Sitting on the desk my father built into the picture window, Luz and I waited for the Disneyland fireworks to explode in the distance like we had done every summer for the past five years. From the second story of my bedroom we had a perfect view. The smog striated the July sky a thousand shades of orange and pink before drawing its night curtain. Waiting for the next show to begin, we watched rats scurry up the tree in my backyard to steal walnuts. While the rats got their dinner, I opened a little box record player that folded neatly into a suitcase. With one song per side, a single record just fit inside when you closed the lid. I struggled with the adapter, flattening the record and the adapter between my palms so it was even on both sides. Once it was secure, I gently laid the record over the spindle holding it by the edges.
Luz was toying some extra adapters lying on the desk while I got the record in place, flicking them like tiddlywinks. She stopped and examined one more closely. The yellow disc, with three notches cut out of the sides, resembled a windmill. “Why do they make these things anyways?” she asked. “Why don’t they just make the holes in the record smaller so they fit on the player in the first place? Like LPs.”
Shrugging, I said. “I dunno? Never thought about it before.” I lowered the needle in place. Barbara Streisand began singing to us about people who need people are the luckiest people in the world. Luz and I sang along, mimicking the lyrics like a broken record.
At nine o’ five, the rats disappeared into the night as Disneyland pulled back the night curtain revealing brilliant purples, blues and greens making my backyard center stage, exploding color on top of color until our eyes blurred.
“Ooh!! Aah!! Look at that one! It looks like a waterfall. I like that one best! Yeah, that’s my favorite, too!” As quickly as it came alive, the torpid sky fell dead again while wispy ghost fireworks drifted aimlessly before disappearing into the heavens. The show was over until tomorrow. Luz and I climbed off the desk and I walked her home.
Disneyland. The happiest place on earth looms imminently a few miles north from the house where I grew up. My house isn’t there anymore. It’s been bulldozed into oblivion by eminent domain. You know, when the government takes someone’s property for the better good of the community, for the sake of moving things forward. And now my house is nothing more than a parking lot. And all that’s left is the walnut tree from my backyard where the rats stole their dinner, its roots lifting the blacktop cracking and raising it up like the Smog Monster is going to break through any minute. I’m standing there right now under my old walnut tree looking across the street at Luz’s house, even though Luz has disappeared into the night like the fireworks. It’s a cute little house. And unlike my house, and my friend who used to live there, it’s still here.
The first time I went to Disneyland was for my seventh birthday. Mom said I could invite a friend.
“I wanna take Luz.”
Luzelena lived on the other side of the street. Her house had twisted wrought iron spears covering their windows that her papi brought up from Tijuana in his pick up truck. She had a fancy screen door that was always locked and Luz wore a key to that door around her neck on a shoestring. We never locked our front door. When Luzelena spoke to her mama and papi, I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Dad said that’s because they’re wetbacks. Her house smelled like dinner at lunchtime. I ate tongue at her house once. Her mama cooked it with tomatoes and onions and potatoes. It tasted like pot roast. My lunch smelled like canned tuna fish and potato chips.
I heard Mom tell Dad once that Luzelena’s skin smelled like lard. All I could smell was the sun from Luz’s clothes where her mama hung their laundry and the steam from the iron. Luz’s house was littered with huge baskets of ironing that people dropped off everyday. Mrs. Chavez turned the wrinkled clothes into hangars of crisp, new garments that draped every doorway of their house. Freshly cooked shirts would appear like magic from the wrinkled laundry baskets. Mrs. Chavez sprinkled something that came from a Bubble-Up bottle with a dented cap to help tame the unruly creases. With a heavy iron with a long black cord that coiled upward and hissed like a snake, she pressed until each piece would submit under her heavy arm. Clouds of steam would escape from the bottom of the iron each time Esperanza Chavez pushed into the piece she was working on. Her feet, splayed and flattened on the bottom, from the pressure of standing all day resembled two little irons themselves. Spilling out of the elastic straps that fastened her sandals, it pained me to watch her waddle down the hall on her tiny feet and strain to hook the hangar of a newly ironed shirt over the doorway using an unbent wire hangar to help her. I knew that she’d repeat that a hundred times more that day and every day except Sunday.
All that ironing made the inside of Luz’s house hot and sweaty like a jungle in the summer. The best place for us to play was under the shade of an old magnolia tree in her front yard. Luz and I would dig in the cool dirt next to her father’s cars that were parked in the yard, making villages among the roots of the tree. Occasionally we’d feel the mist from the neighbor’s sprinklers and we’d lift our faces and catch some of the spray with our spoons to make mud.
At certain times of the day, the sun cast a shadow on the trunk of the tree and Luz told me she could see an image of the Virgin Guadalupe. “Don’t you see it? There’s her shawl covering her head…” Luz pointed to the shadows and light. “…her hands folded in a prayer, her long gown…see? It’s her! It’s a milagro!” I didn’t know what the Virgin Guadalupe looked like, so I’d follow Luz’s hand in the air as she traced the shadow on the trunk of the tree and tried to imagine what the Virgin looked like. I wanted to believe in her, but all I really saw were some leaves fluttering against the bark. And I didn’t know what a milagro was, but it sounded like a good thing, so I squinted my eyes and said, “Yes, Luz. I see it.”
When I asked Mom about taking Luz to Disneyland, she explained, “Barbie, Luz is just… a playmate. Not the kind of friend you take to Disneyland. How about if we take your cousin Cindy instead since her birthday’s next week?”
A gift had arrived for me by mail earlier that day. It was a dress from my Aunt Ruth. She always sent me something awfully nice for my birthday. I wanted to wear it with my patent leather dress shoes to Disneyland. Mom wanted me to wear my black and white saddle shoes instead. But they didn’t look cute with the party dress I wanted to wear. Mom didn’t want me to wear the dress either. She said I would boil in it. She’d laid out a yellow one piece thing she’d made on her sewing machine called a sun suit. It was babyish. We argued. I won. It was my birthday.
I paraded out front in my new dress until it was time to leave. Across the street I saw Luz squatting in her dirt yard crouching behind a car, digging holes with her spoon. She peaked up from behind her papi’s car, looking at me suspiciously. I waved to her. She stared back at me.
“I can’t play with you today, Luz,” I reminded her. “I’m going to Disneyland… with my cousin Cindy.” She went back to digging her holes without saying a word.
“Do you like my new dress? My aunt sent it to me. Don’t I look beautiful?” I twirled around so she could admire the dress from all sides. She looked up briefly, squinting before dropping her spoon and running into her house.
The Happiest Place on Earth
The first thing I saw was the sign spanning across the entrance. Cindy and I clapped our hands together in excitement. Princesses for a day. Each of us holding one of Mom’s hands, we skipped towards the ticket booth.
Back then, they still used ticket books with A, B, C, D & E tickets. You got a lot more A than E tickets and everyone knows that E tickets got you on the best rides. But when you’re seven, it doesn’t matter.
A bell from a train sounded, followed by a long hiiisss as steam escaped from the bottom of the train. “All Abbooarrd!” The deep distinctive sound resonated around the park throughout the day. First Mom took us on the train as it went around the entire park so we could see everything. Then we could decide which rides to go on.
While waiting in long lines for rides we’d swing on cool metallic rails under the shade of eaves. Cindy and I played while Mom shooed us ahead periodically. Inside, the rides were dark and cool and scary. Once outside again, the sun was bright and burning. It felt odd to be in daylight once more, like coming out of a movie theater from a matinee. It seemed like it should be dark everywhere, not just inside.
Finding our way out of the rides, we were forced along with hoards of people who bottle necked into crowds crushing us against Mom’s dress. Suddenly the crowds would disperse for no apparent reason only to grow again like some alien beast with a mind of its own.
I got sick from spinning around on the Tea Cups and throwing my head from side to side like Cindy did. It didn’t seem to bother her though. Whatever the case, it stuck with me far longer than I wanted it to, long after the ride ended. The day’s rising temperatures didn’t help my nausea. I wanted to sit down but there didn’t seem to be anywhere to be able to do just that. No grass. No shade. Even the few benches where I could rest were full of people. Why do they call this place a park when nothing about it resembles a park at all?
By midday, the July heat was intolerable. Diesel fuel clung to the back of my throat. Steam from the train mixed with the rising heat from the pavement made the walk from Fantasy Land to Tomorrow Land unbearable. Turning a corner the smell of chlorinated water and a fine mist near the Matterhorn offered a spurt of cooling relief. I wondered if Luz was sitting under the cool shade of the magnolia tree.
My pretty dress was sticking to my skin. I wanted to rip it off. But I didn’t dare complain to Mom. Instead, I used the ¾ length sleeve to wipe my brow and fanned my legs with its heavy hound’s-tooth skirt. A bead of sweat above my lip tasted salty when I licked it. My feet hurt. Cindy was sensibly dressed in shorts and a sleeveless cotton top. On her feet, she wore plain white sneakers with cotton socks. I envied her. I tried curling my toes up to make the shoes tighter so they wouldn’t rub in the back. This helped for a while. But I couldn’t keep walking like that for long. I could see the babyish sun-suit lying on my bed. I came up with the brilliant idea of asking Cindy if she’d like to trade outfits with me while we were using the bathroom. Surely Cindy would like to have a chance to try on my pretty dress. Mom overheard us talking and put a stop to my plan and accused me of being up to one of my shenanigans.
I could hear the clopping of a tired horse. I watched the horse plod along with its heavy mane shading its eyes. Each leg would rise and fall as if its hooves were laden in cement boots. Black mouse ears bounced up and down polka-dotting the horizon distorted from the heat waves. A woman in a full skirt that fell to the ground whooshed past in a hurry looking as though she lived in the past. The breeze she created with her skirt cooled me for a brief moment. A princess I recognized from a movie happened by along with giant stuffed animals; stifled mimes who’d allow you to shake their hands or hug them, but didn’t utter a peep. The smell of popcorn permeated the air making me hungry and telling me that my motion sickness had passed. Mom bought us a bag. While passing the bag back and forth, I dropped it. A man in white collected our spilt popcorn scraping his flip-up dustpan against the black top as he scurried around like Chip or Dale hording nuts.
Just beyond the giant castle, a merry-go-round was grinding itself like a bore into the ground. It anchors the center of Disneyland. Underneath this circulating anchor is a secret city that no one knows about. It’s a place where workers scurry under the park like chipmunks moving nuts around in a tree to make the magic happen. Food service people hauling tons of food in carts, retail clerks exchanging cash tills, ride operators coming on and going off shift, taking breaks, characters resting out of costume, maintenance crews keeping the rides operating; service people, cleaning crews, cashiers, accountants, and controllers counting the tens of thousands of dollars in cash, supervisors and management all coordinating the orchestra. All the under workings of the park happen here in order to make things function properly and operate smoothly. Yet it’s the very part that Disney doesn’t want the public to see. It all happens in underground tunnels, a little city built especially for the behind the scenes. A whole world no one knows about. To you and me, it doesn’t exist.
The merry-go-round’s beautiful white horses were painted with pink flowers moving around and up and down while landscape scenes in the center, which although they stood still, appeared to be twirling in the opposite direction. The effect was mesmerizing. I wanted to go on this ride most of all. The eerie music racked against my ears pulling me in as if by some mysterious force. Although the song was familiar, it didn’t sound the same as when I’d heard it before. The tinny chords were distorted like the mouse hats in the heat. Unlike the Tea Cups that spun out of control, this slow kind of circular motion had a hypnotic, soothing affect on me.
It was about this time that my feet hurt so badly that I was unable to walk without hiding my limp. Mom noticed and insisted we go to the first aid office, which was right next to the Merry-Go-Round. When the nurse took off my shoes, we all noticed my socks soaked with blood. The blisters had broken and were so bad that band-aids were not going to help.
“Those are some nasty blisters,” the nurse said, looking at Mom. “She really shouldn’t have worn those shoes, you know.” Mom was busy examining the insides of my shoes.
“Have you got a pair of scissors?” Mom asked.
The nurse dug around in her first aid kit and came out with a pair of utility scissors. Taking the scissors, Mom cut the back seam of one of my shoes up the back. I put my hand over my mouth. “Put this on,” she said. I did as I was told.
“Now, walk around,” she said. The shoe flopped a little in the back. But for the most part, the strap held it in place. She did the same with the other shoe. The nurse looked amused.
“It’s either this or we go home,” Mom shrugged. “I don’t have that kind of money to throw around, do you?
“No…but then, I don’t have money to throw away a perfectly good pair of shoes, either,” said the nurse.
“I just split the seam,” Mom said. “Any good shoe repairman can fix that!”
“I suppose you’re right,” the said nurse.
“Besides, we’re celebrating two birthdays!” Mom said, looking at Cindy and me.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” the nurse looked at me and Cindy in mock surprise. She went into the back and came out with two striped lollipops. She handed one to me and one to Cindy that more than made up for the spilt popcorn.
After we left the first-aid office, we rode the Merry-Go-Round. My feet didn’t hurt so much anymore. When we got off, I lost Mom and Cindy. I kept running around and around. They ran in one direction and I followed, never catching them. I panicked. Finally, Mom had sense enough to stop. It seemed like forever before we found each other again. I was sobbing by the time we all met up.
As the day wore on, it cooled off and my dress finally felt comfortable again.
Yellow and Red bulbs hanging from loose wires lit up buildings that aped the late sky. Tinkerbelle, in a spot of light, got our attention making us look up. Following her, I heard the sound of music.
A loud voice said, “Ladies and Gentlemen! Boys and Girls!”
POP! POP! POP! Those same fireworks I’d watched from my bedroom window thundered directly above me.
With every POP, my whole body shuddered. My broken shoes grabbed the pavement. My heart shot into my throat! I felt fireworks rumble through my whole body, but my eyes wouldn’t let go of the sky! I looked at my cousin standing next to me and I wished Luz were here to see this, to feel it in her feet. I wished I’d made a stink and insisted on taking her instead of wearing these dreadful shoes and this hot dress.
A lump the size of a walnut was stuck in Luz’s throat all day. And now that the sun was sinking behind the rooftops and the sky was changing to its sunset color, she felt as though she’d swallowed it whole and it was sitting in the bottom of her belly. Even though her mama sent her older brother, Angel, to find her and tell her that supper was ready, she didn’t feel like eating. She went to her room instead and picked up her Barbie doll from the floor and sunk onto her bed. Luz studied the Barbie doll’s pinched face and Spockish eyes while stroking her fake blond hair, which she tried to make go back into a ponytail with her hands. But it wouldn’t stay. The hairpiece had broken. Barbie doll’s shoes were long gone, perhaps buried somewhere in the closet or simply lost. Luz bounced the Barbie doll up and down on her aching tummy with her pointy feet still arched in a high-heel pose, even though they were bare, pushing the doll harder and harder into her belly trying to make them flat like real feet creating chicken pock marks across her stomach. When the doll didn’t comply, she threw it across the room and it landed head first in a basked of ironing, buried to her torso, with her bare feet sticking out in their pointy pose and her arms protruding backwards with her hands and fingers molded together as though she appeared to be cupping something.
When Luz heard the first POP of the Disneyland fireworks go off in the distance over her friend’s house, her head was already buried underneath her pillow. She swallowed the tears that had welled up in her brown eyes and choked them down with her thumb and hiccupped herself to sleep.
Meanwhile, Luz’s Barbie doll wiggled her way to the bottom of the clothes pile like a mermaid. She squeezed through a hole in the basket, then through a knot in the wooden floor slats and disappeared under the house. She was forgotten in the dust next to the floor furnace along with a brigade of stiff green army men, some marbles, a baseball, and a dead cat named Willie who’d belonged to the previous owners of the house.
“Now, where is our car?” Mom wondered out loud. “Didn’t we park in Donald Duck? Or was it Goofy?” Cars left, opening up parking spaces. We waited. “Aha! There it is!” Mom said as she dragged us by our tired arms towards the sedan. Behind the driver’s wheel, she sat forward pumping the gas while turning the key. Bessie, our ’57 Chevy, finally sputtered to life. It was one the last cars to leave.
Crisscross on top of each other in the back seat, Cindy and I slept while Mom drove home. I didn’t hear Mom pull Bessie into the narrow driveway of our house on Washington Street. The car door creaked open on its rusty hinges and Mom shook me awake. She led me upstairs to my room still asleep and after tucking me into bed, she pried the sticky lollipop out of my hand and tossed it in the garbage along with my broken shoes.
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