My Hollywood

  I collect plates from outside; jasmine petals mix in the pasta. I eat one.

  It does not taste much different.

  At the table, they are laughing. Are they laughing my chop?

  My pupil gets ready the platter, ringing the fish with slices of lemon and orange, picking out the pits with the tip of a knife. We wash the pasta plates, so it will not be too much at the end. Lucy tastes the fish, frowns. “In our place, Lola, the fish is so sweet. The fisherman take right from the sea and you eat.”

  A shriek. I let Lucy go in even though it is my day. Bing sometimes he has nightmares. Williamo sleeps too, in his stroller, under a blanket, by the mother.

  “Sleepysleep,” my pupil says, closing the door.

  I sit. The leftover pasta I put away already. But Lucy takes things off the counter to polish. “Why you do? You are making me look bad.”

  “I try to help them, like that.”

  “But it is not your house.”

  A long time under jasmine they talk. They will hand me from the one side of the table to the other, like a parcel.

  “Lola, we are planning to rebuild our place in Iloilo. Last month I ask for a loan. An advance, like that.”

  An advance! That is why she is polishing. But they will want her to work that off.

  “Next January, my father will go back for the two-year anniversary of our mother’s death. It is our belief if you put on the roof yourself, that will be good luck.”

  This one, she has too many beliefs. First it was doors, that the doors should not line up so you can see through to the outside in their house in the province. I told her I would not pay to fix that. But she and Cheska sent home more than five hundred. Now it is the India trees in front of the house of Cheska. “They are saying that kind of tree, it is bad luck,” my pupil said.

  “But you have not had hard luck.”

  “No, Lola, it is. Butch, the son of Cheska, he got dengue. He almost die. And Mel, he is not sending much for the kids. Maybe he has another woman, like that. I told Cheska, cut the trees. We will just pay that.”

  I saw the pictures. They are beautiful old trees. They need those trees. For shade.

  I am more plain. I pay for my children to get degrees. “You believe in ghosts. Me, I am a believer in money. How much did your employers contribute?”

  “Two thousand.”

  Two thousand! Maybe that is why the talk outside is long.

  “Jeff, he said, I’d rather give you money for your tests. Who’s going to live in that house?”

  “Here, they do not understand a double life.”

  “When I first came, I promised my mother we would fix the house.”

  For a promise. To a woman dead and buried. But my pupil, will she remember her promise to me?

  I do not want that it will be a problem when I take back the job.

  No, anyway, I want to go. Only one year, two years, like that.

  “It seems in this house now, you are almost daughter.”

  “Yes, Lola. But I have lot of problem.” She opens the oven door and a carpet of warm floats out; peaches bubble through a shell. “With Tony, I really do not know.”

  Normally, I would second the motion, but I have swallowed a question mark. I am wondering this white that says my pupil looks like a painting. The word gorgeous, that could work in her system like a drug. To Aleph Sargent, no. But for Lucy, this may be the first time anyone used that word. That is why it is important to have a mother. A mother can see behind flowers. Lucy is young, but she is not gorgeous. Me, I am suspicious. I was the same with my daughters and now the second eldest—she is married to a very nice Visayan, who owns a tilapia farm.

  “You are always going with Tony to Chinatown. Maybe you need privacy.”

  “Because it is cheap, Lola. I tell him, it is okay; we don’t have to spend.”

  Helen comes in carrying a book. “Time for Lola’s coffee.” She pours milk into a pot. “This goes out in the blue pitcher. Here.” She opens the book. “Tahiti.”

  The seed of the areola. But the girl in the picture wears no shirt! Flower behind the ear. I am thinking the white. For him, it will be like getting a slave.

  Helen pours thick coffee into our mugs, and then she swings out again. Why does she keep going back and forth? They all know we are in the kitchen. Why cannot she sit?

  I wash, my pupil dries, to keep the hands fresh. But her clock is past time.

  “Maybe you can have your Tony,” I say. “At last your teacher will allow. I will broker the marriage.”

  In her face, I see an opening. A fan of light from a door; it is hope, full of terror, wanting to grow. “Just wait, Lola.” She blows on her coffee. “Just wait till I am more thin. One month, two months, like that. I have a video; it is Aleph Sargent and her mother exercising. A very nice tape.”

  But I cannot wait.

  I keep expecting Claire to tell me, but when they leave she avoids my eyes.

  Maybe they did not want Lola.

  Monday night, at the sink, I ask.

  “Oh, Lole, I don’t know. When I said, There’s something we have you might want, they assumed I meant something else. They think everything’s for sale.”

  “But-ah, when you said, No, it is Lola?”

  “I was so upset I didn’t ask.”

  I am still taking care Williamo. How many more days? At five o’clock, I help prepare the supper, the sound of chop chopping the same. They still eat. There is really no one I can talk this. I do not want to tell Ruth. I hold it in my chest and breathe with this package hidden; up and down, it hurts. Others here have offered me jobs, but those spots, they filled already.

  I can see they love me, Williamo does and Claire too, so the problem, it really must be money. Paul, what is the matter, all this time working, why he cannot earn? But every Wednesday I replace the underwear, washed and folded in his drawer, I see the card of the Hollywood agent. I see that rectangle with a spray of glitter. If Williamo starred in a commercial, maybe that would be the year salary for Lola. I call when he is at the camp. “I am the babysitter of the boy you met in Starbucks. We will try once.”

  “Well, it’s more than a once commitment, if you know what I mean. We’ve got to get pictures and then there’re auditions.”

  “Where?”

  “You’re in what, Santa Monica? I’m out there Tuesday, Thursdays. I’ve got my shrink if you want to know the truth. Why don’t we meet Tuesday, and in the meantime, I’ll see what’s coming down the pike. He’s what, three, four?”

  “He is now four,” I say.

  Tuesday, I have ready a package of pictures duplicated.

  “I meant head shots,” she says. “We’ll need eight-by-tens. Tell you what, there’s an audition in Studio City tomorrow. Why don’t you just bring him? It’ll be a cattle call, but it’s Volvo, so if he did win, the jackpot’d be big.”

  But he has camp tomorrow. To take without parent permission, that is a crime maybe. If they did not chop me already, they could chop me for this. Wednesday is the day that used to be our playclub. Nannies in Santa Monica know that at this house, there was a party. Almost every week, a few still arrive. All year, I had to tell them, the party is over; Williamo now attends school. I tape a sign on our door just in case. Today, after camp, there will be playclub at the place of Mai-ling. Her birthday, we will have to miss.

  The bus ride it is almost two hours. On my lap he is becoming too big for, I tell him it is a contest and if we win we can surprise his parents.

  “But what do we play?”

  “You just smile. That is all we can do. Is smile.”

  In the big auditorium, I look around; I am the only nanny. Williamo becomes impatient. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  I promise French fries after. We still wait and then when they call his name and he goes to the front, Williamo he does not smile.

  The agent, still in silver, stands, jingling. “We’ll have to work on stage presence,” she says.

 
But I cannot take Williamo out again. I will have to tell Ruth. While we wait for our transfer to the Wilshire bus, we go in McDonald. I keep a Baggie of pennies in my purse, but today I just hand the girl five dollars.

  The ocean, in the distance, has over it a net of gray. Like the iris of an eye, the color is never pure. Over the line of mountains comes a ribbon of smoke. Malibu fires. It is still hot, even now, after five.

  By the time we reach the house of China, playclub will be near done, but we have never yet missed. We step over old toys in the side yard, pass neglected animals, mean birds in cages fed by Mai-ling; two rabbits that run wild almost trip me. In back, nobody but kids and babysitters. A small cake stands on the table; a knife jabbed into the fallen middle. Brookie and Kate stand up a huge girl between them. Esperanza returned from Guatemala with her baby.

  The bigger kids cannonball in the water, holding their knees. Babysitters sit on the edges of the pool. Mai-ling, she does not have a suit. That is because she never had to take China to classes; a private swim instructor comes here. A hundred dollars every time. And China and her brother, they already know how. Stroke refinement, the instructor calls it. For the birthday, we all chipped in to buy Mai-ling a one-piece. We had to go a special store for large sizes. She is short, shorter than me, but wide. They waited for me to give her the box. Mai-ling opens, looking embarrassed. That was a different Lola who asked for the collection and got the card for everyone to sign. I have bigger problems now. To keep the world running, you need people like me before.

  Esperanza stands in the pool. Brookie hands to her the baby. She holds the big girl, skimming her feet on the water so they dance. But a baby should not be so big. And Esperanza walked twenty-one days with that huge girl strapped to a basket on top her head. “Rapidos!” She shows me with one hand, up to here in water. “And now she no more cry.” Esperanza arrived to the door of Beth Martin, carrying the baby and a sack of Pampers. The employers, they let her every day bring the baby. The USC girl they hired left wet towels on the floor and now they will have to refinish.

  Stars of light pucker the surface of the pool. I just now realize, I love this, but I cannot stay. Still nobody here knows yet. If I could just get money, it would be as if it never happened.

  “Everybody loves you,” Esperanza says to Phoebe, the little sister of Simon.

  “I know onebody that don’ love me.”

  Esperanza stretches like a cat. Her body still has its own ideas. Water on her skin angles off into air. She shakes a bottle of glittery gold polish and flecks her toes. I tell her, for a baby, you have to watch, every minute, not for a second can you turn your head. But I really do not have to tell, I am surprise. Esperanza, with this baby that is too fat, you can see she already loves it. She reaches over to tickle it. Then she polishes the toes of the baby gold.

  Lucy blurts, “I will lose weights. Because I am sweating!”

  “The dryer beep,” Mai-ling says.

  “So leave the dryer.” I look down my shirt. “I live with wrinkles.”

  Mai-ling nods, meaning, You keep an eye, yes? Then she goes to answer the dryer. My pupil is giving Bing up-downs, he shrieks, the way he does, and after a while they stop. I hear a difference. Too quiet. I look at the kids, count. “Where is China?”

  We look. Nowhere. Then Lucy dives, hands prayered overhead. I see her body underwater, a dark shape in the blue. This was what she went to medical school for, to save life. Jollibee. Be Happy. Feel Life. That is a billboard in Manila. Jollibee, it is like our McDonald. While my pupil dives, I am thinking billboards.

  She drags the small body out and we crowd around. For a whole minute, we do not know—maybe life stopped. But then, my pupil feels the pulse. “She is breathing,” she says. “Unconscious.”

  “Call nine-one-one,” I say.

  Lita asks where is the number for the parents.

  “They just go. All the time, they just go.” Mai-ling, she is complaining them!

  “Whenever the parents leave, you always get the number,” I scold.

  Lita wants that all but Filipinos get out.

  “But when they leave, they will talk,” I say. “Mai-ling should go. To the bus stop. Wilshire and ten. I will call Danny to pick her.” I hear footsteps down the stairs. Maybe she will get her things.

  “But nine-one-one is police. What about the ones without papers?”

  Lita and I decide. “Only the legals stay.” Lita is the one to call.

  Not even a wall separates the room of Mai-ling from the laundry. Just the washer, dryer, ironing board, her small dresser and bed, China on top the white. Mai-ling tugs a lace dress over her shoulders, dry pink bougainvillea stuck in her hands. “Mai-ling, you should never move the patient!” Lucy shouts.

  A pop and light: Mai-ling taking a picture. The employers, they gave her that Polaroid, for her Christmas once.

  “Oh my God,” Lucy says. “Bu’ang. She is really sirang ulo.”

  “Mai-ling, she is a simple person, she believes things we do not even know what.” Upstairs, we hear a commotion: the paramedics, thudding down in a stampede, doing what my pupil could not, taking Mai-ling off China and moving the girl to the stretcher.

  “Which one’s the housekeeper?”

  Another says, “Whose of you speaks English?”

  China breathes, only unconscious. And then they go, the siren, swinging like the incense in church at home, wailing into the late day.

  Helen arrives just for a normal pickup.

  I hear Mai-ling say, “Ma’am, I will get the electric chair.”

  Still here! She should be gone already. Helen is okay, but anyway not Filipina.

  “I am the only one sending money,” Mai-ling says.

  “I’ve got to call Jeff.” Whatever Helen says, he is the one to decide. She keeps dialing.

  “I cannot leave,” Mai-ling whispers. “They owe me.”

  “You worry that later. Now you go.”

  Mai ling looks up in a diagonal, like an animal.

  “Well, Tarek, where is he?” Helen yells into the phone.

  When Sue opens the door, it feels like a nightmare surprise party. “Oh my God, my God, no.” She bangs her head against the wall. Her thirteen-year-old son holds her shoulders. “Mom. Mom. Chill.” The husband, he is dialing already.

  When he hangs up, he tells us all to go. They lock the door and get into their car.

  At the end of this day, I have a small tragedy my own. When I take the garbage from the bathroom of my employer, I see a shopping bag. I look the receipt. Barneys Mens: $1,275.00. So they are still spending. It is not true, what they said. I cannot believe anymore. And what will they do with Williamo while they work?

  She said they will put him in Funcare at the school.

  That night, I feel a hand on top my head. I was having a dream of white people giving Filipinas pedicures. Beth Martin stood polishing jewelries.

  “I can’t sleep,” he says.

  “Okay, then, we will look for stars.”

  It is cold on the step. But he feels warm, through the pajamas. I smell the skin smell in his hair. In the dream, we lounged around a pool, but Mai-ling fell in. I suppose it is an old LA fear. The fake blue sides. Careful mothers take their toddlers to swim class. Claire had me go with Williamo to the YM. And he is safe. That is enough. “Williamo, you are big now,” I say. “Some-a-day I will be your buddy-buddy, not your babysitter anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “Because-ah everybody has to grow up.”

  I must have mumbled, because Williamo asks, “Do you mean ‘someday’ or ‘summer day’?”

  Some-a-day. My word. Small kids and immigrants; we mix English.

  In The Book of Ruth I read about Flora. She worked for a lady scientist who married the first time at age fifty-two. The scientist and her new husband sent Flora home to her province with a trunk of money, and Flora opened a confection store there. She sent a picture of the store for The Book of Ruth.

  What is left of
night, Williamo sleeps with me.

  In my house, there was a corridor, leading out of our bedroom, the gray carpet with a large stain shaped like the continent of North America, from some long-ago spill of True Orange. They all came there with their shoes and beverages, because the television, we kept in our room. In and out, that was my family, the truest days of my life. I always wanted to replace the carpet and buy a TV set for the entry hall. Sometimes I would look at the old stain—many times I tried to remove it—alone in that room during the day.

  Now that does not exist anymore.

  I sent money a long time ago to fix.

  Lola

  THE PRINCE FROG

  I am ready for our deal. But my pupil she will not like it, not yet. Not until her sailor turns to prince. He is still a frog. Monday, before seven, I walk the same walk I walk every day, but now I am remembering the raw taste of the food there. I will miss my own place. I have the key, but it is not my day, so I push the bell.

  Helen opens the door in her bathrobe.

  “I am asking if I will be needed, because-ah, Claire and Paul, they chop me.”

  “Oh, Lola, come in.” My weekend employer hugs me, but she is not answering. “Come to the kitchen, I’ll make coffee.”

  My handsome employer stands poking a knife into the toaster, the hair wet. “We have to think of Bing.” He looks at his wife with a bar of warning. “He’s attached to Lucy.”

  What do you know? I think. You are never home.

  Helen hides behind her hair, measuring coffee. “Lola, sit down. Tell us what happened.”

  Lucy just sits, looking at the floor.

  “They cannot afford me.” I laugh. “Lola is too expensive. And I am cheaper than you.” I stare at Lucy square, knee to knee. And what do they get for their money? A door opens. The pat of feet. I spread my arms and Bing runs to me. The smell of coffee today is thinner. Helen gives me my mug. I am the only one drinking. They all watch. But I will still take what is offered that is good.

  “Let me talk to Lucy.” Jeff stands. “If Lucy can stay, I’d have to think that’d be best for you-know-who. But if she might be moving on anyway, we should think about a change when Lola is available.”