But the city was different. Smog and concrete. Morning light spilling between stone squeezes, landing on the worn hoods of Model Ts resting on Curtis Street. In the evenings, the sun slipped behind the mountains, sinking away with long tentacles of light reaching over the brickwork city for another chance at brilliance. Maria Josie insisted Diego and Luz must learn the map, as she called it, and she showed them around first on foot and later by streetcar. She wore good walking shoes, and dressed herself and the children in many layers. It tends to heat up, she had said, another moment, it might hail. The siblings learned to be cautious. It was dangerous to stroll through mostly Anglo neighborhoods, their streetcar routes equally unsafe. There were Klan picnics, car races, cross burnings on the edge of the foothills, flames like tongues licking the canyon walls, hatred reaching into the stars.
Luz and Diego were once walking downtown when a man yelled, “Go back to your own country!” and spat at them from a truck window. They were supposed to be learning the map. It was the first time Maria Josie had sent them off alone. Luz had cried, wiping the stranger’s hot phlegm from her tiny face. Diego cursed, held up both arms. But he lowered them cautiously and told Luz he finally recognized where they were. He pulled his little sister by the sleeve of her oversized dress into the market, a place called Tikas, a ringing of bells.
“What happened to the little one?” a voice called, and Luz saw it was the older boy, David, the shopkeeper’s son, watchful behind the counter.
Diego pointed to Luz’s wet cheek and asked if she could please use the sink. She was only eight years old, and everything in the market’s storeroom was unlike anything Luz had ever seen before. Shelves of canned food, sacks of flour, heaps of wooden crates. They must be rich, she thought, scrubbing her face nearly raw with a clean white towel.
“Where’d it happen?” David was asking when Luz returned.
She pointed to the front door.
“What color was the truck?” David said, stepping down from the counter. He was carrying a baseball bat. He gently took Luz’s left hand and walked her to the door, opening it with a sweeping gesture. “Which direction?”
Luz shook her head. She was done crying now. Embarrassed, she held the towel to her face, trying to hide herself from David. “I don’t know any directions yet. We got lost today. We’re trying to learn the map.”
David softly pulled the towel away from Luz’s face. He smiled when she looked at him. He wasn’t a grown-up, but he wasn’t a child and he was tall and slim-shouldered, a warmth in his gaze. He motioned down the wide avenue, between the brick buildings and wire-filled sky. “See that?” he said. “Those are the mountains. They’ll always be west.”
Luz looked to the horizon, allowing the line of sunlight to bathe her eyes.
“And over there,” he said, “it’s flat. That’s the prairie land. East.” David pointed to the mountains once more. “Which direction?”
“West,” said Luz.
David gestured right.
“East,” said Luz.
“Good work,” he said. “Now say, This is my city!”
Luz didn’t say anything, and David nudged her to go on.
“This is my city,” she said quietly.
“This,” David spoke louder, “is my city!”
Luz giggled before she sucked in another breath. “This is my city!”
“All right,” said David. “Now once more like you mean it.”
“THIS IS MY CITY!” they yelled together until their voices boomed, high and arching, rattling streetcar cables and smoggy windows, soaring between stone tenements and factory tufts. This, she repeated, is ours.
* * *
—
The courthouse sat on a sloping grid of patchwork grass pocked with snow. Luz followed David as he climbed the stone steps in his black suit and glistening shoes, a briefcase at his side. It was a Wednesday morning. The sun shined over his shoulders, absorbed into his curly hair. The majestic building of many floors curved inward as if embracing the city. The windows were blank, reflective, the doors massive and brass. David turned around as they reached the walkway’s peak.
“This is a hearing,” he said, outside the front doors. “For the Ruiz case. I’ll normally go to court alone, but sometimes I’ll ask you along. This is to show you how things work. Should be quick.”
Luz said she understood and tried to ignore the gnawing feeling of nervousness inside her stomach. She had never been in a courtroom before, though Diego had once been arrested for loitering when he was doing nothing more than charming snakes across from the train station. He’d spent the weekend in jail and was later made to pay a fine by a surly old judge who looked upon him with disdain from behind tiny circular glasses. It was bullshit, Diego had told Luz. Never enter the courts, he had said, if you can avoid it.
The revolving brass doors fanned Luz and David until they landed in an impressive marble hallway flush with morning. There were Anglo women in red lipstick, their hair held to their scalps with pins, folders in their arms, their feet sounding with the tap dance of work. David said hello to a man dressed like himself in the same black suit and shiny shoes. They walked deeper into the hallway, a tunnel of cream, stone benches, and unused water fountains. On the walls, murals depicted covered wagons, miners panning for gold, an abundance of white men coming to the land. The doors were wood-framed with frosted glass, words printed in black lettering, CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS, COUNTY CLERK. David guided Luz with his hand at her hip until they reached the doors of COURTROOM 108.
“Take a seat,” he whispered, pointing to what looked to Luz like a church pew.
The courtroom was smaller than Luz had anticipated, nearly empty, an American flag, a high bench with two smaller desks before it, one on either side, everything made of wood and stone. There was an officer that David had explained was called a bailiff, a woman perched over a typewriter, a court reporter, and another attorney, a man with white hair and speckles of dandruff across the shoulders of his thick woolen suit. He worked for the city, David had mentioned on their walk over, a real dinosaur.
“All rise,” said the bailiff. “The Second Judicial District Court for the City and County of Denver is now in session, the Honorable Judge Roberts presiding.”
Luz watched as the ancient judge appeared from behind a wood panel as if emerging from a secret passage, stepping quickly in a black robe.
“Thank you,” he said, taking his seat above them. “Please be seated. This record is being made for Ruiz versus Carmichael and the City and County of Denver. Present for the proceeding is Attorney Tikas on behalf of plaintiff Celia Ruiz and Attorney Johnston on behalf of defendant Officer Mitchell Carmichael and the City and County of Denver.”
Luz listened intently but found it difficult to follow the judge’s words. She had the familiar sensation of being in church, half expecting a priest and altar boys to appear with incense and the Eucharist at any moment. The proceedings in the frigid courtroom felt like a ritual, a ceremony Luz didn’t recognize, but she was convinced that she could learn. She sat a little higher, leaned forward on the bench. The judge first called upon the city attorney, who stood and cleared his throat with a wet hacking sound. He was asking for something to be dismissed, a motion he called it.