The apartments at 50th and Imperial are still there. The pool’s gone now, concrete poured in and now where kids used to spend hot summers swimming they are now just kicking soccer balls or doing anything else to let the humid day go by. It was there, for sure, the place where I had the most fun, the closest I was to falling over the line, to getting beat up by Samoans or Black boys, in there we were just all ready to beat the first person that gave us an attitude.
I met Damariz there. Her fragile ten year old bones didn’t stop her from immersing into the world of proving toughness, of rolling eyes to people, of watching Yo MTV Raps and believing it as true because it looked like the kind people and cars and beer bottles that we saw on our own streets. So yeah we romanticized it, it was a feeling like yeah look that’s the life for us, it would take me years to realize that such mentality only chains you, they are nothing but codes that try to instill in us that it is in fact how we are, our nature, in us.
I have been trying to get a hold of Damariz, especially since I last heard that she was heavy into drugs. She’s my little sister; we grew up so close; it’s funny because we even looked alike, both with dark brown curly hair, caramel skin and a chola attitude. Now I am just worried about her, I need to see her, let her know that I want to be part of her life again, just like back in the days, our days in the apartments.
I lived on the first floor on number 2 and her house was on the second floor, up some external cement block stairs with black steel hand railings; hers was number 7. We met and became inseparable. I guess it had to do with our similarities: single moms, always out working and then out dancing at night, R&B videos, and just plainly enjoying each other’s company. She was my confidante and I was hers.
There was a period in which we became die hard WWF fans. She liked the Undertaker and I like Macho man, (for some weird reason I liked it when he would flick his toothpick at his opponents, I thought, “Wow, that is suave”). Once, for a Summer Slam, we collected money from all the kids in the block so that we could order it on Pay-Per-View, we all sat around the black velvety sofas and in the outside stairs and watched it at my house, in a big screen T.V.
All the gang, I lost touch with them and I feel guilty. I ran into Johnnie. Oh we have some history. Once we almost got in a fist fight. He was pissed because I splashed some water to his little sister, he mouthed me off and I returned him the favor and so I got out of the pool and he chased me around, to the entertainment of all the adults sitting on their balconies, he slipped and fell on his huge stomach and all the laughter only served to infuriate him, I ran to my house, locked the door and hid in the bathroom. That didn’t stop him from running through the screen of the window. After that it was more like my mom almost fought his mom.
I was twelve back then, and I needed to switch schools because my mom did not want to drive me around to a bus stop for a school in Clairemont. So now I was to be enrolled in Gompers Secondary School, and anyone from San Diego who grew up in south east can tell you that it had a foul reputation; it was just a dangerous school. I was scared.
“Huuh you’re going to Gompers, you better take a shank!” Juan, who lived on number 15, warned me. “I go there and believe me its crazy.” So I was told about the racial riots, about the constant wars between the Mexicans, the Samoans, the Blacks and the Asians. “When it gets down, you really need to choose a front, you can’t refuse or else you are on your own,” Juan explained to me.
I ended up going to Gompers, against my will. The main issue at Gompers was that they stuffed a middle school and a high school in one campus: it was a 7th grade through 12th grade inferno. And add to that the prime location on 47th and one block north of Market Street, in south east San Diego, one of the most violent and home to various gangs, then yeah, Gompers was crazy. I probably saw at least ten student riots in the three years I was at Gompers and made it out.
The most political one I was the 1993 student walkouts, when the Mexican kids ran out of classes protesting then Governor Pete Wilson’ California Prop. 187. It wanted to refuse public education rights to undocumented students and refuse emergency services to any undocumented patients. We kids back then just needed any excuse to revolt, but this one hit home, it pierced our hearts, it made us furious.
The MEChA student organization planned it out and let the raza know what was going on and within minutes we took to the streets, chanting fuck Pete Wilson and we went to gather students from other schools and then we all congregated at Chicano Park in Logan Heights. It was and continues to be one of my most memorable and enjoyable experience. That day was pure magic, except I didn’t comprehend the magnitude of the event, the meaning of such a riot.
Now I do. And I am glad I stood up for my rights and I stuck out my middle finger to the system.
Me pase de lujo hoy con los compas el gibran y la meli, aunque nuestras carteras no haigan alcanzado pa comer en el frida…
Antes de cruzar, tome un taxi a la linea, aprovechado pues me cobro 120 pesos, pero bueno, ya que…el caso es que me dejo perpeja su indiscrecion: le hace trabajos a coyotes, que cruzan a chinos y arabes (son sus palabras) por abajo, por un tipo de corredor subterraneo, o tal vez sea un tunel, o simples hoyos de la tierra, al que llaman la cueva del muerto…
O sea que la gente, como topos rebeldes, cruzan…a lo underground railroad.
Que interesante. Me dijo: si la migra patrulla por arriba y estos se les escurren por abajo!
Valieron la pena los 120 pesos.
Ya en San Diego, me toco ir a ver piezas en tributo a la friducha…estaban buenisimas las piezas, tres me gustaron mas, la de Irene, otra que se titula Frida’s Day of the Dead y una de una diosa mexica dando luz en pleno desierto, que barbaridad, si yo tuviera ese talento…
Paloma, they told me, your name is Paloma. I was seven, a few months away from my birthday in September and I was supposed to start school that fall in the United States, but in the meantime I was in the backseat of an older model Toyota sedan, I think it was gray, and I was sweating, as I rubbed my hands I felt them sticky and saw them tremble a bit, and as I looked sideways there was a festival of cars aligned, the faces looked desperate, they were touching their heads, rubbing their hair, looking sideways just like me, sometimes our eyes met and then it would be too weird to smile, so we just turn away from each other as fast as we could, evading each other.
Adriana and her husband, of whom I forgot his name, but just recently I ran into him at (funny) another line, the line to Las Cuatro Milpas, the historical Mexican eatery in Barrio Logan, and I asked how their daughter was, Paloma. Seeing him them transported me back to that day, when I was on the back of their car, and I posed as their daughter, an American citizen, my mom must have give them a good chunk of money so that they risk so much, but I guess back then, in the late 80s, it was much easier to fool La Migra, and just say that you were an American citizen and be welcomed in, but for me all I had to do is say my name was Paloma and I was in the land of the plenty, in the states, the place where my mother decided had better opportunities for me, and now, almost twenty years later, I know she was right.
It took me years to get used to this country, as a matter of fact I am still not all that in love with it, but yet Mexico is also distant. I am stateless. But really, I don’t care, I’ve come to the conclusion that homeland is an invention, that patriotism is nothing but shit, a political device, a war excuse, how many dead now from Iraq?
As the car pulled up to the agent, Adriana and her husband smiled, He handed him the documents, theirs and my birth certificate, he looked into the back, he must of asked for my name for I blurted out Paloma and he gave the papers back and he waved us in. That was the very first illegal entry, and it wasn’t my choice, I much rather would of preferred life back in Zomatlan, the laid back life style I had with my grandmother.
I actually made friends with the real Paloma. We used to play barbies together, she was indeed my first playing buddy in the U.S. At the time my mother owned a Mexican seafood restaurant called “El 7 Mares”, it was right on 25th street, in Golden Hill, now, when I pass by it, it got painted light brown and is a Tax Service office. Next door to us is Mireya’s Salon, and it’s still there. On top of the restaurant was a second floor used for storage, that’s where I spent a lot of my first time here in San Diego, Adriana would bring in Paloma so that we could play.
On Saturdays and Sundays I would walk over with five dollars in my hands to the Golden Hill Café and I would order my chocolate milk with fluffy pancakes. I sat in the long breakfast bar, and the waitresses knew my mother, so they were very nice to me. After breakfast I would walk back or get on my scooter, and I went back to El 7 Mares. It’s funny because my Costco card still has that mark, on the back of it, in black letters, it reads: 7 Mares.
