My Hollywood Read online

  “Sure, Lola.” There are certain people; you know they will always say to you yes.

  At the bank, we fall in line. When we go to the front, the lady acts all business, making a total of the dimes. I say, “This little man filled the nickels by himself.”

  While she finishes the silver coins, I lift a bag of pennies from his wagon. It is heavy. We have many pennies. From the log cabin, we counted forty dollars nickels, twenty-seven dimes, and one hundred and three pennies. I lift Williamo up to see.

  But the lady pushes our tubes out. “We cannot take pennies.”

  Williamo picks one roll, to hand it back to her. I remember this moment, again and again: it is like the giving of a flower. He does not yet understand.

  “We don’t take these,” she says.

  For a second, then, his face changes, what his mother calls berry-with-a-frown. Cartoon looks; they are really true on children. An upside-down smile, then bawling. He throws the roll of pennies at her face.

  “I can’t help you,” the lady says with closed teeth. Her hand goes above her eye. She has already given us paper money for the silver. She looks at me with hate. I have seen real hate only a few times in my life. The shape of diamonds, it is shocking.

  But she is hurt above the eye and I am not a white.

  “Come, Williamo.” I fight him down into the wagon. I will have to pull the pennies and him. “We will make our getaway.”

  But he runs, dragging pennies to a garbage can, and dumps the tubes in. Still crying he is mad now, also mad. I have to stop him. This is not right. All our effort. With him what I do is almost tackle. I get on the floor and hold him until the fight is out.

  “Once upon a time,” I say, “I work in Beverly Hills. A house very fancy. Three layers. Floors like a checkerboard. Marble.

  “When I first came, the lady she open the door and right away she said, You are hired. She told me, she knew like that—she snap her fingers—you will never guess from why. Because the way I tie my sneakers. She thought Lola was tidy. But Lola is not so tidy, not really. I can be if I have to. And for her I clean every thing. But that is not the way I live. It is too much time, always straightening. I would rather taste some part of life. The husband, he had an office, and she hired me extra to go on the Saturday. He sat working at his desk. And he had one jar like this, up to my waist, full with pennies. I asked him, did he want me to get tubes from the bank? He said, You can take the pennies.

  “But I could not lift. So I came back Sunday, my off, and I sat on the floor and put pennies into tubes. He stepped around me when he went down the hall to use the lavatory. He ask me how much money as he went by.

  “Thirty-six dollars, I said.

  “Good job, Lola.

  “The next time it was ninety-four. By the last time he passed, I was at three hundred six. His face looked strange, like two lines crossing. He went down the hall and I heard Xeroxing. On his way back, he stopped and said, ‘Maybe you better leave the pennies.

  “Whatever you say. It is up to you.

  “When he returned to his desk, I stood and left it all there, the rolled pennies, the pile on the floor, the jar turned over. I took the bus to the place of Ruth and never went back. That was the end of my career for a Beverly Hills housekeeper.”

  “Is that when you came here?”

  “You were not yet born. I had to wait for you. But-ah, when the husband took the pennies to the bank, you know what they are telling him? They are telling him what they are telling us. We cannot help you. And you know what he will do?”

  “He shouldn’t have taken your pennies, Lola. He is a bad man.”

  “Only a little bad. Listen, you know what he will do? He will throw the pennies in the garbage and go away in a hurry, he is always in a hurry. He is too busy, see?”

  Now I fish with my arm in the garbage, feeling around wet things for our tubes. “But we will do something else. Come. You watch.” I pull him in the wagon out into the bright air. We go to the five-and-dime. And then the candy shop. Then the Discovery Store, where we spin the globe. Each place, I count out money. I put the rolls on the counter, so it is easy for the register clerk. My father told me, Spend your small money first. He remembered when money became light and the lower denominations would not anymore buy. And still at that time, there was wealth.

  In the wagon Williamo eats long orange candy worms.

  “See, in the bank it is nothing, but out here it is still money. Not for the Philippines, but we can buy. Every day a little. It is our trust fund. I trust you and you trust me. You have your candy. Now, we will use pennies to buy Lola coffee.”

  That is what my kids, they will remember. That Lola loved her coffee.

  When we return home, the hallway rounds to a cave and I hear chopping.

  “I will be the one,” I say. My employer, she did not grow up with a helper. She cannot easily ask. So I take the tomatoes. All the while with a smile. It is not hard. Not when you have a purpose. And I have five purposes, the youngest twenty-three studying medicine.

  Always the parents first, Ruth said. A kid cannot fire you. Even here.

  Anyway, my employer is a very good cook. I am happy to chop chop.

  Williamo sits under the table, folding a newspaper to a hat the way I showed him. “Who taught you, Lola? Your nanny?”

  “We did not call the ladies nannies.”

  “What did you call them?”

  “I really do not know. She was just the One in the House.” I shrug to Claire. “In our place, you know, everyone has somebody to help.”

  Tonight her eye where Williamo hit shines black and blue, yellow also. Over it, she has painted makeup. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

  “It is the age too.” But my children, they were not like this, not even Dante. Here in America, they are different. Also taller.

  “Maybe I should find a psychologist for him,” my employer whispers. “Do you think this is all still normal?”

  Really, I do not know. “You are talking to the wrong person,” I say. “Because-ah I like naughty boys.”

  She sighs, better now. We will not tell her the lady at the bank.

  She gives me my plate, covered with a napkin, to carry back to my place.

  “You won’t eat with us, Lole?”

  Ruth advised me, Americans do not know what they want. They invite you, and then after, they will pine for their privacy. Americans need privacy. Because it is a big big land. Also, if I am eating with them, when Williamo needs more milk, I will be the one to jump up. I like to watch the TV. Tonight I have a project. It is important to have hours you are comfortable.

  Later on, he can come to my place. We will study the map. The lavender Philippines, orange California. We are saving for the globe. Each day, we will give the man two rolls. It can help teach counting.

  They leave the dishes for the morning. They are a little spoiled, like my own kids, but I do not mind. They work hard. My money is earned. I can sit. That is my day.

  Some people across the Pacific, they had better be studying.

  I take my project with me in a bag and walk past the house they are building on Twelfth, where they say the wife is Filipina. Esperanza heard housekeeper. Lita today said baby nurse. Whatever she was first, they are now building towers.

  It is different for the babysitters not yet married. They come here every day. For them it is a shrine: boards and empty rectangles of air. Each wants a husband to carry her over the threshold of a Castle. Their dreams take place here.

  Me, I have my house already.

  I always keep in the corner of my room a box for my next shipment home. For a large box, only sixty-five dollars. I make a map for my daughters where to put my treasures. My employer became upset when she saw I had her present wrapped in T-shirts to send. “I want your life here to be a little nicer.” But I have a china cabinet in the dining room at home. I think of that room empty in the afternoon, a clean lung. I am not here to settle. America may be the future
of the world but it is not the future of Lola.

  Smells from gardens wind in the air, lights come on inside houses. Automatic sprinklers siss on.

  Every home has a place that makes the center. In my house, it is the cabinet, where I keep our remembrance and the diplomas of our children. In the downstairs of my employer, it is the stove where Claire cooks every night. For Claire, it is her cello, upstairs in the room she works. In the place of Ruth, the center is a book, left open on a stand like the Oxford dictionary in the studio trailer of my handsome weekend employer. The Book of Ruth tells the story of our careers in America.

  The teacher of Ruth was a picture bride, and then she worked domestic. On the first page, she typed HOW TO WORK FOR THE WHITE.

  They do not like their own smell. Their waste. Their own used things.

  Americans, they are very dirty. They used to be clean. The grandparents are clean. And the habits they lost are what they crave from us.

  I have with me tonight this old book. Ruth gave it so I will make repairs. I walk to Palisades Park, sit on a bench, and lift out the frail book from T-shirts I have wrapped around. The spine is tearing from so many times being opened, and some of the pages glued in, the paste has dried and they are coming loose.

  There is a carbon copy of a letter the teacher wrote to Mrs. Roosevelt and the reply, which came, eleven months later, from someone called Mary Anderson. The carbon paper is smudged from so many handling.

  The teacher of Ruth trained Filipinas. Because we know English, Ruth said. And Japanese did not work anymore domestic.

  A fellow student of Ruth learned English with the children of the family she lived-in. She left to Ruth that Visayan dictionary, with English words penciled in the margins. Into The Book of Ruth, women pasted copies of letters to Marcos and the unfamous presidents of Latin America. One housekeeper wrote a poem in Spanish for her granddaughter.

  Underneath the torn leather of the spine, it looks like machine stitching.

  The teacher of Ruth had a friend from the bus stop who wrote to the president.

  Dear President,

  I am a married woman and my Husband has been out of work for nearly eighteen month. I have been doing house work to keep my home together. I have one boy four and one half years old and it is very hard for me to leave my home and work at house work by the week. I get $12.00 per week. I work from seven in the morning till eight at night and if they have dinner parties I work much later and all I have off is from three o’clock one afternoon during the week and on Sunday afternoon. I wish you could do something to shorten the hours. I do not mind working to support my family but I sure do hate to be made a slave of. I hope Dear President you will not over look us poor things that has to work for the Wealthy. I sure hope my Husband will get work and I sure think if things keep up the way you have been doing every thing will come back wonderful. Dear President, we poor things want to thank you so much for all you have done.

  Sincerely yours,

  Grace Wicker

  17 Mercer Avenue

  Altadena, Calif.

  PS I sure hope you can do something so I can be home with my little boy for I feel he needs me.

  That smudged carbon copy the teacher put on the second page. Grace Wicker worked next door to where she worked. And she is a white, the teacher told Ruth. That is how they even treat their own.

  I take out a needle and three spools of thread. I try to match the faded spine and thread the needle. I sew cross-stitches very tight. After I sew, I will seal the holes with Crazy Glue.

  Everyone who stayed at the place of Ruth signed her name. It is also a how-to book. How to set a table, with four forks and four spoons, tricks about pie crust, how to fan a napkin so it stands.

  Always Do Extra, someone named Dora wrote in 1966. Anything a little nice without spending their money. Here where I am they have orange trees. So I make an orange and lime salad. She drew a picture of the way Valencia trees hold new oranges, along with some from the year before and white blossoms, at the same time. Always pick the old, she advised. Sweeter.

  If someone made a dessert—floating island or a layer cake—she recorded the compliments.

  I need one praise every day, Analise Deoferio wrote. I work Professor Williamson, of UCLA, for twenty-nine years. When my husband die, she pay the funeral.

  The book includes tips. Two baths a day, teeth cleaning at four-hour intervals, no curry, onion, or garlic, even on days off. That is a page someone cut out and taped in: IF THE DOG LIKES YOU, YOU’RE HIRED.

  —Don’t let yourself become the queen. You’re not the queen. The mother is the queen. Especially, it will happen sometimes before the kids are in school. Because the mothers become so dependent. The mother, any fun she can have with her friends, any minute to go shopping, any for herself—she needs you, so at that time they will do everything to keep you happy. But the babysitter made her price so high that later on they decided they do not want. And instead of just changing the pay, they fire her.

  I know because this was me.

  —The babysitter who was La Reina

  The edges of the page lift up; the tape, it is too dry. I will glue this in. I wonder if I can use the old typewriter of my employer to retype the carbon letters. They make a mess on the hands every time you open.

  The penmanship of Ruth is small. If your employer offers you something, old clothes she will not wear anymore, even a food you like to take home, always say no. If she really wants you to have, let her insist.

  Avoid families that do not use paper towels. Cloth diapers even worse. Always put a plastic inside every garbage.

  In the place of Ruth, there is a shelf with a row of black volumes. How many years to fill a book?

  “Average four,” Ruth said.

  “What will be your series title?”

  “A Wealthy Woman’s Guide to Being a Maid. No, seriously, Lola, the real problem in our profession is age. Like Mai-ling. She is too old to chase kids. And the mother knows it. But the father likes the way she irons his shirts.”

  In The Book of Ruth this year, Lita wrote the address of Patricks Road House, where she and Esperanza sat an hour and still the waiter did not take their order.

  Are you not a business? Babysitters work hard for their money; sometimes we want to spend too.

  I still have not yet added anything in the Book. I only fix the old, where it is tearing.

  I think what I can write. I have some advice about silence. If you are smart, when something happens, if the baby takes his first step or says the first word, the first of Williamo was “light,” second “French,” third “fries,” you keep in your private journal so you will have the true date but do not tell. You wait and that evening or the next they will call you shrieking, Lola, Lola come here! But the hitting; that I really do not know. Claire, she is nervous. And the guy, he is not strong. When he is there, he is only playing. I am the one to explain: Williamo, that you cannot do.

  When I am finished my stitching, I wrap the book again in two T-shirts.

  I stand at the fence and watch the Pacific. Fog blows in. Magic carpets.

  Ruth likes to have a picture of every babysitter.

  The book is also for memorial. Since we are working, we cannot always attend ceremonies. The weddings and baptisms, even the funeral. But we will send a letter of remembrance. And that will go alone on a page in The Book of Ruth. I have not known anyone yet who died here.

  I stand at the fence looking down at the ocean, then I turn back. Coming the other way, a woman runs lopsided. My weekend employer. Jogging. “Lola! What are you doing here?”

  “I am waving goodnight to the Philippines.”

  She asks me how long I will stay, meaning Los Angeles, but she is also meaning something else.

  “As long as I am needed,” I say. “It is not up to us.” Williamo, he is an only child. Often, when they start school, the parents they do not want to pay. Or they ask the babysitter to clean the whole house, for no extra. Here kids start
school already at three years. You boil all the bottles and nipples with tongs, and then one day, you stop. Raising children, it is all the same story—they grow above you. And you are no longer needed. They have a name for that here—obsolete. Things outlive their use, even people. And that is actually success. “My employer, she always says they will need me until the day Williamo goes to college. I will be the one to plan the graduation party.”

  Maybe this is what I will write in The Book of Ruth. If you can stay until they are five years old, then they will never forget you.

  I wash my dish in the bathroom sink. On the bed, I glue in the pages that have loosened, put stones on top for the paste to dry overnight.

  There at home, across the ocean, I have a house.

  Here, one room, attached to the garage: a bed, bathroom in the corner. Television.

  There I lived with other people. Bong Bong, our kids, friends and relatives arriving, sitting for a bite of gelatin squares on a plate.

  This room is my place here. It is still light in the sky but already dark on the ground. Before, I did not like to be alone. My sister became the doctor, so I became the clown. Bong Bong, he is the serious one. The cheese stands alone. Not the clown. Because when I am alone I cry. It is a strange thing: here, it feels good, untangling strings. After a few minutes, when I finish, the lines of the day laid out straight, I begin to hope Williamo will come crashing to the screen, yelling Lo-la.

  And when I begin to hope, he comes galumphing.

  Claire

  MY OLD CHAOS

  The phone rang after midnight—my mother. “Come over right away, I was broken into.”

  I made out our dresser, Paul not there, everything the same. The clock blinked 12:18. “Did you call the police?”

  “Just come over. This once you really have to. It’s all I have!” Her voice peeled a shred off me.

  I pulled on sweats, tucked in my nightgown, and walked out back, the wet grass sharp on my ankles, to Lola’s room off the garage, where I heard the faint noise of TV—good, she was still up. But when I knocked, she didn’t answer. I pushed the door open. She’d fallen asleep, the remote in her hand.