“Madre del Río, I bring Albert and Louise. They need your help,” Sol spoke without a stutter.
The River Mother gazed upon Louise, studied her face, shoulders, breast and legs. She turned to look at Albert in the same scrupulous manner.
“I understand what it is. It is a natural thing. Why do you come so full of fear? Albert, you must do what is appropriate for this blessed miracle. What are you waiting for?”
“They can’t go home. Their parents will be very mad. Louise’s uncle hates Albert. Now, for sure he will want revenge. I’m afraid that bringing Albert and Louise to you might put you in danger. But you can help them!”
“Sol, I can’t change the will of Almighty God. Louise is with child and she will have a beautiful boy, but her son will not see the world for the first time here.”
SEVERAL CHILDREN STOPPED their games to watch a young, pretty woman, a stranger in town, walk slowly from Doña Luciana’s house down the hard clay dusty street to a large garden that Doña Luciana tended year round. No matter what season, something grew in that garden. The children ran down to get a better look and to walk with her and carry her baskets. The older children understood she was a girl who moved slowly because she was swollen with child. Several of the children knew that when a mother’s belly became that big, the cry of another brother or sister would soon be demanding their attention.
“Me llamo Louise.” She had learned some Spanish by listening to the help at both the Rivers and Kellers’ houses, and from the workers at the construction yards. She had also learned much of what she knew from Albert and Sol, and wanted to learn more. Living here, she would surely catch on to Spanish much faster.
Louise stopped for a minute to rest and handed a basket to one of the older girls. The children laughed around her and helped pull open the wood and wire fence covered with hundreds of bright-colored ribbons for keeping animals away. Louise pointed to the tomatoes and carrots. The children took a basket and started to harvest the vegetables. Two girls followed Louise to the strawberries, the first batch of the season. The girls ate as they picked the large, bright red strawberries.
In thirty minutes the children had filled the four baskets Louise had brought. Thank God for the kids. How could I have carried these baskets back, Louise thought, as the children walked behind her, chatting and teasing. The older children traded off carrying the heavier baskets filled with vegetables from Doña Luciana’s garden. When they came to Doña Luciana’s front yard and the brick walkway leading to the front door, they placed the baskets around Louise and rushed away waving, jumping, laughing and shouting, “¡Luis! ¡Adiós, Luis!” amazed that Luis could be a girl’s name. Louise stood at the entrance, just watching the children move down the dirt road, running, shouting, jumping, pushing, playing, teasing, having fun—with endless energy, happy and carefree.
Louise managed to carry the baskets one by one to Doña Luciana’s semi-open kitchen that had been modified by the brickyard workers as payment for the curandera’s natural medicines and healing services. The kitchen had been extended out to the brick back patio enclosed on two sides with wooden planks. It had two cooking areas with brick ovens that allowed her to cook inside the house in cool weather and out on the patio during the hot summer months. Doña Luciana’s cooking was delicious. Louise and Albert ate everything she prepared, and Louise almost immediately was able to help her prepare the many dishes the old woman made for them and for her neighbors who at times just did not have enough to nourish their large families. These were difficult times, but Doña Luciana found edible sustenance throughout nature’s spaces.
When the children came to mind, Louise thought about why they had left the baskets and immediately run away. The children did not want to confront the tall stocky woman with thick bushy white hair. They avoided Doña Luciana, always diverting their path when she approached. The children seemed to play a game of being afraid of Doña Luciana, but many if not most had been treated by her. The women of the Simons company town always called on her first before they would go to an americano male physician. They felt comfortable asking intimate questions that only she, as a woman, could truly understand. Doña Luciana and the women she had trained had brought into the world more than seventy percent of the children born in Simons Town. Louise quickly grew to like the strong round woman whose skin was smooth and silky. She could be a wise woman, but not many wrinkles ventured across her face. As Louise carried the last basket to the house, she stopped to feel her child move inside her, like the earth at times moved, pushing and sliding beneath her feet. Down the road came Doña Luciana with two canvas sacks of fruit and wild roots, leaves and herbs. She marched confidently right up to Louise and gave her a hug.
“How do you feel, hija?”
Doña Luciana waited for an answer that did not come.
Louise sensed a genuine caring from this woman, who inspired a deep fearless confidence. During these months, Louise worked for her keep. Doña Luciana had assigned her cooking, cleaning and gardening chores, work she claimed would prepare Louise’s body for a woman’s gift—the pain of giving birth.
“You’re almost ready, and nice and strong.” The silver-haired midwife facing Louise repeated a Spanish prayer for a good birth :
Trabajo
dolor del parto
lista estarás
fuerte serás
Louise learned to say it to herself always. It became her song of pregnancy and strength for birth:
Work
The pain of birth
you will be ready
you will be strong
While both women prepared the evening meal, Louise wove in English and in Spanish her birth prayer song around thoughts of Albert and their baby.
ON THE RIVER Mother’s orders, Sol had driven the eloping lovers to Simons Town, the community of Mexican brick workers isolated on the fringe of Los Angeles.
“Don’t ask how or why. Just take them there!”
She told Louise to rest and not to worry, for the River Mother already felt strong energy emanating from the baby, who would grow powerful and do good works for humanity, just like the other children Louise was destined to carry.
The River Mother’s blessing, like a gentle but powerful wind, pushed them on their way to Simons Town. For two weeks after Sol had left them at Doña Luciana’s, Albert had worked at simple jobs around the brickyard. The men paid him what they could for his work, but he never approached the foreman for a job, for fear that the foreman would ask him to leave. He found that the people of Simons knew about Louise and his situation. They were understanding, generous and helpful. He was grateful for the women who had accepted Louise and invited her to their gatherings, to church. They invited Albert and Louise to come to celebrate baptisms, marriages, family dinners and fiestas. They made them feel welcome and comfortable.
Unlike their parents, the Simons Town children were curious and inquisitive, and at times it became impossible to answer their never-ending questions: “Why is Luisita’s belly so big?” “My mother says that my father makes her belly big.” “Alberto, are you a Mexican like us?” “It’s your fault, huh, Alberto?” “Why does Luisita have pink skin like a little baby piggy?” “Where do your parents live?” “You’re rich, right?” “Luisita is pretty and Alberto is ugly—right, Luisita?” “After your baby is born, are you going to live with us?”
Louise and Albert eventually ignored them.
Albert hoped, in fact requested, that Sol visit every two weeks. Sol did exactly that, every two weeks bringing the news from home. He reported on the reactions to their elopement and news about the family businesses. He would eagerly sit down at Doña Luciana’s outdoor kitchen table to share what he had found out and what messages he was instructed to bring to the four sisters at Hancock Park.
Sol relayed that his parents were not angry, that they worried about the couple, that Louise needed to see a doctor.
“Albert, your father wants you back in school. You are important to th
e company. Your parents want to help you. They want you back home.”
“Please, Sol, let them know I love them. I need to hug them, care for them. I can take Louise to the doctor.”
“Albert, everybody is excited about the baby. Agatha and Allison talk a lot about the baby. They want to see Louise and make sure she gets the best medical care.”
Allison, according to Sol, had changed her mind. “Tell my daughter I love her, that I am not angry. Tell her I want her to have the baby. I love the baby already! Emily and Gloria want to help plan the nursery. Make sure that Albert understands that Louise’s mother … her parents … want them home safe and well. She can have the baby here. Let her know this. She should not be afraid to return home.”
“Louise, you can return home any time. Your mother wants to see you. She wants to help you get ready for the baby. Both families need you back home.”
“Louise, your father loves you and wants you back home. Your parents understand that you love each other. They will help you set up your own home. Your sisters are crazy with happiness, so excited about the baby. They want to come for a visit. I promised to bring them here.”
The three sat down under a big zapote tree on benches that Albert had made for Doña Luciana. Sol smoked a cigarette leisurely. There was something else he was afraid to tell them. In all his visits he had brought good family news, but there was one last bit of information to give them. It made him uneasy, even angry, which was a rarity for Sol. Louise and Albert speculated on what they expected to hear from Louise’s Uncle Philip. Sol did not speak.
“Sol, we know he is against all this. He hates Albert, and he hates me for having Albert’s baby.” Louise reached for Albert’s hand. “I wish my parents would tell him to mind his own business, to stop forcing his ugly beliefs on them. He’s crazy. I’m sure of it! My father does not want to confront him. He says he is our uncle, his father’s brother. He is family, so we can’t push him away.”
“You’re right. Since you left, he’s been at your house almost every night. Sometimes he comes there with a very elegant group to chat with your mother and father. I’m not sure if I understand it right, but the girls tell me that Uncle Philip and his friends talk about the family blood being spoiled and something about mixing with inferior people. It’s not clear what they intend to do, but I know that the girls have heard him say that you and Albert should not marry and that Louise must give up the child at birth or sooner.”
IN THE MONTHS that followed Sol’s first reports to them, the hate of Uncle Philip for Albert did not diminish. At one of his monthly meetings with the Southern California Aryan Club, Uncle Philip explained to the members what had happened to his niece. The membership, all well-educated professional and business men, sympathized with Louise’s situation. They concluded that she, the product of a superior bloodline, could be saved, but Albert, a product of mixed lower-race bloodlines, was beyond rehabilitation. The president of the group insisted that they had to keep the Aryan race, their race, pure and that they should not be afraid to eliminate from society unfit or inferior human examples. According to Uncle Philip, Albert was clearly a social undesirable. He went on to say that now, more than ever before, they had to support the work of a scientist who proposed to purify the human race, the Aryan race, through genetic engineering. Uncle Philip, without hesitation, declared himself a practitioner of the new science of eugenics. He believed that he and others like him were chosen by God to create and guard the planet for the Aryan race.
PHILIP KELLER BEGAN to consider these ideas soon after he attended a lecture, in 1921, by Harry H. Laughlin, a researcher at the Scripps Institute for Biological Research in La Jolla, California. Harry H. Laughlin went to Los Angeles, encouraged by his superiors to give a private lecture to the Southern California Aryan Club, in hopes that the group would make a contribution to the Scripps Institute. Uncle Philip served as Laughlin’s guide during his stay in Los Angeles, and in the few days Laughlin and Keller spent together, they became good friends. Uncle Philip visited Laughlin and his wife in San Diego, spending weekends discussing and absorbing without question Laughlin’s ideas about the relationship between race and intelligence. Uncle Philip eagerly listened to Laughlin’s every word, practically worshipping the man, who was also one of the top scientists at the Eugenics Research Association at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York.
Uncle Philip, with all his intelligence, had become convinced that at one time in the history of humanity there existed a master race called the Aryans. These great pure-blooded people were white-skinned and blue-eyed, tall and highly intelligent. The Aryans conquered and ruled over the dark-skinned races of Europe. They were northern people fated by God to someday rule the entire world.
Uncle Philip was proud that he and his family were members of the Aryan master race. And he was excited about the leadership possibilities for his nieces; they were naturally superior in intelligence, and they should go to the university. He agreed with Allison that the girls could do whatever they wanted to do, be whatever they chose to be. They were Aryan women. It was only natural that they aspire to the best that life offered. But they also had to marry right. They had to produce Aryan progeny. Uncle Philip—for the sake of the family and, most importantly, the master race—wanted to protect the purity and the sanctity of his bloodline, and to do this he had to protect the family’s women and make sure that they married Aryan men. He felt compelled to warn his family about the innate inferiority of dark-skinned people and the physical dangers and genetic risks of associating with unfit humans. Among the most contaminated by miscegenation were Italians, Russians, Spanish and Jews. The country had to segregate the low ape-like Negroes, descendants of slaves. But the new immigrants entering the country today were the most disgusting and dangerous half-breeds. The brown-and the yellow-skinned people were the worst. They seemed to come in hoards and disappear into their communities. These were the Chinese, Japanese and Mexicans. And even worse were the filthy, syphilitic drunks—the so-called American Indians. All of these races populated the country’s prisons and mental institutions. Uncle Philip learned that Laughlin’s research indicated that the majority of the new immigrants were defective, subhuman, the majority of whom had an intelligence quotient of below seventy, officially classified as morons by the Eugenics Records Office. These subhuman races, Uncle Philip believed, had to be stopped from breeding, which justified sterilization of men and, most definitely, women, who, being of a lower race, tended to mate with any man available. The sterilization procedure could be involuntary, done without their knowledge until a law was passed to require this necessary procedure. A program of elimination had to be planned and followed to maintain America as a country of racial purity. These programs had to be set up with haste and urgency. The future well-being and survival of the Aryan master race depended on them.
Throughout the years since his arrival in Southern California and increasingly after his introduction to Harry H. Laughlin, Philip Keller read, listened and accepted without question certain biological and social theories that supported the idea of the master race. He and his fellow Aryan Cub members met regularly with other organizations that supported the new emerging Germany. On occasion he attended four-day, and sometimes longer retreats, at what he called master race colonies located in one of the many canyons that carved a path to the sea from the small mountain ranges and hills that surrounded the Los Angeles basin. From these Aryan compounds, Uncle Philip reemerged assured that his beliefs in a natural superior race were true and justified. He became dogmatic and never hesitated to impose his ideas on his family. Ernest and Allison were very acquainted with his racial ideas, and Emily, Gloria and Louise from infancy had been subjected to their uncle’s superior-race diatribes. Even after Allison had argued and prohibited him from talking to the girls about his beliefs, he persisted.
“You must understand, it’s for their own good. For the good of all of us!”
He had a mission to educate his nieces to de
fend themselves against the subhuman now invading Southern California.
“Please listen. Scientists can prove that there are differences in intelligence among people.”
He often attempted to tell them stories of the ancient master race. “They were white-skinned, blue-eyed, tall and genius Nordic people. The Aryans are our ancestors. Girls, the Kellers are descendants of the Aryan race. You must beware of the inferior human beings, the dark-skinned people who degenerate the pure-blooded American race. These mongrel-race mixtures are feeble-minded morons who produce defective children. Their women are naturally immoral and promiscuous and mate freely like wild animals. Their offspring are always reprobate children who eventually fill the country’s prisons and mental institutions. The immigrants coming into the country today are mostly these inferior hordes. Never associate with the dark-skinned—avoid the Indians, Chinks and Negroes altogether. Listen to your Uncle Philip and you will be safe.”
Uncle Philip supported legislation forbidding sexual intercourse and marriage between blacks and whites. He championed Darwin’s theories and believed that biology determined a natural racial supremacy. The lower races should ultimately be annihilated, destroyed for the benefit of the Aryan race.
“Do not associate with biologically defective, mentally inadequate sub humans,” Uncle Philip repeatedly reminded the Kellers.
As a steadfast believer in the science of eugenics, he donated funds to buy property to establish colonies in Southern California where people could move and live the life prescribed by the eugenicists. He financed lectures, published and distributed pamphlets throughout Los Angeles. After his physical, emotional and financial recovery, he was gratified that finally a European country was going to do something about the defective lower races and the Jews in their society.
BEING PREGNANT, FEELING her body change, inside and out, made Louise nervous and, at other moments, happy and joyous, knowing that a beautiful creature was growing inside of her. This pregnancy was forcing her to expand, to hold her belly with her baby and walk slowly as she recalled her uncle’s horrible words. Dark-skinned people had accepted her and now walked with her to the Cinco de Mayo celebration held in a plaza-like field behind the administration building, the company store, the recreation hall, the small restaurant, post office and bachelors’ quarters of the Simons Brick Company No. 3, located just south of Montebello.
River of Angels Page 25
