Uncle Geraldo was not my uncle. Mom has no brothers, and she is not quite sure who my father is. His real name is not Geraldo either, but shortly after moving to Los Angeles, he realized English speakers were not prone to learn the pronunciation of Spanish names with Js and Rs. Anyway, she had some sort of confidence that he would raise me in a more favorable environment than in Caracas, and sent me with him once I finished primary school. Mom hit it. Uncle G was cool. Big, dark and sweet as a XXL chocolate bar. We took a low-cost flight to a cowboy-named airport, and Geraldo picked us up in his van, offered us a Dunkin' Donuts feast, and drove us to his modest but cute house in South Central.
He had a girl two years my senior and no wife. That might be the only link mom sustained with him. He was a sweet-heart also. Worked part-time as a night watcher in a fish can factory, but his real income came from buying old car bargains, repairing them and selling ten times the purchase price. His basement was the paradise of a mechanics freak. He knew how to reduce an engine to pieces the size of my thumb and set them together in a different car. And to my amazement, the engine started up and moved its new host.
By late August, when Mom returned to Caracas and I started the first term, I already felt at Geraldo's like a fish in a new bowl. By forging my academic record and producing fake English certificates, Mom had managed to register me in a posh school in Santa Monica, the kind of environment she thought a sweet, good-mannered young lady like me deserved, far from the bloody feuds of South Central LA. At Geraldo’s small but pretty house, set in a dead-end drive near the calm and pleasurable Athens Park, I was assigned a modest cabinet previously used as a laundry room. The room had a narrow window facing the hedge that protected us from the neighbor’s view and a functional sofa bed that I folded up every morning.
Gerry, Geraldo’s daughter, was quiet and a bit rough, but loyal and reliable as a Swiss watch, and I soon ended up spending my scarce free time in her room. It was the largest in the house and had a nice view above the back-yard through a cute balcony where two metal chairs and chill lemonade was all we needed to spark up some deep talks. Gerry cut her hazel hair boyish, read car-racing and bodybuilding magazines, and refused to wear a bra. The posters on her room’s walls were not famous pop singers or attractive film stars but giant pictures of her dubious idols; Cory Everson, Cynthia Rothrock, Michele Yeoh or Cat Sasson. Her skin was milky and her cheeks freckled but her solid body line was pure health. Despite her total lack of physical likeness to her father, when she pouched her lips or rubbed her nose with the back of her fingers you saw a mini Geraldo. And, gosh, she was athletic... Her father pushed her to show off her family feats in front of me. She could strike ten push-ups with me knelling on her shoulders or crush an apple to pulp inside her hand. Occasionally, Gerry and I used her red moped to escape for some pizza slices. Then we locked ourselves in Gerry’s room to devour our pizzas while watching old war films, NASCAR races, or her Miss Olympia tapes.
During my first months in LA, Uncle G drove me every morning at 6 am to the bus stop at Harbor Transitway, at the junction of the 110 and 105. The neighborhood was not fit for a 30-minute walk, especially for a cute young girl. So we waited for the bus to arrive inside the car, with the engine on. Fire and Ice blasting from the speakers at full power.
Uncle Geraldo owned a nice collection of music cassettes that we played in his van. He argued that in pop music, a female vocalist was a must. I learned oldies lyrics by heart by screaming along over the loud cassette player during our early morning trips to the Santa Monica bus stop. Deborah Harry, Pat Benatar, the Wilson sisters, Suzi Quatro... Those tunes would stay with me throughout my whole career. When I step on stage to face a particularly colossal rival, the beat of Love is a Battlefield, Atomic, Glad All Over or Barracuda in my headphones would lift me up, and no opponent seems invincible any longer.
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Although my uncle was a cool guy, his retail car sales seemed to be stressful. He never allowed us to meet his clients despite dating them in our basement. He would quote them when Gerry and I were not home, or supposedly sleeping, or simply treated us to an ice cream at Dino's, a place we reached using the red moped. I clutched onto Gerry's broad rib cage, and we defied the law with no helmets, my blonde mane waving free. That way, he cleared the house for his dubious entrepreneurship.
Normally Uncle G would take me to the bus stop directly upon returning from his night shift, and then get into bed. That morning, though, my uncle had to drop me off at the junction and quickly return for an unexpected demand. A middle-aged man wearing expensive sportswear leaned on the bus stop pole. Enjoying the music from his large headphones, he ignored us. My uncle checked him out and cleared his throat. Not the dangerous kind, so he kissed my forehead and rushed away.
Just as the roar of the van faded, a flock of stained-hair blocks with hoods and tattoos of a gang I fortunately didn’t know yet appeared out of nowhere. Their faces sported more metal than many ironmonger displays. Swarming in circles around me, they seemed to dispute who would pounce on the prey first. I lost control of my heartbeat. The excess of blood burned in my cheeks. The slimmest, ugliest one took the lead. He fixed his tiny rat eyes on the golden chain my grandma had bought when I was born. It had Santa Clara engraved on one side and my name on the other, and I'd rather give up a hand than let them take it.
"Not on your life!" I blurted out, high on adrenaline, immediately regretting how insulting it had sounded.
The second ugliest one with green hair flinched out a knife, but before he could make a move, the guy in expensive sportswear flashed behind him and hammer-locked his arm, forcing him to drop the knife.
"Ooh, ooh, we got a local hero here, what an honor!" said the first one, his protruding multi-pierced nose pointing at another pal who had pulled out a shiny gun.
"Let the poor girl's trinket go, take my phones and pocket money," said my hero releasing the green-haired freak and offering his purse. Green Goblin picked up the knife and stuck the end of the blade in the man's nostrils, puffing like a boiling coffee pot, but eventually controlled himself and snatched the purse and phones out of my hero's hands. The sportsman didn’t flinch. With the blade inside his nostril, he seemed relaxed and in control. Was he trying to make an impression on me, or was the whole scene staged for a candid camera shot? Yet the freak had stuck the blade further in, and genuine dark blood poured down.
"Hang," mumbled the leader of the pack. "I think we wear the same size. Take off those pretty sneakers. And don't fuck them up with bloody stains." The stranger hummed, unlaced his $200 footwear, and unveiled handsome athletic feet.
I shouted too late. When he crouched, the knife guy stomped with his army boots on my hero's face. He made a fist, but the sound of a click stopped him cold. The gun guy had unlocked his weapon. Frozen like a marble statue, a blast of blood spoiled his expensive clothes.
"Down," commanded the leader. My hero lay on the dust, and the tattooed junkies swooped down on him like a flock of vultures to take everything they considered valuable from him. A black girl with shaved temples snatched his wristwatch, Green Goblin took the Lambda-pro headphones and Walkman, the multi-pierced leader took possession of the Air Jordans and sweater. In a second, they left him half-naked under the early morning breeze and disappeared as quickly as they had come. The bus was arriving.
He got up, picked the belongings the freaks had left behind, and blocked the bleeding with one of my tissues. His hair was shaved up his muscular neck and grown on top of his head, leaving some bangs brushing his thick eyebrows.
"Dan Steinbeck, sorry to meet you under these circumstances."
We shook. His hand was even larger than mine and squeezed a bit too tight for what I expected from a gentleman.
"Natalia Rodriguez, you can call me Nat," I said, mimicking what adults used to say. I offered him my jacket, he wrapped its sleeves around his waist and tied them behind his back.
"You look like a Highlander."
"A barefoot one," he chuckled, and laughing, we climbed up the Santa Monica bus stairs.
