137 Aquí viene Johnny Ana Roque got her Johnny Rocket, homey.” Ana says this into the mirror, shooting her finger gun toward her chocolate-red reflection as she inspects the small skate-or-die volcanoes erupting hair gel on her scalp. The cool skater guys she envied wore mile-high spikes held up by the gel-hairspray-blow-dryer formula. Depending on the situation, the neighborhood, the disproportionate ratio of truth to reputation, and how much ass she was or wasn’t going to pull in that night, Ana would decorate her sideburns with curly-Qs. Other times she would sculpt her own sideburns long and thick like a stray cat. After today’s locker-room high school showdown with them nasty cha-chas over a pair of cheap boxers, tonight Ana just wants to meet a girl. Careful not to spill any product on her T-shirt, she parts her hair with a pink jelly glob and a ton of hairspray from that ten-year-old can of Aqua Net stored under the sink, the same pink and silver can her mom used back in the Nelson years. Ana laughs a gran puta when she remembers this shit. Mamá never goes out anymore, thank God. No more of that cumbia twisting, latenight slurring, freestyle fucking. Mamá and Nelson. Ana and her brother Pancho stayed behind when they went off to church—this was before Nestor came from El Salvador to live with them. Nelson forced them to sit in front of the tele and watch Benny Hinn throw his white-suited televangelist self over the limp legs of some obese black lady in a wheelchair. 138 Who cares, she tells herself, with Johnny Rocket in my pants. With her funky jellied dildo, some luck, and the punch tonight’s cheap keg will pack, she just might use it on some fine young light thing from Montebello. Puta vos, I’m Johnny Rocket. Ana never Salvi cusses, that is, curses out loud like her Salvadoran uncles would. She wouldn’t dare do so at school because she doesn’t want any of them to hear how she turns the last syllable up with a sudden lilt in her accent only to get called a chuntara for doing so. That’s why she begs Mamá for some money to hit up the allies every week as she and Becky conduct a very successful ten-point anti-chunt program also known as CA—Chuntaros Anonymous. A very painful assimilation process unbeknownst to them as such because it’s one thing for your parents to be chuntaros, but you don’t have to follow in their faded acid-wash footsteps. Consuming as a way to counter the way of their chuntaro elders. Come Monday morning, she walks in all big and bad in some new Dickies, brown like 31 flavors, snug yet never pronouncing her curves. Asco! This bathroom fuckin’ stinks! Dirty, sweaty huevos and that shitty ring in the toilet forces a quick gag reflex as her skin starts to crawl. She is reminded of the awful junkie shitholes in MacArthur Park. Pancho lives here too, Ana thinks to herself. It is fucked up how he acts toward Mamá. Puro gangster pelon but this fuckhead knows dick about slanging or whatever he and his homeboys do, stupid Tupac going to get middle brother killed one of these days. Ana is not going to clean it, seeing that it’s not her turn nor is she a little bitch trying to kiss maternal ass. And Pancho can be so stupid on the cusp of cruel with Ana, when he grabs his member menacingly. He taunts Ana with what he thinks she is envious of. Bex is running on time but too late for Ana’s anxious ass. Tonight they cruise east to catch the T-party off the pager number Ana called earlier in the day. She was in charge of finding the party and Bex was going to hook up the ride to get them there. Ana has a friend who knows some girl from Schurr High who throws a Wednesday afterschool party with the occasional keg. All these chicks kick it after some support group where they all bitch and moan about liking girls and how their mother’s come after them with Bibles and unmarried thirty-yearold men. Montebello girls are notoriously sexy and freaky-liberated, though it is rare to find one who digs butches or Salvadoran...