Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood Read online

  Other books by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  Fiction

  • Carry Me Like Water

  • The House of Forgetting

  • Flowers for the Broken

  • In Perfect Light

  • Names on a Map

  Books for Young Adults

  • He Forgot to Say Goodbye

  • Last Night I Sang to the Monster

  Poetry

  • Calendar of Dust

  • Dark and Perfect Angels

  • Elegies in Blue

  • Dreaming the End of War

  • The Book of What Remains

  Books for Children

  • A Gift from Papá Diego / Un regalo de Papá Diego

  • Grandma Fina and Her Wonderful Umbrellas / La Abuelita Fina y sus sombrillas maravillosas

  • A Perfect Season for Dreaming / Un tiempo perfecto para soñar

  • The Dog Who Loved Tortillas / La perrita que le encantaban las tortillas

  “Set in the barrio of a New Mexico town during the Vietnam war, this heart-rending story of love and loss follows Sammy Santos through his senior year of high school. The gritty details about drugs, sex, domestic violence, the liberal doses of Spanglish, even the profanity, make this story feel like an authentic portrayal of what it meant to be poor and Chicano in America in the 1960s.”

  —Top Picks of the Year, Miami Herald

  “Written in a poetic first-person voice, Sammy’s story of love, loss, and strong family ties is hard to forget.”

  —Horn Book

  “His message is one of victory through endurance rather than escape, as Sammy finds ways to define himself and maintain his loyalties while circumstances prevent him from leaving the barrio.”

  —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

  “[This book] begs to be read out loud and shared with others, placed in the hands of anyone who’s ever struggled with the confusion, loss, and contradictions that come with saying goodbye.”

  —San Antonio Current

  “Sammy deserves to become a character of lasting interest to both casual readers and literature classes. . .This is a powerful and authentic look at a community’s aspirations and the tragic losses that result from shattered dreams.”

  —School Library Journal

  “Benjamin Alire Sáenz exquisitely captures the mood and voice of a community, a culture and a generation.”

  —Albuquerque Journal

  “Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood is indeed a loving tribute to Chicano culture in the Mexican-American borderlands.”

  —Texas Monthly

  Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood. Copyright © 2004 by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written consent from the publisher, except for brief quotations for reviews. For further information, write Cinco Puntos Press, 701 Texas, El Paso, TX 79901; or call 1-915-838-1625.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  FIRST EDITION

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Sáenz, Benjamin Alire.

  Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood / by Benjamin Alire Sáenz.

  p. cm.

  Summary: As a Chicano boy living in the unglamorous town of Hollywood, New Mexico, and a member of the graduating class of 1969, Sammy Santos faces the challenges of “gringo” racism, unpopular dress codes, the Vietnam War, barrio violence, and poverty.

  ISBN 978-1-933693-99-6

  [1. Death Fiction. 2. Grief Fiction. 3. Violence Fiction. 4. Mexican Americans

  Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S1273Sam 2004

  [Fic]--dc22

  2004002414

  Book and cover illustration/design by Antonio Castro H.

  Many thanks to Iris Morales and Hector Delatorre

  whose images grace this cover.

  Dios los bendiga.

  Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood

  Part 1.

  The Way She Looked at Me

  Part 2.

  Pifas and Gigi and the Politics of Hollywood

  Part 3.

  Another Name for Exile

  Part 4.

  The Citizens of Hollywood Rise Up Against the System

  Part 5.

  Welcome to Hollywood

  For Amanda, Roberto, John, Cynthia, Mark, Isel, Ivana—and in memory of Amy

  Every generation has to find its own way. Embrace the journey.

  “The first thing the dead do is lose their voices. But they have their ways of making us listen. Maybe the dead need those of us who made it out alive to go out into the streets and tell everyone what happened. Maybe they want us to do more than tell. Maybe they want us to shout. Maybe they want us to point fingers. Maybe they want us to tell anyone who’ll stop and listen that once, the world was theirs, too. Maybe they won’t leave us alone until we say their names out loud again and again and again.”

  —Sammy Santos

  “If you just talk, Juliana, you can talk yourself into being alive.”

  “Let’s not say anything, Sammy. Let’s not say anything at all.”

  Chapter One

  I remember her eyes, the gray of a sky about to let loose a storm. I remember the way she placed her finger on her bottom lip when she was lost in thoughts as dark as her eyes. I’d have given anything to live that close to her lips.

  I used to picture her eyes as I was lying in bed. Her eyes and that finger touching her bottom lip. I’d lie there and listen to the radio on my favorite station, K-O-M-A in Oklahoma City. It reached me all the way to where I lived in southern New Mexico. But it could only reach me at night. Just at night. I used to wait and hope they’d play that song by Frankie Valle You’re just too good. . . Even if I was half asleep, if I heard the song, I’d suddenly be awake. I’d hum along and put together a scene: a girl dressed up for me and a dance floor shiny as glass. Even the ice cubes in our drinks sparkled in the light. That girl was Juliana. And the whole damned world was mine. I need you ba-a-by. . . And then, after the song was over, I’d fall asleep exhausted from trying to keep the two of us together. Being obsessed with Juliana was hard work. The word obsession came into my vocabulary the second I met Juliana.

  It was the way she looked at me that kept me coming back. Just as I was about to give up on her, just as I was about to tell her, “Look, screw it all. I don’t need to suffer like this. Just can’t take it.” Every time I was about to tell her something like that, she stretched out her arm and made a fist. She’d tap her fist with her other hand, until I nodded and pried it open. I would stare at her open palm, and she would ask: “Do you see?”

  And I would nod and say, “I see,”

  “You see everything now, don’t you?”

  “Yes, everything,” I’d say.

  “You see everything.”

  “Yes. Todo, todo, todo.”

  Now, when I think of her open, outstretched hand, I have to admit I didn’t see a thing. I see my lips moving, “Yes, todo, todo.” I wonder why I lied to her. Maybe it wasn’t a bad lie. Maybe it was. Maybe there aren’t any good lies. I don’t know. I still don’t know. And I didn’t know anything about reading palms either. I’ve never known anything about that. Not then. Not now. One thing I did know—no matter how many times she let me pry her hand open, her fists were still clenched. They’d stay that way forever.

  Juliana letting me pry open her fist. That was a lie. Maybe it was a good lie. I think it was.

  I told her once that she collected secrets like some people colle
cted stamps.

  “You’re full of shit,” she said. “Where do you get that crap? You’re so full of shit.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said.

  “Well,” she said, “everyone needs to collect something.”

  “Collect something else,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “Books.”

  “No, I don’t like them. That’s your thing, Sammy. Did you know everyone calls you ‘the Librarian’?” She looked at me. I pretended I knew. I didn’t. But I pretended. And she let me. “And besides,” she said, “only gringos can afford books. But secrets don’t cost a damn thing.”

  She was wrong about that. Secrets cost plenty.

  I used to write her notes in class that said, “Stop collecting.”

  “Not yet,” she’d write back.

  “Then tell me one. Just one secret.” What did I think she was going to tell me?

  The first time she told me what she was thinking, I found myself trembling. “I’ve always wanted to smoke a cigarette.” That’s what she whispered. I pictured her wearing a backless dress in some smoky bar with a cigarette between her lips. A drink in her hand. I pictured my hand on her bare back—that’s what made me tremble. And that song came into my head you’d be like. . . I almost offered to buy her a pack, buy her two packs, buy her a carton. But I was sixteen and could never talk when I needed to—and my pockets were empty. So I just stood there trying to figure out what to do with my hands. I wanted to die.

  That night, I decided to be a man. I was tired of sitting there like a chair. That was me. Sammy Santos. A chair. Sitting there. Thinking. As if thinking ever did any good. To hell with everything. After dinner, I walked out of the house, borrowed Paco’s bike and stole two cases of Dr. Pepper bottles from Mrs. Franco. She had a nice house. She didn’t live in Hollywood. She didn’t need the bottles. I cashed them in at the Pic Quick on Solano—and bought my first pack of cigarettes. My dad wanted to know where I was. “Just taking a walk,” I said.

  Dad’s smile almost broke me. “You’re like your mom,” he said. “She’d walk and think. You take after her.” He looked so happy. If you can be happy and sad at the same time. That’s how he looked when he talked about her.

  I hated to lie to him. But I couldn’t tell him I was stealing Dr. Pepper bottles from Mrs. Franco. I couldn’t. He thought I was some kind of altar boy. He never went a week without telling me I was good. Good? What’s that? Sometimes I wanted to yell, “You don’t know, Dad. You don’t know these things.” I wanted to yell that. It would have broken his heart.

  Later, in bed, I held the red pack of Marlboro’s and studied it like I was going to be tested on what it looked like. I smelled the cigarettes through the cellophane—and it was then that I fell in love with the smell of tobacco. The next day, during lunch, I offered Juliana the pack of cigarettes. She stared at my hand, that trembling hand of mine, holding out the pack of cigarettes. She took them. Real casual. But there was something in her eyes. Something. She put them in her purse. Then she stared into my palm. “You work,” she said. It was true. I got up at four to clean seedy bars for Speed Sweep Janitor Service. “We can sweep anything you can own.” That was our motto. Every day from 4:30 to 7:00, I worked. Worked, came home, showered—then fixed breakfast for me and my sister. “Everyone works,” I said.

  She was going to say something. Then changed her mind. I hated that. It was like knowing a secret was there. And the secret was about you. Knowing it was there, well, it hurt. “You’re nice,” she finally said. Nice, I thought. There were better compliments. She smiled. “Someone’s gonna hurt you. And you’re gonna wish you never had a heart.”

  I wanted to tell her that my mom had died, and that I already knew about hurt. I didn’t say that, didn’t say anything. Nothing. I just watched her walk away, my eyes following her until she disappeared like a sun taking a slow dive into the earth.

  Everything was darker when she was gone.

  She knew something about hurt, too. But she knew how to fight back, and she could scare you into silence with just a look. It wasn’t that she was ugly or mean—it’s just that she’d learned certain ways. The world wasn’t all that good to her, and she wanted to remind everyone around her—but mostly herself, I think—that she was worth something. That the air was hers, too. That the ground she walked on was as much hers as it was anybody else’s. She was so afraid of being beaten down. I think that came from having a father who wanted to crush her until she turned into powder. So the wind could blow her away. Then she’d be nothing.

  I remember what she told me. I remember exactly. “When I was four, I fell off a swing at a park. I dirtied my dress. My father just kinda looked at me. Like I was dirty. And I knew right then he didn’t care if I sat in that dirt for the rest of my life. I think he was disappointed when I didn’t cry. I got up, dusted myself off and got back on the swing. But I never forgot that look. He hated me. And there was nothing I could do about it. I tried to make him change his mind about me, but nothing worked. I served him tea, I shined his shoes, I cooked meals for him. Once, I ironed his favorite shirt, and it was perfect. He grabbed it from my hands and wadded it up like a piece of paper. So I just gave up. I was twelve. When I was in the eighth grade, I read a story. The teacher made us look up words we didn’t know. The word I was looking up was ‘disdain.’ And when I read the definition, I said to myself, ‘Yeah, I know that word.’” That night, when she was telling me these things, we were smoking cigarettes in my dad’s Chevy Impala. We were at the Aggie Drive-In Theater off Valley Drive. We’d turned down the speakers because we’d both already seen The Odd Couple. There was nothing real or interesting about that movie—watching it made us tired. It was supposed to be funny. I guess so. But it wasn’t. Not to Juliana. Not to me. And Juliana said it was weird, the kind of movies gringos went mad for. “But you can’t do anything about gringos,” she said, “just like you can’t do anything about fathers.” And then she kept talking about her dad, and how he made sure he put everyone down. “If I’d have been born a bird, he’d have cut off my wings.”

  I wanted to tell her that I would kill myself if my father hated me. Every day, when my father came home from work, the first thing he did was rub my hair and tell me supper smelled good. I tried to cook like Mom. I did okay. And Dad always thanked me. That’s the way he was, a thanker, always thanking people for the things they did. And damnit, I hated Juliana’s father. I did. For not being like my father. For not knowing what he had. I did hate him. And finally, that’s what I told her. “I hate him. I really hate him.” That’s what I said. And that was the first time she kissed me. She tasted like cotton candy. Not sticky, but sweet, as if something inside her was making up for the something she didn’t have in the house where she lived.

  “You’re nice,” she said. “Someone’s gonna hurt you.”

  “Yeah. You’ve said that before.”

  “It’s true.” She kissed me again.

  I kissed her back, hard as I could, and when she stopped she looked at me. “You were born to get hurt.”

  “Nope,” I said. And then we just went back to kissing. We sat on the hood of the car and smoked all night. And kissed some more. I still remember her smell. She didn’t wear perfume or jewelry like all the other girls. I liked that about her. She talked about how her mother would sometimes leave, but always come back, and she wondered why her mother wouldn’t take them all with her when she left. “She just leaves us there—with him.” I listened. I liked listening to her. I didn’t care if the stories she told weren’t soft or beautiful or nice. The barrio we lived in wasn’t soft or beautiful or nice. It didn’t matter that someone had named the barrio where we lived “Hollywood.” Maybe it was a joke. Maybe it was a prayer. Didn’t matter. Nice stories were hard to come by in Hollywood. So I just listened. Juliana said her aunt told her that she didn’t have to worry about anything because she was born beautiful. But another aunt told her that she had to pay for her looks because no
thing was free—not even good looks.

  “Someday,” Juliana said, “I swear I’m gonna kill my father. I’m gonna watch him bleed like he’s a dog someone ran over in the middle of a busy street.” It scared me to hear her talk like that. I knew she was picturing the scene in her mind.

  And then, after she said that, it was me who kissed her. I wanted to make her forget. I thought that a guy’s kisses could make a girl forget all the bad stuff. Sixteen-year-old boys don’t know shit. How could a tongue down a girl’s throat make her forget?

  Her eyes were always half on fire, lightning about to strike—and beautiful in the way that fires and lightning are beautiful, a kind of natural and graceful rage that made all living things stand back in awe. Or maybe just fear. Sometimes, she could look at you and you could see what she was trying to tell you don’t screw with me because I’ve been through things, and you don’t know a damn thing about what it’s cost me to be here, right here, right here on this worthless piece of ground, so don’t treat me like I’m some crack on a sidewalk because if you step on me, you’ll never take another step without thinking of me. I swear to God you won’t. I saw that look a hundred times. I took that look home with me. I studied it. I never understood. Not back then. How is that we can look at something every day, and still not know what we’re looking at?

  One time, she was walking out of the gym door and some guy looked at her and said, “Ayyyyy muñeca!” And then he made this motion thing with both his arms and body as if he was having sex with her against a wall. She walked up to him, got real close, then kneed him right in the place that made him a man. He bent down in pain, screaming like a boy. She stood there. Watched. When he was breathing right again, she smiled at him. “Now you can tell everyone what it was like to be with a girl from Hollywood.”

  Another time, this guy asked her out. It wasn’t as if she belonged to me. It wasn’t that way. Boyfriend, girlfriend, that kind of thing didn’t mean that much. Not to her. It meant more to me, I think, but I was always a little soft, like my father. Manzito, my father used to say about himself. Tame. As in the opposite of wild. As in a dog that would never bite.