Memoir
Always Running by Luis J. Rodriguez
One day, my mother asked Rano and me to go to the grocery store. We decided to go across the railroad tracks
into South Gate. In those days, South Gate was an Anglo neighborhood, filled with the families of workers from the auto
plant and other nearby industry. Like Lynnwood or Huntington Park, it was forbidden territory for the people of Watts.
My brother insisted we go. I don’t know what possessed him, but then I never did. It was useless to argue; he’d
force me anyway. He was nine then, I was six. So without ceremony, we started over the tracks, climbing over discarded1
market carts and tore-up sofas, across Alameda Street, into South Gate: all-white, all-American.
We entered the first small corner grocery store we found. Everything was cool at first. We bought some bread,
milk, soup cans and candy. We each walked out with a bag filled with food. We barely got a few feet, though, when five
teenagers on bikes approached. We tried not to pay any attention and proceeded to our side of the tracks. But the
youths pulled up in front of us. While two of them stood nearby on their bikes, three of them jumped off theirs and
walked over to us.
“What do we got here?” one of the boys said. “Tacos to order — maybe with some beans?”
He pushed me to the ground; the groceries splattered onto the asphalt. I felt melted gum and chips of broken
beer bottle on my lips and cheek. Then somebody picked me up and held me while the two others seized my brother,
tossed his groceries out, and pounded on him. They punched him in the face, in the stomach, then his face again, cutting
his lip, causing him to vomit.
I remember the shrill2, maddening laughter of one of the kids on a bike, this laughing like a raven’s wail, a harsh
wind’s shriek, a laugh that I would hear in countless beatings thereafter. I watched the others take turns on my brother,
this terror of a brother, and he doubled over, had blood and spew on his shirt, and tears down his face. I wanted to do
something, but they held me and I just looked on, as every strike against Rano opened me up inside.
They finally let my brother go and he slid to the ground, like a rotten banana squeezed out of its peeling. They
threw us back over the tracks. In the sunset I could see the Watts Towers, shimmers of 70,000 pieces of broken bottles,
sea shells, ceramic and metal on spiraling points puncturing the heavens, which reflected back the rays of a falling sun.
My brother and I then picked ourselves up, saw the teenagers take off, still laughing, still talking about those stupid
greasers who dared to cross over to South Gate.
Up until then my brother had never shown any emotion to me other than disdain. He had never asked me
anything, unless it was a demand, an expectation, an obligation3 to be his throwaway boy-doll. But for this once he
looked at me, tears welled in his eyes, blood streamed from several cuts — lips and cheeks swollen.
“Swear — you got to swear — you’ll never tell anybody how I cried,” he said.
I suppose I did promise. It was his one last thing to hold onto, his rep as someone who could take a belt
whipping, who could take a beating in the neighborhood and still go back risking more — it was this pathetic plea from
the pavement I remember. I must have promised.
1
discarded: thrown away as useless
2
shrill: high-pitched and sharp
3
obligation: a duty
