Breaking Stereotypes
8/01/09 – edit
CHAPTER II: Sina -
Vivian’s mom smoked a lot of cigarettes. Benson & Hedges, Menthol lights. She had purple lips from all the smoking I think. Her fingernails were also yellow. Her name is Sina and she talked like those people do in those black and white movies with gangers. Everything started with, “you see honey…” with a New Yorker, James Cagney sound. And she wasn’t even from New York but from Pago Pago, Samoa. There were also a couple of alcoholic Samoan women in the neighborhood that loved black men. Sisters in their late thirties that were attractive, tall, beautiful and sexy in a loud way. But I think it was only to the guys at the local dive bar where unemployed men would sit and order drinks on credit. Men would return to pay the bar tab when they got their County check on the 1st and the 15th of the month. One of the sisters had a low husky voice which must have been from the same cigarette smoking of Sina. She had long wild wavy dark hair and big eyes. She would burn her red Maybelline dark eyeliner and trace her eyes with it. She said burning it made the make-up soft enough to use on the delicate skin around her eyes. This was the late seventies and the few Samoan grown up’s I knew that were “Americanized” wore tight straight leg denim. This was at least 20 years before the WTO opened up trade with China; to relieve everyone with stretch denim jeans manufactured abroad.
These two sisters were part of the neighborhood's classic ghetto drama series. They would get drunk at the bar and come home loud. The sisters would start arguing in the street or the alley and soon one would hit the other. The yelling of the sisters wrestling on the ground in knock-off Calvin Klein jeans; would summon everyone out of their apartments. Leaning over the guardrail to watch the fight was a normal event until the Elders (Older Samoan generation) told them to knock it off, the younger teens are watching. Don’t fa ma aiga (don’t shame your family through bad behavior in public)
It was late afternoon and the older sister with all her beautiful hair and carefully applied black Maybelline eyeliner, passed out in the alley from alcohol and exhaustion. I would take this all in and say to myself, “I don’t want to be like that when I grow up.”
Sina called me away from the ghetto drama. My aunt talked with a New Yorker James Cagney ring to it, “hey kid. What the hell are you staring at? For the love of Pete get away from those two crazies.” I would wonder, “Whose Pete?” But I wouldn’t ask her.
“Come over here and help me figure out what this letter says.” I left the alley fight and walked through the catwalk that led from my family’s 3 story apartment building to Vivian’s house. Leaving behind the yelling I followed Sina, who is a relative somewhere along the family line on my dad’s side. I think our grandparents are from the same island.
Sina told me, “I got this letter see? It came from that place they took your cousin Vivian.”
As I followed Sina leaving behind the alley fight, we walked through the back door of Sina’s apartment which led immediately to the kitchen. Aunty stopped to ash her cigarette in the sink, while talking to herself about those fuckers that took her daughter away. Sina wore vibrant color clothes and on that day she had on her lime green polyester pants, and orange tank top that matches her flip flops. She had a way of dragging her words and making them exaggerated at the end of the word. Like sweetie. Sina would stretch the “tee” part of swee-teee. She’d also annunciate every word separately, choppy as if someone where pointing at shapes on a card and asking her, “what is this?” Triangle. Square. Circle. Fucker.
While pointing with her half burned cigarette hand at me Sina went on, “You-seem-to-be-the-smart-kid-in-the-bunch-so-can-you-tell-me-honeey-what-those-god-dam-sons-of-bitches-said-about-my daughter? Sit here.” She instructs me. “Read-the-letter. Tell-me-what-those-sons-of-bitches-are-saying-in-that-letter.” Sina nodded with her head where I should sit in her dark 3 bedroom apartment.
Westcoast Victorian Era - 1930’s Long Beach, California
The place was built in the 1930’s with high ceilings and spacious rooms. The entire apartment was painted salmon, with French doors and windows that never had drapes. The smell was always damp like the odor of dish rags that needed to be washed a long time ago. Inside the living room were scant furnishings made up of one broken recliner, and a green and white folding lawn chair. Lastly, a sofa that endured at least ten or more years of wear and tear from people’s asses, and sweat from Eddy’s body because the couch doubled as a bed at night. There was also a record player – which was why I was always at their home after school. We didn’t own a record player, only an eight-track tape player that my parents played Donny and Marie Osmond or Captain and Taneal or the Carpenters. Nothing I liked. But Vivian and her brothers Junior and Eddy owned all the latest music that came out. Lakesides’ Fantastic Voyage and Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall were my favorite albums and I’d go to their home as often as possible to play vinyl 12” extended version records. At fifteen this was one of my chill spots. However, Eddie would howl with anger if anyone scratched his brand new records, when it started to skip. He’d yell, “Who the fk scratched my album! Vivian! Who played this last? Where is Terry?! I know she was playing Lakeside, probably dancing around and bumped the player! WTF!” This was my que to run out the back door to escape Eddy’s lamenting - over the music he desperately needed to hear to feel better. I’d beat-up myself in my mind for ruining another brand new record, by accident. Later I would tell him I was sorry for scratching his records, it was an accident. He was older than Vivian, and would call me a stupid name and laugh while accepting the apology. Eddy was the neighborhood DJ that always had candy, soda, and quarters to play Asteroids; a new thing called Video Games at Big John’s Liquor store adjacent to Jed’s market.
Aunty Sina’s apartment they lived in used to be servant quarters for the hired help at the Drake Manor. The Drake house was this beautiful turn of the century Victorian home that faced the park. (More on the house later) But the demographics and times had changed not only the social order of things; but also the class of people that lived in the Drake Park area. This was now the neighborhood of the blue collar, working class where your mother was either a nurse at a convalescent hospital, or your father worked at the oil refineries. I sat in the broken recliner that was slick from numerous spills of both food and drink and started to read the letter. I told my aunt, who really wasn’t my aunt, that her daughter; my cousin who is really not my cousin, was doing well in her program. While in Juvenile hall she could have visitors in 3 months if she stayed good. My cousin or better yet – my best friend Vivian was sent away for about a year for beating up a group of girls in the restroom at the park. For some reason I didn’t want to participate in it. And it was a really fucked up deal looking back on it. “That’s good news honey,” Sina smiled while blowing out cigarette smoke towards those high ceilings that were dark from the tar in the smoke. Slowly and with a sound of relief she said, “That’s really good news. Thanks doll.” My aunt Sina looked out the French windows that poured brilliant orange and golden rays of light from the setting sun in the west and smiled, but her eyes began to collect with tears and became vacant as she drifted off to some memory probably about her daughter, leaving her body behind to hold the cigarette. Her mind wandered out the window through the sunlit memories that only she knew about. I watched Sina not knowing what I should say next. Aunty sat leaning forward with her right hand on one knee and the other hand cupping the cigarette that had burned down to the butt with the ashes still holding on.
Her face was very brown from the sun even though she didn’t have a job that required her to work outside. She would pluck her eyebrows until there was only a very thin
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