My Hollywood (27 page)

Lucy blurts, “I will lose weights. Because I am sweating!”

“The dryer beep,” Mai-ling says.

“So leave the dryer.” I look down my shirt. “I live with wrinkles.”

Mai-ling nods, meaning,
You keep an eye, yes?
Then she goes to answer the dryer. My pupil is giving Bing up-downs, he shrieks, the way he does, and after a while they stop. I hear a difference. Too quiet. I look at the kids, count. “Where is China?”

We look. Nowhere. Then Lucy dives, hands prayered overhead. I see her body underwater, a dark shape in the blue. This was what she went to medical school for, to save life.
Jollibee. Be Happy. Feel Life
. That is a billboard in Manila. Jollibee, it is like our McDonald. While my pupil dives, I am thinking billboards.

She drags the small body out and we crowd around. For a whole minute, we do not know—maybe life stopped. But then, my pupil feels the pulse. “She is breathing,” she says. “Unconscious.”

“Call nine-one-one,” I say.

Lita asks where is the number for the parents.

“They just go. All the time, they just go.” Mai-ling, she is complaining them!

“Whenever the parents leave, you always get the number,” I scold.

Lita wants that all but Filipinos get out.

“But when they leave, they will talk,” I say. “Mai-ling should go. To the bus stop. Wilshire and ten. I will call Danny to pick her.” I hear footsteps down the stairs. Maybe she will get her things.

“But nine-one-one is police. What about the ones without papers?”

Lita and I decide. “Only the legals stay.” Lita is the one to call.

Not even a wall separates the room of Mai-ling from the laundry. Just the washer, dryer, ironing board, her small dresser and bed, China on top the white. Mai-ling tugs a lace dress over her shoulders, dry pink bougainvillea stuck in her hands. “Mai-ling, you should never move the patient!” Lucy shouts.

A pop and light: Mai-ling taking a picture. The employers, they gave her that Polaroid, for her Christmas once.

“Oh my God,” Lucy says.
“Bu’ang
. She is really
sirang ulo.”

“Mai-ling, she is a simple person, she believes things we do not even know what.” Upstairs, we hear a commotion: the paramedics, thudding down in a stampede, doing what my pupil could not, taking Mai-ling off China and moving the girl to the stretcher.

“Which one’s the housekeeper?”

Another says, “Whose of you speaks English?”

China breathes, only unconscious. And then they go, the siren, swinging like the incense in church at home, wailing into the late day.

Helen arrives just for a normal pickup.

I hear Mai-ling say, “Ma’am, I will get the electric chair.”

Still here! She should be gone already. Helen is okay, but anyway not Filipina.

“I am the only one sending money,” Mai-ling says.

“I’ve got to call Jeff.” Whatever Helen says, he is the one to decide. She keeps dialing.

“I cannot leave,” Mai-ling whispers. “They owe me.”

“You worry that later. Now you go.”

Mai ling looks up in a diagonal, like an animal.

“Well, Tarek, where is he?” Helen yells into the phone.

When Sue opens the door, it feels like a nightmare surprise party. “Oh my God, my God, no.” She bangs her head against the wall. Her thirteen-year-old son holds her shoulders. “Mom. Mom. Chill.” The husband, he is dialing already.

When he hangs up, he tells us all to go. They lock the door and get into their car.

At the end of this day, I have a small tragedy my own. When I take the garbage from the bathroom of my employer, I see a shopping bag. I look the receipt. Barneys Mens: $1,275.00. So they are still spending. It is not true, what they said. I cannot believe anymore. And what will they do with Williamo while they work?

She said they will put him in Funcare at the school.

That night, I feel a hand on top my head. I was having a dream of white people giving Filipinas pedicures. Beth Martin stood polishing jewelries.

“I can’t sleep,” he says.

“Okay, then, we will look for stars.”

It is cold on the step. But he feels warm, through the pajamas. I smell the skin smell in his hair. In the dream, we lounged around a pool, but Mai-ling fell in. I suppose it is an old LA fear. The fake blue sides. Careful mothers take their toddlers to swim class. Claire had me go with Williamo to the YM. And he is safe. That is enough. “Williamo, you are big now,” I say. “Some-a-day I will be your buddy-buddy, not your babysitter anymore.”

“Why?”

“Because-ah everybody has to grow up.”

I must have mumbled, because Williamo asks, “Do you mean ‘someday’ or ‘summer day’?”

Some-a-day
. My word. Small kids and immigrants; we mix English.

In
The Book of Ruth
I read about Flora. She worked for a lady scientist who married the first time at age fifty-two. The scientist and her new husband sent Flora home to her province with a trunk of money, and Flora opened a confection store there. She sent a picture of the store for
The Book of Ruth
.

What is left of night, Williamo sleeps with me.

In my house, there was a corridor, leading out of our bedroom, the gray carpet with a large stain shaped like the continent of North America, from some long-ago spill of True Orange. They all came there with their shoes and beverages, because the television, we kept in our room. In and out, that was my family, the truest days of my life. I always wanted to replace the carpet and buy a TV set for the entry hall. Sometimes I would look at the old stain—many times I tried to remove it—alone in that room during the day.

Now that does not exist anymore.

I sent money a long time ago to fix.

Lola
THE PRINCE FROG

I am ready for our deal. But my pupil she will not like it, not yet. Not until her sailor turns to prince. He is still a frog. Monday, before seven, I walk the same walk I walk every day, but now I am remembering the raw taste of the food there. I will miss my own place. I have the key, but it is not my day, so I push the bell.

Helen opens the door in her bathrobe.

“I am asking if I will be needed, because-ah, Claire and Paul, they chop me.”

“Oh, Lola, come in.” My weekend employer hugs me, but she is not answering. “Come to the kitchen, I’ll make coffee.”

My handsome employer stands poking a knife into the toaster, the hair wet. “We have to think of Bing.” He looks at his wife with a bar of warning. “He’s attached to Lucy.”

What do you know? I think. You are never home.

Helen hides behind her hair, measuring coffee. “Lola, sit down. Tell us what happened.”

Lucy just sits, looking at the floor.

“They cannot afford me.” I laugh. “Lola is too expensive. And I am cheaper than you.” I stare at Lucy square, knee to knee. And what do they get for their money? A door opens. The pat of feet. I spread my arms and Bing runs to me. The smell of coffee today is thinner. Helen gives me my mug. I am the only one drinking. They all watch. But I will still take what is offered that is good.

“Let me talk to Lucy.” Jeff stands. “If Lucy can stay, I’d have to think that’d be best for you-know-who. But if she might be moving on anyway, we should think about a change when Lola is available.”

“But I will not take away the job from Lola, like that.”

“No, no, you wouldn’t be,” Helen says.

But she does not know! Lucy and Jeff go out into the other room.

When they come back the verdict is wrong. There is no place for Lola. Lucy stares down at Bing: her excuse. But she does not love him. If Tony were the one asking, she would jump. But Tony will not propose her. He will only honk.

I walk back to my place. I will have to move.

But then my employer comes, with her teeth. “Lola, we have to talk about what to tell William.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“In a way, the easiest thing is that you’re going back to the Philippines.”

What will I do in the Philippines? I need money. “But he will see me here. Then what?”

“Oh, okay. I thought if you were working in the Valley or something. Well, why don’t we just wait.”

The chop it is still secret. Before long, everyone will know.

By the end of the day, I have an idea. Maybe I should let her have her Tony. If I get for her her Tony, she will give to me my job. I hate my pupil now, but I cannot afford to. So I will broker the marriage. I call Tony myself; if he does not agree, I will tell Lita. But he right away said okay. We will meet. I borrow the car of Danny for the drive. On the freeway 405, I stay as far right as I can go, but then I have to cross, just to not get pushed out.

The naval base looks shabby, not like the U.S. government compound in Manila, where green lawns spread inside new-painted white fences and waves scallop the bay. Thirty feet above the beach, I saw a guy curled up asleep on the cupping branch of a chestnut, next to a fishtail palm. That is my Philippines.

In the café, Tony does not stand for me. Lita worked here in America when he was young; how could she teach the thousands of small ways? Manners, they are stitches sewn in the random hours. A frog into a prince, that is fairytale.

“You must be the one,” I say, pulling out my own chair. I suppose he is handsome, but the strings in him should be pulled tighter.

He opens a small rattan suitcase, what we call native. He lifts out clothes, a yellow blouse, the shell buttons browned. A skirt of pale linen. A black-and-white picture preserved in the garments; a posed tableau of a family, the father wearing a tilted panama hat, two boys, and a girl with a ribbon in her hair. The mother wears the clothes that are now dry as pressed leaves, cracking at the folds. “When she got here, they made her wear a chicken uniform, with real feathers. Filipinas dressed as chickens, serving chicken.”

I never knew that. Now Lita is proper, always a purse, not a pack. There is a restaurant I have passed in Glendale, built the shape of a chicken.

“Lickin’ Chicken
. I didn’t see her for seventeen years.”

“Oh, that is too long.” But Lita did not have the green card then. “Lucy tells me that you are the one meant for her.”

He shrugs inside his jacket. “Never felt that.”

“I did not either. And I am married, thirty-four years.”

He turns around his chair. “Lucy’s a weekday—like air.”

“Air is important. But-ah, she may be Wednesday to you, to somebody else a weekend. Holiday even. So you have been a ladies man.”

He shrugs. “Girls like me, don’t know why.”

“According to Lucy, it is because you are handsome.”

He smiles.

“That is no compliment. You did not make your face. Your bank account, that is your doing.” I stand. “Show me a boat.” I have noticed with kids, they talk more easily in motion.

He flashes his U.S. military ID and we walk onto the big pavement. The boat looks more a parking lot. On the first deck, there are all kinds of planes.

“She never says when she goes to see him, but I can tell.”

Who does Lucy see? “The dentist?”

“I mean my mom. And the kid.” A wall opens. Lita had a child here? But then, I know; he is talking the one she took care.

“That boy must be grown by now.” We stand at the railing. Lita never told me she saw him; she only talks about the Chinese Adopteds. “My kids, too, they are jealous.”

“Rainy day, she was tickling his back, I was alone the other side of the world.”

I have missed things too. But I do not anymore mind.

“Strange power you get from a woman raising you who’s your servant. You kick her a little.”

“Williamo, he does not kick.” But more than once, he hit. “My kids, they probably say the same. But now they have their degrees.”

“I was too much of a fuck-up to stay in school.”

“You were younger. Mine, before I left, they already started university.”

“We shuffled through days. Then a package would land and we practically killed each other ripping it open. Now she’s trying to make up time. First Christmas here she gave me a stuffed animal.
Lady—man, I’m twenty five
, I said. We can’t have those years back.”

“But you forget how poor you were.”

“I know. All the little chants of America.”

The ocean here looks different than the ocean in Santa Monica. Water churns brown bits of debris and chips of wood flicker. “These the years for Lucy,” I say. “If you are not serious of her, you should leave her be.”

“I like Lucy. Only thing with her, I never get that rush. Usually, there’s something I want to find, some chase.”

“Her friends, they are asking,
What was he doing here nine years that he has no savings?
”

“Did my digging for gold in the square of light on a bedroom floor.”

“They are warning her against you.” Lucy, she is thirty-four almost.

“Sometimes when I hear piano playing, I’m not getting it through my ears but my chest, you know? Sex was like that. For healing.”

Nearby, we hear a foghorn. “Tony, this is a workday for me.”

“My sad stories, I told to a married lady I was in love with. She made them into coins.”

“Where is that lady now?”

“Still married.”

“And what will those coins buy? But anyway, I am asking you to let Lucy alone. Because there is someone else, someone good for her.”

His whole face becomes more up, the strings pulled. “Some other guy?”

“It is a friend the employer. Dale. A white.” I bring out the book from my backpack. “He thinks she looks like the woman of this painter. Very famous.” I nod. “Museums around the world.”

Telling him the white—that is my trick. But the trick will not last.

Still, nothing lasts. And he is a sailor. Soon his ship will go again to sea.

For the second time, I have a gift for Lucy. I know from taking care kids, there are many kinds of gifts. Candy and arcade quarters buy a smile, but they do not add much to the pole strength inside. Tricks wrapped in shiny paper look like presents. I lent Lucy this job; she could use it, but not keep it. I wanted it for my insurance. Then she stole it from me. The gift I am carrying now, I really do not know. Like toys I sometimes buy Williamo, they may not be good for him, but anyway, maybe they will not harm. Some believe all sugar is bad; Claire wants that Williamo will have only music of orchestras, things that will teach him to do well in school, not songs from the Disney movie. But I want Williamo and my pupil, too, to hold the bubbles that look perfect to them, once upon a time in their hands.

Of course bubbles will break. But everything breaks.

The cars of my weekend employers are absent, so I let myself in. I find Lucy on the nursery floor, cutting out pictures from a magazine with child-rounded scissors. A table. A bed with four posts. Next to her a jar of paste. She is making a book.

“What are you doing?”

She jumps. “For our place.” She and Cheska, they are fixing the family house. Maybe this is good enough a life.

I am tempted to get up and take my gift, unused.

“In our place, we have lots of woods. To pay a guy to build, it is so cheap, Lola. I will just show the picture.” She has a look, part proud and part embarrassed. Even without children, Lucy has a purpose.

I look around the room. At the changing table, I remember my pupil, after the wipe patting on powder, chanting
Shoushou
. She pictures herself a young mother, everything pretty.
Sleepysleep
, she says when she closes the light.

I tumble ahead. Two and two onto the ark. I suppose it is best if everyone gets married. Do I still believe that? But my pupil is romantic; the dad Florencio, the mom Florencia, and they named their children all the same. “You better stop planning for your house in the Philippines,” I say. “You will have your children here. I have talked to Tony.”

Only a few times, I have seen on the face of Williamo what fleets across the features of Lucy now. The eyes open; the mouth falls. Hope, it is a temporary mirage.

It will break soon. But everything breaks.

“I will take back my job,” I say to my pupil, at the park.

“Yes, Lola,” she says.

So I can tell Williamo: I will still see him every day. Once a week, I can pick up Williamo and Bing together, so they become friends again. Claire, she worries that. But my pupil does not say when. Maybe Tony did not propose her yet. What is the lag? Almost two weeks already I am chop. Claire and him, they will give me one-month severance. I will use that for the first half August tuition. The rest and September, I can pay with savings. But October, there will be nothing.

Two weeks ago, I ask Claire, “It is okay I am still here?”

“Course, Lola,” she said.

“For how long it is okay?”

“Forever,” she said.

I still take care Williamo. Because he does not know. But Claire comes out to tell me she will write me a reference, and again she has the teeth. I hate her now.

“I will go,” I say, “as soon I am needed.”

Then I call to tell Ruth I am chop. It is not so hard, even when her voice hushes, because I hold a secret. She does not know it is a jungle swing, from one job to the next. The weekend will become the five-day, seven days even. One-ten a day, I will become rich.

Ruth says Sunday Danny will drive her here to move me to their place. Then I will have to tell Williamo.

•  •  •

As Ruth and Danny carry my boxes, Claire comes with an envelope of money. She hugs me, but I stiff; I do not like her touch. The guy, he is inside watching TV. I feel a grinding in my jaw. He is the one who harmed me.

Last is Williamo. He stands hands in his pockets.

“Give me high five,” I say. “Buddy buddy, I will see you very soon, okay?”

But he will not look up the ground. He stands like that as we drive away.

“You have to become an agency now,” I tell Ruth. “I cannot go the Valley or Hollywood. Because Williamo. He is not yet five.” Right now I want day work, just to clean. She says she can find me live-out. Wednesdays, she thinks.

She cleared a bottom bunk for me already, below Mai-ling, next to the slave. She is not ready to work yet. Ruth took her to a doctor the priest knows. Because her body, it is marked with bruises that do not go away. From that guy throwing her down, she does not have hearing in one ear. And Ruth cannot send Mai-ling out for a new job either. Any employer will want references. She was in that house thirteen years.

“China is still sleeping,” Ruth says. “Coma. I heard from Lita who knows from Alice.” China is God’s way to remind me a chop is a smaller thing, but his trick does not work; I still feel sad for myself. I worry for China but from far, the way we do for movie stars, when I read Julia Roberts, she is getting a divorce.

“Next job, I will do everything. I will work by night.” Mai-ling stands on a chair, dusting each one the Venetian blinds, the way she used to in the house of Sue. The apartment does look very clean. “Maybe I am on television. Most wanted.”

“No, Mai-ling,” Ruth says. “In America, they have crimes with sex in them. Nobody wants you.”

Mai-ling made a mistake I would never forgive my
yaya
. I lost my job too, and I did not let anybody drown.

“Remember,” Ruth says, “your pupil went to New York with her employers and she met Filipinas in the park? She says they are earning big. Maybe we will drive Mai-ling to there.” Danny has the 1975 Mercedes, pale green, that I drove to the naval base. He has owned it five years already, but this trip will be its first journey across the continent.

“I will wish upon a car,” I say. “But what about your jobs?”

“I can get an off. But Danny will have to quit.” She shrugs. “Not now. Not with Candace.” It takes me a minute to remember Candace is the slave.

Mai-ling shuffles as we talk about her. She does not want that her son will be a drug addict. She thinks she did a wrong when he was small. Some strength she did not build, some might. But she hopes for his daughter. If she can get her in a good school, a Catholic. Inside her suitcase is the picture she made of China. She has confused China with the granddaughter she has never seen, so when she looks at the Polaroid she is praying for both girls. She believes she can hear the picture breathing.