My Hollywood (38 page)

—Pablo Neruda

I keep this folded in my pocket, with the letter from my former employer, where I once carried the soul of China. I was going back and forth. The poem tears me.

I love Laurita.

But I love myself too.

In
The Book of Ruth
, I promised I would not leave until Laura became five. Last September, when she turned five, I change that to eight. It made my hourglass. But there are other clocks. Before, when I came from the Philippines, I had a number in pesos: nine million. Later on, my dreams unfurled in English. But I always planned that after I hit that number, first in pesos, then in dollars,
ding
, right away, I would return. I came when my youngest was just starting, and medicine in our country it is ten years. Even at the beginning, my goal was a success; to have a daughter accepted by Far Eastern. Every year, the tuition increased, one year there was a big jump, but before Laura enters kinder in fall, I will achieve my ambition. Issa, my baby, graduates FEU. Dr. Issa. They want me to attend for the taking of the oath.
You have to come because you are a part of that
, Issa says.
The money you sent
.

I did not think I could go, but now I will. “I cannot say no to my last,” I will tell Judith. But I am afraid Laura. They Xerox that poem from a book, though. He probably stood at the copy machine, telling the other lawyers, laughing at me. I go forward trudging against what I want. I love Laurita, it is true. I worry her.

“Your Lola is going away,” I finally admit. “But only for two weeks.”

“If my Lola is going then I will go too.”

“No, I cannot take you. You have school. That is the law. Besides, you belong to your mother.”

My third daughter and her husband waited to have the church wedding. Bong Bong and I, we will celebrate our fortieth, the ruby, renewing our vows. I describe to Laura the party, the dress, the attendants (the same ones we had the first time, another couple we hardly know anymore). For our colors, we select silver and ice blue. My daughters will buy the dress, hire the photographer, and order the cake. From Hallmark, Bong Bong gets invitations free. “My sister, she will pay,” I tell Judith.
“Because I will never experience that
, she said,
I want that you will have.”

“That’s sad,” Judith says, “for her, I mean.”

“No, she has her divorce club. They are now in Alaska on a singles’ cruise.”

“You are leaving me,” Laura says.

“I will return. See. I will give to you the keys for my car.”

She throws them against the wall we painted yellow.

I call Lucy to fill in for me, but she cannot. At the end of our talk, she cries. “Lola, it is really hard. I am so tired.” Ruth gives me Candace. Candace has had jobs, but something always goes wrong; now Ruth keeps her home for a pet.

So I have everything prepared. When I am gone, they will see—like the employers of Esperanza. After I return, maybe they will not say anymore about ironing. But Friday night, after Laura is asleep, Judith says, “Now that we’re alone, Lola, we can talk. I’m kind of assuming once you get back home, you’ll want to stay there.”

“I return the twenty-first,” I tell her. “Four in the afternoon, my flight lands.”

She looks at him.

“Well, maybe it’s time for a change,” he says.

“With Laura in school all day, maybe this job’s not enough challenge,” Judith says. “You always liked having a baby.”

“You’ve helped her,” he says. “And now I think the job’s done.”

“What you mean? You will not be needing me anymore?” The job done! Laura, she is five years old. Issa, my youngest, she is thirty, graduate medical school, and my job is not yet over.

They sit there. But this is too fast.

“We thought with your daughter finishing school and everything, you might be happier there. Laura’s settled now. We’ll move into someone more a housekeeper. And I’m thinking of cutting down my hours at work.”

Now I am stuck. More than five years, almost six I have taken care this girl. Every day did the exercises. Worried over what girls she plays with, steered her to the better ones, and helped her see the good in them. I just now realize that I love this. And tomorrow I will be packing again. I thought this was my last home. He is the one who ruined us.

The hardest minute of my life is when I have to tell Laura.

“Your mother and I talk and I will be going. But-ah, you and me, we will still be buddy buddy.” It is like she is made of dough: I stuck my finger in and she just falls. Her arms around me hold. I did it. And now cannot take it back. Over the years, she has had many ways to tell me no. For a long time, she screamed, she made baby sounds, she thrashed, she kicked, she threw. When she was first mine she would only look at me and now she is back to that. This time she stays quiet. Too quiet. She does not even question. She accepts that she will be unfortunate again.

I tell Judith about the slave. “Laurita says she is okay for her. Ruth will train. Because I gave her my old car, she will work two weeks free. And she is cheaper than Lola. She can even iron.”

“We’ll see,” Judith says. “Marta knows some people too.”

Laura keeps at my side, helping me wrap my treasures in newspaper. They have left us alone in the house. She says, “Remember the poison?”

When Judith worries for money, she asks me to pack her lunch. I make like for Laura, with a plastic fork and knife wrapped in napkin. One day, when Laura and I washed the car of Judith, I found one of those old lunches in the trunk, the food grown fluorescent in Tupperware. I put on gloves to sterilize the containers, using tongs I had for bottles when Laura was small small. I made her sit away. I did not want her near bacteria.

“We can poison him,” she says.

She opens the closet, where once hung only the clothes of Judith. In a row hang his shirts: gray, blue, white, the colors separate, like a picture in a catalog. I once counted seventy-three. He has me take five or six every week to the Chinese laundry. When they come back, I have to transfer to wooden hangers.

I have a small craft scissors I keep apart from the regular ones, because cutting our chickens dulls the blades. I could use these scissors to snip off one triangle of each collar, the side near the wall. I picture him taking out one shirt, not noticing until he looks in the mirror. Then another. That is the ending to a fairytale.

But I cannot do in real life. I am that much Catholic.

I pay the penalty to change my ticket to give us one week more. My things, I sent already. From my old employer, I have a box of books—the plays of William Shakespeare, abridged for children. I read
Julius Caesar
in high school, but in real life, envy is a not such a problem. Before I used to make Laura push through a chapter book. But now, I want to enjoy our life. In the bottom of the box, I find
Nancy Drew and the Secret of the Clock
. I make hot chocolate, then I am the one to read and she listens. Even after Laura falls asleep, I cannot stop.

I finally understand Lettie Elizande. Because, now, I am depress. I will ask Alice for Prozac. On a scarred pole, under power lines, I saw a thumbtacked sign.
ACCENT ELIMINATION.
I wrote down the number. I remember Laura, when she was small small, saying,
I losted it
. Maybe I need speech therapy too.

Ruth wants me to partner for an agency. She says there are good jobs, high paying, newborns even, but I do not want to start again. I had my baby. It is time to go, I tell her. But for what? My kids, they are already grown.

My car I sell to Lita, for Tony and Lucy. I touch the oval of my locket and think of Laura, next year in kinder, carrying her backpack. I know all her clothes. I iron on labels with her name. For that, I will iron. I leave open my Wells Fargo account. Once, it was going to be my surprise money home. But my kids, they do not need anything. I purchase an international cell phone plan, so Laura can call me. I let her pick out a tiny orange phone. I will pay from that account. I have more than fourteen thousand. So this is not my goodbye to California.

Judith is the one to take me to the airport. They decided it would be too hard for Laura. Almost six years, Judith and I have lived together; we cooperated, but we are not close. Many times she said things that hurt me. Like in a marriage, those do not go away. They stay stones inside. We made a so-so marriage, like many others, bound for the love of a child. When I first came here I was already a Lola and I was a better Lola than a mom. With mine, I had too much pride in them. I wanted them to be more than I was. I was never a student, only the clown. And when I had my kids, I had to earn money too. I got to be, for this girl, what they call here stay-at-home mom.

At the airport, I tell Judith, she does not have to park.

“You sure? I’m not going back to the office.” Now her job, it is more like ordinary work. She says she is thinking of quitting. She has time finally when she no longer needs it. Laura already in school, this fall kinder.

“I am okay,” I say, like the kids talk. “My bags, they are not heavy.” I wear around my neck the locket from Claire, with a picture of Laura.

“All right, Lole,” she says. “Good luck. Thank you for everything.”

And that is the end. She thinks this is the last she will see me, saying to herself,
There goes Lola
. I turned her broken baby into a real girl, and now I should go back where I came from, an island of dark millions, all good with kids. But Disney did not draw me. And I refuse to dissolve into sky.

Before, America looked bright, as if our cars and machines in the Philippines were hand-me-downs from here. But now LAX looks like Ninoy Aquino. Birds peck at soiled carpets. I think of Snip; I have been the one to keep him alive. Afraid her mother would forget to buy feed, Laura asked me to take him. But once he left, he could never come back. Bird without green card, I explained. So I bought ten bags bird suet and I taught her to replenish the seeds.

On the plane, I try to remember the video they sent of my house. They fix the upstairs and the garden. The house should be my accomplishment. They will have it that way, like a present. But I wish I were going back to the old.

The Philippines, my Philippines. I imagined this return too many times. The sheds at the airport seem low and old colored. My daughters stand, wearing dresses, their long hair, square at the ends, lifting in breeze. Bong Bong shrugs, a kind man, shy, the same, with lines of worry between the eyes. My son hands me our itinerary he made with the computer. Tomorrow already comes the taking of the Hippocratic oath. I will have to be awake and I cannot complain jet lag. I was supposed to arrive last week.

In our house, I stand in the entrance like a guest. My daughters run upstairs to get the dress. They say they worried, maybe I had become fat. But everything fits. The suit for the reception, the dress for the church. They brush on makeup, comb my hair, fondle. I remember these touches, but faint, like music in an ice-cream truck, far away. It is only afternoon, but I feel tired. Before I left, Lita asked Alice to give pills for me. I take two now with water. And it is a good feeling, going down in this house.

Our daughter, still small, stands with a white coat over her dress, her hair combed out on her back. Her face a little Lola. No holes in the ears, a fine gold chain with a cross, tiny diamond in the center. Virgin. She lifts her slender wrist to say the oath. A very great event. We stand in a courtyard of the hospital, with leafy trees, then high buildings, on all sides. She talks afterward with the other young doctors; they look up at the thousand windows where will be their lives. All the time she was studying, I did not think of her entering the world of the sick. The others come from good families also. Too many wear glasses. They sip punch with the people who paid for them, but they want to go in. Go, I think.

I roam to the hospital gift store to buy an international phone card. Tomorrow, it will be the teacher conference. I have never left this girl—not like my kids. Something I cannot describe—there is no word—I get from her that I cannot live without. I do not want to anymore.

“Do not worry, I still love you,” my eldest says, leaving to the law office.

“Still love me. You should love me. What is the ‘still’?”

All of them, they have made new habits that are not anymore to them new. In less than one week, I think, this was mistake. There is nothing for me to do here. My kids, they are busy. And I cannot sit still.

My daughter-in-law gives to me her sons. But babies do not talk. My older grandson when I pick him from the school, he does not talk either. They only want what I buy for them. And here, I am spending too much money. I need a coffee in the morning and a chocolate latte in the afternoon. Easy come. A dollar, it is so much here.

I try to join up with my old friends, but the clubs I started, they do not exist anymore. So I make friends the branch librarian. I finish
The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes
. She gives me more Nancy Drews.

Then it is our anniversary celebration. Five o’clock, in the church, me in my dress, Bong Bong in his Americano, my third daughter, pregnant with her second, says her vows and it is our turn.

“Do you take this man to be?”

“I do,” I say, but we did not live together. That is why I do.

The other couple, our witnesses, they have both grown fat. I stay slim because at my age, I am still chasing kids.

Then we go in a limousine to the hotel, full with people I know only the faces. My daughters took trouble to arrange the same centerpieces as at our wedding, but I never liked those. Gladiolas. My mother had picked, without asking me. I was too young—younger than my daughters now.
It is the thought that counts, the intention
. How many times have I said that to Laura? Still, this intention does not seem enough: I am their mother; they should know me. Tents roof the courtyard. Men in white jackets serve grilled squid on banana leaves, but my stomach feels tight.

Our friends, they look the same, but they talk about Manila restaurants, festivals at the church, and the schools of their grandchildren. I answer along, but I do not care. Each family, though, has someone in America—a sister or a cousin or the wife of a brother—and that lifts my attention. Where? I ask. For how long?