We were too shaken up to go straight home, so we headed to the park—the one we’d discovered over the summer, which sat on a hill right above Disneyland. If you looked closely, you could see the tip of Space Mountain, which Lupe and I still hadn’t been to. We’d been hoping to go over the summer, but things were always too busy back at the motel.
Hank led me to a spot in the shade. “You okay?” he asked as we sat down underneath a tall oak tree.
“It’s so mean.” I shook my head, kicking the grass with my flip-flops.
“Things are at a fever pitch right now with the election.”
I looked over at him. “But it’s going to be okay, right?” I asked. “They’re not really going to pass that law?”
“I hope not,” Hank said, gazing into the horizon. A gentle breeze swept by us.
I fell quiet. He still didn’t know about Lupe.
“What’s the matter?” Hank asked. “Is it school?”
I groaned and started telling him about Mrs. Welch and my bad grade. When Hank heard what Mrs. Welch said about race not being real, he snorted.
“Race might be a social construct, but racism’s as real as the clouds,” he said, pointing at the sky. “You can see it, and you can feel it when it pours.”
I thought about how true that was. We could see it plain as day. It was right there on the grocery store wall.
“Want to hear how my first week as Marketing Director went?” Hank asked. I nodded. “Well, I went to the bank. I wanted to try to get a line of credit for the motel, so if we ever need money, we can borrow it from the bank instead of turning to loan sharks.”
“And?” I asked.
“And they turned me down.” Hank sighed.
“Why?” I asked.
The leaves above rattled in the wind. Hank shook his head. “They didn’t think they could trust someone like me to pay it back. I thought that if I got some nice clothes and dressed real smart, they’d treat me like everyone else … but it’s not easy being a Black professional.”
Hank frowned into his hands. It hurt me so much to see him like this, and I wanted to run over to the bank and speak to the manager. Let ’em have a piece of my mind. And then take all their deposit slips and draw on them. Why did everything have to be so hard, even for Hank, who was born here?
Tears fell down my cheeks. Hank lifted his brown hand to rub them away. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said with a smile. “There are other banks.”
I nodded.
“The point is, there are racist people everywhere. You can’t avoid them, and you certainly can’t let them stop you,” he said. “You just have to hope that through your small interactions with them, eventually you’ll change their minds.”
I looked out at the clouds hovering above the Happiest Place on Earth. They were so thick and heavy in the sky, we could see them and feel them, even if we couldn’t reach out and touch them.
Hank got up and reached out a hand. “Now how about we go home and make some chocolate chip cookies?”
I smiled.
The cookies turned out great. I brought some to school to share the next day, but Lupe wasn’t there. During art class, I snuck little bites when Mrs. Welch wasn’t looking. We were talking about stylized art. One of the other kids raised a hand.
“Speaking of graffiti, is there a punishment for spraying stuff on a wall?” Jorge asked.
I put my cookie down and turned to him. Did he see it too?
“Are you talking about the graffiti outside Ralphs?” Tomás, or Thomas, asked.
“Wasn’t it awful?” I asked.
“My mom says there was another one last month outside the Misión del Sagrado Corazón,” Kareña chimed in, looking sadly down at her desk as she uttered the name of the local church.
My eyes bulged. “What did it say?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Jorge said, shaking his head.
Mrs. Welch cleared her throat. “We’re getting off topic,” she said. “We’re not talking about graffiti today; we’re doing self-portraits. Now I need you to all get out a blank piece of paper and a pencil.”
As we all dug out our pencil cases, I scribbled a note to Tomás, Kareña, and Jorge.
Meet me by the tree at recess.
–Mia
Mrs. Welch might not feel like talking about it, but I did.
Under the green canopy of the tall oak tree, Kareña, Tomás, Jorge, and I sat exchanging info about the hateful words that’d been popping up all around town—not just on walls, but from people’s mouths too—ever since Governor Wilson started airing his ads.
“My mom and I were in the laundromat, trying to do the wash,” Kareña said. “This guy came in, told us to leave, and when we didn’t, he opened up our machine and all the water came pouring out at us.”
Tomás’s hands clenched up tight.
“We had to grab our soaking wet clothes and run out!” Her chin quivered at the memory. “I nearly fell on the water.”
“I’d like to wring that guy in the dryer,” I fumed. “Was there anybody else there?”
“Yeah. There was a white family. But they just pulled their kids behind them and pretended not to see,” Kareña said.
“That’s the worst.” Jorge shook his head. “The people who just watch and don’t do anything.”
I thought about all the times last year when Jason made fun of my clothes and nobody stepped in, not even Lupe. At the time I was really hurt that Lupe didn’t stand up for me. Now I understood a little more why she might have been scared.
“Are you guys worried about Prop 187?” I asked them gingerly.
They jerked backward a little at the question. “We’re not illegals, you know,” Kareña said.
I waved my hands—that hadn’t been what I meant. “I’m just saying, it affects, you know, all of us.”
Kareña nodded. “Yeah, it does. Even if my family is safe, my aunts and uncles might not be.” She sat cross-legged on the grass, with her chin in her hands. “I just think it’s wrong, you know? That my little cousins won’t be able to go to school.”
“Or my auntie Ling’s cousin’s kid,” I added.
Jorge nodded. “It’s so wrong. And who’s next? What if one day all immigrants aren’t allowed to go to school?”
The recess bell rang. We peered back toward the classroom, sorry that our time under the peaceful tree had to end.
“This was nice,” Tomás said.
“We should do this again tomorrow,” Jorge suggested.
“Totally!” I smiled. “And my friend Lupe will be back tomorrow. She’ll love our new secret club!” I liked the sound of that, a secret club.
“What do we call it?” Kareña asked.
I put a finger to my chin and thought real hard, even though Mrs. Welch was blowing the whistle at us to come back.
“How about Kids for Kids?” I suggested.
The others liked the sound of that. We shook hands on it and agreed to meet again tomorrow, under the leafy tree.