UFO
by STANLEY DELGADO
What we needed were White people. We cruised around from Koreatown to Watts, between corner liquor stores, auto shops, taco trucks and drive-thru burger stands, just looking for the perfect little White person at the wrong place and wrong time. We kept our eyes peeled. At that time, there in the backseat sat four of us: Lysandro, Francisco, Anjelita, and myself, all of us from the same province of Santa Equis back home. Meanwhile, Benny steered the Cadillac slug slow, his face stern and taught and ready to snap—a rat trap.
Why White people: because Latinos had no papers, of any kind, so they were out. Asian drivers pretended they didn’t speak English or Spanish, even though everywhere else they knew plenty of both. The Black drivers were split into two: those who hated us and those who ignored us. Of course, some of these groups did have insurance, Benny said, but it was usually not premium, not worth the whiplash. Shitsurance.
Behind us were the veterans of the trade. They drove an average car, a silver Toyota, a white Nissan. We drove along, waiting. The long freeway curved then straightened while the potholes jilted us up and down. The hills were pale in the distance; the white smudge on them was the Hollywood sign, Benny. Then, in the carpool lane of the 110 North, the veterans flashed their high beams twice, a signal. Benny sped up, so did the veterans. The danger was hot under our skin. At the last second: the veterans bailed out and sliced across two lanes of traffic. Benny tapped on the brake pedal. We braced. The nice White family driving behind us—matching the speed of the veterans, unprepared for our sudden stop—slammed their Jeep into our trunk. Crashes happen with such speed; you’re sitting one place then snap into another. In the rearview a White man, woman, and two kids also snapped forward into their airbags, also white. Drivers all around us honked, slowed to a crawl as they passed us, then kept driving. In Los Angeles this happened all the time. Most people called them car crashes, but we called them moves.
—
The streets were made of money, and it was quite simple, Benny assured us. All we had to do was be inside a crashing car, easiest work in our lives. And the insurance paperwork, he said, it proved out existence. It had watermarks, stamps, signatures. This paperwork, he said, was how we applied for amnesty—the thing that sonofabitch Reagan had been working on for so long. Amnesty was bank accounts, apartments, a house. The insurance companies cannot deport you, Benny assured us. They cannot even ask if you are a citizen. If you want amnesty, you’re going to need something called ‘temporary evidence for permanent residence.’ Proof that you once occupied an American time and space. And these car crashes were how we proved it back in 1985.
—
Benny was the man who took us under his wing. He was an original bracero and built like a brick wall. You couldn’t even tell he had liver cirrhosis and diabetes. Meanwhile, the veterans were too proud to be seen with us, wet-back-whatevers, the recently-arrived. But Benny respected us. He said the only thing worth a thing in this life-thing was a dollar, better yet millions of them. Because when he came over here for work—couldn’t we believe it—that he had actually paid money to work in the United States. With the few coins in his purse, he had paid money to not pay more money for his paperwork back then, which actually, the lack thereof, meant his employers could pay him dirt, treat him like less. But we do whatever it takes to survive, he said. Whatever, however. Since the 60s and 70s, Benny and his veterans had ran scams with food stamps, laundry machines, catalytic converters, selling polished pennies that the parking meters scanned as quarters.
What do you think about this? Do you know how he spent the money he made?
Grilled steak and chicken marinated in Donald Duck orange juice out on the corner of 7th and Alvarado on a patch of shade in Macarthur Park with whatever friends he had.
—
But anyway, how much did we make that first move—that first crash? Not millions, but we paid for our rent, our groceries, our Levi’s and Nikes, perms for the women and suits for the men. We hustled along the corners of Macarthur Park—which was beautiful at the time, the cholos, the 18th Street crew, were our protectors, and MS-13 were still metal-heads with long hair and denim vests, no guns yet, just fists and chains; streets were cleaner, so was the sky. We danced at the Mayan and ate bacon-wrapped hot dogs late at night. The people we had made promises to on our way over here—well, they had to understand, too. Lysandro’s sick grandmother, Francisco’s waiting wife, the piece of land that housed Anjelita’s six brothers. Things had changed. An umbilical cord is snipped that easy.
—
The problem was the insurance claims took forever. Once approved, we waited for paper checks that were often late, months late, but Benny grew our numbers steadily so that we were always waiting on a paycheck. We went from four to eight to twelve, but still, we had to find other jobs. We washed dishes in Chinese restaurants, we sold bootleg Gucci in the Santee Alleyways, we took used up tires from junkyards and cut new treads into them with a sharpened flathead to resell them.
We were always hungry for the next move. Most of us, at least, because Lysandro had been in a panic since the first move. He had with bad headaches and dizzy spells. He developed a twitch. He said he could feel the crash in his body, an invisible force jerking him forward. Jerking me forward from this life to the next, I swear, he said, with a worried, half-serious smile.
—
Our second and third moves were Swedish watches, as Benny would say—perfect. An older White woman out on 51st and Main who cried the entire time. An older White man off the 105 freeway, right in front of the Nickerson Projects. The man apologized to Benny a thousand times while we stared at him through the back window, his waxy blank face, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, his bald head wrapped in a kerchief. Benny spoke to him for a while, then wrote something on the back of a taxi card, gave it to him and shook his hand. The man sat in his car and looked like a ghost.
He has cancer, Benny said back in the car. The gentleman was on his way to a new treatment facility and he was lost.
We were all quiet, tense. Lysandro rubbed his eyes and steadied himself on the door handle. Oh god, he said, god, god, god.
Relax, I gave him directions, Benny said. Then, upon noticing our silence, maybe guilt, Benny said: Kids, he cannot take the money when he’s gone.
—
Which was true. The next day we hung out on the corner, making a list of things we needed to buy. Ajax, Fabuloso, sponges, toilet paper, aluminum foil, white rice, black beans, tortillas, onions, garlic, Maggi packets. Birthday cake from the bakery in Chinatown, new work boots, linen dresses. Lysandro said, Can we get some dreams?
What? we said.
I heard you can buy dreams in the store that don’t make you dizzy. Dramamine? Anjelita said. Is that what you mean?
We all started laughing. Someone said, If you could buy me a dream then buy me Lilia Prado. Veronica Castro, someone else said. Lucha Villa when she was skinny. Aldo Monti in a white suit. Lucha Villa when she was fat. We named off other things, like wings, love, soursop juice that someone’s grandmother used to make, a house, a second house—Lysandro piped in again, an actual bed, not blankets on the floor of a closet.
Francisco said, Go to a hospital and tell them you’ll kill yourself. They give you a bed right away.
We all laughed, but Lysandro said, Really?
Then Anjelita said, I want a pool and swimming lessons for my kids.
Just throw him into the lake! we said. He’ll learn faster.
That’s exactly what I don’t want, she said. They should learn it right. They should learn it correct and slow.
We talked about other things then. I thought about what Anjelita said. Wanting to give your kids the chance to be patient and calm, to be guided by the hand into the water. The sun was setting, then, and the city looked quite beautiful in the late-evening light.
—
We began attending night school next to the Salvation Army. We could only escape English for so long. Ms. De La Pasion, our older Filipino teacher, walked us through the alphabet, urging us that it was the same letters in English as in Spanish, as in Tagalog, if she could do it so could do we. Language is only thing you have, she said to us. Now, time for Pledge of Allegiance.
Which we loved because Lysandro could never pronounce flag. He said, I pledge allegiance to the fly, which had us busting up with laughter. Flag, Ms. De La Pasion corrected, flag, flag, even though her own accent made it sound like plahg. God bless her. She gave us all pocket-size dictionaries and English textbooks so tattered they were out of circulation—Gift of the Magi, a dozen or so Chekhov stories and folktales like Bluebeard —all of their pages marked with breasts and penises. We translated the stories back in Spanish to each other like they had actually happened to us.
There was one story in particular; it had terrified Lysandro when he first heard it. It was about a Frenchman who waves hello at a ship full of Brazilians, and by doing so, he invites some kind of foreign presence, the way it was described made us think of a ghost, or an alien, that tortures him. This presence sat on his chest while he slept, it drank the water he left on his bedside table. To kill the presence, he burned his house down, killing himself and his servant in the process. We didn’t know if it was supposed to be funny; at least, some of us had laughed.
—
One evening we turned into the black hills of Bel Air while the veterans followed behind us. One hill had a necklace of lights, we thought they were the windows of multiple houses sprawling across. The closer we got, though, we realized these lights were the windows of a single long mansion, one half of it supported by beams over a glen. Riches so all-encompassing they terrified us. Lysandro kept mumbling to himself, that the mountains were as dark as those back in El Salvador yet people lived in these here.
Benny began speaking: These hills remind me of 1964, when me and those veterans behind us were all in Salinas working the spinach and lettuce. Back then, we made three dollars and forty cents a week. I had sent most of it to my parents for years by that point—I hadn’t seen their faces in twice as long. What could she have looked like? My little mother, looking at those dollars.
The veterans flashed their lights. The signal. We sped up, they bailed, we braced, and a massive limousine slammed us so hard we went over the side of the road, over a small hill, and into the bottom of a ditch. The sky was upside down and the long mansion with the many windows seemed like a flying saucer sailing through the clouds.
When we came to, the veterans were hauling us out of the Cadillac and up to the side of the road. Our faces bled in our hands. It was almost dawn, and the hills were a deep blue. The veterans told us the limousine had drove off. A White woman in a ball gown took one look at us and demanded that her driver to leave at once. She was old, with peal necklaces, and next to her was an older White fossil wearing a tuxedo. They looked like movie stars, the veterans said. And also, Benny was dead.
—
We never knew what happened to Benny’s body, but we held our own private wake for him. In the coming weeks, stories from back home reached us: Lysandro’s grandmother was missing, Francisco’s waiting wife had married another man, a colonel, who vowed that Francisco would never return to El Salvador, lest he face a firing squad. Anjelica’s land was ransacked. Of her six brothers, three were conscripted into the military and three joined the guerillas. Anjelica hadn’t believed it, the even split between the brothers seemed too perfect and fantastical to be true.
Meanwhile, the day had finally come for our green card and residency appointments. The paperwork was requested and our presence needed. Our side hustles were also blooming: the extra clothes in the alleyways landed us in the seats of sewing tables in garment factories, the dishes we washed were exchanged for sharp chef knives, and our experience with cars took us into auto shops.
And one afternoon the veterans came to our apartment with $10,000 in cash in a paper bag, money from Benny’s death, or his life.
Consider yourselves lucky, they told us. This is the best thing that could have happened. The insurance companies were getting wise to the scam. Information was being passed. There were investigation units and certain policy revisions—fraudulent claims could be prosecuted in court that could result in large fines, prison, or deportation.
So, come on, the veterans said. Walk out with your backs straight and heads high, you motherfuckers, you’re Americans.
—
There are a handful of buildings, mostly in Culver City, that are particularly interesting. One is a clinic, another an L-shaped corner strip mall, another a tall stack of condos. The rest are nameless and quiet but powerful enough to pay the rent. Something in them, the foundation, the lode-bearing walls, the plumbing, the wiring, the paint on the walls, the hauling and placing of furniture, something in these buildings was handled by our Lysandro Romer, during his career—his move—as honest citizen. After Benny’s death, he rented an apartment and worked in construction for a while. Once we invited him to a cook-out at Anjelita’s house. We asked how he was spending his days, and he told us about being visited by the aliens while in the hospital. They were see-through skinned and sticky little men with big eyes who bothered him in his sleep. He never got a good night’s rest. Some of us laughed and said, Moron, we’re the aliens. Another said, We were the aliens, were. Another said, Let us know when the aliens come, then. We can grab the sonsabitches and make them crash for us. That really had us cackling. Lysandro said nothing. He dropped his head between his knees, the full Corona in his hand slackening and spilling beer into the grass. He wasn’t even drinking. Lysandro, we said. We were just playing. Hey, come on. And Lysandro looked back up at us, dry-eyed, as he said, The aliens have my grandmother. She didn’t die. They have her. I have to get her. They’ve been dressing up as people I know and they pass me the messages. And the messages tell me such terrible things, but they show me the pattern. My green card number is 193419551995. My grandmother was born in 1934, I was born in 1955, and next year is 1995. What’s going to happen next?
We squeezed his arm, held his hand, told him everything was going to be all right, then we cleaned up and ended the party. We gave him three hundred dollars.
—
Years and years later Lysandro leapt off the San Pedro Bridge. When I heard the news I collapsed into my office chair at the car dealership. I loosened the top two buttons of my shirt and clutched at my chest. I hung up the phone on Anjelita, and I swallowed my Carvedilol and Losartan with water. I sat there for a moment, one hand on my chest and the other on my gut. Time had been poured into me.
The San Pedro Bridge had a fifteen-foot-tall fence; someone would have to climb all that, work so hard, just to jump off the other side. I buttoned my shirt and adjusted my belt and went back to work. There was a little Mexican family buying a big car—a Ford F-150—Father and Mother combined made $52 K p/year, $797 car note p/month. I had a mortgage to pay, after all, and my children were applying to Ivy Leagues; whatever, however. I told the little Mexican family that it was a low price, on account of them being from a similarly far away place like me, a similarly distant and honest-working bloodline.
—
Why do I confess this now?
My daughter recently applied to college, and when I sat at the dinner table of my house and read her personal statement, I could not brave it.
She began it like this. My mother and father came here as immigrants, and they inspire me in all that I do. My father arrived in the 80s, a historically dynamic time for immigrants, and my mother came a few years after, in the 90s. My eyes skipped down the page. My daughter calls me these things: hard-working, honest, kind, humorous, gentle, brave. She writes that I worked for years cooking in Chinese restaurants, selling garments, and fixing cars. She writes describes that I sell cars now, granting mobility for those who have none. These are her final lines. I want to attend this prestigious university for its community, its values, and its opportunities. I want my parents to be proud of me, as I continue their legacy of bravery. In this country, they were once called aliens, but I am here to prove that we are all human.
When I finished reading it, she said, “Oh my god, Daddy, you’re crying.”
I could not tell her what I felt. I wiped the wetness off my face and stared at the ceiling of my marvelous house, a Craftsman that was dirt cheap back then because there were so many Black and Brown boys killing each other nearby.
‘So,’ my daughter started, ‘is it good? What do you think?’
I got up and kissed the top of her head. I said, ‘I think I love you very much.’ And then I went out into the backyard. We have an avocado tree, an orange tree, and a fig tree. I stared at the bed of turned earth I made for the garlic. My daughter has carved herself up just as much. She hopes to code, to help the brain of a computer know things, she told me. All I know is that there’s money in it. She’s been fascinated by computers since she was young, when during a museum trip they told her computers sent men to the moon. That evening she told us she would build us a space ship and travel the universe.
In the end I couldn’t make it to Lysandro’s funeral. I could no longer look at any of those people in the eye. For several weeks after I had dreams of finding myself in line at Immigration. The offices and seating look the same as they did in the 90s. Old. I wait and wait, which is something one rarely does in a dream—wait. When it is finally my turn, I go to speak, and my language is unlike anything I have ever heard before. I speak in pitches of static and varying shades of colors. The man behind the stall hands me a bizarre contraption that I strap to my mouth. My words are then translated, but the translation is rough. The translation does not capture my meaning. The translation is different person altogether. Yet I continue to speak.
author pic here
Stanley Delgado is a graduate of New York University’s MFA program, and he is currently a Literary Arts Fellow at Montalvo’s Sally and Don Lucas Artists Program. His work has appeared in One Story, Glimmer Train, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
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