The Librería Lozaro, a bookstore and center for ex-patriate Mexican cultural activity, was one place where intellectuals gathered and fomented intellectual and political activity. Sol, Albert, Louise and Allison frequented this bookstore and other intellectual cauldrons. At the Librería Lozaro, owned by Inojosa and Martita Lozaro, the Rivers and the Kellers encountered engaging writers, artists, scientists and intellectuals from North and South America, and other parts of the world. The Librería Lozaro was a site of dialogues between national and international people from different walks of life living in or visiting Los Angeles. Here the attendees listened and responded. The Librería was a neutral zone that welcomed discussions of all political and religious beliefs.
It was at the Librería Lozaro that Albert, Louise and Allison were introduced to the avant-garde movements popular in Europe and Latin America. At Bryn Mawr Allison had studied and met avant-garde artists and poets. At her parents’ urging, Allison studied French, but she had an interest in Spanish and also studied that similar Romance language right up to her last year at the university. She believed that the European catastrophe of World War I was brought about by the corruption and failure of the major western institutions to prevent the war. Skeptical of the nineteenth-century social and cultural models, of government, political, social, religious powers, and of art itself that had brought the world to the brink of annihilation, Allison questioned and considered that these institutions, philosophies and beliefs should be done away with as quickly as possible. She believed in the power of human creativity and was open to the diversity of thought, culture and race. Above all, she hated the subjugation of women by men and their patriarchal, paternalistic models of control. “Women,” she told her daughters and anyone who would listen, “should be free to vote and do whatever they want to do!”
After Allison had settled her family in their new home, her children—Louise, Gloria and Emily—adjusted well to their school, and her husband seemed relatively happy with his business. She had the energy to confront Uncle Philip and his ideas of social and racial superiority. Allison despised that kind of talk. The more Uncle Philip became involved with the Southern California Aryan Club, the more he tried to proselytize with his beliefs. He became more aggressive in insisting that his nephew’s children hear and understand his message of superiority. Now he openly accused Ernest and Allison of endangering their children by allowing them to associate with the Mexican and Indian races. On one occasion Uncle Philip, after a delicious Mexican dinner that Allison had prepared, drank too much scotch and ended up drinking shots of tequila. That evening Louise had gone out with Emily, Gloria, Dame Marie and Albert to a movie theater in downtown Los Angeles. Sol had driven them there and picked them up. The three girls returned home about eight in the evening.
When Louise and her sisters entered the house, Uncle Philip asked Louise, “Why are you associating with that Mexican mongrel?”
Louise stood frozen by the question and by Uncle Philip’s tone of voice. Emily and Gloria held each other while Uncle Philip raised his voice again.
“Those people aren’t good enough for you. They will only ruin your reputation. They are violent, unpredictable and promiscuous. Don’t associate with that boy. He is no good. Louise, he will ruin you!”
Uncle Philip approached Louise, reaching for her in a pleading way. His face begged her to listen. He truly loved his niece. He stumbled to his knees, stunned, disoriented and once more reached out to Louise.
Ernest and Allison quickly helped him up, steadied him and sat him down on the nearest chair. Allison went to her daughters, who were in tears, calmed them down and took them to the kitchen. She put a teaspoon of sugar in their mouths and prepared hot chocolate. When it was ready, she poured a cup of the chocolate for each of her daughters. Once she was sure they were not afraid or in shock, Allison returned to the living room; there she could hear Ernest arguing with his Uncle Philip.
At the moment Allison entered, Uncle Philip ceased arguing with his nephew and, without hesitation, began to scold Allison as if he had complete authority over her.
“I want you to stop being permissive with my nieces. I don’t want my nieces to see any of the Rivers’ children. They are not who you think they are! Oakley is not one of us! He is a Mexican, an Indian, a half-breed, and so are his children. You, Allison, are the laughing stock of the Aryan Club. You should have given us boys, at least one boy child! Damn it! Damn you, Allison!”
“Stop this! Silence! Shut up, Philip!” Ernest covered Uncle Philip’s mouth with a hand.
“Keep your hands off me! I can send you packing back to Philadelphia! I can fire you, Ernest!”
“Philip! Philip!” Allison raised her voice. She went directly to the man and faced him eye to eye. “Philip, I want you not to forget what I am going to say. I will say it only once.”
She paused and looked at her husband.
“Thank you for bringing us to Los Angeles. Now, listen to me very carefully. You will never yell at my children or me ever again! You will never again tell me how to raise my children! You are family, but you do not own this house. Remember, you are a guest in my house! Also, if you want to fire Ernest, go ahead. Just be assured that the business will collapse without him. For over a year, well over a year, you haven’t done one thing to assist him in the business. It has grown, and he has made it profitable because of contracts and connections he has made. Fire Ernest and you will lose everything! Not only will you lose the small portion of the business that supports you and that allows you to keep your status, but you will lose your family—us, all of us. Go home. Sober up.
“The next time you come to visit, and it’s up to you if you want to come back, do not raise your voice to Ernest or any of the girls, and especially not to me! And no more racist hate-talk in my home, never again in my house! If you truly love the girls like you say you do, you will remember what I’ve said. Good night, Uncle Philip!”
With that, Allison went into the kitchen where she heard her daughters laughing with Ernestina.
Ernest drove Uncle Philip to his home in Beverly Hills. He helped him to the door. Marco, Uncle Philip’s friend, who had moved in shortly after Uncle Philip’s wife died, assisted Ernest in carrying Uncle Philip to the nearest couch, which was in Uncle Philip’s study. Ernest sat down at the desk where his uncle worked. The desk was covered with articles and pamphlets on Aryanism. Ernest perused the documents that contained theories and scientific jargon justifying “the Aryan race as the superior race of mankind.” Most of the publications’ authors were prominent professionals. Ernest read several short articles filled with hatred for Africans, Jews, Asians and Mexicans. Distracted, he looked up, saw Marco give Philip water and clean his face with a damp cloth. In the soft light, Uncle Philip held on to Marco. As they whispered, Ernest thought he saw Marco caress Philip.
Suddenly Marco realized that Ernest was still there at Philip’s desk. He gently made Philip sit up. Ernest moved quickly toward the front door.
“Ernest, wait!
As his nephew drove carefully out of the circular driveway, not just the hateful literature … but disturbing images kept trespassing into his mind. Ernest drove the long way home trying to understand all that had happened that night. As he arrived home, everything appeared normal in his house in Hancock Park, where Allison waited to open the door.
THE WARM SUNLIGHT gave a healthy glow to Albert’s face. An intermittent breeze wrapped his cardinal-and-gold tie round his neck as he posed smiling in the middle of the second row of a group of forty students, including three women, just before the photographer yelled, “Say cheese!” The engineering department now numbered two civil engineering professors, although one, Dr. John Boyer, taught both mechanical and civil engineering. Only Professor Promantz taught civil engineering exclusively. The class gathered, as tradition required, in front of the Coordinance House, where most classes and laboratories were housed.
Albert felt very comfortable in the middle of these
mostly white Anglo-Saxon Protestant young men. There were several black-eyed and black-haired German nationals. Although Albert was darker skinned, he did not stand out as that different, not like the three women engineering students who were teased and pestered constantly. Most of the men made it a point to make the women feel physically uncomfortable, embarrassed and intimidated. The women did not know what to expect next from the male students. The men’s goal was to make the female students break down, “crack” under the pressure. The ultimate prize, the crown of their male efforts and outright harassment was to bring forth tears and frustration from their women colleagues. Which one would make it, which one would survive, Albert wondered, standing in the middle of the second row.
For the three women, posing for the University of Southern California’s School of Engineering annual photograph was torture. The male students, “the boys” as they called themselves in a forgiving way, did everything they could get away with, that and much more, to make it so miserable that the women would not show up to class or would run out of a class upset. Today Albert surveyed the group and located his female colleagues: Elana Soblac to his left, Susan Dearnold to his right and tiny but brainy Alia Riverside holding a surveyor’s tripod in front of her. It was a wonderful fact, although hard to believe, that the University of Southern California was famous for having awarded the first engineering professional degrees to women in 1922.
“Here goes! Ready!”
Could Louise survive in this horrible anti-female environment? All the abuse and teasing she would have to take, Albert thought, as he shaped his lips into a smile, waiting for the photographer’s final instruction.
“Say cheese!”
Albert walked away by himself from the Coordinance House, not because he wanted to avoid anyone but because he enjoyed walking through the campus by himself. On the way to his truck he passed the building where the Southern California Aryan Club met. USC gave the club meeting rooms and large lecture halls for events that attracted numerous participants. The number of followers became bigger and bigger. Uncle Philip was deeply involved with the leaders of this group. He believed in their philosophy, supported them financially and promoted their racial theories. He called the younger men “sons,” sons of the organization. Sometimes when they had a meeting, Albert got in close enough to hear the speaker, or the organization’s president, or their USC friends talk disparagingly about Negroes, Mexicans, Indians, Jews, any group that they had declared inferior. They condemned any group new to the area that did not fit their vision of what Los Angeles should be. The speakers insisted that they talked from the point of view of city planners, of caretakers of the future of Los Angeles, because Los Angeles was the City of the Future. They argued that it was commercially and residentially wise to section off specific areas of Los Angeles for the inferior groups.
“We don’t want inferior races, Negroes, drunken Indians, lazy Mexicans or the like near us, near where we live!”
Albert was beginning to understand why Uncle Sol had been advising him to be careful, to be wary of people who are educated and who should know better but who are filled with hate for other human beings. The Aryan Club members, and men and women like them, wished to eliminate all races except their own white race. At the University of Southern California, Albert received an excellent engineering education, but every day it hosted forces that practiced overt prejudice, discrimination and racism. What would his fellow students do? Albert had seen some of the men who followed Uncle Philip, and he knew of other men, some of “the boys” group, who attended the Southern California Aryan Club gatherings. They knew that he was a “mixed breed,” but he thought they respected his intelligence, his high academic standing in the class. Students sought Albert out for his tutoring and even his personal advice. Lately, however there had been some rude comments and slurs for Albert to hear—questions about his father’s ancestry, his engineering credentials, his ethnicity and racial identity. In the remarks people made, Albert recognized Uncle Philip’s beliefs, his ugly words repeatedly spoken to the Kellers about Oakley Rivers. Uncle Philip for years had expressed his racist ideas and suspicions about Albert’s father, about who this successful Los Angeles businessman really was. Uncle Philip was now convinced that Albert’s father was an imposter, a mongrel product engendered from inferior human stock.
Albert was not worried. Instead he felt a great disappointment in his fellow students. He experienced disenchantment and deep sadness for many of these bright young men. But even more intense in his mind was the thought that Louise had expressed an interest in becoming an engineer to help her father with Keller Construction Company. He had no doubt that she could handle the academic work, but the vicious teasing about her being in a man’s profession worried him. He knew that the male students would not let up. Maybe she could deal with the classroom pranks and banter, but when she went out in the field? Could she handle the physical part, the pushing and shoving, these men forcing her to carry more than her designated load? Worse yet, how would she deal with the ugly groping? How would he deal with it? He would not be with her all the time. He would not be able to protect her. Yet Louise can defend herself, Albert thought. Louise will probably do just fine. No doubt she’ll be accepted, with her Uncle Philip now on the USC Board of Trustees. Yet, Albert was sure that his fellow students would complain bitterly that the women students were taking the men’s slots. Men are the bread winners; they should get the education and the jobs they need.
She’ll be married and pregnant in no time.
Albert could just about hear “the boys” protest.
The bottom line is economics—women are a bad educational investment!
The male students’ logic went on: Parents, usually fathers, pay for an expensive education that their daughters will use when changing diapers.
Laughter filled the lecture rooms and laboratories of the University of Southern California’s School of Engineering—at the women’s expense.
The chance that Louise would elect to study a man’s profession excited Allison and made her very proud. She wanted her daughters to receive the very best education the family could afford. Money really was not her concern. For the moment it was the relationship that Louise had with Albert that most concerned her. She had seen them walking, holding hands in the garden. They kissed innocently, not concerned about anyone observing them. Albert held Louise’s head tenderly while their lips met again and again. That afternoon Allison no longer saw in Louise and Albert the children who had grown up together. They were adults now, maybe not their minds completely, but certainly their bodies. She understood that they could not resist one another forever, that they could not remain celibate for much longer. She was being realistic. She recognized what a wonderful couple her beautiful daughter and handsome Albert Rivers made.
On that afternoon, observing those young bodies happily walking to the bench under a large pepper tree in the back garden, Allison’s worries intensified, aware of how Uncle Philip would react to a public declaration of her daughter’s love for Albert Rivers. How ugly Uncle Philip would make it seem. The alcohol made him speak ugly thoughts, she thought, as she watched Albert and Louise stroll along the street toward their neighbor Walter Simons’ blue brick house. Together, Louise and Albert were picture perfect, she thought, as the young couple disappeared into Albert’s house. She had allowed them to spend too much time alone together. How could she have allowed that to happen? Agatha and I are both guilty of this. Allison nodded and felt annoyed at what had resulted from her liberal behavior toward Louise. They both had realized what might happen. What they found to be cute at first now became an adult reality. Their children had fallen in love, but how far along in love had they advanced? Had they started a sexual relationship? Oh my God, my poor baby girl, what have I done? Agatha, what have we allowed to happen? We toyed with their lives, their bodies; like porcelain dolls we put them together because they fit so well, because they matched so nicely, because they made such a cute coup
le as children, but they grew up, became a man and woman before our eyes, before we realized that it had happened! Are we in time to stop the inevitable? If I prevent Louise from seeing Albert, it would seem so contradictory after years of pushing them together. I don’t want to make them suffer, to get them angry at me, at us. It’s too late to pull them apart. Louise would rebel. My little girl, the young woman she has become, knows how to defend what she wants. She knows how to stand alone. To pull them apart would cause great scandal and probably ugly rumors by attempting to explain why Albert and Louise were forbidden to see each other. The families would be scandalized in the public eye. We would all become fodder for ridicule and gossip. The only person who would benefit is Uncle Philip, who continuously warns us about our children getting too close to the Rivers family. Albert and Louise’s relationship might cause us, their mothers, to eat crow.
UNCLE SOL, LOUISE, Dame Marie, Gloria, Albert and Emily leaned forward around the one-hundred-foot tower, stared up through the thousands of open geometrical spaces formed by the myriad steel cables wrapped with wire mesh, tied with wire and covered with cement encrusted with millions of colored pieces of glass, mirrors, seashells, rocks, ceramic tile, pottery and marble.
“Can you climb it?” Emily asked, still looking up.
“Nobody gets up there, only Mr. Rodia.”
“These towers are amazing! They’re solid—and in the middle of this neighborhood!” Louise added.
“So many colors!” Dame Marie passed her fingers over the intricate mosaic design on the base of the tower.
“He is a natural engineer. Why did he build them here on this odd-shaped lot, Tío?”
“Because I want to make something big on this funny lot,” answered a short man in overalls who went to Uncle Sol and embraced him. The man laughed while shaking Sol’s hand.
River of Angels Page 18
