Page 12 of And Still Her Voice
She stabbed the pin into the diaper and then picked the baby up out of the trunk. “As you can see, there’s not that much room with the baby and all.”
“Please. I just need to get away from here.” I hooked a shaky thumb toward the van. “From them.”
She peered at me before looking beyond my shoulder, nodding. “Far out, I’ll tell Ben.”
In the back seat of the cramped Beetle, there was more room to breathe than in the van I’d just escaped. Betsy’s blue eyes, hard to miss, called attention even behind the quiet, almost invisible eyelashes. Tiny colorful beads strung onto gold chains dangled from her ears as she moved her head, constantly. I’d learn she couldn’t talk without moving her body and she couldn’t sit without talking; boy could she talk.
“Again, I’m Betsy and this is—” She giggled. “Well, I already said, Ben.” With a blond buzz cut, Ben, now holding the baby, looked like he might only be a year or so older than Betsy. She turned toward Ben, unbuttoned her blouse, exposing full breasts, and then reached for the baby. My face burned as if flames the size of dollar pancakes had flown out of her nipples. I’d seen my mothernurse my siblings, but she’d always been very discreet. The baby latched on as if she hadn’t eaten for days. “She’s Poppy. Almost a year old,” Betsy said, kissing the top of the baby’s head, a shock of translucent white hair sticking out like a scared dandelion.
“That’s a cute name. I’m Anna.”
“Far out. Nice to meet you, Anna.”
“So, this is not a test but, how old are you and where are you from?”
“Eighteen. Glendale. It’s in Los Angeles.”
“Yeah, I know. I was born in Beverly Hills before we moved to Arroyo Grande where my father opened a medical practice.” She cleared her throat. “Well, a psychiatry practice. Ben’s from Oakland. We met in Ethnic Studies at Cal Poly.”
“Good ole Cal Poly, the most conservative college in the world,” Ben chimed in. “I had no idea how hayseed SLO was. Man, I should’ve gone to Santa Cruz or UCSF where all the action is.”
“But then we wouldn’t have met,” Betsy said, reaching out to caress his arm. “Besides, you only have one more year,” she said, turning toward me. “He’s going to be an engineer.”
“If Nam doesn’t get me first,” Ben said, turning the dial on the radio.
“Talk about action. And that’s why we’re headed up to San Francisco. To protest the nasty war,” Betsy said, as if she had the power to move mountains, stop bullets.
“Are you communists?” I asked, recalling how my father called draft dodgers commies. Even though he hadn’t volunteered. Grandma had simply given him no choice but to join the Navy on his seventeenth birthday.
They laughed and Ben slapped the steering wheel. “We’re conscientious objectors,” Betsy said, switching the baby to her right breast. “We can no longer remain silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the minorities.” She sounded like she’dbeen rehearsing a speech, like she was Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr., or something.
This young fair, blue-eyed couple didn’t look like minorities, per se. They weren’t dark-skinned like Mom or my cousins or the families at Cristo Del Rey or those singers like Diana Ross and the Supremes.
“You’re very beautiful,” Betsy said, peering at me. “Isn’t she Ben?” My whole body ignited like church penny candles.
Ben, still fiddling with the radio, glanced at the rearview mirror. “Sure.”
I looked away.
“Exotic. What’s your background?” Betsy asked.
“American.”
“I mean—”
Even though I could be quite naïve, I knew what she meant. “My dad’s white. My mom’s Mexican.”
“A mixed-marriage. Far out.” She said “far out” a lot and for just about everything like if I’d have said, my dad’s Martian and my mom’s Klingon, she’d have said “far out,” and then in that case it might apply.
Far out, if you say so. The jury is still out on that one. Mostly, when I went out with my parents, some people just stared at us. Mom would get angry and whisper things like “Gringos estupidos, trailer trash,” or “Okies.” She’d readGrapes of Wrath, but for some reason she had some bias against the poor white people from Oklahoma who’d also migrated here looking for work during the Dust Bowl.
“Do you know how many Mexicans or African-Americans are enrolled at our school?” Ben asked. “How about Harvard? Berkeley? What about just poor people in general?”
I shrugged. As far as I knew, there’d been no plans for me to go to college. My parents couldn’t even afford to give me a quinceañera party. But what did it matter? I was that specialdaughter groomed to either get married or take care of them into old age.
“How many of them do you think have been drafted?”
More than the educated, rich white people? “I have no idea.”
