The Infinite Plan by Isabel Allende Page B

principal’s spankings. He lived like a boarder in his own home, staying out as late as possible, coming home only to sleep—he much preferred visiting the Moraleses, or Olga. Most of his time he was to be found in the jungle of the barrio, learning its most secret secrets. Everyone called him El Gringo, and despite racial animosity, many people liked him, because he was cheerful and obliging. He had several friends: the cook at the taco stand, who always had some tasty dish to offer him; the lady at the grocery store, who let him read comic books without buying them; and the usher at the movies, who from time to time let him in the side door to watch the film. Even Purple Pecker, who never suspected Gregory’s role in tagging him with that name, used to treat him to soda pop in Los Tres Amigos bar. Trying to learn Spanish, he lost much of his English and ended up speaking both languages poorly. For a while he stuttered badly, and the principal called Nora Reeves to recommend that she place her son in the nuns’ school for retarded children, but his teacher, Miss June, intervened, promising she would help him with his homework. He was not much interested in school; his world was the streets—where, incidentally, he learned considerably more. The barrio was a citadel within the city, a rough, impoverished ghetto born of spontaneous growth around an industrial zone where illegal immigrants could be employed without anyone’s asking questions. The air was tainted with the stench of the tire factory; added to that on weekdays was smoke from exhausts and streetside grills, which formed thick clouds like a heavy mantle above the houses. On Fridays and Saturdays it was dangerous to venture out after nightfall, when the barrio was crawling with drunks and drug addicts, ready to explode into homicidal combat. At night you could hear couples arguing, women screaming, children crying, men brawling, and sometimes gunshots and police sirens. During the day, the streets boiled with activity, while unemployed men with time on their hands loafed on the street corners, drinking, hassling women, shooting craps, and wishing away the hours with the fatalism of five centuries of Indian forebears. Shops displayed the same low-priced goods seen in any Mexican town, restaurants served typical dishes, the bars tequila and beer, and in the dance hall they played Latin music; during celebrations there was never a shortage of mariachis dressed in enormous sombreros and matador suits and singing of honor and despair. Gregory, who knew them all and never missed a fiesta, became a kind of mascot to the musicians; he would sing along with them, yelling the obligatory ay, ay, ay of Mexican rancheras like a pro, stirring the enthusiasm of the crowd that had never known a gringo with such talent. He called half the barrio by name and had such an angelic expression that he won the confidence of most who knew him. More comfortable in the labyrinth of alleys and passageways, empty lots and abandoned buildings than at home, he played with the Morales brothers and a half-dozen other boys his age, always avoiding confrontation with older gangs. Just as with young blacks, Asians, or poor whites in other parts of the city, for young Hispanics the barrio was more important than family; it was their inviolable territory. Each gang was identified by its language of signs, colors, and wall graffiti. From a distance the gangs all seemed the same, formed of ragged, belligerent boys unable to articulate a thought; seen more closely, they were distinctive, each with individual rites and intricate symbolic language. For Gregory, learning the codes was a prime necessity; he could distinguish members of the different gangs by the jacket or cap they wore or the hand signs they used to flash messages or to challenge a fight; he had only to see the color of a single slogan on the wall to know who had put it there and what it meant. Graffiti marked boundaries,