Linda Zamora Lucero

After Delano

San Francisco, 1995

I am dancing with Nico at César’s Club, he spinning me around and around on the crowded dance floor. All giddy and sweaty, we are laughing and howling like wild coyotes until a shrill and insistent ringing pulls me awake. Half conscious, I grasp for the phone on the nightstand, thinking it has to be Nico, even though I haven’t heard from ese loquito in months and all I want is to fall back into the luscious dream after another Friday night out with friends, carousing until the bartenders kicked us out. 

“Vida. It’s me.” 

A woman’s voice and rush of adrenalin charges through me as I sit up against the pillow, wide awake. Amalia Cuevas. The low throatiness in her voice, as if she’d smoked a pack before breakfast. 

 “Yeah, it’s been a minute,” Amalia says, with an uneasy laugh. “I’m in Berkeley for a film panel at Pacific Film this evening–it’s on Latinos in Hollywood. You know. All seven of us.” She pauses. “Vida, I need to talk to you in person . . . can I come by today? I saw Nico in Denver last week and I’m mad worried.”

Truly, I have not spoken to this woman for almost fifteen years yet she’s super confident that I can’t say no, not when it has to do with Nico. After a long hesitation, I say, “Okay. I’ll be at Bajone’s at two, Valencia Street near La Raza Graphics.” 

I hang up and a deep breath to steady myself. 

I will never ever forget the day Amalia ditched us just outside of Delano where we had been staying with friends that final summer. No warning. No speeches. With a quiet, “I’m out of here,” she packed up her belongings and thumbed a ride to L.A., even leaving behind Hector, her longtime boyfriend. That afternoon, an obviously shaken Hector hugged Nico and me goodbye, slid behind the wheel of his VW crammed with sets, props, and costumes and shot up 99 towards Fresno. The four of us in our small theater collective had been familia, compañeros en el movimiento and until that day, I had believed Teatro Milagro was forever.

According to Nico–who, God knows, has been known to embellish–Hector had long since married, turned Seventh Day Adventist and was teaching Sunday school in Modesto. “He’s got that guilty-Christian-kinda-thing going on,” Nico likes to joke. “No more teatro, no more música for our Hector. He gets hella panicky whenever I contact him.” Which is probably not a joke.

Devastated, I retreated back to the Mission in San Francisco where I had grown up, got a teaching credential and haven’t gone near a stage since. I mean, why dwell on what might have been? What’s over is over. Teaching ESL to newcomers is good work and pays the bills. And the Mission is a fantastic community, with its música, muralists, djs, flor y cantos, galleries, street festivals, bars and late night taquerías. Not to mention, I have rent control and that’s everything in the gentrifying Mission.

Naturally, easygoing Nico never blamed Amalia like I did. After Delano, he simply moved on, spending months with a Zapotec teatro in Oaxaca before returning to directing gigs at Houston Rep, Mark Taper and on to the wider world. For someone whose visits are few, seldom calls and never writes, he’s somehow stayed connected with us individually over the years. I have my friends, but I live for the times when Nico’s in town and comes by the flat to insist, “Get dressed, mija! Let’s go to César’s tonight. Those beautiful hips are made for dancing, and here’s a line of coke to get you in the mood!” 

Nico’s how I know Amalia is shacked up in L.A. with a big-time TV producer and is still trying to make it. ¡Chale! At the age of twenty-eight when she left us, Amalia was already too old for Hollywood dreaming. I rejoice in that knowledge. I’m not as evolved as Nico.  Ni siquiera. 

After a long shower, I pull on an old yellow sweatshirt and blue jeans, and run a comb through my hair before tying back it in a short pony tail. Drinking coffee in the kitchen, I try in vain to visualize how it will feel seeing Amalia after so much time gone by, wondering what in the hell she actually wants. I haven’t heard from Nico for months but that isn’t remotely unusual. 

On the way out the door at the appointed hour, I smile at a framed large-format photo of Nico and me samba’ing down Mission Street at last year’s Carnaval, both of us in flamboyant red and white costumes and gold-feathered crowns, half-drunk and blissed. That image always makes me happy even on the grayest days. 

#

A popular spot for late night jazz, Bajone’s is dark and nearly deserted on a Saturday afternoon. Smokey Robinson’s “Quiet Storm” is playing softly on the sound system. As soon as I walk in, the woman sitting at the bar turns around and removes her sunglasses. 

“Hey, Vida,” she says with a bright smile. “Thank you for meeting me.”

The voice is familiar but everything else throws me off. The dark hair pulled into a sleek bun, the full make-up and enormous gold hoops, the purple leather jacket and matching slacks and high heels. I try not to stare but it’s a real challenge. Not so long ago, Amalia had been a formidable activist and cultural organizer, a mentor I had looked up to. Now she looks like a designer eggplant. It’s depressing. 

“You look good,” she says, and of course she lies. I’m not looking nor feeling my best but at least I’m rocking my favorite turquoise earrings. Sliding onto the stool next to her, I notice the two shots of tequila on the bar. 

“Well, I could use a drink,” I say dryly. 

Amalia hands me a glass and raises her own, says, “Salud!” 

“Salud,” I say. 

The first time we met, I had been a desperately homesick freshman at UC-Santa Barbara. Missing la locura de mi barrio–all the Raza, Natives, Blacks and Pilipinos I’d grown up with–I was drowning in a sea of strangeness until the afternoon I stumbled across an event on the quad. On a makeshift stage were three brown actors who clowned, sang, turned cartwheels, and portrayed a giddy succession of farmworkers, landowners, organizers, sheriffs and judges. The play–if it was a play–was hilarious, angry and over-the-top. At the end, Amalia introduced herself to the crowd and made an impassioned speech about the United Farmworkers’ unionizing efforts. Utterly entranced, I signed a petition and got invited to an off-campus party that evening. 

I searched for Amalia when I arrived and finally found her on the back porch smoking a cigarette. With striking indigenous features, she was wearing black overalls and a bulky Mexican cardigan, her hair in two thick black braids woven with red ribbon. “You came!” she said with a welcoming smile, waving me over. Close up, she had a dusting of copper freckles on her cheeks.

“Hey!” I said. It felt easy sitting next to her, like I’d found the older sister I had always longed for. I wore my go-to outfit in those days: thrift-store brown suede jacket with fringes over a white tee and short denim skirt, my straight black hair hanging loose, beaded turquoise earrings from the Stanford Powwow. I immediately started gushing about the play, how I’d never seen anything like it.

“Teatro Milagro is Chicano theater,” she said, “We’re about better conditions for nuestra gente. Migrant farmworker families–hasta los chamacos–pick fruit and cotton for pennies an hour in 100-degree weather.” I was raised on city sidewalks far from any fields, but my dad had told me stories about picking sugar beets in New Mexico with his brother Alfonso. Turned out Amalia’s family was still following the crops up and down the West Coast. “Forget about fresh water or toilets. Crop dusters spewing poison on us like we’re animals!” Her silver hoops shook as she spoke. Suddenly, she jumped up and ground her cigarette under her boot, saying, “Come on, Vida. ¡Bailémos!” 

“¡Bailémos!” I grinned, getting to my feet. 

Inside the crowded smoke-filled house, we boogied to Motown and Fania blasting on the stereo, sweated, drank jug wine, danced some more. Amalia waved at her boyfriend Hector, who had pockmarked cheeks and round wire-rimmed glasses. One of the actors I’d seen earlier, he was spinning records near the built-in bookcase, driving the momentum of the dancers, clearly enjoying himself. It was way past midnight when the third actor bounced into the party carrying a six-pack and I swear to sweet Jesus, it was like a “Boom!” to my heart. Dressed in black, he was slender, his Indio skin smooth over high cheekbones, shiny black hair pulled back in a ponytail. His large hooded eyes gleaming as if lit from within. 

“High time, Nico!” a willowy woman in an Afro called out from the dance floor without breaking rhythm. “I’ve got something for you.” 

“Hey, child!” Nico turned but kept moonwalking in the direction of the stereo. “I’ll be back,” he teased. I felt an intense energy when he brushed by me. 

Others called out “Nico!” as they twirled, carried on a blast of horns. “Hey Nico!” He might have been a wandering troubadour returned from foreign lands. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him. 

Hector reached out to Nico with a showy homeboy greeting. Palms, grip, slide, playful finger wiggle. “Hombre, we killed today!” They bear hugged before Hector dropped another LP on the turntable and Nico morphed into Sly Stone: his voice stirring, his agile body bopping to the music. “Boom shaka-laka-laka!  . . .” Nico sang out. Others joined in, grooving and singing, "Boom shaka-laka-laka . . .” As Amalia and I danced, I sang out too, a raucous joy catching hold of me for the first time since leaving home. 

In the wee hours, I found myself in the kitchen making small talk with Amalia and Hector, his arm slung around her shoulder and Nico leaning back against the countertop, nursing a beer. With a wine-loosened tongue, I revealed that I’d understudied the role of Sabina in The Skin of Our Teeth in middle school and offered to help them paint sets or pass the hat, help la causa–whatever was needed for Teatro Milagro, I was determined to be part of it. 

“We’re taking Milagro to the camps this summer. Come with us!” Amalia said. 

 “Simón, esa. I’m not gonna lie,” Hector said, continuing in a melodramatic voice, “We’ll be living on rice and beans, relying on the kindness of strangers!”

“Our message will be welcome,” Amalia said. “Te lo prometo.” 

Nico winked at me. “We need you,” he said. “Besides, I like how you move.” 

I laughed and winked back at him, knowing I had found my place in the world. 

#

Glancing at the green neon “Bajone’s” above the bottles behind the bar, Amalia says, “I distinctly remember coming here with you after a chaotic TENAZ meeting at the Cultural Center, must have been seventy-five or six. Those were crazy times.” She laughs lightly as if wanting to reminisce but I’m not biting. 

“So, you saw Nico recently?” I say, my voice tight. 

“Three weeks ago, in Denver. He was directing House of Santos for Tony Vargas. ¿Te acuerdas de Tony?”

I nod.

“Opening night reception in the lobby after the play, and our Nico was high on teatro and Colombian pharmaceuticals. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Tony was pissed.”

“Tony always was a control freak,” I say, defending Nico at his worst because I have no intention of agreeing with Amalia. 

“It was legit. You can’t make theater that way. Nico was shedding energy everywhere,” Amalia says. “He’s in l-o-v-e.”

“Who’s the lucky guy?” I am way past pretending Nico is anything but romantically interested in men. He still insists he’s attracted to both men and women, yet I’ve never seen him with a woman romance-wise. I was definitely in denial when we first met, but after a few weeks on tour that first summer, we had been drinking at a boisterous Mexican cantina in Hollister, chismeando in the darkest booth and getting pleasantly tipsy, the waxing moon dazzling outside the plate glass windows. Nico ordered another round of drinks and told me–almost in a whisper–about his first love, a man. His second love, a woman. “Two great loves in my life,” he said softly. “And now there’s you, mija.” I wanted to kiss him right then, but I somehow realized it wasn’t a seduction. It was a gesture of profound love, an offering. “I love you too, Nico,” I said. “Always and forever. Like the song.” 

Y así fué. He would scold me for falling in love too easily. “Those guys don’t deserve you,” he’d say. I would worry about his drinking and party-loving maneras, but he said he had his reasons and I always joined him because I do love a pachanga and as I quickly learned, when an itinerant teatro comes to town, revelry is absolutely expected. 

Now Amalia laughs her guttural laugh. “Actually, it was Gina Coca, the lead actress, remember Gina from Corridos? At the after-party Nico corners me and whispers in my ear real loud: ‘Coca! Can you believe that’s her last name? This is so crazy, mi’ja, we are in love. Only one small complication.’ ‘Like what?’ I ask him. Nico says, ‘Her husband. But, no wait, Amalia!’ He saw me rolling my eyes you know. ‘The three of us talked it out. Last night, for hours. It was intense but Gina’s husband’s cool. This is for real.’ ” 

Amalia has Nico nailed: his actorly intonation, the way he lifts his right eyebrow when he’s trying to convince you of something completely outrageous, his delight at his own trickster-ness. 

“Good for Nico. Maybe it is for real,” I say, yet feeling a twinge of jealousy. Maybe he and I just weren’t right after all. I shake away the thought because I know I’m wrong. I do love Nico, had been in love with Nico, but I had also fallen in love with Teatro with a capital T from the moment I first stepped onto the stage that first summer. 

# 

“Five minutes, mujer,” Amalia said, her tender embrace banishing my jitters. The sun had mercifully disappeared from the Coachella Valley, leaving behind the whirr of crickets and the enormous black moths wheeling in the sky above the labor camp. From the wings of the platform stage, I peered out at about thirty farmworkers sprawled in lawn chairs, drinking soda and beer out of coolers, chatting in Spanish, Mixtec, Spanglish. Children crowded on the dirt in front of the stage, sucking on popsicles, eyes riveted on Hector as he strolled in from stage left, strumming guitar. Amalia and Nico followed, singing “De Colores,” the audience clapping in rhythm. My cue. Taking a breath, I twirled onto the stage, blue petticoat swinging, clad in Amalia’s red hand-me-down dance shoes that were too tight and beautiful beyond measure.

I played Susana as Nico directed, broadly and heroically. The exhausted workers would be snoring ten minutes into the play if he hadn’t kept our actos loaded with music, slapstick, and melodramatic plot turns. Teatro Milagro was a collective: together we wrote scripts, acted multiple roles, built and tore down sets, cooked meals, but Nico was our sole director. 

In the final scene, Nico, in the role of Antonio, drew me close. “Tengo miedo,” he said, his hands encircling my waist. I kicked up a leg and kissed him on the lips. The kids hooted and whistled. 

“Don’t be afraid, Antonio. ¡Todo es possible si nos unimos!” I declared. Grape picker, union organizer, feminist–my Susana had it covered. In the world we depicted, education, hard work and union membership paid off. 

From the second row, a woman shouted, “¡Si se puede!” 

Others responded, “¡Si se puede!” 

I wept with happiness at the end of that first performance, singing “El Picket Sign” with farmworkers who would roll out of their bunks at four in the morning to beat the sun to the fields. I was making a positive difference for my people, working alongside others who were doing the same.  

That summer, we settled into our roles, on stage and off: Amalia, the intellectual organizer. Nico, the genius director. Hector, the charismatic músico. Vida, the newcomer with a surprising flair for comedy. For five glorious years, we were El Teatro Milagro. So long ago, it feels like a myth. 

# 

Amalia catches my gaze. “Vida, you’re the only person who knows Nico like I do. In Denver I felt a desperation in him. It wasn’t the drugs.” She pauses. “Maybe I’m projecting but I’m worried about AIDS.” 

I draw a slow ragged breath. I should have guessed. The Chronicle is filled with obits of men–friends, brothers, fathers, cousins, artists, teachers–cut down cruelly and without mercy. I recognize more and more names each day. “Do you have a cigarette?” I ask shakily. I am not ready to talk about AIDS in the same breath as Nico’s name. 

Amalia takes a flat blue enameled case from her bag and sets it on the bar, sweeping a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She removes two cigarettes from the case, lights them both with a silver lighter and hands one to me, just like Joan Crawford. I take a long drag and regard her in the dim light. Amalia is right in one respect. We share a bond with Nico, like with no other person except maybe for Hector, bless his ignorant fundamentalist soul. 

The cigarette smoke slowly coils around us and dissolves into nothing. “Nico–he’s either being honored by Yale Rep or being threatened by soldados in Chiapas for being a subversive, peyote-eating gringo.” My tension gradually melts. “At my niece’s wedding, the whole time he’s stage-whispering about the Pope having nine lovers, one for each day of the week and three for Sundays. I almost peed from laughing, right there in St. Peter’s.” 

 “I asked Nico directly about his health, but he swears he’s not at risk.” Amalia takes a drag, her voice raspier. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“Nearly six months ago. April 29. César’s funeral. Nico called in the morning and swooped by with George from the Rez, who drives an orange Toyota that runs on prayers and saging. We barely got to 40 Acres in time to join the procession following the pine casket. Imagine almost forty thousand people waving UFW flags, weeping, singing, celebrating his life. It was a party.” 

“I was on set in London,” she murmurs. “How did our boy look?” 

I picture Nico’s wide-brimmed straw hat, the red flag with the black eagle draped across his shoulders. The joyous smile that never fails to rip my heart to shreds. 

“Delgadito. Como siempre, he forgets to eat,” I say, unexpectedly on the verge of tears. I think of Paulo, a gay colleague at school alarmed about his sudden weight loss, my next-door neighbor Simeon anxiously checking his skin daily for the tell-tale lesions that spell death. 

“We were supposed to meet for drinks on my last night in Denver and he didn’t show. No one has heard from him since.” 

“We’re talking Nico, right?” 

"I know but, like that?” Amalia says, snapping her fingers. “He has a paid residency in Denver and this new relationship. Unfinished business.”

The woman stepped right in it. “You did the same thing in Delano,” I say, shaking my head. 

Amalia’s gaze goes blank then focuses when she catches my drift. “That wasn’t the same,” she says, flicking an ash into a glass ashtray.

“Do not pretend it was nothing.” My voice quivers. 

Amalia says with a half-smile, “What does it matter after all these years.” 

My blood surges, infuriated by her dismissive response. “Was your career worth it?” I demand, trembling inside. 

“My what?” Amalia’s eyes meet mine, searching. “God,” she says. “Nico never told you.”

I’m so done with Amalia. What could she say about why she had abandoned us outside of Delano that would make any sense? 

After a long hesitation, she says in a low flat voice I strain to hear. “I came home early from a UFW meeting and caught Hector and Nico together in bed. In our bed. I couldn’t . . . I was completely blindsided. I couldn’t deal with it . . .  Come on, Vida, this is news?” 

I regress to my pudgy fourth-grader self, who intent on finally scoring in kickball, rounded home plate and, unable to break, slammed into the fence and had the wind knocked out of me. 

Hector and Nico? Had I known? Had I? After five summers on tour, we knew everything about everyone’s sentimental life. How Nico would disappear nights whenever he encountered another closeted Chicano or a straight guy who was willing. How Amalia and Hector had been love-birds since middle school. How I was always complaining about my non-existent love life. Amalia would make us laugh by insisting that true romance was waiting for me at the next off-ramp. When did I realize how often Hector came around to console me when the others were busy elsewhere? How as time went on his mouth would find mine as if by chance. I’d angrily shoved him away, reminding him that Amalia–his compañera–was my hermana. He would play it off. Me saying anything about it to the others would have been childish and hurtful to la causa. Hector was a just regular guy, nothing I couldn’t handle. 

Long ago memories cut like shards of glass. A school auditorium in Modesto. Amalia and Nico on stage in the last acto, Hector and me in the wings. Hector was insistent and yes, I was needy. I met him as an equal, my body melting into his until we heard our compañeros calling us back for final curtain. Pulling apart, we hastily straightened our clothes as we ran out into a sea of applause and the thunder of stomping feet. The four of us locked arms, drinking it all in: the pleasure running through the audience, the joy pulsing through our own bursting hearts. “¡Si se puede! ¡Si se puede!” We took a last bow and when I rose up I glanced at my compañeros and in them I saw reflected my own exultation. We were Teatro Milagro, Chicano theater, teatro por nuestra gente. Hector kept up the badgering, but I never again weakened. 

Had I sensed anything between Hector and Nico? Had I? I would have been too distracted by my own nagging guilt to have noticed anything. Perhaps I had chosen not to see. I’ve always been good at that. A few months later, when Amalia quit Milagro, had I unconsciously feared that I was the reason? And Nico? Why had he kept me in the dark all these years?  

“Hector was a dog,” I say, taking Amalia’s hands in mine. Her hands are warm and immediately familiar, causing tears to well up in my eyes. “And Nico? I don’t even know what to say. How long had it been going on?” 

Amalia shrugs. “I wrote you, called at your dad’s, for months after I left Delano. You never responded. You were real quick to turn from me. Nico and I made up years ago, but you were so righteous.” She smiles a sad knowing smile. “We are all human, Vida.” 

I feel hot blood rush to my head, realizing that she must have known about Hector. However brief it was, it was I who had betrayed Amalia. “I am so sorry,” I say softly as shame engulfs me. “I am so sorry.” How to take it all in, the years of misunderstanding and hurt between us? I had failed us both. So much has been lost, I can’t stand to think about it.

Amalia drains the last of her drink and changes the subject in a bright voice. “Farmworkers now make $7.50 an hour. That’s an improvement, believe it or not. I’m working on a script about Dolores Huerta, a documentary. Dolores is the future. I hope to workshop it at Sundance. Ya verémos.” She hesitates, then grins. “Nico says you write poetry.” 

Startled, I say, “Ha. I do love a challenge.” 

“Keep at it, mujer. We have to keep writing our songs.”  

I laugh. “You do know Nico’s going to take the credit for bringing us back together.” A lighthearted remark so pathetic I immediately regret it. 

 “Vida, Nico’s not well . . .” 

“Amalia,” I say firmly, fighting a rising dread. “If I’m sure of anything, it’s that Nico will ring my doorbell tonight, itching to share the latest gossip on the road to somewhere else. I keep a bottle of his favorite tequila at home. Can’t you see him now, pouring us traguitos con sal y lima, an earsplitting grito erupting from his brown soul? Can’t you just hear him? Just like Vicente Fernández, ‘¡Aaaaajajajajai!’ ” I chuckle at my poor imitation.

“Puro teatro, ese Nico,” Amalia says without a trace of joy.  She glances at her watch and stubs out the last of her cigarette. “I gotta get going.” 

We rise from our stools and embrace for a long time. 

“Good luck with Sundance,” I say. 

“Let’s keep in touch, hermana. And call if you hear from Nico, ok?” 

I nod. Nico’s fine, I want to tell her, but she won’t hear it.

After Amalia is gone, I can’t keep from thinking about a night two years ago–Nico’s fortieth birthday–a clear starry night when a rowdy group of us are flying along Sixteenth Street, fueled with tequila and lines of coke. The red silk bandana around Nico’s forehead makes him look like a stylish pirate on the road to revolution. I cannot stop giggling. After Delano, I know this is the happiest I would ever be, linking arms with Nico and la fabulosa Juana la Cubana, wailing to the sound of Pedro Infante’s "Los Hombres no deben llorar" escaping from Esta Noche. High above Twin Peaks is a dense river of fog rolling towards us and I swear to God, we are having the best time of our lives, levitating into the San Francisco night.