The Chicano in You
/Daniel A. Olivas
The first time Javier Zambrano experienced it, he was four years old. JFK had been assassinated a week before, the country still in the throes of mourning, Roman Catholics like Javier’s family suffering this violent loss more than others.
Javier stood still, silently watching a stray calico cat carefully make a path through the succulents that lined the fence in his abuelita’s backyard. The Los Angeles sky was clear save for a few fainthearted clouds, the midday temperature already hitting 80 degrees even with the sun sitting low in the sky, the same sun that warmed the boy’s back through his favorite faded green t-shirt. The calico suddenly sensed Javier’s presence, stopped its progress with its left forepaw frozen above a level patch of grass, and set its eyes on the boy. Javier smiled, wondered what it would be like to creep through his abuelita’s plants with such perfect control, one paw at a time.
And then it happened.
Javier blinked, the low hanging sun now in his line of sight making the long shadow of a figure jut toward him. Who was that? A boy, like him. Wearing the same faded green t-shirt he wore. Javier blinked again, realized that he was close to the ground. He looked down and saw them: one white and orange paw firmly on the ground, the other lifted before him, frozen in mid step. Javier looked up and recognized the boy. And at that moment, a wet foam of fear covered him, and he closed his eyes as tightly as he could. When Javier opened them a few moments later, his line of sight had returned to where it had been, sun at his back, eyeballing the calico.
Over the years, Javier gradually learned to exert some control over his ability, but that control was far from perfect. First, he learned that he could not enter a person—or animal—that he knew too well. Too much connection seemed to block his ability, and he certainly had tried especially when his father beat him. Second, Javier could use his ability no more than once a year, that is if everything fell into place perfectly. Third, while in another person or animal, he retained some measure of control while enjoying the particular skill, knowledge, and experience of his host. And perhaps most importantly, Javier discovered that he could remain in another being for months at a time while the real Javier went about his life as he would normally.
And as the decades passed, Javier grew more cautious with the targets he chose, honing his ability as if in preparation for a great goal, a history-altering finale. For he learned while in college that he could use his ability not only on people he saw from afar or knew only in passing, but also on those he encountered solely through television, radio, magazines. Another lesson Javier learned: never could he aim his ability at a target to cause harm, gain a selfish advantage over others, or fulfill carnal desires. That’s not to say he didn’t try; Javier was no more perfect than you or I. And once he knew the restrictions of his ability, he aimed to stay within those constraints, feeling a bit chastened and quite embarrassed by his failings as a person.
So, over the decades, Javier went to college, married and divorced quickly before the age of twenty-five, then married Celia Norte, twenty years later, who had sole custody of two teenage boys from a previous marriage. Javier worked several jobs until settling on a comfortable career with the city’s building permit department which, combined with Celia’s salary as a paralegal for a large law firm, allowed them to purchase a lovely 1923 craftsman house northeast of downtown that kept their commute within the realm of reasonable as the boys attended Loyola High School.
But he kept his ability a secret from his beloved Celia and everyone else for that matter. Throughout the years before and after he had married, Javier had experienced many remarkable things: flying through the Los Angeles skies on feathered wings and in the cockpit of a Cessna Skycatcher; lecturing two class sessions of a course titled “The Oceanic Imaginaries: Postcolonial Literatures” to graduate students at UCLA—despite majoring in Economics while in college; conducting Mahler’s Adagio Symphony No. 10 at Walt Disney Concert Hall; fabricating thin sheet metal products that eventually became rain gutters, outdoor signs, and ducts for heating and air conditioning; delivering three babies in one day.
His wife never suspected that he possessed this special ability—of course, how could she?—but Celia was particularly impressed by Javier’s rather eclectic and precise knowledge of airplanes, music, literature, sheet metal, and medicine, to name a few of the many interesting subjects Javier could opine on. She had married a savant, a kindhearted, sometimes distracted, savant.
And Javier grew accustomed to his ability, figured it would be something he would utilize until his death. But one night, he realized his ability had a purpose beyond self-improvement and experiential diversity.
They lay in bed as talking heads on television gesticulated in an almost disoriented manner. Celia had fallen asleep weeping, her face partially buried into her pillow. Javier stared at the screen as the stunned commentators called Pennsylvania. Celia had given up—she could see the momentum, she had predicted that this could happen despite Javier’s optimistic opinion that America would never, ever reward such a man with its highest prize. After all, this was a man who based his candidacy on a promise to build a great wall to keep Mexicans—criminals and rapists, to use his words—out of the United States. People like Javier’s long-dead abuelita, one of the kindest souls he had ever known. No! Not in Javier’s lifetime. Never, ever.
And when the networks called Wisconsin—giving that man enough electoral college votes to become the forty-fifth president—Javier knew the identity of his next target. This would be the greatest test of his special ability. It would require control, will power, a resigned acceptance that he would be away from his family for four, or even eight years. But Javier had to do it. He had no choice. It would be Javier’s one heroic chance to make America great again.
Author’s Commentary: While I don’t know if “inspiration” is the right word, I have been compelled to address—through fiction, essays, and playwriting—the election of Donald Trump especially with respect to his bigoted attacks on immigrants. And with respect to fiction, I have found that dystopian storylines and magical realism seem to be the appropriate literary vehicles for me to do this. “The Chicano in You” is one of three short stories that I have written that address the Trump presidency. I discussed my first piece of such fiction (the short story, “The Great Wall”) in a New York Times op-ed, “The Dystopia Is Here.” The third short story (“Los Otros Coyotes”) appears in the anthology Both Sides: Stories from the Border (Polis Books, 2020), edited by Gabino Iglesias.
Daniel A. Olivas is the author of nine books and editor of two anthologies. His latest books are The King of Lighting Fixtures: Stories (University of Arizona Press, 2017) and Crossing the Border: Collected Poems (Pact Press, 2017). Widely anthologized, Olivas has written for many publications, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Guardian, and BOMB. His writing has appeared in many literary journals, including PANK, Fairy Tale Review, MacGuffin, New Madrid, and The Prairie Schooner Blog. He shares blogging duties at La Bloga, which is dedicated to Chicanx and Latinx literature.
Read an interview with Daniel A. Olivas here.
