An encounter with Concha

All the Memories I Never Had

Karen Dennis


The Hawk Union Building is bubbling with young enthusiasm. Students are gathered in tight clusters in every corner of the cafeteria, hovering over cardboard platters like flies, bobbing heads up and down in conversation, and spewing forth one thousand words per second.
“Everyone wants to go to Los Angeles,” Sergio begins, unloading his grocery bag across the narrow table from me.
Mi companero is aware that I am salivating at the mouth to devour the food that is emanating those luscious, spicy smells from the bag. It think that is why he is taking his time.
“Tengo hambre”, I complain, hugging my stomach. I have been waiting all afternoon.
“Just a minute,” he counters, “I still have to warm them up.”
I’m staring at his shirt. The plain whiteness of it is astounding next to his creamy cinnamon skin. From his shoulders begin two strips of solid white embroidery, melting flowers. They tumble down, down over his torso, into the symmetrical pockets at his hips and right to the end of his garment. It’s straight and boxy. It fits his frame perfectly.
He sees me staring. “You like it?” He inquires.
“Yeah I do. Where did you get it?”
“Marlen got it for me at a thrift store.”
Marlen, his most recent ex-girlfriend in a long string of beautiful, dark-haired girls, comes up in about very conversation these days.
The shirt reminds me of the thick, dazzling frocks that Charros wear on fiesta days, riding into the rodeo arena on their stocky stallions, elegant and dashing. Albeit, Charros are more colorful. But still, Sergio used to be a Charro. I’m sure that when the world does not demand so much American acquiescence, he still is.
“Los Angeles is like America to Mexicans,” he continues, “You never hear about Washington or Oregon or anything. It’s all about ‘Vamos al Norte! A Los Angeles!’ down there.”
He produces two cheap, thin plates. One is heaped with invisible tortillas, covered with a tinfoil. The other is blank-faced, expectant.
His meaty hands reach in, causing a conniption of plastic crinkles, to pull out a tiny Tupperware container of sour crème, and an old baby jar of reddish-green salsa.
“It’s dollars, man.”
“Really,” I respond.
“Oh yeah, it’s jobs, and money, and better houses.”
“You were poor in Mexico,” I wonder.
“Well, sure,” he goes on, “We were poor, but we were happy.”
He uncovers the tortillas, and the smells of chilli and chicken attack the tasteless all-too-American air.
“My mom made these at home,” he tells me, breathing deeply the prickly aromas.
And I can smell it too. I see freshly chopped onions and peppers lying raw in his mother’s Mexican kitchen. I hear the fry pan popping with hot sauce. And now, at last, the great explosion of cold flour covered panitas bursts into my ears as they hit the heat, rolling around, flipping and frying to perfection.
A silent moment passes as he smothers the tortillas in sour crème. My belly protests at the delay.
“Donde estan las mias?” I ask.
“Comida? Para ti?” He jokes.
“Por favor…” I put on my pathetic look.
“Ay, muchacha, cierto. Que impaciante.” He chuckles.
Chuckles. That would be a good nickname for him. However, everyone that knows him calls him Checko. Close enough.
He unloads two or three onto the spare plate.
“I’ll tell you what I heard most about America,” he picks up. “The life, man! White girls! Everyone has a car and all the white chicks love him. It’s true.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“Really, it’s true. Ever since I moved here…”
“Uh-huh.”
“No, really…”
“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah right Concha, like you would know!”
Laughing, he picks up both plates to go warm them and pick up knives and forks for the two of us.
I don’t remember when exactly he started calling me Concha. It’s short for Constancia, which is my name in Spanish class. Constancia means faithful and true. Concha, on the other hand, is a tortoise shell.
I follow Sergio with my eyes as he navigates the tables like a pro, a second year student. Another young Chicano is eating near the condiment island. Sergio approaches him. Slapping hands pinch my ears. Sometimes it seems to me that he knows every Mexican student on campus. His spirit simply draws people to him. Carismatico- that’s what he is.
From my table I am straining to make out their voices.
“Que pasa, hombre?”
“No mas. Comiendo. Como ‘tas?”
“Bien, bien. Sabes que…”
And on and on, just like any other students would greet each other. However, somehow it is different. To me it is beautiful.
They converse on a higher level now, rapidly and with ease, while their voices mix and intertwine with the undertones of the surrounding students. I am able to catch bits, a verb tense or a few nouns. Even so, as soon as I begin to understand the direction they are going it changes and I am lost, batting my brain back and forth, wanting to know, wanting to take part.
His friend looks over at me for a split second. I turn away, not wanting him to see my rapt interest. I don’t know what he may think of me. When I attempt to glace back again, I barely catch the uncertain look that flashes across his face. He returns to the conversation and royally avoids any further eye contact with me.
Once again, I am confronted with the horrid feeling of being the attachment that no one wants to open. I don’t want to feel like that, but I know people we meet, other Mexican’s like himself, find me a mystery. Will I understand if they talk to me? They wonder what stereotypes I believe about them. Why am I hanging around Sergio? I can see it in their eyes, the uncomfortable uncertainty of not knowing what I am thinking, not being able to read me. They have no idea how preoccupied I am of what they think of me.
Forced to walk the middle line between tradition and a changing world, Sergio is one of those people I can enjoy my cultural development with while still being able to fall back on learned ways if I need to. I see him holding tight to his family, his language and customs while doing what he can to better himself in a culture-robbed conformist society. More amazing still, there is an entire generation of such people facing challenges I can only imagine.
I turn away from listening, feeling heavy with despair at not being able to follow. ‘Behold’, I think, ‘The great masses of Columbia Basin Community College.’ The alumni move, eat and breathe in droves. But drones are what they are, all of them.
I am slightly annoyed at the monotony. Empty eyes, empty conversations. However, here I am among them, a silent observer, locked in a box of frustration.
Sergio returns, sitting down lightly in his chair. He hands me my utensils and slides my hot plate in front of me.
“Vamos orar,” he says quietly, bowing his head.
We mutually thank God for our food. The food didn’t stand a chance. They are nothing but dust in a few minutes.
“So tell me about your life in Mexico,” I demand. I am sure I sound demanding.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Something interesting for my essay.”
He’s cleaning off the last of the salsa from his plate with a piece of tortilla. Chewing and savoring, I see him mentally paging through his numerous memories that he so often refers to. His eyes become distant for a moment as he reaches out to grasp one. It must be nice to be able to relive them, to return to a world that today’s harsh reality does not spoil.
I remember once I heard him say, speaking in that low, serious voice of his, “If I ever get married, the girl, you know, she would have to understand what Mexico is in my heart.”
He has been silent for nearly a minute now. That’s okay. In the wake of his unfolding, I don’t feel the need to fill the space between us with words.
“Well,” he pauses to swallow. “You know, people were so much happier there. Everyone just did what they had to do and didn’t complain. When we were kids, my parents didn’t worry about us. We just played most of the day.”
Does he hear his strong accent emerging?
“My mom and dad worked really hard to get us over here. They wanted me to grow up with opportunity. They had to borrow from a lot of people.”
“What about English?”
“What about it?”
“How did you communicate without it?” I wonder.
“I went to school, you know. I eventually learned. A lot of kids were Mexican-American, but they were pretty awkward with me.”
“Were you ashamed?”
“Ashamed?”
“Because you couldn’t speak properly?”
“No, not ashamed,” he shakes his head loosely. “Never ashamed.”
‘Should I have been? Why did you ask that?’ he’s probably thinking. I wonder what it is exactly I was trying to say. ‘Properly’ referring to what? Is it really anyone’s right to say one language is more proper than another? I’m sorry I mentioned it.
“I remember right after we made to Los Angeles,” he begins again, “I was so excited. I was standing on this road, and it was PAVED! There wasn’t dust flying around everywhere. And I had on SHOES! They were these Batman shoes. I was like, ‘Whoa! I’m in America!”
He’s shining now and I can’t help but smile at his radiant face.
“You know it was my Uncle Chuy that got us here.”
“Yes I remember,” but I don’t mind being told again.
“He sent us a ton of money for traveling and things. He was this huge drug dealer in California.”
I’m stuffed. My mouth is still twitching form the salsa. Salsa. Sergio dances to salsa music.
“The Mexican’s were really different…so American. I mean, I consider myself to be more Chicano now. You know, like a Hispanic-American (finger quotes for emphasis and a big smile), but I was still pretty Mexican back then. We were at this transition school when I first arrived. That was before we got a real building. So, we didn’t have a cafeteria. They gave us bag lunches every day.” His twists his face into an image of disgust, “like peanut butter and jelly, dude!”
“You’d never have that before?” I inquire, trying to imagine my young life without it.
“No way! I was like, ‘Donde estan los frijoles?”
How funny.
“Hey want to hear a joke?”
“What?”
“Why can’t Mexican’s barbeque?”
“Why?”
“Because the beans fall through the grill!”
Oh, groan. I give him a pity laugh, but inside I am lighting up. When I asked him to share his thoughts about Mexico and being Mexican for a creative essay, I don’t know what I was expecting. Sitting here listening to him talk about his life was such a privilege, I would laugh at any lame joke he produced.
“What about where you lived in Mexico?”
“What about it?”
He does not respond to vague questions.
“Where did you like to do?”
“Oh well…” he pauses. “I remember there was this beach we used to love to go to. It was right at the end of this road junction thing. Here, let me show you.”
‘Sure, let’s go right now. I’m down for a road trip’, I think, laughing to myself. He begins to draw on a nearby napkin.
“The dock…right here…it was full of, like, shops and casinos and stuff. But the beach was awesome. The sun didn’t set until, like, nine-o-clock. My brothers and I would get out there and just sit. The hills were on both sides of the beach, like this. You could go up to the top and you could see all the way down to the bottom of the gulf, and all the people and stuff. We were right here,” he emphatically dots the napkin on the far left side of the beach. “We always sat right here.”
In my mind I am following him, a dark haired boy, peeking into casinos, roaming endless hills, and splashing brown toes in clear gulf water. I can almost picture him and his brothers lounging lazily, nearly naked bodies, half-deep in squishy sand, soaking the soft rays unto their wet, warm skin.
Silence reigns. I don’t dare disrupt him.
“Anyway,” he begins again, raking his fingers through his short waves, “So my dad started his own business where we first moved here. He made metal fences for cattle corrals and stuff. He welded. And my mom, she worked a lot of odd jobs...washing clothes, cooking…”
“Yes, she is a good cook,” I interrupt. I hate when I do that.
“Dude,” he continues, unfazed by my rudeness. “My brother would get out in front of our house and tie these chairs together. We had this old table too, and he would set that up. Men would come by and she would dish up food for them. She sold them lunch out there.”
“Every day?”
“Yeah, they were pickers. They picked mostly every day.”
Every day. How amazing. Even mailmen get Sunday’s and holidays off.
But I can understand why the men kept returning to his mom’s house. I am already looking forward to next Thursday when we dine again. I wonder if he will bring my favorite, corn tamales with shredded beef.
“I worked in an orchard once too, when I was sixteen. We were out there digging up holes and putting down sprinklers.”
“How long did you do it?”
“Just for the summer, but it was the hardest work I ever did. I was sweaty and tired all the time. I would come home and fall into bed just to wake up and go to work again.”
“No kidding…”
And where was I? If I do the math correctly, it was probably the year I started my cush job at Arnold’s Bakery. I was fifteen. I needed the money. Back then, running a register, stocking bread and managing the floor of a twenty by twenty bread store seemed like the hardest and most challenging job one could ever ask a teenager to do.
“Yeah, I wasn’t meant to be a picker. I had better dreams.”
“Like what?”
“Like not being a picker.”
Chuckle, chuckle.
“That summer I felt like my dad, working so much.”
“Tell me about him…” I prod.
“Well, I told you he had his own business, right.” Pause. “He would come home at night and his eyes would be burning real bad from this torch he had to use all day. So, my mom would rub this oil on them. Most nights he would just lay there for hours, just like this.”
He throws his arms out to both sides and sags in his chair. His eyes are closed as if dreaming. He springs to life again.
“For hours, dude.”
My face must give me away, because he nods as if to verify the truth.
“He was just about blind.”
“That’s awful.”
“Well, like I said, we had problems, but we were happy.”
“Still…”
He has really come back to life now.
“But I wasn’t kidding about the girls, you know? They really loved me.”
“I roll my eyes.”
“It’s true, Concha.”
The cafeteria is almost empty now. The clock strikes one.
Sergio packs away the tiny containers. I watch as he scrapes the leftovers, what little there is, into a piece of tinfoil to save. The plates are neatly stacked back into the grocery bag.
Tying the handles of the bag together, he turns to me, “So what are you going to write your essay on?”
“I don’t know.”
“I could try to get a hold of papers I did for English class. I said a whole lot more stuff in those. You remember?”
“Yes, of course.” I edited every single one of them.
“Oh, hold on, the teacher hasn’t handed those back yet.”
“It’s okay, I think I can do it.”
“Gotcha. Okay, dude. I’ll catch you later.”
We slap hands goodbye and I watch as he walks away, slinging his carryall over his shoulder and poising to throw away the garbage in one graceful motion. Is shirt shines brilliantly white where discarded sunshine touches it through the skylights. Striding towards the double doors, I notice a slight tilt in his walk, reminiscent of his gangster days.
“Hasta luego,” I call.
“Okay, hasta luego.”
And he is gone.
I could go do some homework, or even start on my essay, but both options do not appeal to me right now. So I pull on my sweater and pack up my books to go for a walk around campus. The massive brick structures rise up around me like great and imposing advocates to the American way.