was very clear: while these sorts of things were not technically legal, the government was not allowed to bulldoze homes.
We had until morning to build them.
The hours passed, and by dawn, the progress was undeniable, and with a little imagination one could see the bare outlines of the place this would become. There were tents made of tarps and sticks. There were mats of woven reeds topped with sewn-together rice sacks, and sheets of pressboard leaning against the scavenged hoods of old cars. Everything the city discarded we’d been saving for months in preparation for this first night. And we worked and we worked, and for good measure spent the last hours of that long night drawing roads on the earth, just lines of chalk then, but think of it, just think … We could see them—the avenues they would be—even if no one else could. By morning, it was all there, this ramshackle collection of odds and ends, and we couldn’t help but feel pride. When we finally stopped to rest, we realized we were cold, and on the soft slope of the hill, dozens of small fires were built, and we warmed ourselves, each taking comfort in it, in our numbers, in this land we had chosen. The morning dawned pale, the sky scoured clean and cloudless. “It’s pretty,” we said, and yes, the mountains were beautiful that morning.
They still are. The government arrived before noon and didn’t know what to do. The bulldozers came, and we stood arm in arm, encircling what we had built, and did not move. “These are our homes,” we said, and the government scratched its febrile head. It had never seen houses like ours—our constructions of wire and aluminum, of quilts and driftwood, of plastic tarps and rubber tires. It came down off its machines to inspect these works of art. We showed the government the places we’d made, and eventually it left. “You can have this land,” it said. “We don’t want it anyway.”
The newspapers wondered where the thousands had come from. How we had done it. And the radio asked as well, and the television sent cameras, and little by little we told our story. But not all of it. We saved much for ourselves, like the words of the songs we sang, or the content of our prayers. One day, the government decided to count us, but it didn’t take long before someone decided the task was impossible, and so new maps were drawn, and on the empty space that had existed on the northeastern edge of the city, the cartographers now wrote The Thousands. And we liked the name because numbers are all we ever had.
Of course, we are many more than that now.
Let’s say your given name is Adrano Rontal, but they call you Rocky. Let’s say you’re a poor boy growing up in a poor city in a poor region of a very rich country. The richest in the world, or so they tell you. Let’s say there’s no evidence of that, at least not any that you’ve seen.
You have five brothers and a little sister. You’re not the oldest, but you are the bravest. Brave, even though you’re small. Brave, even when you shouldn’t be.
Let’s say the welfare check comes on the first and the fifteenth. Your father gets his cut first. For whiskey. No one sees him until night falls … And then, it isn’t your older brothers who protect your mom.
Instead, it’s you. Let’s say they dress you in layer after layer of clothes: extra sweaters, long-sleeve shirts, jackets, an ad hoc suit of armor, so stiff you can barely bend your arms. And your father, he beats you with a nightstick, like the kind cops use. And still you don’t cower.
Life has a way of punishing brave boys like you. Life has a way of making brave boys like you punish themselves. Particularly here. Where you live. You already know that.
One night your father gets carried away. He locks you in the closet, and your mother spends the night sleeping with her back to the door, to protect you.
In the morning, she sneaks the keys out of your father’s pocket. Let’s say she opens up the closet. And you’re caked in blood.
And so she kicks him out. A not insignificant act of bravery for a young woman with little education and few prospects, suddenly alone, with six children to feed.
You don’t know it yet, but you’re full of guilt. Full of hate.
Within a year, your older brothers are in juvenile. Now you’re ten years old. Now you’re the man of the house.
Let’s say one day a social worker comes by to check on you and your brothers. There’s no food in the pantry. You’re humiliated. You and your baby sister and your younger brothers are sent to a children’s shelter. You escape that same night and come home, but it’s your mother who convinces you, with tears in her eyes, to go back. “Don’t you wanna be with your younger brothers?” “Yes, jefita.” So you spend three months there, in a foster home, across the street from a methadone clinic. You recognize the junkies when they come by. You know them from the neighborhood. “Hey, Rocky,” they say. You can’t wait to go home.
You promise yourself you’ll never let the food run out again.
So when you come home, you start stealing. The first time you ever get busted it’s for breaking into a fruit stand. But before long you move on to bigger things. Let’s say you burglarize houses, taking anything that can be sold, but paying special attention to the food. You fill your father’s old duffel bag with cereal, with bread. You’re obsessed with the pantry. Obsessed with keeping it full. A week before the food runs out, you’re already in motion.
And then: at thirteen you’ve got your first .38. It’s the year you graduate to boosting cars. Let’s say you get a list, three or four a week. Make, model, year, color. You’re going to school now and then, but it’s like you’re not really there. You have other business.
At fifteen, you get picked up and sent to juvenile, like your brothers before you. You see friends from the neighborhood, tough, unsmiling boys just like you. You meet others, from all over California. And this is the first time you realize what you are. Or rather, this is the first time you realize what the world thinks you are.
Let’s say you’re sitting in a group meeting when the counselor calls you a gang member.
You’re offended. You hang around with people of the same cloth, the same experience, the same sufferings. These are your friends, like family. You don’t think of yourselves as gang members, but of course, technically, that’s what you are.
And let’s say you embrace the label.
When you get out, you start doing robberies. Holding up liquor stores, convenience stores. Let’s say you carry a gun, and every night you wave it in the faces of frightened cashiers. You don’t just take the bills; you take the change too. And at the end of the night, when you come home, let’s say you empty your pockets, slipping these coins under the pillows of your little brothers and your sister. It’ll make them smile when they wake up. They’ll know it was you who left the coins, even if they won’t know where they came from.
This is a story of three terrible crimes.
