What We Are (5 page)

Papa Mac drones on and the mind keeps wandering.

I sometimes wonder about strength in diversity. What I see around me today seems like new characters, same story. Power seizure, untapped discord. Too much disparate history and counterculture in the soup. It's all diluted, cheap base. No one from Mountain View, California, cares a lick about anyone from Lansing, Michigan, and vice versa. Hell: no one from Mountain View cares about anyone in Sunnyvale, its sister city two doors down.

It's not a matter of proximity; it's a matter of commonality, of being able to say that you understand what the fella to the left of you is
thinking, somewhat. Of uniting under a story line. See what happens when you drop Davy Crockett into a conversation at Starbucks knocking back a mocha latte. Or, if you're a fifteenth generation American and therefore live somewhere in New England, try bragging at the next cocktail party that your kid's banished ancestors crashed at Plymouth Rock. They'll ask you, if they ask you anything, “Was that like Woodstock?” I'm more diverse than most, but it's hard keeping up with progress. Nowadays we Americanos need a working definition of the Khmer Rouge, a layman's understanding of the Hutus and Tutsis, and a steam-pressed kimono wrapped around the torso before borrowing a tool from the neighbor.

Just this month at a 7-Eleven on University and the Alameda I saw a fistfight in the parking lot between an El Salvadoreño and a Vietnamese patron over the last soggy donut under the yellow light of the heating lamp. The bearded, turbaned, hairy-armed Punjabi cashier whom I liked and was of course named Singh was shouting into the phone, “Jay-lee donut! Jay-lee donut!”

All the morning business people with their tanned crimson oiled heads and dollar-sign eyeballs and manicured nails and pearly teeth of bleach and Star Trek headpieces extending from ear to mouth jumped into their sloped aerodynamic cars that were silver as barracuda scales and left before having to bear witness. Before having to lose time. No one cared. I sat down on the spray-painted curb by a pay phone that probably still doesn't work, and watched. I hoped for knives, chains, guns. Cultural and maternal insults. Then I could step in between the two men when it counted, or mold a tourniquet for the wounded, have true utility for just a moment, feel real purpose.

Two good blows, a straight right from the lanky Vietnamese and a hook by the squat El Salvadoreño, landed dull, solid. It was a classic fight in framework, reach, power, a free ticket for a poor man's Ali–Frazier IV: the El Salvadoreño stalking and swinging for the ribs, the Vietnamese backstepping and keeping him at bay with the jab.
These two wouldn't quit, you knew it the minute they took to the lot; they had that old world determination seared by trying times. They had good chins, not because of some physiological attribute but because they'd been beaten by life, somewhere out there in the jungle, and weren't about to take the beatdown again. It was more than the fist connecting to the socket of the eye, it was history, faith in one's story; it was the future, the right to a new story.

Twenty-five seconds in, I'd say it was even. Hook, jab, body blow. A few wayward immigrants—Hispanic, Southeast Asian, African—stayed behind but fled when they heard the sirens. It looked like the Sharks and the Jets scattering over the walls, under the fences.

They had no clue where they were going, but they knew where they were at. By now, our 230th year, hyperintegrated America produced bad comedy at its best, B-movie material. Foolhardy emotion in the Silicon Valley, all over deep-fried, jelly-filled, sugarcoated American cuisine.

The police came but both men were already gone. Everyone but me and Singh, who had a good reason to be there. The cop asked me if I had any valuable information. “Yes,” I said. “The terms of the Treaty of Versailles can be seen as the exact catalyst for World War Two.”

He said with disgust, “Frenchman, eh?”

I shrugged, not seeing the difference in whether it was true or not.

Hooking his thumbs in his utility belt, he said, “I've been boycotting you assholes for nineteen months now. Ever since you people allied yourselves with Saddam. Won't let the wife visit Paris, see that Eiffel Tower. Stocked up on wine from the Napa Valley only. No champagne, no bubbly. Not on my watch. We buy and we drink American.”

“That's right,” I said. “We oughta go back to speaking the Olde English before those damned Normans arrived back in 1066.”

“Yeah.”

“Rename our kids Hrothgar and eat our mutton without mustard.”

He was American and spoke a mongrel form of English, but he'd never read the first official tale in the language. Too bad. I got the sense that this one would have enjoyed the conquering exploits of Beowulf, precursor to the Schwarzenegger/Stallone epic hero.

“I've got the kids saying ‘a burger with the works and freedom fries.'”

It took me a second before I figured out the culinary twist. “You mean french fries?”

“Freedom fries.”

He didn't believe that I was a believer. He was, after all, an officer of the law: sharp-eyed, trained, a human retriever of men. And then also, for the first time in some time, I was laughing. He had a tan line over the bridge of the nosebone that he'd shaven, his Latin eyebrows so bush thick it looked like padding. His badge read
LAFAYETTE
, a strong Anglo surname.

Papa Mac's done. My standing daydream does not discourage me. When there's someone up there I don't want to hear, I can peacefully tune out.

The lady priest from the Unitarian church takes the mic like a rock star, leans in and smiles, her teeth the grimy yellow of day-old chicken skin.

“
¡Sí se puto!
” she screeches. A few people laugh at her error, but most are polite. She shouts, “
¡Bah La Migra!
I love you people!” and that's it. I look around. They're as bewildered as me, some don't even know what she said.

A child beside me corrects her: “
Baja La Migra
.” Down with Immigration and Naturalization Services.

She hops off the front side of the stage into the crowd, and they give her plenty of room to land.

It's the brotha's turn, the pastor from Grace Baptist Church, the biggest holy roller denomination in the Bay. He's got a great voice,
but he's using it on the wrong crowd. I can clearly see something he's missed: dropped cowboy hats, weight shifting from one foot to the other.

“And we must remember, my brothers, about the reparations owed to us and kept from us. We must never forget the profiteering that went on in our names because we didn't claim what's ours... .”

He's too loud for their liking, too pushy. This is a problem of style, not substance.

A hearty struggle coming to a theater near you: Black Power vs.
Sí, se puede
.

Look out, dog.
Mirale, ese
.

The brotha pastor puts a Tommie Smith fist up in the air.
Please please please don't shout Black Power
, I think.
Not here, baby
. Instead he gives us “Peace.
¡Baja La Migra!
”

Scattered applause. Not really sure if this is an ally. Before anything can be decided, the Sikh takes the stage. He's cool, and I admire his spirit and guts, but no one gets a word he's saying. At one point or another, everyone is lost in translation in America.

I've always been caught in the middle of racial noise, factions trying to claim me. My freshman year in college, the head coach of our football team, a soft Irishman named Patrick O'Malley, didn't have the nuts to confront the brothas who'd decided to occupy the right bottom of the team photograph. Jersey number and height went right out the door. A few of the white guys, mostly linemen, were mad. I heard one of them say, “Are they clumping up by tribe?” Me, the half-breed Samoan, cool with both sides, stuck right there in the middle of the shot. There it was, the return of segregation, 1999 voluntary flouting of Brown vs. Board of Education, this on the West Coast, this in the Silicon Valley, right into the new millennium we go.

It feels sort of natural to observe life in neutrality: detached, cool, uncommitted. Nothing required of me, really, but to fill space, absorb an exotic dance, a foreign film. Whatever route my life takes
from here seems fair in that it will happen; whatever I have to say about it is inconsequential, even my view of it won't last. How can it? There are six billion other bodies out there squeezing for space. But I, an American of this new century, am under the impression that no position is worth my life. Now I wonder if my life is worth nothing because I have no position.

The Sikh seems to be here out of confusion. Out of accepting a deal without quite knowing the terms, not knowing what he signed onto. He walks back to the rear of the stage, gets down on his knees. There's a microphone setup the height of a midget. He recites a Sikh prayer, though no one here can confirm that it's a prayer. Maybe it's a saying you share before dinner or a toast to camaraderie before battle, an anecdote about the dirt god.

The audience grows restless and fidgety, tuning out on this opera. I hear the Azteca drums starting up again. What pricks: right in the middle of the guy's tribute to their cause. The audience shifts and stands on toes to get a peek above the neighbor's shoulder. The drums grow louder.

The circle of Azteca dancers press toward the stage in ancient chant. Sounds like a powwow. They're shirtless, barefoot, brown-skinned in skimpy leather waistcloths, peacock headdresses higher than an NBA center. The feathers sway in the wind, splashes of deep blue and bright green, fast streaks of yellow, out-of-control spirals of red. They're dancing in circles, kicking out their legs, circle, kick. I get on my toes and see their feet: anklets of hay that look almost Polynesian.

Everyone seems to dig this dance. Several men whistle through their teeth, another dozen make barn animal noises. I bounce on my heels, feeling bad for the Sikh.

“
¡Orale!
”

Testosterone levels rising, racial pride in the air, energy levels up, a wisp of anger's scent, when I see her at about forty yards. Pushing
her way through the crowd, separating parents with infants hoisted on their shoulders. The time to be reverential is over.

A couple of people point in my general direction, and to keep the hope of peace up, I look around me and find nothing out of the ordinary. Paisas, grass, the creek.

Then several eyes lock on me, almost like it's in me, whatever they're looking for. Pointing, nodding. A little bit of space opens up and I don't have to ask who's coming. That I didn't leave the place earlier says more about me than about them. The heroes of the ancient tales went down with the ship to save the women and kids and the old folks. I'll go down with the damned thing just to see what happens.

She emerges from the brown crowd, very white but very confident, fingering me, shouting, “That's him! Right there! He's the one!”

I don't know what she's told them. Maybe that I dragged her into an abandoned alleyway and accosted her, as I want to do now—
a tiny slap, please, one little pop
—or maybe that I flashed her my jimmy on the bus ride over. Maybe she told them that I said, “Mutherfuck chorizo, Acapulco, the state of Oaxaca, and Che Guevara.” That seems more likely. The men around her are mad. They don't care about gender parity or even her directly, she's just the white conduit with tits.

I say, “What's up?”

She's hysterical now, screaming as if a life has been lost, “He's the one! He's the one!”

I see the cops at the taco stand drop their plates and start separating the crowd, moving into it. But they're too far off: this thing is about to blow up.

One of the paisas squeezes through the crowd and stops a yard in front of me. I've got him by five inches and forty pounds. He's got me by
La Gente. De la Migra
.

He says, “
¿Que paso, ese?
”

I can answer him in Spanish, but that would be a concession. I recognize the guy and his mustache from somewhere. His eyes are superior and bold, as if he too knows me. I don't like it, the familiarity between us.

I say, “Nothing much, dude,” trying to sound as white as possible, Southern California, surferish, orange skin and bleached hair, eyebrow piercing, right off Hermosa Beach. Some of these cats think I'm Hispanic, and I want to remove that possibility fast. Not because I don't care for their race or would be embarrassed to be a part of it—
they're beautiful people, they're beautiful!
—but because fuck them, fuck these people. Most cats right about now would have it over with and shout, “
¡Sí, se puede! Sí, se puede!
” But a part of me doesn't like that these paisas know Americans are weak, will back down to danger.

What do they know about me, anyway?

I say, “What's up with you, dude?”

The paisa's looking over my shoulder with stealth. Someone's moving closer to my right. No drums now, the crowd is hushed. Amazing how the opiate of potential violence can make the masses go quiet. It's like one little peep could interfere with the rushing momentum toward death. I tilt my head to the left and the same thing's coming from that side.

Just like that, I'm shoved from behind and falling forward, right as I think,
Swing swing swing at the fucker
, and I do, connecting with the left eye in front of me. I know I got him clean because he's falling to his back, me falling too, atop him. I'm up on my hands at once and rip two shots off on his head and before I can let loose another I'm getting struck from the side the rear the ribs and I'm floating through the force of the blows until I reach out for the neck and choke the paisa beneath me whom the brain in its craziness has actually—
can you believe this?
—identified....

Poom poom poom poom poom—jingle jingle
.