But not today. Today we were on an adventure.
“I see it!”
Leticia didn’t hear me at first. She was too busy rapping along to Janelle, but I could see it. Salvation Mountain. It seemed to pop up out of nowhere on the long stretch of road.
“Wow,” Leticia finally said. She even lowered the volume of the radio, as if the vibrant colors might sing out a melodious tune to welcome us and she didn’t want to miss it. I slowed down to let the ethereal landscape come into focus, and then found a parking spot. We weren’t the only ones who’d made the trek. The place was filled with people. Families and hipsters and tourists.
“You ready?” Leticia asked. She handed me Cherry On Top, and I adjusted the rearview mirror to reapply.
Whenever we arrived at a new space, Leticia and I had an unspoken rule. We entered with imaginary armor; armor that would protect us from questionable stares. We walked in at the ready, our lips pressed tightly together until the space was ours and we could smile widely.
Circles of girls wearing the typical music festival uniform posed in front of the waves of color. Leticia took hold of my hand, and we walked past them to the top of the mountain, right to the large sign in red that states God is Love. She stood in front of me, taking picture upon picture. Smiling. Serious. Silly face. Then it was her turn to make the same faces.
“Together,” I said.
Leticia held the phone high so that it could include both of us and the extreme hues that enveloped us like colorful clouds. The sun kissed our skin. For those brief moments, we owned the celestial land.
“Let’s explore,” she said. We followed the yellow path down the monument and entered the cave-like rooms where so many objects were on display. My favorites were the old books and the sand-encrusted mirrors.
“If you had to live here, where would you sleep?” I asked.
Leticia wrinkled her nose and studied the room carefully.
“Right here.” She pointed to an elevated space made to look like a bench. “And you would sleep here.” She pointed to the floor and laughed.
“You wish,” I said, lightly pushing her.
Leticia found the perfect spot for us to eat our sandwiches, away from the crowd, underneath a tree painted in rainbow colors.
“I wish I had skills like an artist,” she said. “I don’t have any skills. I don’t even know why I’m bothering going to school.”
I shook my head. School would soon end, and with that came decisions that were made a few months ago: community college for Leticia, work for me. Leticia got this way, sometimes; she’d start to doubt herself, and that quickly became contagious, because I too would start to doubt myself.
“You’re going to school because you’re smart, stupid,” I said. “Because your parents are busting their asses to make sure you do something other than work. Besides, you are not going that far. Take some classes, see what you like, and then keep moving forward. Pa’lante, remember?”
“Pa’lante. Right. You’re not attending, and maybe that’s why I’m nervous. Like, how am I supposed to follow when you are not right by me?” she asked. “What if I fail? What if I waste everyone’s time and money?”
“What if you succeed? What about that? Stop saying no to yourself. If you win, I win. We are here to take over. Together.”
She nodded. “You are right! We made it to Salvation Mountain.” She paused. “It was a magical place on our list, and now we can scratch it off, because we got here. The magic is part of us. We can do anything.”
I pointed at some posing white girls. “They don’t know this yet, but we got this,” I said. “All of it. We are going to win in spite of the walls and the dumb obstacles they place before us. We’re warriors.”
“Warrior hermanas,” Leticia said. “We should get a tattoo right here.” She pointed to her flexed arm, then pulled out her phone and added warrior hermana tattoos to our list.
“Here, eat.” She handed me half of the Palomilla steak sandwich we’d picked up from Tito’s Market. We finished our food and stayed another hour, until sunset. The drive back would have us hitting El Monte late. We had to go.
“The guy who made this, Leonard Knight, was such a religious freak,” Leticia said as she read writings on the wall that declared peace and faith and temperance. “Everyone should live like this.”
“Like religious people?” I asked. “Living righteously only works for people with money.”
“No, you’re wrong,” she said. “We can live by these rules. Everyone can. If they took these words into their life, we wouldn’t be in the situation we are now. People wouldn’t be afraid of my family.”
I didn’t want to argue with Leticia. It was her tone. She needed to be right, so I let her be right. She took a picture of the sign, and we quietly walked back to the car.
* * *
To leave Salvation Mountain, we had to take the two-lane road towards Niland, California. When the cars in front of us slowed down, we knew there was trouble ahead of us. How was it that we hadn’t noticed the roadblock on the way in? We’d been too busy singing, too busy rushing toward Salvation.
“They’re checking,” Leticia said. There was no panic in her voice, not yet. This wasn’t the first time she’d had to deal with this. But we’d let our guard down, and now we were stuck behind these cars, inching closer to the men in uniform. “What if they take me in? What’s our plan?”
“Don’t say a word. I will talk.” We hadn’t done anything wrong, and we had to maintain that feeling because fear would get us nowhere. “We’re good.”
The closer we got to the checkpoint, the tighter my hands gripped the steering wheel. We were not even close to the border, but here they were, ICE, doing what they did best. Leticia pulled down the mirror and placed her hair up in a bun. Her lipstick still glistened red. The car in front of us was full of a bunch of girls we’d seen earlier, taking pictures in front of the mountains, just like us, except they were white.
One of the patrolmen talked while the others looked on menacingly. Jokes must have been exchanged, because one of the girls flicked her hair back and laughed. Leticia connected her phone to the car charger. She practiced her smile, as did I. I stopped the car in front of the line of border patrol cops. One of them held a leash connected to a large German shepherd.
“Who here is Puerto Rican?” he asked, pointing to the miniature flag hanging off the dashboard.
“We both are,” I said. Big smiles. I turned to Leticia and she nodded.
“Too bad,” another patrolman teased. I focused on the one in front me, but sometimes glanced over—to the dog, to the men wearing sunglasses that shielded their eyes. Their mirrored sunglasses reflected my face.