Hailey's War

I nodded.

“If he offers you anything, a beer or a cigarette or a joint, accept it,” she said. “That’s hospitality around here. To refuse is rude.”

“I know.”

“When you talk to him, don’t front and try to act real tough,” she went on. “Don’t be a shrinking violet, either. Act like you respect yourself, but that’s all. And, this is important, if he plays with you”-she meant if he made a joke at my expense-“and you think of a comeback, don’t say it. He’s the man. Let him feel like the man. But don’t flirt with him, either. You’re here for business.”

We were on the sidewalk in front of his house, where we’d stopped so she could finish her thoughts.

“He’s not a bad guy, and I think he knows that you’re more qualified to lead the mission than he is. What I’m saying is, when the time comes, Payaso will let you lead, if you act respectful of him. If you front, he’s gonna have to front, and that’s not gonna be good for anyone.”

“I understand.”

“Okay.”

We went up the walk. There was a metal port in the door, like from a Prohibition speakeasy.

“Damn,” I said, impressed.

“Yeah,” Serena said. “Old Payaso read about these things somewhere and decided he had to have one.”

She’d explained “Old Payaso” to me earlier. The Payaso we were coming to see wasn’t the one who’d led Trece when Serena joined at fifteen. That had been the former Payaso, who’d shared his moniker with a promising fourteen-year-old. Sharing the name hadn’t made Lil’Payaso first in line to take over, but when Payaso was shot to death by rivals, Lil’Payaso became just Payaso, and in time he fought to lead Trece and won.

A skinny, shaven-headed boy pulled back the port, saw Serena, and nodded. He closed the port, and a bolt slid back.

“Not a lot of protection from gunfire to the face, that thing,” I said.

“Not for him,” Serena agreed.

The inside of the house wasn’t substantially different from Serena’s. There was a low throb of music and a pervasive scent of cigarette smoke, and about six or seven homeboys lounging in the living room. A pit bull barked once, not really interested.

The only surprise was that I wasn’t the only white person there. A red-haired teenager was on the couch, in the arms of one of the boys. Her hair was braided in a complicated way up over her head, and her shirt was open nearly to the waist, revealing a lacy blue bra. It apparently served like a tank top or camisole; she seemed to feel no modesty about revealing it in front of a roomful of guys.

I didn’t need to be told which one was Payaso. For one thing, the name was tattooed high on his pectoral muscle, which was laid bare by his wifebeater shirt. It was also implicit in the grouping of guys around him, the way they loosely surrounded and faced him. He didn’t look tall, maybe five-nine, but he had good muscle, like a fighter. When he saw us walk into the living room, he nodded to the white girl on the couch. “Go kick it with Mel and Jaime for a while,” he said to her. “We’re gonna talk some business.”

The girl got up without argument, though she looked at me with veiled curiosity before disappearing into one of the bedrooms. I wondered if it was my white skin or the bruises from my initiation that she found more curious. I wondered if she thought I let a man give them to me.

There was a small reshuffling as a place was made for Serena among the guys. I could already see where I was supposed to sit, in a straight-backed chair that had clearly been borrowed from a dining table and which faced Payaso directly, job-interview style. I took my place and let him look at me.

“Trece eres?” he asked. Loosely translated, Are you one of us?

“Por vida,” I said. For life.

Payaso pulled an exaggerated face of skepticism, his long, mobile mouth turning down, but with a trace of amusement. “Funny, I ain’t seen you around the neighborhood,” he said.

“I know.”

His eyes flashed with humor. “I’m just playing with you,” he said. “I know who you are. You’re the famous Hailey.”

“I doubt I’m famous.”

“Warchild used to talk about you, not just recently, but a long time back. Talking about how you used to jump outta airplanes for the Army, shit like that, saying how tough you were.”

This was news to me. I disciplined myself not to look back at her in surprise.

Payaso said, “You want something to drink?” He looked at the boy who’d answered the door. “Get her something. Warchild, too.”

“I’m cool,” Serena said. Apparently, her status with Payaso was such that it was acceptable for her to turn down hospitality.

When the boy came back with a Coors for me, Payaso said, “Warchild tells me they just initiated you last night.”

I nodded.

“Yeah, you got some marks on you,” he said, and smiled. “I bet you didn’t know Latin girls were so tough, eh?”

I shook my head modestly. Actually, I had expected a good beatdown from Serena’s sucias, but Payaso wanted to brag on his homegirls, and I wanted to let him.

He said, “So now you’re In-soo-la,” exaggerating the second syllable. “What kind of name is that?”

“Latin,” I said.

“You really speak that?”

“Mostly,” I said. “I couldn’t get a job translating or anything.”

“There’s jobs translating Latin? I thought it was a dead language.”

“It is,” I said, “but scholars are still doing new translations of the classic poems.”

“Why do people translate things that have already been translated? What’s the point?” he said.

I said, “The same reason that bands cover songs that someone else has recorded, I guess. To put their own spin on it.”

He nodded thoughtfully. His homeboys were all watching and listening. I wondered if they really found this interesting, or if it was their way of showing Payaso respect, pretending to be absorbed in everything he found interesting.

Payaso said, “So what’s my name in Latin?”

“Fossor,” I said, for clown, jokester.

“Fossor?” He frowned exaggeratedly again. It was easy to see where he got his moniker; he did have mobile, clownish features, with intelligence underneath them.

I said, “Sorry. It does sound better in Spanish. Latin isn’t as pretty a language as a lot of people think. It can make a lot of things sound like an STD.”

His guys laughed.

“You were at West Point, too,” he said.

“Yes.”

“What’s that like?”

“Hard,” I said, “but like a lot of things, if you work hard and respect the underlying ideals, people respect you. It’s rigorous in a lot of ways: academically and physically and psychologically. A lot of people don’t make it. Including me.”

This was risky. If he wanted to know why I washed out, he’d ask now, and I didn’t know if I could refuse him. And if I did tell him the answer, I didn’t know how he’d feel about it.

But he just said, “They got a lot of girls there? Are the guys cool with that?”

“Most guys are,” I said.

“What about guys like me? Does West Point take vatos?”

“I don’t know if I’d call them vatos,” I said. “They take Latinos, if they’re as square as I used to be.”