Saturday, October 29, 2005

 

CENTRALIA
A Novel

Chaper 9
Me Llamo Juan Eduardo Mejía

“I grew up in southern California, a place where most people, most white people, look down their noses at Mexicans and other Latinos. My parents are from Mexico, from Guanajuato—not that I really cared about where my parents were from when I was growing up. I just wanted them to be American and speak unaccented English. When you’re a kid you don’t want to be the least bit different; you just want to be camouflaged and fit in with everyone else.

“I actually went by John as a kid. I made my parents call me that instead of the name they gave me. I suppose that I just wanted to my parents to adopt the American child they had given birth to and were raising in southern California. I was named after my grandfather but I didn’t meet him until I was in college—the first time I ever went to Mexico. My folks went back a couple of times when I was growing up, but I never had any interest in seeing where they came from. I stayed home with relatives. For me there were just too many Mexicans in Mexico, even more than in California, if that was possible.

“Spanish was my first language and I didn’t speak a lot of English until I started kindergarten. That’s when I really knew that I was different, and I hated it. I hated being ashamed of my parents, my name, my language, and my skin color. I was lucky on that last account; I am fairly light skinned. Most of the kids in my neighborhood were darker skinned Latinos. They seemed less self-conscious of their race than I did. I was afraid of getting the slightest bit of sun which would further darken my pelt—try avoiding the sun in the beach culture of L.A.

“I spoke Spanish at home with my parents and I spoke English everywhere else. I watched so much TV as an infant that by the time I got to kindergarten I understood English perfectly. My parents, on the other hand, had a tough time learning their new language. Their first jobs were in restaurant kitchens where everyone else was Hispanic. The owners had a long history of hiring illegals, so they spoke enough Spanish to get their point across. Their point usually consisted of getting the illegals to work as hard as possible for as little pay as possible.

“There weren’t a lot of resources available for learning English as a foreign language, even if you had the time or the energy after working twelve hours a day. Even to this day, after living in the States for almost forty years my folks speak English imperfectly. I don’t look upon their heavy accents and fractured syntax with the shame I once did. It’s a terrible and disgraceful thing to be ashamed of your own parents, especially when you have wonderful parents like mine.

“My folks, Hugo and Rosa Mejía, were both 18 when they were married in Guanajuato, Mexico. My father had been working as a mechanic along with his father and two older brothers. He knew that he wanted more for his own family than what was probable in a life spent in Guanajuato. He decided after he was married that he would follow a childhood friend who had crossed the border into the United States and started a life there. They were 19 and Rosa was pregnant with my older sister. My mom and dad made their way north, just the two of them.

“Like all immigrants who have come to this country their story is fairly harrowing. So many of us take our own citizenship for granted, especially those who are critical of immigrants—either legal or otherwise. My own U.S. citizenship was conferred upon me by the simple fact that I was born in this country. My parents knew this, that’s why they had their children in U.S. hospitals, even if that meant taking tremendous risks. My parents had each other, and that has always been their greatest asset.

“So without a lot of planning, my parents left everything behind. They traveled by bus north. It was only a matter of a couple of hours before they were both farther from home than they had ever been before. I think that they were either incredibly brave or simply terrified. Like all other illegals seeking a better life in America, they risked robbery and violence at the hands of both Mexicans and Americans involved in smuggling human cargo. My father’s friend in the States had arranged for them to meet someone who was to help them slip across the border, a coyote. His friend had paid the coyote $200 and who was supposed to drive Hugo and Rosa across the border into Texas where my father was to pay the coyote another $200.

“My parents got off the bus in Ciudad Acuña, a ratty border town that would be the last stop in Mexico on the journey to their new lives. The bus station in Acuña was the home base of every coyote, drug dealer, and thief looking to cash in on the steady stream of desperate refugees from every part of Mexico and Central America making their way into Texas.

“My parents almost thought about turning back and going home after a few minutes at the bus station. They were looking for the coyote who went by the nickname of El Ruso. They had barely stepped off the bus when they had half a dozen propositions for every conceivable combination of illegal activities, some of which probably were invented at the Cuidad Acuña bus station. They spent the day trying to sleep on a metal bench in the station waiting for their deliverer.

“They spent that night in the bus station along with about a dozen other hapless castaways, most of whom looked far worse off than Rosa and Hugo. Groups of young men sat in silence reading the mildly pornographic comics for sale at the station kiosk. Extended families of campesinos who barely spoke Spanish huddled together whispering in their native Indian dialects. Everyone was either trying to steal into the United States or had already been turned back by the border police and now found themselves at the bus station purgatory.

“I have listened to dozens of stories and almost every Mexican has a pretty harrowing account about how they came across the border into America to seek out a better life for themselves. Robbery, rape, and brutality are fairly common experiences of these immigrants. Men, women, and children will walk for days through the blistering desert for the chance to do any job that Americans will no longer even consider.

“My father talked with almost everyone waiting. An old man selling candy told him that El Ruso did some business out of a bar nearby. My mother was sleeping as soundly as she could on the metal bench so my father decided not to wake her to say that he was going to the bar to look for the coyote.

“The bar was called El Sinaloense and my dad remembers that the place actually had swinging door, just like a saloon out of a western. When he entered it was about four in the morning and the place was deserted except for the bartender and about five men, a couple standing at the bar and the others seated by themselves at tables. Even by the standards of Mexican border towns, El Sinaloense was a rough place.

“It was fairly large and had a dance floor in the back. Above the bar the prices were hand-painted on the wall; cerveza and tequila being the only choices. Hugo ordered a beer to work up his courage. He took a few pulls from the bottle before he asked the bartender if he knew someone called El Ruso. He answered by raising his eyebrows towards the two men standing at the bar a few feet away.

“They were both tall and dressed as cowboys, the standard uniform for men in this part of Mexico. Hugo stepped over and greeted the two cowboys. They barely turned their heads as they studied the stranger under the brims of their white cowboy hats. Without waiting to hear a response my father started to explain that he was looking for a guy who was supposed to take him across the river and then drive him and his wife to San Angelo, Texas. He mentioned the down payment and the $200 that was to be paid when the deal was concluded. ‘Somos todos Mexicanos aquí, no hay ningun ruso.’ They both laughed at this and turned away. Hugo returned to finish his beer. The two cowboys didn’t so much as glance at him. Then dad made the mistake of walking to the back of the place to find the toilet.

“El Sinaloense would give the worst dive bar a bad name so you can imagine how squalid the bathroom was. It was a large open room, perhaps fifteen feet by fifteen feet with a single cement trough that went along the walls. Just as my father was finishing he turned and met the fist of El Ruso. The punch landed squarely on his nose and broke it. Blood poured down my father’s face.

“As bad as this situation may have seemed for my father, the cowboy had made two fateful mistakes. His first mistake was trying to rob my father without the aid of his partner who was still drinking at the bar. His second mistake was starting a fight with a man who had aspirations of becoming a Greco-roman wrestler. The cowboy had fucked up and he didn’t even know it yet.

“My dad told me that he didn’t even feel his nose being broken. He said that he had been hit much harder during wrestling practice. He had taken head butts that had almost knocked him unconscious on many occasions so he knew all about taking a punch. El Ruso tried for a follow-up punch but my father clinched up around the bigger man and pushed his head into his chest so that the cowboys flailing arms couldn’t do any damage.

“All my father said that he could think about during these furious few seconds was that his partner would come into the bathroom and he would end up dying on the filthy floor of this disgusting bathroom. He thought about how my mother would wake up to find him gone and he would never return to her. He didn’t have much time to have these thoughts.

“Hugo leaned into his attacker and threw him violently into the air with a hip throw. My father came down on him with all of his weight. El Ruso’s head hit the concrete floor hard. The fight was over…almost. He was completely unconscious. My father kneeled on his chest and smashed his fist into the cowboy’s cheek. He could feel the bone splinter. That was payback for the sucker punch that broke my father’s nose. Dad knew that a broken cheek bone is much worse than what he got. A broken nose is just cartilage.

“Hugo couldn’t believe that the other cowboy hadn’t walked in. He quickly washed most of the blood off his face in the sink and walked out of the bathroom. There was a back door to the place behind a few stacks of empty beer bottles which meant that he wouldn’t have to get past El Ruso’s drinking partner. When he got back to the bus station Rosa was still asleep on the bench. He finished washing up and changed clothes in the bathroom. He reset his nose in the mirror. To this day you can see the imperfect job he did that night in the Ciudad Acuña bus station.

“Hugo was already getting two black eyes so when he woke Rosa she was terrified. My father’s complete calm assured my mother that he was fine. When she asked him what had happened he just told her that he had saved them the $200 they were to pay the coyote. They left the station immediately. It was still an hour or so before daybreak as they walked to the northwest, away from town and towards the river and America. As the sun started to come up that morning they stopped in a stand of trees on a low rise a few hundred feet above the Rio Grande, or the Rio Bravo as the Mexicans call it. At this time of year the river is neither grande nor bravo but the sight of it was a tremendous comfort for the young couple. After what they had been through this gentle river would be the easiest hurtle of the trip.

“That evening my folks took the time-honored method of getting into the United States of America illegally from Mexico: they waded across the gentle river that separates this land of great hope from the despair and poverty of our neighbor to the South. I used to cringe with shame when I heard the term ‘wetback’ but when my father tells the story about the night he and his young bride waded across the river to their new lives in America, it is obvious that this is a pleasant memory for him.

“On the other bank of the river Hugo and Rosa settled in the cover of the sagebrush and mesquite just above the flood plain of the river and looked back at the land they were leaving. With their youthful outlooks they could only foresee prosperity ahead of them. By the next morning they had made it to a highway several miles from the border. They walked to an intersection where one of the roads had to stop to yield to the other. They hid in the brush until a pick-up truck approached the stop sign. The driver was alone and he looked like a Mexican. My father ran up to the truck and asked him for a ride. It was Hugo and Rosa’s lucky day. The stranger drove them north to the first bus station and helped them buy tickets to San Diego.

“It wasn’t long before my parents were prospering. Like generations of immigrants before and after them, they worked hard, saved, and provided the best that they could for their children. By the time I was in high school they owned their own business and we were solidly middle class. I could never escape from the shame I felt of being the son of Mexican immigrants. I spoke Spanish only when I had to around the house or at family functions. My grandmother came to stay with us and she didn’t speak a word of English. As much as I loved my grandmother, I hated being out in public with her because the whole family had to speak Spanish. I was American and I wanted everyone to know it.

“When I went away to college I had absolutely no interest in Latin culture. I hated the music from Mexico and everything about it. I had never traveled to Mexico and I didn’t care if I never went there. I actually took French at the university because I didn’t want to use Spanish as my foreign language requirement.

“Being the affluent middle class kids that I was, thanks to my parents’ hard work, I decided to go to a summer school program in Paris. After the six weeks of classes had ended my friend, Murph, and I began a two month trip around Europe. We both had rail passes which allowed us to travel second class on any scheduled rail line on the continent. From Paris we decided to visit the French Pyrenees area and then we were going to double back and go on to Italy.

“With the rail passes we didn’t need to plan very carefully. You just found a train that was going your direction and go. It was very improvisational. We found a train going to Bordeaux and found two seats inside an empty six-seat compartment. The train began to pull out of the Gare Montparnasse and we commented on our good luck of having a compartment to ourselves when the door opened and four beautiful young women with backpacks practically fell through the door.

“They were obviously Scandinavian but I spoke French to them just to show off that I spoke a bit. By the time we helped to get their bags settled we also settled on English as the lingua franca of the compartment. None of the girls—Finnish as it eventually came out—spoke French but they all spoke English to one degree or another. I was seated across from the one who spoke the best English. Her name was Seija-Liisa and she was probably the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I couldn’t even look at her for more than a couple of seconds. It was like looking at the sun.

“When the train finally got up to speed out of Paris I asked anyone if they wanted to go to the club car for a coffee. As my luck would have it only Seija-Liisa took me up on the offer. We made our way to the club car where I ordered. ‘Un café au lait et un double espress avec du lait à part.’ If I could do one thing in French after six weeks of classes it was order coffee. Seija-Liisa complimented me on my French and remarked that she found it curious that an American spoke anything other than English. It didn’t even occur to me that I also spoke Spanish. If I had thought of it I wouldn’t have told her.

“The club car didn’t have seats but there was a stand-up counter along the windows on both sides. I couldn’t imagine a better place to have a conversation with this insanely attractive girl. We were the same age, both studying at a university, and we both had the rest of the summer off to travel. I had already decided that if I had any say in the matter I would spend as much of it as possible with her.

“We were in the club car for a couple of hours together when the subject got around to where she and her friends were headed. They had plans to go to Madrid and then on to Sevilla and Granada. I immediately excused myself and said that I would be right back. I practically ran back to the compartment where Murph was playing his guitar and singing for his three fellow passengers. I entered the compartment and dug my camera out of my pack. I studied it for a second and then asked Murph to step outside to take a look at it for me.

“Out in the passageway between the compartments I told Murph that we were going to Spain. ‘It’s taken you this long to figure this out? I found out where they were going ten minutes after you left the car. John Mejía, you ain’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. Very tricky ruse with the camera. Smooth.’

“I know that it’s ridiculous, but before that moment when Seija-Liisa said she was going to Spain, I had never, not for a second, considered going there. Spain represented for me my Latin heritage that I was trying so desperately to leave behind. Women have that power over us, and thank God for it. As the train moved through France towards the border I still didn’t think about Spain other than it was the destination of the beautiful woman who was sharing my train compartment.

“We crossed into Spain early the next morning. A conductor came by our compartment to look at tickets and passports. Without even thinking about it I was speaking Spanish, trading jokes with the conductor about the sorry state of our compartment as six people all tried to find their documents at the same time. He was cheerful considering it was before seven ion the morning. When he left Murph turned to me, ‘You never told me you spoke Spanish. Where the hell did that come from?’

“I had met Murph over a year ago in a class and I supposed that I never had mentioned that I spoke Spanish, or that I was Mexican-American. That was my secret, when I could keep it a secret. The Finnish gals were talking among themselves in their language.

“Seija-Liisa turned to me, ‘You never told me you were Spanish. I though you were American?’

“’I’m not Spanish. My parents are from Mexico but I was born in California.’ Just on a side note, it’s nice to be able to tell people you are from California because everyone in the world at least knows about Hollywood, so they assume you’re from Hollywood and must have something to do with movies and I say that they can keep thinking that. So this gorgeous Finnish girl thought it was cool that I spoke fluent Spanish, and for the very first time in my life, so did I.

“I had never used my Spanish except for talking with friends and relatives, I never saw it as a means for communicating outside of the Latino community of southern California which I wanted as little to do with as possible. Now all of a sudden, in this group of women, I was exotic, suave, worldly, and most of all, desirable, at least as far as one of them was concerned.

“When we arrived in Madrid we found a hotel near the Puerta del Sol. The six of us got three adjoining rooms and everyone differed to me to do all of the talking. The hotel clerk slid the registration card across the counter. Without thinking, and for the first time in my life, I signed my name as Juan Eduardo Mejía, and that’s who I’ve been ever since.

“We spent several days in Madrid doing all of the usual tourist things. We went to the Prado and several other museums. At night we did walked the streets and ran in and out of dozens of tapas bars. On our last night Seija-Liisa suggested that we all go to a flamenco show. It sounded corny to me, I just assumed that a flamenco show would be solely for the sake of tourists, but I was thoroughly infatuated with her by this time. I asked the concierge at the hotel and he told me of the best place in Madrid to see flamenco. By his enthusiastic recommendation of the show I began to think that perhaps I was wrong about the flamenco show.

“The place was on the Calle de Torija just a few blocks from our hotel. The six of us sat at a table in the middle of the café. The only other people who looked like tourists was a table of three young Japanese girls, everyone else was speaking Spanish. The show was a mixture of a vocalist accompanied by a guitarist or perhaps two guitarists, and a group of men and women dancers. I’d never had much interest in dancing, and I had avoided and sort of Latin music at any cost, so I was completely taken off-guard by my reaction to it all.

“Luckily I was sitting at the back of our table against the wall because I broke down completely. I felt so many conflicting emotions, all of which were completely overwhelming, that I practically hyperventilated. The immense power of the singing, dancing, and music was undeniable and obvious to everyone in the room. The intense agony that is such a big part of the lament of flamenco spoke directly to me that night.

“I guess you would call it an epiphany. I came to the realization that up until I had arrived in Spain I had denied my entire heritage. I thought to myself, ‘This is your heritage, and it is truly magnificent, and you’ve wasted so much time being ashamed of it.’

“The others were so enraptured by the performance that I didn’t think they noticed my sobbing. I got up from the table and walked to the back of the room. It was like I was feeling the most overwhelming grief and the most joyous elation at the same time. I felt the happiest I had ever felt in my entire life up until that moment. I was overcome by a sense of pride of who I was. I was Juan Eduardo Mejía.

“From that day forward I never again felt ashamed of who I was. I stayed in Spain for the rest of that summer. Murph and I went our separate ways because he wanted to visit other countries. I would see those places some other time. On trip I could not get learn enough about my Spanish roots. I even waved goodbye to Seija-Liisa at the train station in Sevilla as she, too, wanted to travel on to Italy and Greece with her friends. I never told her that she was the one who made me proud of the fact that I spoke Spanish. Never since have I underestimated the power of a woman.

“I stayed in Sevilla for the rest of that summer. I found a cheap room with a Spanish family. I wanted to learn everything there was to learn about life in this Spanish city. I hounded the señora until she taught me to cook. I spent my days sitting standing at the bars in cafes writing long letters in Spanish to my parents. I felt so incredibly thankful to them now that I could speak their language, a language I had learned almost against my will.

“I felt an almost spiritual affinity towards Sevilla. I had fallen immediately in love with Paris, as everyone does, but this city was different. Paris is such a treasure that it seems like it belongs to everyone who visits, even for a day. In Sevilla I felt like I belonged there, as if the city had chosen me to be a part of it. I didn’t learn this until I returned home but my mother’s family came from Sevilla. After my epiphany I wanted to learn everything that I could about my family.

Juan took another sip of tequila. “In Spain people drink mostly wine, Mexicans drink beer and tequila.”

“So did you finally take a trip to Mexico?”

“The first thing that I did when I returned home at the end of e the summer was plan a trip to Mexico with my folks. After avoiding it for so long I was dying to see where my parents were born. Like most Americans I thought of Mexico as just poor and dirty. There certainly are plenty of places that are poor and dirty but there are also lots of wonderful cities. As I said, my parents are from Guanajuato, a city older than any colonial city in America. It is high in the mountains in central Mexico. We flew into the airport that services this area outside of León.

“At that point I didn’t know what I was expecting but I certainly didn’t expect the beautiful colonial city of Guanajuato. It is one of the most beautiful cities I had ever seen but what really struck me was the lifestyle of the people who live there. I had grown up in the suburban sprawl of southern California where we thought nothing of driving 45 minutes just to go to a restaurant. We were completely dependent on our cars. I guess we see this as being sophisticated. Cars in our culture have always been symbols of independence and freedom. It’s almost impossible for most of us to imagine living without our cars.

“I was shocked to find that Guanajuato was more like European cities than anything I had seen in the United States. People walk everywhere. Every evening people pour out into the streets to shop, sit in cafes, watch their children play in the parks, and listen to music. Every night that I was in Guanajuato we heard people playing music in the streets.

“I would sit in the main plaza in Guanajuato and talk with my parents and the rest of my family that lived there. At least two nights a week throughout my childhood we would either have guests at our house or we would go to someone else’s home. We would listen to Mexican music and eat Mexican food. I always thought that these evenings were simply a way for my parents to live in the past. Now I could see how my parents had tried to provide the kind of community they left behind in Mexico for our family in California. They wanted us to live like they did here in Guanajuato. Now that I had experienced it for myself I wanted to live this way myself.”

I looked around the crowded bar at O’Something or Other’s. There was a view of the parking lot out front. “Was this what you had in mind? This place charges extra for items like ‘sense of community.’ It’s probably on the menu under side items. Honestly, I don’t think that you could get farther from what you are talking about than this place. What happened? How did we go from listening to music in the park while watching our children play to sitting in a phony Irish pub trying to block out the sound of the canned hit parade?”

“Of course, this isn’t all bad, if it were the business model would fail. They do have a lot of great tequila for an Irish place, after all,” Juan waved at the row of bottles above the bar.

“There certainly is no shortage of consumer choices along this stretch of road. It’s hypnotic—hypnotic or boring. I think that part of my problem is my brain can no longer distinguish between hunger and boredom.” This seemed like a perfectly obvious statement but I had never said it out loud.

9:09 PM

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