ALICIA

Five older girls surrounded her. She tried not to tremble, burying her face in her hands. At an unspoken signal, the girls began to hit her, pummeling her back, her head, her stomach, her legs.

Suddenly, after what seemed like several minutes, the beating stopped, and Alicia Luna’s tormentors came close to comfort her. They shook her hand, hugged her, made her one of them: “You’re our new homegirl.”

Her eyes still wet from the pain, her small body bruised and bloodied, she was the newest, and youngest, member of the Brown Brotherhood, a Whittier girls street gang.

She was 11.

The violence of that day in a tree-shaded Whittier backyard was part of a long pattern of abuse: a childhood marked by domestic violence and visits to a father who was often behind bars.

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Juan Carlos Manuel Luna was a heroin user and gang member, killed in 1990 when Alicia was 8, her mother says.

To this day, Alicia, now 14, and her mother, Refugio Benavides, do not know the details of his death in a drive-by shooting. Nor does Alicia know much about his life. He told her she had two half-sisters, yet she has never met them. One day, she says, she must.

There are two images of her father among the scores of photographs tacked to a cork bulletin board in a corner of her bedroom, both taken while he was in San Quentin prison. He is dark and handsome, grim in one photo but playful in the other.

She cherishes nearly a dozen elaborately illustrated cards and notes sent to the family from prison. On one to Alicia, her father drew lowrider cars and colorful, intricately detailed borders of leaves and flowers, signing them, “With love, your Daddy.”

Yet even with those he loved, her father was violent. He beat Benavides, stole jewelry from her and broke down the apartment door. He threw a television across the room, desperate in his search for drug money.

“He even hit her when she was pregnant with me,” Alicia says as her mother gently brushes a strand of hair from her daughter’s shoulder.

*

The Brown Brotherhood members told her there were two ways to be “jumped in” to the gang. She could fight with one girl--of their choosing--or be beaten by the other girls without fighting back. She chose the second, hoping it would be faster.

“After that, they just said they would always be there for me,” she says, expressionless.

She was known as “Little One.” She joined in starting fights with strangers, smoking marijuana, covering for others during shoplifting excursions. But she wouldn’t steal anything herself, angering the older girls. “They said I wasn’t down for my shit,” she said.

She left the gang in less than six months. A girl who persuaded her to join moved away, and Alicia took the chance to escape.

Gang life followed her.

A year ago, a girl from a rival gang moved in two doors down and began to harass her. She knew Alicia’s gang history and accused her of trying to steal her boyfriend.

She left messages: “You better watch your back, I’m going to kick your ass.” When the two fought one day after school--and friends declared Alicia the winner--the threats grew more pointed. “I’m going to blast you,” the new messages said, again and again.

For months, Alicia would not leave home on her own. She felt trapped, alone. One day last June, she pulled a knife from a kitchen drawer, planning to stab herself. Her mother’s boyfriend stopped her, staying with her until she fell asleep.

“I used to pray all the time for everything to go away,” she says. “I felt like I was alone, my dad wasn’t with me, I couldn’t go anywhere. I was crying and crying. I wanted it to end.”

*

Entirely unpredictable has been Alicia’s emergence this year, after four years in the Saint Joseph Ballet, as one of the program’s most faithful and disciplined members.

“You can see a real iron will in her,” ballet founder Beth Burns said.

She looks older than her years, and acts it. She is not as high-spirited as other teenagers, and she holds herself apart at the ballet and at Tustin High School. Emotions are kept in check. She speaks quietly about personal, painful issues, though her expressive eyes occasionally turn tearful.

Frightened by her attempt at suicide, Alicia has in the last few months begun to reach out to some adults, including the ballet staff and her mother, who works at an Orange preschool.

Alicia and her mother speak more openly about her father and Alicia’s own gang membership, which her mother suspected but never knew.

She has let down her guard at the ballet too. Hospitalized last fall with a concussion and broken eardrums after a car accident, she called the ballet to let them know she’d be missing class, and to ask for a visit.

“She had never reached out to us like that before,” Burns said. “It meant a lot that she allowed us to care for her at that time.”

She has met Gilbert Alvarez, 15, now her boyfriend. A freshman at Santa Ana’s Valley High School, Gilbert talks proudly of Alicia’s dancing.

Because she has a learning disability, school may never be easy. Yet she has made significant progress in recent months. “I think she’s doing well and realizes that she can continue if she keeps working hard,” said Dolly Grigaitis, a teacher at Tustin High.

*

Alicia reflects on a day last summer when Burns noticed that she seemed especially down.

“I never really talked to her that much before, but I just started telling her everything about my dad and the gangs,” Alicia said. “She was looking at my eyes. She was paying real attention to me and her eyes were getting all watery. I found out they really care for you there.”

She started going to the ballet more often, listening to Burns’ advice about pouring her emotions and her problems into her dancing. She was moved up from a beginning class to intermediate.

Lately, Burns has felt close enough to risk teasing her a little about the thin, painted eyebrows and carefully lined lips that recall her gang past.

“She won’t tell me to take it off. She just says I would look so much prettier if I don’t do it like that. Maybe I’ll change it sometime,” Alicia says.

“The ballet has changed me. I’ve learned how to express my emotions. I’ve learned how to dance, how to talk in front of other people, how to respect other people.”

Refugio Benavides says she has never been more hopeful about her daughter’s future. She credits the ballet, but also her daughter’s own determination.

“She says I used to remind her of my dad,” Alicia says, her eyes filling again. “She thought I was going to be just like him. But not anymore.”