“Sorry, ésa,” Montalvo says to me. He’s wearing this baglady—looking T-shirt and boxers and I can see all the red on his skin from the Avenida. But under them scrapes he’s giving me icicle eyes to show he don’t care one way or another. “Couldn’t get nothing,” he said, then shrugs.
I knew I was in trouble when he looks at me like that, forgetting who I am. That I’m la primera. Something crawls into my belly then, sitting there cold and making me feel weak and seasick. “You didn’t find nothing because you don’t want to,” is what I say, knowing he thinks I’m just this crazy chavala who’s trying to get payback for a sorry crippled sheep. Montalvo don’t care I got Beto’s ear, one woman’s the same as the next to him. The neighborhood’s quiet with everybody still sleeping and I’m trying to make my voice mean and low, but instead it grows bigger, bending up and stretching like a howl. “You don’t want to,” I tried to say again but then I hear I’m only screaming sounds at him, crying sounds, filling up the streets and the sidewalks and the trees with my sad noise.
Those was some black bad days. I’d look in the mirror sometimes and see this white-faced llorona, with skinny bones sticking out her face and big shiny eyes, like I’m sick. I remind myself how I used to be swinging around here telling locos what to do, not looking like some old ghost. You’ve gotta be that strong chica, I’d whisper to myself, staring at what I see. You didn’t come this far to crack your head up. It don’t matter Star Girl can’t walk none, it don’t hurt you, does it? Sit tight, woman, I’d say, and try to smile. But all my talking didn’t make the bruja in the mirror run off, she just showed me her sharp bad wolf teeth.
A chica like me, she ain’t meant to be crazy. I don’t got time to be weak. I remember when I was a niña, tough as iron even then. Not the baby bandido hiding under the bed. I remember the one watching the world with her smart head and checking out what goes which way. There’s the busboys and slick suits walking in my mami’s house, there’s me standing out in the hall listening. And even when Manny was beating me down, I kept my nose above water. Remember to breathe, that’s what I do best. Breathe and keep living. So I didn’t know why I was going all loose now. It seemed like I couldn’t keep myself together no matter how hard I tried.
The only thing that made me feel strong was playing payback big. And I did it till it hurt.
“You all right, Lucía?” Chique asked me after I screamed crazy at Montalvo. I hadn’t been right in the head for a while there, shivering and talking to myself, hiding out in my house. I knew she was checking up on me. “What’s up, girl?” she said, standing over by the refri in her shiny black boots and mall-girl clothes and staring at my face like she sees something crazy there, like she sees my llorona. But she ain’t stupid. She didn’t try and touch me light on the arm, or tell me things are okay. She knew me good enough by then.
Back when Star Girl was walking, Chique knew she was always my second. I didn’t hide that I loved Star special. I’d give her the lookout jobs and made her the main picker, the big dealer. But Chique was my right hand now. She was the one doing the lookouts and keeping her ear to the ground for me just like Star Girl used to. Girl didn’t even wanna see me no more. Every day she’s not walking she just got harder and meaner, but not like before. This was the hard you get when you lose something. She’d told me that she didn’t want nothing more to do with la clika. “I paid enough, you see that,” she’d said, turning her head up at me from her chair so I see that pale mouth, her stringy hair. She didn’t even wanna get the C-4 who banged her. “It ain’t gonna make me walk now, is it?” She wheeled herself around her place, her squeakysounding chair moving over the carpet. I thought, Give Girl time, give her time. We’re gonna patch things up right.
Chique fit herself right into that empty space. She snugged herself by my side after the rumbla and acted like she’d always been my main gangster. And being a big head these days suited Chique good, I could tell that, turning my eyes from my wall and seeing her stand in my kitchen door waiting to hear what I’ve got to say. She just wanted to crawl up on top same as any other gangbanger, and with Star Girl gone she’d got this new shine in her eye. She’d permed her hair out curly and started wearing this butter-soft black leather jacket, a skin-tight skirt. Her skin glowed out like warm satin, and even though she was still pig-slop fat she was wearing it better, shifting her heavy ass back and forth down the street so you’d turn and look. The woman was even making sexy eyes at some of the vatos and acting tough with the sheep. She still had her head on straight, though. That girl could tell there was something up with me.
But she didn’t have to worry about me too hard. I’m a woman who’s always gonna keep standing strong. After all them days looking crazy at myself in the mirror, staring at my walls and my floors, I’d made up my mind. I already knew how I was gonna get my C-4. And having that plan set into me pushed up my bones, it put a shield in my hands. I was almost feeling good and scrappy again now that I knew what I was gonna do.
“So. Lucía. You all right?” Chique said again. She was staring at me patient.
“Just fine, ésa,” I told her, flashing out a grin. “You go on and get me some Garfield babies and I’ll be doing even better.”
It all comes down to Garfield, that’s where we fought our war. Garfield’s full of mainly westside Parker kids cause it’s on our side of the line but some of your C-4 babies go there too. Just walk around and look through the chain-link fence sometime. You’ll see them little niños from both sides playing recess ball and laughing on the playground, stomping the flat black asphalt and screaming down from the bars like little monkeys. They’re too young yet to know they can’t be friends, but I’m changing that. All over the school walls there’s Lobo and C-4 tags now, these big black and yellow sets tangled together and warring out over who’s the main clika. It used to be that Garfield’s nothing but a money bag for me, I’d look through the fence and only see curious-cat junior high schoolers with a little pocket change. Now Garfield looked lots different. I knew if I got them greenhorns to go with the Lobos, we’d get so big nobody could hide from me. Not even that blank-faced C-4 boy.
If you wanna take over a place, you’ve got to piss all over it. And the first thing we did is fuck with Chico’s head by crossing out all the C-4 tags and get a graffiti war started. Warming up. It was too easy, almost. We got the finest taggers here in the Lobos.
In the clikas, you got your warriors and you got your taggers. Taggers are usually third-raters cause they’re the little bow-legged stubby locos that can’t fight good. They got spray cans instead of pistols and go on their midnight tagging missions like they’re ninjas. A Lobo tagger will paint our set up on the buildings, on the storefronts, on the stop signs, so that everybody knows who we are. You’ve seen it. ECHO PARK! in thick black blocky letters ten feet high blasting on down from the freeway signs. Our taggers have got their names painted proud all over town, and that’s their black zebra stripes crossing out the lemon yellow C-4 tags on the walls. Around here, crossing out a homeboy’s set is serious business. If a gangster walks by and sees your big old black line drawn through his name, he’s gonna start hunting for you. He has to do something or else he loses face. Getting crossed out means somebody’s slamming on your manhood. And rebels think that if they don’t got their respect, they don’t got nothing else either.