My Mother joins a gang

Tattooed men, bouncing lowriders, and lots of carrot cake

The call came in at the same time as previous nights with the same opening question: “have you visited Madre, yet?”

“No,” I replied. “Not since last time.”

Things came up, you see; college, exams, part-time job, the girlfriend, a full-time job to keep the girlfriend, and then the imminent breakup. Episode after episode with no space in between to keep true to the promises of “yes, I’ll go over for the weekend” and “I’ll call you again tomorrow afternoon.”

“I did and they’re still there,” the voice on the other end of the telephone said.

“And I’m sure they won’t leave any time soon,” I said.

“Well, you’re going to have to go there. Make a presence. I don’t like them being around her.”

“Me neither, but…” I thought of the pending assignments due this week, of how I wanted to get them done either tonight or tomorrow to have the weekend for myself. I might go to the beach, Santa Monica or Santa Cruz or Santa Whatever, feel the salty breeze against my skin, sand between my toes, and forget about my student loans. I had told Madre I was too busy this weekend. “Fine, I’ll go.”

I picked my wardrobe out before bed. I dusted off my heavy duty boots that gave me an extra inch in height and dug up a thick jacket from a winter box that made me look bulkier. ‘Try to look menacing,’ my sister told me on one of the many phone calls before.

She didn’t call me as much. Not before last month when we decided to visit our Madre for her birthday, after not having seen her for many months, to find that she was in good company. On that day, before we could ring the doorbell, a man unrecognizable to us opens the door.

“Who the hell are you?” the man says. He’s shaved head with black shades sitting on top of it. Tattoos cover his arms and chest like a cross sketch, his white tank not able to cover the images of the Katrina skeleton and the Virgin Mary. He wears slacks and outdoors slippers and smells of cigarettes and body spray.

“Is… is this Elena Rodriguez’s house…?” my sister asks nervously. She had almost dropped the cheap carrot cake we had bought for Madre at first sight of him.

“Oh, shit! You must be the cachorros. Yo, L! The little puppy dogs showed up!” the cholo says, ushering us in our mother’s home.

More men sat at the table. They looked as if they were part of a club for they all had the same appearance: shaved heads, tattooed arms, baggy slacks, and slippers. Chatter, laughter, and the smell of good food filled the small house. Women walked around with large trays of food in one hand and beer bottled wedged between fingers in the other. Through the slide glass doors of the backyard we could see several other men, women, and children huddled around a barbecue. We didn’t know anyone here.

“I’ll be damned,” I said to my sister. “This is a party.”

“Who these foos?” one of the shaved ones said once he spotted us which didn’t take them long. We stood out like Christians in Vegas.

“Those — “ a voice cuts through the calamity, “are my children.”

**********************************************

My Madre is part of a gang, or so Gato had joked about at her birthday party. “She takes care of us, and we take care of her,” he said right before he opened a beer bottle with his teeth and handed it to me.

We met up with her and hugged. “Here’s a cake, Madre. Carrot cake is your favorite, right?” my sister says.

“Oh, it’s one of my favorites. You shouldn’t have.” Madre opens the fridge and full of trays of tres leches cake, chocolate cake, two of baked brownies, a mosaic gelato, and a bigger and more decorative carrot cake.

“This is my oldest. She is a paralegal and lives downtown. Not too far from here but enough to not make the drive over here since it’s been so long since we’ve last seen each other.”

My sister blemishes and nods courteously to the multitude staring her down. “Oh, it hasn’t been that long, Mother.”

“My last birthday. Exactly one year.”

“Ok, it has been.”

“And my son is in school. He’s doing his Master’s degree. He has a scholarship!”

“That’s some fancy-ass shit,” Gato says. “How much you getting paid?”

“I’m not,” I said.

“So what can you do with that Masters?”

“Maybe become a writer?”

“And that pays good?”

“No.”

“Hmmm. I don’t get it. So why are you still in school.”

“I don’t get it either.”

I gently pull my mother away from the main table as I also courteously nod and moonwalk back. The loud Chicano rap music playing both inside and out doesn’t let me whisper.

“Madre, who the hell are all these people?”

“The neighbors,” she puts it casually.

“Are you ok? Do you want me to call the police?” She is taken aback by this.

“Marco! Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Ridiculous? Madre, the men around the barbecue are literally smoking weed right now.”

“Would you prefer they take opioids instead like the Johnsons? Or vape like their kids?”

“How do you know all of them?” I ask.

“Gato’s son comes her to play on your playbox, or whatever it’s called.”

“Gato? The one smashing beer cans with his chin?”

“He’s such a good boy. He’s still struggling to find a job. You know mijo, it’s harder if you just got out of prison. And I said I could help him look over Gatito. And then Gatito’s friends started to come over and play and not too long after their whole families.”

Throughout that whole party, we felt like strangers. Too many inside jokes and stories that fake smiling became an exhausting habit. What was planned to be a simple drop by, eat dinner and dash before the dawn ended up being a neighborhood bash. More people came as the Sun went down and the Moon took its place. Madre was astonished by the amount of lowriders parked outside, surrounding our Sentra, each with such unique character that you thought they’d give a similar dose of detail to their wardrobe. That’s just me being bitter.

Music blasted from one of the lowriders and they all coordinated in an idle dance. Up and down. Up and down. Up, nearly down, one front tire still up, and then down. Karaoke was put up in the backyard and that lasted until midnight. The party was then taken the streets where people stood around their riders.

We had left by then. I’m sure no one had noticed our departure, maybe not even our mother who was in the middle of singing a Vicente Fernandez song.

I got home and lay on my bed. The memories of tonight’s events still bubbled up and around in my head like a percolator. I waited until it settled. It didn’t.

That was then and now I prepped to go back. But didn’t. I dialed my sister.

“I’m not going,” I said. “We should go when we remember we have a Mother.”

The image of the house chaotically alive bounced around like the lowriders parked on her lawn. Her, surrounded by those who were there for her.

“She’s in good company,” I said.