by Mona Simpson
I ran back to the house and called Paul. “Can you come home?”
“Not yet. Oh, thanks. Diet Coke. Sorry, they’re just passing out the pizza. You’ll have to wake her and give her the monitor. Call me from your mother’s.”
I felt terrible touching Lola’s shoulder in the dark. She bolted up, as if she’d done something wrong. “I have to go to my mom’s, I think her apartment was broken into.” I handed her the small plastic baby monitor.
But she said, “I will just stay in the house.”
I felt grateful I could drive back to my old chaos and leave Will sleeping. Paul’s mother’s edict against live-out nannies finally made sense, for a reason she wouldn’t have imagined. I coasted empty streets. Without traffic, my mother lived nine minutes away, which would swell into an hour when the sun rose. Had she really been broken into? Growing up, I’d become the man of the house because there wasn’t one. I’d learned the power companies’ addresses and how to pay their bills. But I’d failed to protect her.
All her lights were on. She met me at the door, her hair sticking out at wild angles and her eyes sketching back and forth. “It’s gone,” she said. “I had a money order for one hundred thousand.”
I didn’t believe her. She didn’t have a hundred thousand dollars. But I asked questions with the distant patience of a police officer, one not particularly kind.
“No windows broken?”
“Huh-uh.”
“And nobody else has your keys?”
“The landlord does. And I’ve been wondering about him. Last week, he came to repair that leak, you know, I told you in the back of the—”
“It’s not the landlord, Mom.” The landlords, two men who’d upgraded their forties building, got a kick out of my mother and hadn’t raised her rent in seven years. A complaint could trigger a correction, I thought, or worse.
“Maybe one of his men. You know, fixing something.” As she talked, describing small repairs, she picked up things off her kitchen counters and opened drawers. I’d completely lost track of her story, when all at once, she gasped “Oh.” She’d lifted up a small cutting board behind a statue of Joseph and the Doves and under it she had her money order, Bank of America, for one hundred thousand dollars.
“Mom, what is this? Where did you get it?”
“That’s my retirement. Everything.”
“Why do you have this here? It should be in a bank! Where it can’t be stolen.”
“I know.” She held it to her chest.
“Why don’t you call Tom tomorrow and he’ll take you to the bank?”
“Well, not Tom maybe.”
I gave her a warning look. “Why not Tom?”
“I don’t know if I trust him always.”
“You can trust him,” I said, remembering Paul calling Tom the most boring man in the world.
“Don’t bother with it.”
“Why are you crying now? You still have everything.”
“I know,” she whispered, as I went to leave. “I know.”
When I got home, Paul stood eating a cold chicken leg. When I came to the part about her pulling out the money order, he started laughing. “Your mother. You should go with her tomorrow, make sure she gets that into a bank.” My mother was an old story.
I woke up to the sound of Paul and Will growling engine noise. I heard the windup mouse scuttle across the floor, then the clomp of
Will’s feet.
Do it again, he said.
Paul left scribbed notes on the backs of envelopes by the door of our bedroom. I stepped over:
TO BRADY
CALL JENNY MEACHER’S SON
CLAIRE’S MOM—BANK
Later that morning, I asked my mother if she’d called Tom. She said she had.
“He’s coming to get me.”
“To go to the bank?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said. I didn’t believe her, and we never talked about it again.
For a long time, I thought I’d gotten away with something. I wasn’t behind the upper-middle-class kids who, from college on, moved everywhere around me, wearing their advantages lightly, like expensive clothes, only a tiny bit different from what the rest of us had. The trouble their parents had taken: lessons, tutors, AYSO. It seemed incredible that it hardly made a difference at all. Still, I’d understood that when I had children, they would resemble those kids more than me. I’d wondered if I could love them.
Now I had my answer.
Lola
HOW I CAME TO HOLLYWOOD
“So how did you find your way to Hollywood?”
That is the story people tell at the house of Ruth.
I came to America because of a flyer. I had heard already about the money from relatives of Lita. The daughter went to university with my eldest. Then I saw the flyer. JOBS IN AMERICA! MOTHERS, NURSES, COOKS! SEND MONEY HOME. RETIRE RICH IN FIVE YEARS! I folded the flyer and put it in my purse. At that time, Issa was writing her examinations for medicine.
My port of entry was San Francisco, because Bong Bong had a cousin in Petaluma. When Luz arrived at the lobby of my Chinatown hotel that was a little rancid, she smelled like a mint. All in white, in her red car, she looked like the American Red Cross. I sank into the seat and she drove. They live far outside. You cannot see other houses from that place—they are really alone. The movies we saw in Tagaytay—the Westerns! It is really like that.
Luz and the husband, they have monkeys, parrots, all different birds and snakes. Monkeys I really do not like, very dirty animals, and they made noise all night. There was a taste at the top of my mouth like an infection that did not go away. The guy bumped over the ground in a wheelchair; everything was built for him with wooden ramps. He was very good to the animals. One bird just sat on his shoulder.
I asked our relative, “Was he the same since you know him?”
She nodded.
“That is hard for you.”
“No,” she said. “He is so kind. More than a Filipino guy. Lot of Filipino guys, they are a little mean. He really cares what I am thinking. In my mind.”
But Bong Bong, her cousin, he is not mean.
The next morning, she folded into her red Toyota. She drives one hour and a half every day to be dental hygienist.
I cleaned, first the bathroom, then the kitchen, then I washed myself. By the time the guy woke up, I was raking gray dust that was their front lawn. The ones working there were Spanish, but with their hands they showed me how to work the cages. There was old dirt, because the animals.
“Sit down,” the husband said. “Let’s see if you’ll eat a Denver omelet.”
Now, I can make that. With the heat there, a smell rises—baked dirt, bird poo, and eucalyptus. But in the evening, your arms feel good. We sat on chairs made of aluminum tubes and woven plastic. Made in the Philippines.
So many stars, it seems you are inside that sky.
The guy brought out the magazine where he first saw Luz. Each page showed rows of pictures. Our relative wore a school uniform with a small gold cross.
Then the guy carried out a square box of ice cream; he served it ruffled in bowls. Luz opened a tied folder of his letters. In the first one, he had written I’m not any girl’s idea of a prince. He provided a typed sheet of his stocks and bonds and a copy of the deed for the property. He wrote in small, neat numbers what whoever became his wife could afford.
Did he include a picture, I wondered. Who ever sent any but the best picture? Still, our relative is thirty-seven now and prettier than she was in the catalog. Her face became thin. And her clothes look nice, because she is a professional woman.
But I had to find a job. I told them, just a few more days and then I will go south.
The guy had to deliver snakes to the San Jose Zoo, so he drove me to the train station. I called the number on the flyer before but when I arrive, there is nobody. I shouted into the pay telephone. “I am here! Yes! In Bakersfield!” They told me to take a taxi. It is an agency, I thought. The crippled guy
had given me a bag of oranges, almonds, dates, and bills of American money that now I used.
The address from the flyer belongs to a pink one-story hotel with a chain-link fence all around. The taxi driver set my suitcase on the pavement. Another taxi waited, with a tatay and two daughters from Iloilo, trying to pay their driver in pesos. I gave him the rest my bills. They came to find work too, they said, and the people running this place were distant relatives that they had never met.
Inside, the ones who made the flyer looked at us, then at each other and giggled. The old lady said, since we are all here, they will go out to the movies! We can stay and give the patients their food! And we do not know anything! We have only been there fifteen minutes. The tatay does not understand English or Tagalog.
None of the retardeds has a mouth that is right. When the ones who made the flyer left, the retardeds cried. They pulled at us, whimpering.
“What? What is it you want?” The young from Iloilo shouted, every time louder.
Eight retardeds and only four of us. The ones who made the flyer left out cans of soup and packages of frozen hot dogs. And the way the retardeds ate! No one is teaching them. They are each different, one a mongoloid. Only all abnormal. Finally, I discovered by accident what will work. I snapped the TV and they all sat, weak as if it had power on them. We could clean up then; there was food over everything. When we finished they were still watching, tigers in a net, with their hands on their privates. The young from Iloilo went and placed the hands in the pockets. The elder shrieked. “I should do that! She is not yet married.”
“They are asleep,” the young said. “Anyway, I finished medicine already.”
“So you are doctor?”
“Yes, Lola.” Like my Issa will be, I thought. That is how I met Lucy.
The retardeds have dreams. They cry out, wanting their parents. And no family visited, all the time we lived there. The youngest of the ones who made the flyer, he told me the government pays them. But they are not really teaching! And the retardeds can learn. They are docile; before maybe, the ones who made the flyer, they were hitting. I taught the retardeds to dress themselves. Little by little. We spent many days on tying the shoe; the bow Tommy made, it was wobbly, but still a bow. We stayed forty days. The hotel is a pen. The ones who made the flyer, they just keep the money.
“I observe that I am losing weights,” Lucy said.
They were not paying us, just our food. I had headaches trying to think. All around was chain-link fence. The two from Iloilo said they had to go to the Veterans Administration. “None near here,” the old lady snapped. But the tatay, he receives a benefit check!
“We will go with you,” the old lady said the next time. Her conclusion.
At night, the distant relatives watched TV, the tatay went to sleep, and I talked to Lucy. They took a boat from their place, then a bus, then a jeepney to the airport in Manila.
“Where is your mother?” I asked, because usually it is the mother who will come.
She is still there, running the store. I hug her goodbye, my arms do not go all the way around, she is so fat! She smells like water and sugar.
Their point of entry was LAX. The bus driver looked in the mirror and said to them, “Chinatown?” In the Philippines, it is better to be Spanish. Here, better Chinese. They found the Veterans Administration Building and brought in their papers, with the decoration of honor from the Second World War. Their family had that frilled ribbon on the wall before these two were born and now, here, they were spending it.
The ones who made the flyer learned right away that Cheska can cook and now every meal, she was the one preparing. I washed the dishes, and I saw the purse of the old lady open. I observed that the payments came in a certain kind of envelope.
“How about if you share that with us too?” I said, over my shoulder, like throwing a thin ball into the air, the one we use with the retardeds in the swimming pool.
The room behind me changed shape; it now had points. I scrubbed. Every chink and ring widened. Then I wiped my hands, turned around, and they were staring. “Because we are working hard. We are new here, we need money.” We did all their work and they partied around, the tatay they asked him to bring them pineapple and coconut milk drinks by the pool. That is what they are doing!
The room made a funnel; the old lady the opening. “Not even legal here. We take you in. We could call police, they’d send you out on a jail boat.”
A ring of my head lifted off the top.
“Not legal?” Lucy whispered. “But we registered already.” She kept papers in the purse for novenas hung around her neck.
“You are lucky you have relatives,” the old lady said, the jaw closing. I had made things worse.
Good we know it is a happy ending, Ruth said, when I first told the story.
The hotel is the shape of a saw; the big end a lobby they changed into a kitchen, the smallest room number 9. The pool makes a saw the opposite way. On the other side of the fence there is another building the same except pale blue, where old people live in bathrobes. I observed, the people who took care—Sri Lankans—they are good. But the olds came right up to the fence and stared. They liked to watch the abnormals.
Then it was a heat wave and the retardeds were all the time in the pool. Every day the ones who made the flyer sat by the side and let the retardeds bob, in life jackets. Like human corks. They get no exercise! That is why they stay fat! I showed Tommy and the twins to hold the side and kick. The ones who made the flyer became wet, where they sat with their drinks. They watched me. They could not hate Cheska; she was making their foods. There was a cake they craved, with almonds and oranges. They let her out to buy ingredients. I told her to get sunblock, too, and we put white zinc on the noses of the retardeds.
“Lola! They are liking my cooking,” Cheska said. She was proud!
The olds next door hung with their fingers in the fence and they got wet from the kicking. The ones who made the flyer did not want that I would teach the retardeds to swim. But if they cannot swim, they should anyway know to float.
“If anything happened,” the younger one told me, the best relative, “the parents could sue. With life jackets, they’re safe.”
“But what if they fall in with no jacket?” Tommy sleepwalked. Three or four times we found him at night rattling the fence.
The best relative shrugged. The old lady controlled all.
The first time I saw Ruth outside the fence, I knew she could save us. A heavy middle-age woman wearing a T-shirt, the hair chop short. She looks like a hundred mothers, back home in the Philippines. She came Sunday morning when we were alone there. The ones who made the flyer locked us in when they left for church; Ruth rattled the gate and said she had heard about us here. Now I know Ruth goes to that place every month. She knows about their flyer. That day, she told us she had jobs, good jobs, one weekends, in a mansion taking care two children and the other an old lady.
“We can do that.” I told Cheska to bring the pineapple-and-coconut-milk tea drink. “We are looking for a place to live.” I went fast because church would be over soon.
The tall glass would not fit underneath the fence so Lucy held it, and Ruth leaned close to drink through a straw. She closed her eyes. “I have room,” she said.
I wanted to leave. I could climb the fence and the sisters too, but not Tatay. A sprinkle of water hit my back. I remembered then, the retardeds. We cannot leave! But if we put them in their rooms, I thought, with the windows open on the top, they will not suffocate. Less than one hour. We will give water.
“One load in the wash, one in the dryer,” Lucy said.
We will leave the wet, I said. I was hauling their huge suitcase when I saw the brown car slide in. It felt I am shot. I dragged my body, a bag of sand.
The ones who made the flyer unlocked the gate.
“So I have given a job to your friends,” Ruth said. “Weekends.”
“And Ruth has been so nice.” I looked down. “She
has a place in LA we can rent.”
“But here you don’t have to pay,” the old lady said.
“It is okay,” Lucy said. “We do not like to be charity case, like that.”
The old lady made a sound that is her laugh. “Can pay us, then.”
“Well, we better get going,” Ruth said. “The bus comes at noon.”
I picked up their suitcase and nodded to Cheska. Poor Cheska, she was very confused. The tatay was saying, in Cebuano, his wet clothes over there, and Lucy said, “It is okay.” We were almost out the gate; Cheska turned and said, “Thank you, goodbye.”
Then there was a noise. Like an animal, big, but human. It was Tommy running at me, I heard all at once he is shouting “No!” and the word stretched oval. That was his face, what he means. I cannot go and leave him. He spread over his side of the fence, still bellowing as we walk away. We follow Ruth and I heard a splash. Tommy ran and jumped in the pool, wetting the ones who made the flyer and the olds. On the other side of the fence, Sri Lankans stood clapping.
Right away, the first night, Ruth asked, Baby or elderly?
“Wherever I am needed,” I said.
“You wait,” she told me. “We will find for you a full-time.”
Lucy hugged Ruth. She told me she expected her to smell like sugar, like her mother. But Ruth, she really has no smell.
Claire
THE COUPLES’ DATE
Paul and I hadn’t eaten together on a weeknight for more than a year.
“Wanna go out?” he asked on the phone. Usually he left in the morning and came back after it was all done. But apparently Jeff Grant had asked if we were free.
“I told Mooney my grandparents were in town,” Paul said. “But it’s probably okay, don’t you think? I only asked to get out early once before.”
The once before his grandparents really were in town. Paul never did this for us—Little Him and me—which was how I thought of myself now. As an “us.” But I liked the idea of the other couple.
I picked clothes in a flurry while Lola fought Will into the bath. “You to do it!” he screamed, reaching for me as I tried to blast the blow-dryer onto my bad hair, all three of us in the room, William naked, me shirtless, and Lola dressed. I’d hardly spent any time with him today. I’d driven for an hour to the Colburn School to talk about teaching, and then it was him or a shower. I gave up on blow-drying and stepped into his bath. Lola understood my problems. She did our laundry, but I buried the ruined underwear, in garbage cans in the alley. When I stepped out, she handed me a new package of briefs. “From Chinatown. All cotton. Ten pieces for twenty dollar.”
