One-Foot Skater

Overnight, a skating rink appeared on a vacant lot en la calle Catorce on the Chicano edge of Kingsville, our small town located just north of the mythical Valley of Texas. The roller-rink floor was thrown together using wide slabs of wood sitting on cinder blocks and surrounded by a wooden skeleton frame about three-and-a-half-feet high, plain and simple. Strings of lights were woven to and fro using nearby trees for the evening spectacle. It was a skating summer run swarming down through the Valley like a meandering locust infestation. It was an irresistible sight! It was better than the annual carnivals that blew in with the cool breeze of late November nights. It was free to see for onlookers; on the contrary, you had to pay for the pleasure of the bearded lady and the swami lying on a bed of nails. It was even more amazing than the time Pop took us to see a seven-foot-tall giant at a car dealership downtown. That was only a one-time-three-minute-thing that almost broke our necks, but this skating sensation was a one-month-long-marvel and practically in the barrio’s backyard hungry for excitement!

My sister and I rushed over to sneak a look the following Friday as the dusty evening shadows began to fall on the barrio. We couldn’t wait to see how it all worked under the illusory, glitzy lights! Se me fueron los ojos! Wide-eyed, my sister and I found spirited skaters slamming their miniature wheels onto the wooden floor, rolling effortlessly up and down the rink about the size of two large rooms side by side. Where had they learned how to skate in our rink-less town of Kings? They had a stack of skates for rent and skaters were required to pay an entry fee to roam round-and-round on their wooden platform that held unimaginable delight. The teen couples held hands criss-crossed as they glided in unison so romantically across the makeshift rink to the loud “Over the Waves” organ music. This starry-eyed 10-year-old was in ecstasy; it was something spiritual, like being in church! I didn’t know about my sister Tina, but I couldn’t help myself—I wanted some of that. Please Lord!

Summer over, the skating oasis evaporated without a trace. Only a distant mirage of its glory clung to my imagination. Oh well, back to the real world. Fifth grade was on the horizon, wielding long-division hurdles to jump the fall of 1954. One good thing though, Mrs. Spinks, my fourth grade teacher, was moving up to fifth grade with us and I couldn’t have been happier. The class was full of the same barrio bunch from la calle Catorce—all Hispanics except for the new kid, el peloncito James, the only Anglo in the entire school, who preferred to be called Santiago. The girls, the same ones from last year, gathered together to chitchat about summer vacation. I had had several close pals for years—Eloisa García, Becky Munguía. But every so often, just to change it up, I buddied up to somebody different that was easy to like.

This new school year, Nancy Benavides and I clicked. She was a sweet gentle girl—media humildona. A fragile, flimsy guerita that looked like she might break at any minute. She could have been a scarecrow with her thin ralito straw-colored hair and a slight buffalo hump back. Besides her spindly look, she had the strangest voice in town, maybe the world, I thought. Her voice was raspy, breathy, and strained. It appears, she suffered from a kind of perpetual case of laryngitis (I didn’t know that word yet). Simply put: estaba ronca, hoarse, all the time. When she spoke to you, her labored sound never rose above a whisper and you felt obliged to whisper right back just to meet her halfway. Despite her troubled vocal chords, I liked her friendly winsome smile and we became fast friends. Nancy was an only child and lived...