I was eleven when she died of pneumonia. Obviously, I don’t have a lot of memories of her, but I do remember that she smelled like cheap vanilla, and she made the most amazing caldo gallego. She never called me Evelyn, only mija, which made me feel really special, like I was hers and she was mine. Above all else, my mother wanted to be a movie star. She really thought she could get us out of there and away from my father by getting into the movies.
I wanted to be just like her.
I’ve often wished that on her deathbed she’d said something moving, something I could take with me always. But we didn’t know how sick she was until it was over. The last thing she said to me was Dile a tu padre que estaré en la cama. “Tell your father I’ll be in bed.”
After she died, I would cry only in the shower, where no one could see me or hear me, where I couldn’t tell what were my tears and what was the water. I don’t know why I did that. I just know that after a few months, I was able to take a shower without crying.
And then, the summer after she died, I began to develop.
My chest started growing, and it wouldn’t stop. I had to rifle through my mom’s old things when I was twelve years old, looking to see if there was a bra that would fit. The only one I found was too small, but I put it on anyway.
By the time I was thirteen, I was five foot eight, with dark, shiny brown hair, long legs, light bronze skin, and a chest that pulled at the buttons of my dresses. Grown men were watching me walk down the street, and some of the girls in my building didn’t want to hang out with me anymore. It was a lonely business. Motherless, with an abusive father, no friends, and a sexuality in my body that my mind wasn’t ready for.
The cashier at the five-and-dime on the corner was this boy named Billy. He was the sixteen-year-old brother of the girl who sat next to me in school. One October day, I went down to the five-and-dime to buy a piece of candy, and he kissed me.
I didn’t want him to kiss me. I pushed him away. But he held on to my arm.
“Oh, come on,” he said.
The store was empty. His arms were strong. He grasped me tighter. And in that moment, I knew he was going to get what he wanted from me whether I let him or not.
So I had two choices. I could do it for free. Or I could do it for free candy.
For the next three months, I took anything I wanted from that five-and-dime. And in exchange, I saw him every Saturday night and let him take my shirt off. I never felt I had much choice in the matter. Being wanted meant having to satisfy. At least, that was my view of it back then.
I remember him saying, in the dark, cramped stockroom with my back against a wooden crate, “You have this power over me.”
He’d convinced himself that his wanting me was my fault.
And I believed him.
Look what I do to these poor boys, I thought. And yet also, Here is my value, my power.
So when he dumped me—because he was bored with me, because he’d found someone else more exciting—I felt both a deep relief and a very real sense of failure.
There was one other boy like that, whom I took my shirt off for because I thought I had to, before I started realizing that I could be the one doing the choosing.
I didn’t want anyone; that was the problem. To be perfectly blunt, I’d started to figure my body out quickly. I didn’t need boys in order to feel good. And that realization gave me great power. So I wasn’t interested in anyone sexually. But I did want something.
I wanted to get far away from Hell’s Kitchen.
I wanted out of my apartment, away from my father’s stale tequila breath and heavy hand. I wanted someone to take care of me. I wanted a nice house and money. I wanted to run, far away from my life. I wanted to go where my mom had promised me we’d end up someday.
Here’s the thing about Hollywood. It’s both a place and a feeling. If you run there, you can run toward Southern California, where the sun always shines and the grimy buildings and dirty sidewalks are replaced by palm trees and orange groves. But you also run toward the way life is portrayed in the movies.
You run toward a world that is moral and just, where the good guys win and the bad guys lose, where the pain you face is only in an effort to make you stronger, so that you can win that much bigger in the end.
It would take me years to figure out that life doesn’t get easier simply because it gets more glamorous. But you couldn’t have told me that when I was fourteen.
So I put on my favorite green dress, the one I had just about grown out of. And I knocked on the door of the guy I heard was headed to Hollywood.
I could tell just by the look on his face that Ernie Diaz was glad to see me.
And that’s what I traded my virginity for. A ride to Hollywood.