My Hollywood (5 page)

“Bing,” Esperanza calls. “Look your boat.” The boat floats, but the water stays still in this pool. Maybe if we turn on the jets for the Jacuzzi. Esperanza steps out her shorts, shaking her body into the bikini. All her parts fit the way they are supposed to. “Brooke, when you are big and rich, what will you do with all your money? Maybe you will live on a yacht!” Babysitters, even if they are in America one week from a swamp in the jungle, they know what is a yacht. The employers do not like us to tell these words to their children. But why not? That is the fun of here.

“I will buy you a house,” Brooke says.

“Oh,” Esperanza murmurs, happy in her cheeks. But this is a girl promising a babysitter; she will grow up and forget. The Latins, they are always watching telenovelas. It makes them too romantic.

Bingo! The jets start waves.

“What about me?” I call.

“I will buy you a house too.”

No one asks Esperanza why she thinks Brooke will become rich. She is rich now, already. But in the Philippines, we seemed a fortunate family when I was the age of Brooke. Williamo, he stands with his arms stretching, then he loses his balance and falls into the water. I hook him out, under the arm. My happiest times are when we are laughing at our life. For that you have to be the same. To be above other people, you will say goodbye to laughter. “How about me?” I hear Vicky ask Bing. “When you are rich, what will you buy me?”

He puffs his cheeks, blowing, trying to whistle, but nothing comes out.

Esperanza holds a sail to her cheek. “No?” But all colors look good on her.

“You know the house on the corner of Twelfth?” Lita says. “A lady, she told me the wife was first the baby nurse. The mother, she die in childbirth.”

“Yesterday,” Esperanza says, “we are walking and I see him—the guy. Oh, he is tall.
Guapo.”

“Hand-sum,” Lita says.

The young babysitters they want handsome husbands. My employer, she would like a new stove. I wish only for money. To buy schooling. So my kids, they will have their chance. Degrees cannot make them happy. Not guaranteed. But what else can you give?

Today is Friday, the last of the month. Lita is selling the lottery tickets she gets from her bad son. She has two kids hardworking but the middle one, he just plays. Lettie Elizande buys a ticket. She wants to go home. She does not like anything here. I buy also. This week I can send home fifty more. I have thirteen hundred savings, my little mound. If I win, poof, no more Lola. That was all I wanted, when I flew over, my hands useless on my lap. But that was when all I loved was there. Now I have Williamo.

And something else. These weekend people. I think of them and have to work to stop my smile. Another man never courted me. Bong Bong was the only one who wanted Lola. I am not a beauty who had a hundred proposals. But, I tell my daughters, all it takes is one. Now I have my empire of children. Six with Williamo.

We sail our wooden boats from the sides of the pool, our kids not yet old enough to swim. Heat shimmers. Palm leaf shadows dark the light.

I have in one fist the bunched T-shirt of China while Mai-ling runs to get the camera and in the other the collar of Bing while Vicky goes to the bathroom. Vicky, she takes care a boy who still naps twice a day, and the moment she is needed, she uses the restroom. Every weekend, our mutual employers talk about her. Last Sunday, Helen made me her coffee; Jeff stood one foot on the other knee. “She won’t talk to us, Lola.”

“She is not like you,” Helen whispered. With them, there is so much not said. I am not used to hidden meanings. From a helper, people usually want what you do for them. That is all.

“But-ah, Vicky is nice,” I said. “I will tell her to talk more. Me, I am
dal-dal
.”

The last time I talked like this, it was the beginning with Bong Bong.

“How do you like being a big brother,” Lita asks Simon. “You love your sister, yes!”

“I will never love that lump,” he says.

Mai-ling has returned with the Polaroid the employers gave her for Christmas. We have our children sit cross-legged, holding the strings of boats. I put my arms around Bing and Williamo. Aileen, the granddaughter of Ruth, sits by Lita, who will watch her today. The colored boats bob on water. I am squatting behind to make sure nobody falls in, when the star of light sputters and blinks.

When I see that picture, I am surprised. I know the work we did, gluing one wood on top the other, each sail hemmed and rigged with string. But the kids look a way I remember being myself long ago: stiff, facing a camera, asked to smile, children put together, used to each other, not friends, in time to be gotten through, the middle of the day, the feeling that later causes people in jobs to look at clocks, but these kids do not even have those handlebars for boredom. They cannot yet tell time.

The babysitters stand, brush off their laps. “Tomorrow at the house of Lita,” Vicky calls, hitting me too hard.

“I want to go there now,” Bing says. “To Litahouse.”

In their voices, that is the only place it is our house.

Back home, I have ready a project. We put into cardboard all the coins. Claire told us we could have the pennies for the choo-choo bank, where we are saving for the Philippines. We also find nickels, dimes, and quarters and I have brown tubes for those too. There is always money in this house. “It is a hunt,” I tell Williamo, and we discover nests in the carpet, piles on counters, little dishes filled. If someone came to the door with a pizza and I needed ten dollars, I could find it, in pockets and cups, mixed with slips of paper. My house in the Philippines is like this too. That way if I become very low I can dig. My secret garden.

We pile the rolls of coins; build with them an American log cabin, using his Play-Doh for the mortar. Williamo is a very good worker. If we can keep the dimes, we will have a lot already. But I have to ask. The pennies, they are already ours.

“Hey,” Claire answers her phone. She is only upstairs, but I am supposed to call. It is hard for her to hear sounds she is making if we go there. The neighbor gardeners cause problems, also, with the machine that blows leaves.

“We are asking, can we have also the silver coins?”

“Sure, Lola.” There are certain people; you know they will always say to you yes.

At the bank, we fall in line. When we go to the front, the lady acts all business, making a total of the dimes. I say, “This little man filled the nickels by himself.”

While she finishes the silver coins, I lift a bag of pennies from his wagon. It is heavy. We have many pennies. From the log cabin, we counted forty dollars nickels, twenty-seven dimes, and one hundred and three pennies. I lift Williamo up to see.

But the lady pushes our tubes out. “We cannot take pennies.”

Williamo picks one roll, to hand it back to her. I remember this moment, again and again: it is like the giving of a flower. He does not yet understand.

“We don’t
take
these,” she says.

For a second, then, his face changes, what his mother calls berry-with-a-frown. Cartoon looks; they are really true on children. An upside-down smile, then bawling. He throws the roll of pennies at her face.

“I can’t help you,” the lady says with closed teeth. Her hand goes above her eye. She has already given us paper money for the silver. She looks at me with hate. I have seen real hate only a few times in my life. The shape of diamonds, it is shocking.

But she is hurt above the eye and I am not a white.

“Come, Williamo.” I fight him down into the wagon. I will have to pull the pennies and him. “We will make our getaway.”

But he runs, dragging pennies to a garbage can, and dumps the tubes in. Still crying he is mad now, also mad. I have to stop him. This is not right. All our effort. With him what I do is almost tackle. I get on the floor and hold him until the fight is out.

“Once upon a time,” I say, “I work in Beverly Hills. A house very fancy. Three layers. Floors like a checkerboard. Marble.

“When I first came, the lady she open the door and right away she said,
You are hired
. She told me, she knew like
that
—she snap her fingers—you will never guess from why. Because the way I tie my sneakers. She thought Lola was tidy. But Lola is not so tidy, not really. I can be if I have to. And for her I clean every thing. But that is not the way I live. It is too much time, always straightening. I would rather taste some part of life. The husband, he had an office, and she hired me extra to go on the Saturday. He sat working at his desk. And he had one jar like this, up to my waist, full with pennies. I asked him, did he want me to get tubes from the bank? He said,
You can take the pennies
.

“But I could not lift. So I came back Sunday, my off, and I sat on the floor and put pennies into tubes. He stepped around me when he went down the hall to use the lavatory. He ask me how much money as he went by.

“Thirty-six dollars
, I said.

“Good job, Lola
.

“The next time it was ninety-four. By the last time he passed, I was at three hundred six. His face looked strange, like two lines crossing. He went down the hall and I heard Xeroxing. On his way back, he stopped and said,
‘Maybe you better leave the pennies
.

“Whatever you say. It is up to you
.

“When he returned to his desk, I stood and left it all there, the rolled pennies, the pile on the floor, the jar turned over. I took the bus to the place of Ruth and never went back. That was the end of my career for a Beverly Hills housekeeper.”

“Is that when you came here?”

“You were not yet born. I had to wait for you. But-ah, when the husband took the pennies to the bank, you know what they are telling him? They are telling him what they are telling us.
We cannot help you
. And you know what he will do?”

“He shouldn’t have taken your pennies, Lola. He is a bad man.”

“Only a little bad. Listen, you know what he will do? He will throw the pennies in the garbage and go away in a hurry, he is always in a hurry. He is too busy, see?”

Now I fish with my arm in the garbage, feeling around wet things for our tubes. “But we will do something else. Come. You watch.” I pull him in the wagon out into the bright air. We go to the five-and-dime. And then the candy shop. Then the Discovery Store, where we spin the globe. Each place, I count out money. I put the rolls on the counter, so it is easy for the register clerk. My father told me,
Spend your small money first
. He remembered when money became light and the lower denominations would not anymore buy. And still at that time, there was wealth.

In the wagon Williamo eats long orange candy worms.

“See, in the bank it is nothing, but out here it is still money. Not for the Philippines, but we can buy. Every day a little. It is our trust fund. I trust you and you trust me. You have your candy. Now, we will use pennies to buy Lola coffee.”

That is what my kids, they will remember. That Lola loved her coffee.

When we return home, the hallway rounds to a cave and I hear chopping.

“I will be the one,” I say. My employer, she did not grow up with a helper. She cannot easily ask. So I take the tomatoes. All the while with a smile. It is not hard. Not when you have a purpose. And I have five purposes, the youngest twenty-three studying medicine.

Always the parents first, Ruth said. A kid cannot fire you. Even here.

Anyway, my employer is a very good cook. I am happy to chop chop.

Williamo sits under the table, folding a newspaper to a hat the way I showed him. “Who taught
you
, Lola? Your nanny?”

“We did not call the ladies nannies.”

“What did you call them?”

“I really do not know. She was just the One in the House.” I shrug to Claire. “In our place, you know, everyone has somebody to help.”

Tonight her eye where Williamo hit shines black and blue, yellow also. Over it, she has painted makeup. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

“It is the age too.” But my children, they were not like this, not even Dante. Here in America, they are different. Also taller.

“Maybe I should find a psychologist for him,” my employer whispers. “Do you think this is all still normal?”

Really, I do not know. “You are talking to the wrong person,” I say. “Because-ah I like naughty boys.”

She sighs, better now. We will not tell her the lady at the bank.

She gives me my plate, covered with a napkin, to carry back to my place.

“You won’t eat with us, Lole?”

Ruth advised me,
Americans do not know what they want. They invite you, and then after, they will pine for their privacy. Americans need privacy. Because it is a big big land
. Also, if I am eating with them, when Williamo needs more milk, I will be the one to jump up. I like to watch the TV. Tonight I have a project. It is important to have hours you are comfortable.

Later on, he can come to my place. We will study the map. The lavender Philippines, orange California. We are saving for the globe. Each day, we will give the man two rolls. It can help teach counting.

They leave the dishes for the morning. They are a little spoiled, like my own kids, but I do not mind. They work hard. My money is earned. I can sit. That is my day.

Some people across the Pacific, they had better be studying.

I take my project with me in a bag and walk past the house they are building on Twelfth, where they say the wife is Filipina. Esperanza heard housekeeper. Lita today said baby nurse. Whatever she was first, they are now building towers.

It is different for the babysitters not yet married. They come here every day. For them it is a shrine: boards and empty rectangles of air. Each wants a husband to carry her over the threshold of a Castle. Their dreams take place here.

Me, I have my house already.

I always keep in the corner of my room a box for my next shipment home. For a large box, only sixty-five dollars. I make a map for my daughters where to put my treasures. My employer became upset when she saw I had her present wrapped in T-shirts to send. “I want your life
here
to be a little nicer.” But I have a china cabinet in the dining room at home. I think of that room empty in the afternoon, a clean lung. I am not here to settle. America may be the future of the world but it is not the future of Lola.