NO GOOKS
SPICS
NIGGERS
Allowed
Or
Kikes, Catholics, Communists
“I can’t believe I learned to read,” Lizette said, ripping the notice from the bark. “So I could read bullshit like this.” She balled the paper, anger like flames in her hands.
“Let’s go,” said Luz, looking over her shoulder, searching for people in the trees. “Now.”
They left behind the lavish houses, the manicured lawns, that hateful bark. At the edge of Colfax, the city was an open vein. The hobbled tents of vagrants were pitched under faded awnings, policemen rode on horseback, and there were sounds of hollow hooves. A woman screamed from an open window. Somewhere glass shattered. A baby cried. Soaring pigeons caught sunlight, their oil-slick wings illuminated in a great flash. The city had a pace, a feeling. It seemed Luz could dive into the roadways, drown in the immensity of people and machines. In the distance, the Rocky Mountains embraced the skyline, that rift where the rivers decided to run west into the Pacific or downward and out into that faraway gulf. La Divisoria, the separation of it all, a continent split in two.
After some time, when the park and its bodies were far behind, Lizette said, “Sorry we went that way.”
THREE
The Greeks
“There’s been another killing,” said Papa Tikas.
Luz was with Maria Josie in the Tikas Market, a tightly packed brick row where the Mexican, Colored, and Greek neighborhoods met. Papa Tikas sold the freshest meat and vegetables in Denver, unloading vibrant melons and apples and cuts of lamb each morning directly from the butchers’ and farmers’ trucks. Luz was in the bulk aisle beside the register, scooping pinto beans from wooden barrels into paper sacks. It was Thursday afternoon, and she wore her hair pinned away from her face. The market was calm, the selection thinned from an early morning rush.
“That same cop as last time?” said an older man in a Greek accent. “Business as usual for them.”
“It might be, but my son is a determined lawyer.” The ornate register dinged, and Papa Tikas handed the man his change. They were both nicely dressed, rings on their fingers, thick gold watches on their wrists. “He’ll make it all the way to district attorney someday.”
“A socialist as the DA. Can you imagine?”
Papa Tikas laughed. “Another way is possible. It wasn’t so long ago—”
At the nape of her neck, Luz felt a callused hand. “Don’t eavesdrop,” said Maria Josie, making her way toward the dairy aisle.
Luz told her auntie that she wasn’t, and rolled her eyes. She slipped past a group of viejos playing dominoes over a folding table in the foyer. The clip clap of their ivory pieces merged with the crackling sounds of the radio. “In the early spring,” President Roosevelt’s assured voice rang out, “there were actually and proportionally more people out of work in this country than in any other nation in the world…Our troubles will not be over tomorrow, but we are on our way.” Whenever Luz heard the president’s announcements on the radio she imagined him tall, gray-eyed, grandfatherly with his cane and leg braces. Since he had taken office, people seemed more hopeful about finding work. But even with jobs, no matter how much Luz or Maria Josie or even Diego worked, they were still poor, as if their position in life had been permanently decided generations before.
“What about pork chops?” Luz called across the store.
Maria Josie stood on the checkered floor, studying her grocery list. After some time, she slid the paper back into her trouser pocket. Her cropped hair stayed against her head as she shook her head no. “Not this week, jita.”
Luz nodded in annoyed acceptance. She was hungry and felt that way often. A breeze rushed the market aisles, stirring smells of garlic and lemon and clove. Along the walls were religious icons, gold-leafed and glinting, a dragon slayed by Saint George, a saint Luz always mistook for San Miguel. They must be the same, or at the very least, cousins.
“How we doing on rice?” Maria Josie asked loudly.
Luz said they were fine, and didn’t mention that Lizette had been giving her free rice from Alfonso, who had been stealing it from work.
Maria Josie was scanning shelves, clearly running calculations in her mind, cutting a penny here, a nickel there. In her midthirties, she had a young face and black hair stringed gray along the temples. She often wore men’s clothing and was sometimes mistaken for one by strangers, strangers who yelled names at Maria Josie, names Luz was never to repeat. Maria Josie preferred the company of women, though she didn’t state this out loud. Sometimes she stayed the night someplace else, and every once in a while, she’d bring a woman friend back to Hornet Moon, where they’d smoke cigarettes and drink tequila in the kitchen until dawn. More than once, Luz remembered walking the shared hallway with a lit candle, glimpsing her auntie embracing a woman near the tenement stairs, her elegant hand rushing long hair.
“My light.” It was Papa Tikas from behind the counter. “Why do you have the strained face of a scholar?”
“Hi, Papa Tikas,” Luz said with a smile.
“You’re a beauty,” he said, waving his arms to the tin ceiling. “But you know what else you are, Luz? You’re smart. What’re you thinking of?” Papa Tikas worked his hands through his canvas apron, his white eyebrows lifting.
No one besides Papa Tikas ever asked Luz about her thoughts, and the question made her feel warmth, a worthiness. “My auntie,” she said, motioning at Maria Josie, who walked toward the register with a meager basket.
“Ah,” he said, “who could ever forget the prodigious Maria Josefina.”
Maria Josie waved her left hand in the air, as if to say, Nonsense. She took some bananas from Luz’s basket, directing her to put the rest of her groceries back.
Papa Tikas weighed the fruit and flour, speaking to Maria Josie about the weather, the stray cat he had found sleeping in the milk crates behind the shop, his bad case of ar-ther-rite-us.
“You gotta put clove oil on your joints,” Maria Josie told him.
Papa Tikas nodded with his whole body. It was so much easier, he claimed, to complain about problems than do something about it. “The gift of gab,” he said, looking at Maria Josie with precision. He took her change and handed over three paper sacks. “Looking forward to the party?”
Maria Josie chuckled, her breasts lifting as one long shelf. “Oh, a dance is for young people. But how proud you must be that David has his own office now.”
Papa Tikas’s only son, David, had just opened his own law practice after working for a large firm for several years. He had gone east and graduated from Columbia Law School, bringing back mysterious seashells, potent Chinese herbs, and several lanky, unadorned Anglo girlfriends. Luz was only a child when he first left, but whenever he was home for break, she caught herself gazing at him in the store—his body was as sculpted as an athlete’s, and his eyelashes were full, like clumps of dust. Once, around Christmastime, Luz watched David shake out his curly brown hair after walking in from the snow. Flecks of water ran down his face and jacket, beading the skin around his neck. Luz was fifteen then and wanted nothing more than to run her tongue along his Adam’s apple. She had never wanted something like that, and it startled her that she could.