My Hollywood (29 page)

I sign the contract, but I do not join the Gelfond family.

Actually, I stay at that rich job only one week. Every day, they want that I will take the babies to the mom at her lunch, and on the regular roads that is more than one hour each way. The first day Franny cries and I have to pull to the curb to change the diaper in the back. The second day, they both scream and I have to feed. Finally home, the twins sit in their bouncy chairs on the kitchen island, waving spatulas like wands. I stir biscuits from a mix. I have spread out a map, to find a better route for tomorrow.

My weekend employer calls me. “There’s a woman at Paramount, single mom. I don’t really know her, but she just went into the hospital to have the baby and she needs help.” She lives in Santa Monica, he tells me. Ten minutes from Williamo. She will give me two thousand for a down payment on a car and a good salary, he says, whatever you’re getting paid there.

It is better really with a single mother, Ruth says. She does her job and you do yours. The ex-husband of Natalie, he can find a good car for you.

By the time my employers turn the key in the lock that night I am packed. I tell them I am going home. Before anything, the father runs upstairs, two at a time. Yes, they are alive, asleep, tucked in their cribs. I did not kidnap the prince and princess.

“But what about when you come back,” the mother pleads. He panicked that they were dead or stolen. She frets; how can she go to work tomorrow? “The twins
like
you.
We
know you. I’ll ask the agency to get us a temp.”

But they do not know me. “I am old,” I say. “I will not return here.” I wait outside for Danny to pick me. Really, what I told them, it is the truth.

“This is Lola,” my weekend employer says at the hospital, his other hand cupping the elbow of the doctor. But the doctor is Alice, the employer of Lita. So it is true what the babysitters are gossiping. Here Alice seems different, in a white coat and scrubs.

“I know Lola,” she says. “I’ll take you to meet my patient. This baby needs someone. During the birth, there were problems.”

The mother, she puts the baby in my hands that first day. She gives her to me. A girl this time. No father. And something wrong.

The first week I make the mother soup and eggs. I took care an elderly, so already I am used to foods of convalescence. My job now it is not only the baby but to take care the mother so she can soon return to Paramount Pictures. It does not feel to me the house of a new mother. But my employer
is
a new mother, too, even in her forties. The baby, she still has no name.

“I’ve been overwhelmed,” Judith says. A quick smile up at me.

It is quiet here. In back, the middle of three duplex units, there is an old sycamore and many birds, but we are the only ones to watch. Americans, they do not like to share land. We have an easy time, this baby and I. A baby really is the beginning of the world. If you slow down, you too will grow. With my own, I was too tired from the births. In the Philippines, we have only what they call here natural childbirth.

The mother sleeps, the eyes still sunk. I keep water on low, so as soon as she sits I can bring her tea. Especially now, I appreciate the sharp taste of coffee. I will take the tray away, and then she is sleeping again. I keep the
dede
in a can of warm water. The baby girl listens to the birds. My life is managing two sleepers, holding kites so the strings do not tangle. A tent slopes over us, of tender air.

The tenth evening, I tell my employer, “The hospital telephoned. You must give a name. Otherwise, the birth certificate will come back from the county clerk
No name Wilson.”
She stays up past midnight at the kitchen table making a list.

Natasha
Claire
Grace
Anna
Sophia
Caitlin

“So which will it be?” I ask in the morning, rinsing her glass from the night.

“I don’t know yet,” she says.

•  •  •

I strap Little One onto my chest in the Snugli. Now when I walk to the Pacific, she comes along. The head drops by the time we cross Seventh Street, the sky a deep blue.

I tap the soul of China in my pocket. When I turn onto her street, there is a light in the kitchen. Donald Howard must be home, because the convertible is here, parked like a carousel animal, ferocious but still, made with the mouth always open. Maybe China came home from the hospital. The other ending is there too, an egg on the bone between my breasts.

Sue opens the door, hair just down. “Hi, come on in. I’m pumping.”

Little One sleeps, her head to one side, looking like the neck is broken. I follow Sue to the kitchen. Claire had a rented pump, blue and yellow, like a toy. This one covers half the counter. When Sue puts her breasts in and flips the switch, milk runs through the clear pipes that circle around like a racetrack and end in two waiting bottles. The nipples suck forward and back. I step away. After all this time, Sue still has milk. The kimono falls, so her shoulders show. I do not think of Sue as attractive, her hair she just lets, but under, the body looks young.

“Used to wake up with my breasts full of rocks.”

Somewhere in this house, I hear television news; Donald must be listening or the Harvard-Westlake brother.

She lifts off the funnels and screws lids on the bottles, then puts them in the freezer, where there are rows already. But who is that milk for?

I look down at this baby, whose head still fits my hand. When I came to the States, I did not realize any difference between breast milk and formula, only that breast milk was free. For my babies, that was all I needed to know. But this girl has many problems. She could use the vitamins of milk from a mother.

I give the wax-paper bag with the certificate. Many times now, I will pat my pocket before I remember that it is not lost but returned. If she asks me, I will say Mai-ling went back to Ilocos Norte. A bakery. I will answer all that is true for Lettie Elizande. But Sue does not ask. Tears run on her face, falling on the soul of China, wetting so it will begin to dissolve.

“I know. I am a mother too,” I say.

She lurches into a hug, and I feel her breasts behind the silk.

“I am asking milk. For this one.”

She gets a bag from a dress shop with twine handles and fills it with bottles. “China hardly nurses anymore.”

“So China?”

“China! C’mere!”

China and the brother stampede downstairs. “She’s watching
Madeleine
, but it’s time for the
Simpsons
and she won’t let me!”

Sue fixes them each with a different TV, and then I hear. China was in the hospital three days. She would open her eyes but close them again. They checked her reflexes to determine if she could feel hot and cold. They were not sure she would survive, and the doctors said she could have brain damage if she did. Then, after nine hours, she woke up, looked at her parents, and said,
Cake
. And after that, she talked.

Cake
. The birthday cake for Mai-ling! She wanted another piece. I will call everyone tonight. The story will go from babysitter to babysitter until the word shines.

“She already started First Pres.”

One year behind Williamo. “How is Williamo?”

Sue shrugs. “I heard something about him and another boy sticking their heads in the toilet.”

I walk home fast to get the bottles in the ref. Two men stand at our curb, waiting to deliver a large crib, compliments the doctor, they say. Lita told me Alice was glad I took the job. She told Lita,
That baby needs something
. The crib was for her own baby who died. They had a whole room. Very expensive, Lita said. All match. She gave away everything. I set the milk in the freezer—wealth. I heat one bottle, mix with formula, introduce a tiny bit at a time, only one drop. I remember Williamo. But this one she accepts the better milk. She is like me, in with the many who need. I think about the soul of this one. I do not even know the religion of Judith. When she comes home, I ask. “Will your daughter be baptized?”

“I don’t really go to church, but I suppose it couldn’t hurt. What do you think, Lola?”

“Join the club,” I say.

She sits in the dark again, frowning. She narrows down to the top three.

Ida Louise
Natasha Sophia
Laura Anne

“Which do you like, Lola?”

I pick Laura.

Laurita and I go to see off Ruth and Danny when they drive Mai-ling to New York. Mai-ling asks me if I gave the certificate.

“China is fine,” I tell her. “At First Pres.”

Lucy flutters around the car, because her father will ride in back. To an American, he and Mai-ling can look married, even though they speak no common language. They will ride through cornfields under lifting arrows of birds. But if I knew Lucy would be here, I would have stayed home.

There is Cora and Benny, Lucy remembers. But she cannot find telephone numbers. “I only see them in the park! The Hippo Park!” So in all of New York City, Ruth will have to try to find three Filipinas in a park.

I have five children my own and Williamo to age four, but I never had a baby like this one. She cries so I see lines on the walls, air comes to a crack in my head where air should not be. She arches her back and screams, to ask God for what she does not have. And God does not answer this girl. I wait with her, through the night. I need this job. I really cannot quit. The door of the mother stays shut, on the other side the kitchen. It might as well be the other side the world. But Judith has to get up early for her work.

At first, when Laura woke in the night, my new employer shuffled in, but the shrieking became more.

I said, “I will be the one.” And the baby sucked my third finger. Her weight dropped in my lap.

So now it is Lola she wants. My employer, she sleeps, but Lola cannot rest anymore. I count money in a circle. This time I will try to get ahead.

With my kids, I had my husband and our neighborhood association. The job of even a baby, it is really too big for one person only.

I pull the legs every day so they will grow straight. I did not do for my kids. I come from an educated family that does not believe those old things. But my pupil pulled the legs of Bing, and now, they are growing good. My boss, she goes before nine in the morning and comes back at seven. At first I scheduled the bath when she got home. But she felt frightened holding the baby; she thought Laura would slip out of her hands.

“Your mama thinks you are a piece of soap,” I tell her.

Now, when my employer walks in the door I have Laurita in foot pajamas, a tiny duck on the collar. I used to keep the evening bottle in warm water for the mother to give. But now I start the
dede
and Judith will finish. Judith when she gets home wants to look at her mail, eat some dinner.

Laura is dark—dark skin, dark hair. She could be Asian. She looks up at me, eyes to eyes. “When I first got the job, your mother said,
We won the lottery
. Because-ah the moment I held you, you smiled. I said,
Och, look, there is chemistry.”

Finally, for me, Laurita sleeps. I tell her,
Otherwise, Lola will be too tired to take care you. Help me
. I said that also to my own babies.
Help
.

I clear the kitchen table, make a coffee, take out my notebook, and mark how many weeks are left of the year. Since I have been in America, I have sent home more than $180,000. That is
495,485. In pesos, we are millionaires.

From six years working here, I have paid more than half the medical training for Issa. That money, it is my shipyard pile. As a married woman, I worked, too, but Bong Bong was the breadwinner. Since I came here, they are dependent on me.

I do not feel married anymore, even though I talk to Bong Bong every other Sunday and still receive a card once a week. In our house, we have drawers of cards.
Christmas in the Philippines, Buko Pie for Assumption
. I remember when greeting cards came to the Philippines. Bong Bong was working his first job, in the National Book Store, for Mrs. Socorro Ramos. People from Kansas came on Good Friday. That first year, Bong Bong drew on the kitchen table in the house of Mrs. Ramos. A year later, they had a warehouse with desks, at each one an illustrator. First you could only buy cards in Metro Manila. Now they employ four hundred people. We had times of softness too. But Lola did not get her grand passion. Alone here, at the kitchen table, I open my letter from home.

My daughters sent me a clipping from the
Manila Standard
, with a note.
Is this the lady you paid to send home?

Oton, Iloilo—Faced with the challenge of raising four children, Lettie “Nang Palang” Elizande decided to bake and sell pies to augment the earnings of her husband Eduardo, then a public jeepney driver. In 1991 she went to America to work as a nanny. Two years later she returned home to Iloilo. “There I was having a nervous breakdown. My friends took up a collection to send me home.” Once back, she started baking. She formulated her own recipes based on books that she read. She baked cassava puddings, banana cakes and buko pies using a gas oven that could only cook three plates at a time. After baking from her home in Barangay Trapiche, Oton town, she would sell the pies in offices and schools in Iloilo City, about eight kilometers away. On a good day, she sold ten plates at fourteen pesos each. She also received orders for weddings as well as baptismal parties. After just three years, Nang Palang’s name has become synonymous with the tasty buko pie in the Oton town. Her earnings from the business were small but these helped send her children to school. In 1994, Nang Palang’s husband quit driving public jeepneys and has since been helping in the business. The store now sells an average of three hundred plates daily aside from orders for special occasions. To cope with the rising demand, Lettie acquired two ovens that could bake seventy-six plates at a time
.