweet smelling orchards whose limbs rise and sigh as we pick the swollen fruit. Picking peaches is my favorite work, because mom is happiest here.  I can hear the men call back and forth to each other in a language of whistles and chirps. We are sheltered from the sun by the trees.  My mom talks  about god here more than anywhere else.  “ This is God’s work, all of this!” my mother says as she lovingly sweeps away the fruit flies that try to ambush the half eaten juicy peach that drips from my young mouth. Her hands sway back and forth like a hypnotist’s watch as they move through the air.  Her magic creeps inside me and I know this is where I want to be.

 I had never imagined god was so great until the first morning we worked in the cotton fields near  South Mountain.  I saw the gold sun rise over the mountain covered in saguaros and brush.  God crept slowly as his rays started to shoot into the gray- blue darkness and into my eyes. The rays creep up my spine and cause glorious shivers that explode with brilliant flashes of light as they leave my pores.  Those are god spells my mothers laughs. God is calling you. He is in here now. She says as she touches my heart. God calls me every morning in the fields. Now he is calling you.  Is this where god has been I ask?  Does he live over that mountain? And how does he know which field the truck will drop us at in the morning?  God is not a person she says, God is everything. She points to my sisters walking side by side helping each other stay ahead as their hoes whack the weeds that push through the young green cotton. God is with them right now and at home with my babies.  I don’t quite understand but I feel what she means. She moves ahead and hums a Yolanda Del Rio song.    God begins to hum in my heart and the earth is good.   I am watching something that is not supposed to be seen. Daybreak is the moment when god changes time, before the birds begin to sing and after the nightmares have been put away.  I am watching the earth wake as my mother and sisters lose their shadows in the rising sun. We walk innocently and unaware.  I only known that I am working and walking next to the most important person in my life and god is here with us in the fields.

This summer is a fruitful summer and having my extra paycheck allows my mother to relax a little, laugh a little more and pay our bills on time.  We know school starts in August and all of us except Angel my baby sister will be attending.  We start school clothes shopping in mid July.  My mother has saved enough money to layaway our clothes for the remainder of the month.  She takes the girls shopping and then the boys.  There are eight of us kids to shop for 4 boys and 4 girls.  We layaway our clothes at JCPenney’s and Kmart.  We have 4 more pay checks to pay for the clothes and we will pick them up a week before school starts my mother says.  Once they are on layaway we spend our summer evenings sharing with the each other the outfits we picked out and how we looked in them when we tried them on.  This is the first year I do not have to dress exactly like my little brothers.  This is the first year we all get new school clothes.

One evening my mother comes home from grocery shopping with Big Mary her best friend.   Big Mary grabs my face and kisses me with her wet lips. You are going to be a movie star mijo, and you look just like your father. She says. My mother puts down her grocery bags and gives Big Mary a dirty look.  She says“ He is a good-looking boy but don’t say he looks like that man.  He looks like my father an Indian.”  Big Mary lets me go from her tight embrace.  Calmate’ Maria” she whispers to my mom. “It is his day” My mother’s face softens as she pulls a pair of brand new Levi’s from among the bags scattered on the linoleum floor. Mijo these are for you. You worked hard this summer and no one but you and I know what it means to have you helping.  Go try them on.

But take a shower first! Laughs Big Mary.  We are taking you with us to the Cine’. You will be our date.  I stand staring at the Levi’s as tears well in my eyes. My mother bends down and kisses my head.  Go now. She says. Get ready. Big Mary whispers “Maria he is too sensitive” he will have trouble later if you don’t toughen him up.  I run towards the  bathroom and shrug off the whispered concerns of my manhood and clutch my New Levi’s too my chest.  I cannot believe My mom has bought me a pair of Levi’s.  Levi’s are for older people like my sisters and the guys that tried to sneak around the house. I cannot believe this is happening! To go to the Mexican movies is one thing, new Levi’s another but in my heart an evening alone with my mother is the real prize.  Big Mary being there doesn’t matter because mom and I have a secret way of speaking. I always hear her in my heart even when she has no words.

  I quickly take a shower as my brothers and sisters began to banter back and forth with my mother on not being able to go.  I hear my mother’s voice trying to contain her laughter as my siblings try to wheel and deal their way into our evening.   Big Mary’s booming laughter, moaning shower pipes, the pleading voices of my brothers and sisters become the symphony that accompanies the bursts of water that splash in my shower and day dreams of this evening.

I step out of the shower and looked in the mirror.  The little curly black haired boy is looking at me.  He counts his freckles, pushes back his ears, and giggles as he tries to tame the wet black curls that cling near his big brown eyes.  I look in the mirror as I leave the bathroom.  He waves goodbye, I wave back and my towel falls to the floor.

I dress in the room I share with my little brothers. I smell the New on the Levi’s as I cut the tags with my teeth.  They are stiff with the starch that shouts to the world that they are not hand me downs or from the second hand store that sells the castaway clothes of my schoolmates. The clothes that cause them to jeer and laugh at me when they recognize them as once their own.  I pull my New Levi’s up over my legs and button the fly fumbling at each button as I push the shiny silver buttons through the new holes. I roll them into 2-inch cuffs, as is the style.  I reach under the bed and grab my faded red low top Converse All Stars. A whiff of aged rubber drifts in my face as I lace each shoe. My mother is calling me as I stretch my white Fruit of the Loom undershirt over my head and run towards the living room.  It is too hot to wear a second shirt.

I jump in the back seat of my mother’s 1966 baby blue impala and we drive off out of the Hamilton Housing Projects and head towards Phoenix.  I know Phoenix is west of Chandler because the sun sets in the west and Phoenix is where all the skyscrapers, movie stars and rich people live.  Phoenix is where the Palace West Theatre is. Big Mary shouts over the Mexican music  “Maria play the tape! Where is the tape?”  My mother pushes in the 8 track of Yolanda Del Rio as I stare out the window trying to catch images in the passing windows that we speed by. Yolanda is singing her heart out and half opened windows rattle and shake to the beat of Mexican arias and bare tires fighting the stressed cracked asphalt beat earlier by the Arizona sun.  

We reach the Palace West theatre. I stare at the Marquee.  I have never been to a theatre so grand! My grandmother said once that The Palace West is on its last legs as is downtown Phoenix and shows Mexican films only to wetbags and whores.  I don’t care. Today, tonight in my eyes it is the grandest place I could ever have imagined.  The film showing is “La Hija de Nadie” with Yolanda de Rio. I am thinking my mother and Yolanda Del Rio look alike maybe that is why my mother loves her so much.  As the movie starts I stare up into the screen at a beautiful Mexican woman that was raised an orphan and seems to suffer as beautifully as she sings.  Even her songs are sad.  I do not speak too much Spanish and my mother kindly shares the story with me as it unfolds. I can keep up but I lose interest after a while and I begin to imagine who will be in my 5^th grade class that starts in 2 weeks. I hope we don’t move again, I hate starting a new school.  I don’t mind moving,  I just don’t make friends easy.

Besides I want to wear my new Levi’s on the first day of school.  I want the kids that laughed at me last year to see how I have changed.  I plan to be careful and not dirty my new Levi’s; In fact I decide I will not wear them again until the first day of school.  “Mom can I go to the bathroom? I lean over and whisper. I catch her head as it nods in the light of the movies screen. She touches my hand. Hurry back mijo, she whispers.

 I do not really need to go to the restroom. I am bored and I want to explore the beautiful theatre.  I want to look at the posters of movie stars and walk on the marble staircase that leads to the balcony. The theatre lobby is empty except for the Mexican girl scooping popcorn into red and white striped boxes. I wonder if it is circus popcorn.  I have never been to the circus so I wouldn’t know.  But I wonder.  I pretend I know where I am going as I run my hand along the cold marble walls.  I can see cars passing by outside the theatre and watch people walking by and looking in. Can they see me? I wonder.

The bathrooms are down a flight of stairs and I walk down into the largest, fanciest bathroom I have ever seen.  There are floor to ceiling mirrors and chandeliers. The walls are lined with shiny white urinals that almost reach my head.  Dark gray paint covers the metals doors of the toilet stalls and stand ominous and sterile. They remind me of the confessionals at St. Mary's Church that i used to sneak into and sit waiting for god to question me, that is until Sister Catherine dug her finger nails into my arms yelling at me to get and stay out.   How was I supposed to know I was still a pagan? God never came into the confessionals anyway, at least while I was in there.

I glance towards the huge mirrors and I am still there.  I have this whole grand ballroom to myself! Me myself and I! I walk up next to the mirror at the end of the stalls and smile because the curly haired boy is in the mirror. He is smiling. I don’t mind him being here with me, i stare into his eyes in the mirror, catching his smile and agreeing it is a very special day.

  I hear the squeaky door of the restroom open and I quickly jumped in front of a urinal near me and unbutton my pants.  I cannot be caught daydreaming in the mirror. I am not a little boy anymore.  A man approaches the urinal next to me and says hi in Spanish. He keeps talking.  He is speaking to me in Spanish but I did not understand him. I begin to button my pants to leave and the man reaches for me.  I cannot understand what he is saying but his pants are undone and he shoves me headfirst into the nearest stall.  He covers my mouth with his sour hand, and keeps talking in a lowered, rushed voice.  He pushes my head against the white tiled walls as I feel him force the buttons on my new Levi’s. The buttons fight back but then they pop and give way.  I cannot think anymore, spots float in my eyes and I try to push away but he drops his hand from my pants and slams my head into the wall.  My head bows as I watch my new Levi’s crumple to the floor and cover my red sneakers.  He forces himself inside me and I begin to cry as he muffles my sobs with his sour hand gripped tight over my mouth.  I can see myself from the top of the stall as I float up, out and away from the pain.  I watch as my tears fall into the toilet.   I wonder as I sit on top of the stall and watch if the little boy’s tears will find the same ocean that he imagines when his mother makes her tortillas.  I wonder as I watch if his mother will pull him from this nightmare.  The squeaky restroom door opens again and I freeze with fear. Someone else had come into the restroom.  I hear the click clack of someone’s heels on the marble floor. Someone’s footsteps click closer to my shame.  Someone flushed a toilet nearby and walked away.  The squeaky restroom door closes and a flash of white pain sears through my body.  The man tightens his sour sweaty hand over my mouth, sighs and shudders.  I watch my tears falling like lost raindrops in a storm. They fall silently into the toilet; I try to imagine my ocean, but all I can see are the dirty yellow stains on the toilet seat and the small curly black hair that cling to the sides. Someone’s face looks up at me from the toilet, it seems familiar, but it fades away.

I can hear the man rustle his clothes but I do not want to turn around. I am afraid to look, afraid to move. I stare at the  white tiles that have now turned gray.  I turn around slowly after he leaves and sit on the toilet and softly cry.   I notice the graffiti on the stall but it is in Spanish and I cannot understand the scribble.  There is so much I do not understand. I pull my scratchy Levi’s up and dust off the dirt that had gathered on the pant legs that were crumpled on the dirty floor.  I leave the stall.  I do not look in the mirror.  I leave the bathroom.  I walk by the popcorn girl but I am afraid to look at her; I know she knows.   I find my mother in the darkness and stare up at the screen as Yolanda Del Rio commits suicide. 

My mother and Big Mary talk about the movie on the drive home.  The Mexican music plays on the radio but all I can hear are muffled voices and distant sounds.  I keep both back windows all the way open as we drive home. The warm air carries out the sounds inside the car and creates a wall between the front seat and me.   I do not want my mother to smell what happened. I do not know how to be.   My stomach hurts deep inside as I lay on the seat looking down at torn carpet that holds peanut shells, bits of plastic and a peach seed I had lost earlier in the week. It is funny how it is just laying there. Why did I not see the garbage earlier?  My new Levi’s itch.  They felt like the torn dirty carpet would feel on my bare feet.  I can feel something sticky trickle down my thigh and I hope it isn’t blood.  Mijo are you OK? My mother asks.  I lied. Yes mom, I just have a stomach ache and am tired. I replied, “ I am not tired.  I am afraid. I am afraid of bathrooms. I am afraid of Mexican men. I am afraid I am going to die tonight.”  I want to cry.  I want to crawl into her arms and smell her mom smell.  I want to feel her fingers in my curly black hair.  But I am silent and she continues talking about Yolanda Del Rio as I watched the neon lights of Van Buren’s seedy motels whip by.  I watch the colors and lights bounce off the shiny silver trim inside the car.  I am dizzy.  I wonder if I am going to make it home.  I wonder if my stomach is going to explode in the car.

When we arrived home my brothers and sisters are asleep.  I walk into the bathroom and bathe quietly as my mother lights her altar and prepares for bed. I am afraid to look in the mirror.  I slowly turn towards the little boy in the mirror but he is gone.  It is just me in the mirror.  Just me and my  strange dirty face.  I climb up to my bunk and stare out the window up towards the stars.  I wonder where aliens live? I wonder what they wear?  I know they do not wear Levi’s. I know what happened has happened because of my Levi’s. I stare down at the new silver buttons glowing from the moonlight, the moon light that filters in like fingers through the torn window screen, reaching towards me.   I climb out of bed grab the Levi’s and walk through the warm sticky darkness towards the dumpster near our house. My feet and chest are bare as I stumble through the rocks and broken glass careful not to make any noise. I look down as the lights play with the cows and clouds that live on my pajama shorts.  For a moment I am caught in the silent film that rolls off my shorts.

  I open the dumpster lid and drop my new Levi’s into the smelly darkness. The grease and rotten vegetables steam up towards my face leaving my stomach retching the leftovers of god and my soul. As I lean against the brick wall that fences off the garbage, an alley cat purrs against my legs and begins to lick the left over contents of my stomach now splashed on the greasy concrete floor.  I wonder if she ate my soul? Did she eat god?   I walk back to our house and I promise myself, to never wear Levi’s again until I know how. I promise myself because god cannot hear me and my mother is fast asleep dreaming about La Hija de Nadie. (The daughter of No One).