Day of the Dead by Erik Orrantia

Author:Erik Orrantia [Orrantia, Erik]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press

Chapter Twenty

I DID long for Guanajuato and resent, at times, not being able to go there. When I had returned from Phoenix, I was sure I’d never leave home again. The summer heat, the winter cold, the backbreaking work, and the underclass status of an illegal were enough to keep me from Arizona forever, not to mention the scapegoating of the aliens for all political and economic woes. They could keep the Grand Canyon, and I would be happy enough in the humble hills and valleys back home.

San Francisco was another story. A true hodgepodge—all types of Latinos and blacks, Asians and whites, Catholics, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, men, women, manly girls, girly men, bikers, thrashers, punks, crazies, lazies, junkies, yuppies, gays, dykes, and everything in between—all within some forty square miles. I thought at times I could walk around with blue skin and three orange eyes and nobody would look twice.

I’d had a pair of clip-on skates when I was a kid, something one of my uncles found in a box of his. Within five minutes back then I learned that skates and cobblestones were a bad mix. The inline skates you gave me for my birthday my first year with you looked like futuristic gizmos compared to the clunky metal things I’d had as a child. And the broad, smooth asphalt on the main boulevard through Golden Gate Park made a better training spot than anything back home, especially on Sundays when they closed the road to vehicular traffic.

The throngs of people on all sorts of rolling devices amazed me. A hodgepodge of San Franciscans came out in shorts and stretch pants, cruising on bicycles and tricycles, various sorts of parents pushing strollers, young folks whizzing by on skateboards or unicycles, and multitudes of people on skates. We stopped at the blacktop of a basketball court where jumbo speakers blasted The Village People and the Bee Gees. Skaters flitted around, a bunch in a rolling conga line, and many individuals showing off their own personal disco moves as they spun and twisted to the beat.

I strapped on my skates, and then donned my kneepads, elbow pads, helmet, and gloves. You became my trainer as my body gave up the urge to step and replaced it with the necessary sway. I had my spills—never did figure out why they didn’t make butt pads—and after a few weeks, I was skating along with the rest of them.

At first, you held my hand to give me support. Like a child, I’d venture off on my own, try a new turn, catch a little air, and glide back to you. We went every Sunday until I became as good a skater as you, and we still held hands those days because we wanted to. I’d never have done so in Guanajuato. The skates and your hand made me feel like a free bird again, like racing down the desert highway under a starry sky at a hundred miles an hour. In San Francisco, I felt a sense of liberty that I’d never approached in Phoenix or Guanajuato.

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