Free Growing Up Ethnic in America: Contemporary Fiction About Learning to Be American by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Jennifer Gillan Page B

Saturday. I was nervous, knowing what I had to do, and the pennies kept sticking to my sweaty fingers. Finally, in exasperation, Flash Gordo’s long-nosed wife counted them herself, watching me like a hawk so I wouldn’t try to sneak in until she got to ten, and then she growled, “All right!”
    Zoom! Past the candy counter and down the aisle like I said, looking for Flash. I didn’t see him until I got right up front, my heart pounding, and started to move toward the door. That’s when this circular shadow loomed in the semi-dark, and I looked up in fright to see him standing at the edge of the stage looking at the screen. Then he turned abruptly and scowled at me as if he could read my mind. I slipped into an aisle seat and pretended I was testing it by bouncing up and down a couple of times and then sliding over to try the next one.
    I thought Flash was going to say something as he walkedin my direction. But he suddenly bobbed down and picked something off the floor—a dead rat?—when a yell came from the back of the theater. “Lupe and Carlos are doing it again! Back in the last row!”
    Flash bolted upright so quickly my mouth fell open. Before I could close it, he rushed up the aisle out of sight, toward those sex maniacs in the last row. Of all the things Flash Gordo could not tolerate, this was the worst. And every Saturday some clown would tattle on Lupe and Carlos, and Flash would rush across the theater. Only later did I learn that there never was any Lupe or Carlos. If there had been, I’m sure Los Indios would have kept very quiet and watched whatever it was they were doing back there.
    “Oh, Carlos!” someone yelled in a falsetto. “Stop that this minute!”
    I jumped out of my seat and rushed to the door to let Los Indios in. By the time Flash Gordo had shined his flashlight over and under the seats in the back, we were all across the theater at the edge of the crowd where we wouldn’t be conspicuous. Later we moved to our favorite spot in the front row, where we craned our necks to look up at the giant figures acting out their adventures.
    While the movies were fantastic—the highlight of our week—sometimes I think we had almost as much fun talking about them afterwards and acting them out. It was like much later when I went to high school; rehashing the Saturday night dance or party was sometimes better than the actual event.
    We all had our favorites and our definite point of view about Hollywood movies. We barely tolerated those cowboy movies with actors like Johnny Mack Brown and Wild Bill Elliot and Gene Autry and even Hopalong Cassidy. Gringos! we’d sniff with disdain. But we’d watch them in preference to roaming the streets, and we’d cheer for the Indiansand sometimes for the bad guys if they were swarthy and Mexican.
    They showed the Zorro movies several times each, including the serials, with one chapter each Saturday. Zorro drew mixed reviews and was the subject of endless argument. “Spanish dandy!” one would scoff. “
¿Dónde están los mejicanos?
” Over in the background hanging on to their straw sombreros and smiling fearfully as they bowed to the tax collector, I remember.
    “But at least Zorro speaks the right language.”
    Then somebody would hoot, “Yeah, Hollywood
inglés.
Look at the actors who play Zorro, Gringos every one. John Carroll. Reed Handley. Tyrone Power.
¡Mierda!
”
    That was what Zorro did to us. Better than Gene Autry but still a phony Spaniard, while all the
indios y mestizos
were bit players.
    That was no doubt the reason why our favorite was the Cisco Kid. Even the one gringo who played the role, Warner Baxter, could have passed for a Mexican. More than one kid said he looked like my old man, so I was one of those who accepted Warner Baxter. Somebody even thought that he was Mexican but had changed his name so he could get parts in Hollywood—you know how Hollywood is. But we conveniently leaped from that to cheering for the “real”