Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 12, December 1956

I will tell it now. All of it, and I hope well enough. It has taken five years to learn to tell it. Five years from the time of the knife to this time of the pen...

It was summer and Antonio laughed at me. It was the night of the party that my cousin Antonio laughed at me because I wouldn’t come away from the window, because I kept staring out over the city, at the buildings and the lights that went on and on into the distance, until the haze swallowed them up.

“Come away from the window, Juan,” Antonio said. “The city won’t go away.”

His friends laughed with him.

“Maybe he’s afraid he’ll go away,” Pepe said. “Maybe he’s afraid the border police will catch him, send him back to Mexico.”

I turned away from the city toward them, for a moment feeling a cold ache in my stomach. Yes, I thought, that’s what I’m afraid of, even if Antonio says it’s silly. Antonio says I’m here now, all I’ve got to do is learn English and I’ll be all right.

“Squares I’ve seen before,” Miguel said. “But this one...”

“This one is my cousin,” Antonio said. His voice wasn’t laughing now. He leaned toward Miguel, a strange, almost angry look on his face.

“Sure,” Miguel said. “Sure.”

They lapsed back into English. I tried to listen, to understand them, but I couldn’t understand too much. They were drinking wine, the same red wine I’d drunk at home, in San Ysidro, in the mountains of Sonora; the room had many of the home smells, wine and chili and garlic. But it wasn’t like my village.

I stared out over Los Angeles, toward the palm trees and the endless traffic and the people, so many people, more than I had ever imagined living in the entire world.

My cousin Antonio didn’t know how lucky he was. He was just my age, seventeen, three months younger than I, actually; yet already he had a big room of his own, with space for a cot and a chair and a table, a room he could visit his friends in without Mama and Papa and his sisters underfoot. He had good clothes too. He and his friends all had shiny purple jackets, with bulls’ heads on them. “Baje Los Toros,” the jackets said. “Down with the Bulls.” Antonio said it was a joke.

“Come, Juan,” Antonio called. “Have some wine.”

I shook my head. “Later.”

“He’s drunk with the bright lights,” Miguel said. Pepe laughed with him. My cousin didn’t laugh, and after a minute the other two stopped and they were all quiet.

Two weeks I’ve been here, I thought, fifteen days since I crossed the border... The village seemed far, far away in time. It was hard to believe that there, at home, my mother and my little brothers would be eating dinner as usual and maybe wondering where I was... I’ll never go back, I promised myself, staring out past the fire escape, over the roof of the house in front, across Chavez Ravine to the high buildings and the endless streams of cars on the freeway below. Maybe later, I thought, when I have the money, I can send for Mama and the boys.

I was just thinking this, looking forward to the day when I could mail the money home, when I heard the knock on the door. It was the knock all of Antonio’s friends used, two quick raps, a pause, and then two more.

“Come in,” Antonio called.

The door opened and Antonio’s other friend, the short, chunky one they called Switch, stepped inside. I was sorry, in a way, that he was there. I didn’t like Switch, though I’d never mentioned how I felt to Antonio. Why should I speak against my cousin’s friends? But Switch had a loose mouth; he called girls putas, and not only the girls from Mama Ortegas’. I’d heard him speak of Antonio’s sister Rosa this way once, and Rosa was a good girl, like an iceberg when you told her nice things. Once I’d seen him try to pinch Rosa; she’d hit him and said, “I’ll tell my brother,” and Switch had just laughed and walked away.

“That all you can do?” Switch said. “Sit around and swill wine, like old men?”

“What else?” my cousin said. “We should go to the YMCA, maybe?”

They all laughed. I laughed too, to be polite, though I didn’t understand the joke. Switch dropped down on the cot beside my cousin and reached for the wine bottle.

“I know of a party,” he said. “They’ve got lots of food, lots of liquor — they can’t ever put it all away without help.”

“Who?” Antonio said. “Some of the Aces?”

“It’s too hot for a rumble,” Miguel said, reaching for the wine.

“No,” Switch said. “Not the Aces. It’s a private party. One of the anglo kids is giving it. You know, Terry Fletcher, over on Avenue 60.”

“Might be an idea,” Pepe said. “They’d be real glad to see us, wouldn’t they?”

“Yeah,” Switch said. “Real glad.”

Miguel reached for his purple jacket. He’d taken it off earlier, when he’d said it was too hot.

“What’re we waiting for?” he asked.

My cousin hesitated. He looked over at me, then at the others.

“I don’t know about Juan,” he said uncertainly.

“Oh, bring the kid along.” Switch turned to me. “You’d like to go to an honest-to-God-American birthday party, wouldn’t you, kid?”

I didn’t like the way he said it, the half-smile on his face, but then, I never liked the way Switch said anything.

“Is it a fiesta?” I said.

“Yeah. That’s just what it’s going to be. A fiesta.”

“I’d like to go,” I said.

Antonio hesitated. Then he turned and went over to his closet and pulled out a purple jacket. One of the sleeves was torn and the colors were faded, but it had the bull’s head on the back.

“Good I didn’t throw this away,” Antonio said. “Here, Juan. Put this on.”

It was a little tight over my shoulders, but I didn’t care. I zipped it up and turned back and forth, looking at my reflection in the cracked glass hanging on the closet door. Now I look like an Americano, I thought. For the first time.

“Come on,” Switch said.

In the room outside, the family room where Mama Lopez had just finished cleaning up after dinner, Rosa stood watching us.

“Hi, baby,” Switch said in English.

She turned away from him. Her glance slid past Pepe and Miguel and her brother; it started to slide past me but stopped.

“Juan, you going with them?” she asked, and stared at me.

I wondered why her voice sounded so sad.

“Yes,” I said. “We’re going to a party.”

For the first time, she reached out to me. Her hand was soft against mine. She was so pretty it hurt to look at her, just at the stage where a girl starts turning into a woman. She smelled of soap and perfume and, underneath, the soft woman-smell the girls of San Ysidro had.

“Don’t go, Juan.”

Switch laughed.

Mama Lopez swung around toward him, as if about to say something, then tossed her head angrily and turned away.

“You want to go to the party, Rosa?” I said.

“No.” She pulled her hand away and turned her back on me.

“Come on.” Antonio started for the door. He sounded embarrassed.

I followed them, out into the street. I wished Rosa could have come with us, but maybe it wasn’t the custom for girls to go to this kind of party. I couldn’t get used to the customs, here in Los Angeles.

By now, after two weeks, I was no longer so terrified of the cars, the way my cousin drove, cutting in and out of traffic on the freeway, with other drivers honking and yelling at him. Besides, just about the time I really began to get scared, we pulled off the freeway and turned up a wide, quiet street, with big houses on either side, and lawns and rows of flowers and trees.

At the end of the block, one house was all lit up. Music poured out the open windows, the strange gringo music I’d never really learned to like. I heard laughter, both men’s and women’s, and I wondered, as we pulled up to park in front, why we couldn’t have brought Rosa. Unless maybe the women here were from Mama Ortegas’...