My Hollywood

by Mona Simpson

  I tell my daughters, Do not trust roses; they will stink one week in the jar. Maybe I have been wrong!

  But Vicky was good for me, I never minded Vicky. They like me better and that will never change. With someone new, who knows?

  “Helen tells me they’re paying you fifty-five dollars.” He pauses, napkining his mouth.

  They do not know my raise. I am now sixty-two fifty.

  “I just signed contracts for two projects. We could start you at one hundred.”

  One hundred dollars a day! Like Lita. Maybe the things I heard before—even the man in the Castle marrying the baby nurse—maybe they all come true. It feels like The End. Darkness eats in from the edges. I think of the carmelly coffee, fine silt at the bottom.

  “But I will have to think,” I say.

  They look at each other. It seems they were expecting me to jump.

  “Tell us, Lola, if there’s anything we can do. Because we really want to have you.”

  He leans over. “Would a hundred and ten make a difference?”

  I say no to dessert. Outside the restaurant the sky is dark blue. They tell me I can take the night off.

  “You could catch a movie.” He looks at his watch. “It’s only eight-thirty.”

  Helen touches my wrist. “Either way, still friends?”

  I am carrying a small heavy bag—my steak. “More than friends. You are my weekend employers.”

  They laugh. For them that is a joke. For me it is not funny. If I say no, what if the person they get wants seven days? One hundred ten dollars a day! The last few minutes in the restaurant, they upped me fifty a week! More than my year raise from Claire and him. After six months, Claire raised me five dollars a day and again when he turned two, seven-fifty. I walk around the dark neighborhood, past houses where I know children, entering a room of jasmine and a smell of pepper. After one more year, Williamo he will start in the school.

  I always work for free the day of his birthday and the one before. For their wedding anniversary, I give a weekend. I throw in the Friday night. And they celebrate the anniversary of my coming by raising me. So when Williamo turned two, that is when I became sixty-two fifty. Some of my friends get more, but their employers, they are rich. Also, if Claire asks me to work late, she will pay extra. Many here pay one price for live-in. No matter what you have to do. I always say to them, “As long as I am needed.”

  But $110 every day! Five days or seven. Up to me. That is $770 a week instead of $482.50. Per year, an extra $14,950. My God. I think I have to take that. Plus in that house, I will have my coffee made every day. That is $416 saved. Helen is young. They will want more kids. Maybe two more. This is a good job for a long time.

  I walk all the way to the ocean to say good morning to the Philippines.

  I live Sunday in this life. There is a light wind, teasing. The sky you can see through to ships far away at sea. We sit in Starbucks, Bing asleep in his stroller, and I write my letter home. This one a toddler, very easy. I do not have to clean. My career in America it is up. For the first time, I keep my numbers private. They will guess a raise, but not this big.

  I need another international stamp. Tomorrow morning I will walk Williamo to the post office. Those machines take pennies. I will have to find things to stack so he can reach the slot. On the stamps are pictures. I know from Bong Bong, that is the job of someone to draw. But a needle starts in my heel; sand scratches my mouth, opening a bad taste. I pray for a hint. I never asked for too much, from Bong Bong, from the teachers of my children, even from God. If you ask for only a little, maybe then the answer it will be yes.

  As I come into the weekday house, Claire shouts, “Lola, we’re in here.” Her arms cross. Williamo looks the way he looks when he gets bad, his face the shape of a box. This is my sign. My heart slopes.

  “Do not worry,” I whisper. “Your Lola will not leave you.”

  Monday morning at six, I hand my weekend employer his newspaper. “I cannot leave Williamo yet. Maybe I will be the one to raise your next baby.”

  “Oh, okay,” he says, scratching the back of his head.

  “Williamo is almost the age he will no longer need. One or two years more only. I will bring to you Inday to fill in until I come.”

  “Okay, great, anybody you know, I’m sure Helen’d be glad to meet.”

  Helen stands here now, too, holding a sweater over her nightie. “But you’ll still come weekends?”

  “As long as I am needed.”

  Forty-seven dollars and fifty cents poorer, I want coffee. I fix Williamo his breakfast and take him to church. He is now old enough, I will teach him to pray. Pain shoots up my knees the shape of star fruit; this is a feeling I have known all my life, lowering myself in a high place. I understood after I married Bong Bong I would never have a love affair. This is the closest I came and see, I did not. I never wish for a different husband. In America, people make second marriages. Many women on our street, they are second wives. For me, a second marriage would be, I had a broken life. It is not that I think Bong Bong is the only guy in the world I could get along with. But he is the one, we had our children. Does that mean a Catholic can make herself happy with anyone? A good Catholic would say yes. An American would ask, But what about chemistry?

  “Williamo, you light a candle.” I count out fifty pennies for him to put in the offertory.

  He knows to whisper in the church. “Can I make a wish?”

  “It is not that kind of candle. Watch.” I hold my letter to the flame and burn my written present home. A wafer of ash floats up and then lands, the last of it.

  “I want to blow it out.”

  “Here you ask your prayer and let the candle burn.” You already have your wish. I almost left. No more Lola. Now I can never tell Bong Bong. They will not understand. They would say, Take the hundred ten dollars. I have cried already from this house too many times Wolf.

  “What is Pax Deus?”

  “You read that?” Not yet three years old. Another sign.

  There is no longer a letter, but I bring Williamo to the post office. We stay for a long time choosing stamps. In the bottom of the stroller I keep our rolled pennies. I am in the mood to spend. We go to the Discovery Store and pay the whole rest to get the globe. The counting takes us almost twenty minutes.

  Every Monday, some babysitters meet at the Brentwood Country Mart. Today I play a trick. “I am getting coffee. Does anyone want?”

  “Mmm, yes, please, a latte. Large.” Lita looks down. Esperanza says, “Sí, cappuccino, gracias.” Mai-ling asks for a tea. But Vicky says she has already eaten, like I knew she would. Every week Vicky drinks only water from the fountain and says she has already eaten. Well, if you know you will meet friends, why you eat before? Vicky sends only to her mother. I have five kids. But Bong Bong understands, I have to live too where I am.

  But the joke is on Vicky. When Lita hands to me her dollars, Mai-ling her coins, and Esperanza stands to pull a bill out of her tight jeans pocket, I say, “No, our treat. Come, Williamo. We will count the pennies.” The price of coffee, it is a tax. The restaurants here, they cost too much, and the dress shops, but we can still afford coffee or a fries. Some-a-day at the end, when my kids work in offices with their diplomas and I sit in my house, with my cabinet full of glass, I will talk about my life in Hollywood, and the locations for my stories they will be Starbucks, McDonalds, and the Brentwood Country Mart, where we talked, holding children on our laps. I can say I drank the hot hot coffee I liked every day and never once spilled on my boy. You need to have every day in your life a small treat.

  “They want us,” Lita whispers, “because they are having problems their kids.”

  American children are different because their parents work far away at things they cannot understand. We were always working too. But even children understand money.

  “You can never hit them,” Mai-ling says. “If you hit them, they will call police!”

  “Our kids, they are good.” But
I am not sure we can make these kids the same. Williamo sits, stacking pennies, attracted to everything he should not hear. “The boy of my brother was giving them trouble. So they hang him in a jute bag from a banyan tree and when it become night, they cut him down. They are not having problem with him anymore.”

  “What is jute?” Williamo asks.

  “It is what they wrap on roots of plants. What you here call burlap.” I write down for Esperanza six words and Williamo draws the pictures. Every week we trade: six napkins English for six napkins Spanish. La Mariposa. She marks a butterfly. La Estrella. La Flor. Words of the day. We chant for the kids too, but after a few words they run. I learned English in grade 1, but my real voice it is Tagalog. Here, people shout at me in Spanish, louder each time I do not answer. I have memorized sentences, present tense and also simple past. I have learned by heart two poems. But while I work to learn Spanish, my English grows tall without anything. I tell Esperanza, I will make her honorary Filipina. Now we hear the faint music of the ice-cream truck and follow the kids, searching our pockets for dimes. They bend into the cool cavern coming up with cones and Popsicles, bunnies and ducks in colors that stain the face.

  Then while we dab their mouths with flimsy napkins, all of a sudden Mai-ling says, Where is China? Mai-ling chases the truck parked down the street still singing. There in back in a small room we find China, her pants down, a Drumstick in each fist. We push the man away. Lita yanks up the pants. I take away both ice creams, throw them on the dirty floor, the others yell in three languages. When we get out, he drives off, no music, as fast as an ordinary car.

  “What happened?” Williamo asks.

  “Nothing happened.” But we have to be more careful. With my own it was different. I made them, I thought, I can risk their life. But these they are not ours. We cannot break them.

  “If anything happen to her,” Mai-ling says, “I will sit in the electric chair.”

  “What happened?” Williamo says again.

  “Nothing happened,” I repeat. “But do not mention to your mother.”

  I think of the money I gave up. Now I am left with my old life and the afternoon slows. At the Castle, Williamo climbs on boards, his arms out the sides for balance. “Come down,” I yell, but he keeps stepping the high plank I told him not to and he falls, so I am kneeling on the grass, hands against his, half dance, half fight. He wants to go back up and I say no. “You are not listening me.”

  Then he hits. He has hit before but never Lola. When he hit Bing and Bing cried, I said, Really, you are going to be fine. But now warm tears run paths down my face. Never once did a child of mine hit me. They hit each other, maybe, but only around corners, where I could not see. Of course it is different here; with nannies, one per customer, there are no corners. But he should not hit me. He should never hit me.

  Just then they come, Jeff and Helen. My heart drags; I feel its short route, up-down. The curls of my employer fall on his collar, folded like an envelope. Her stare pastes us in a book—just as we are, Williamo in his old clothes, dirt on the top lip. I hope they did not see him hit me.

  Helen looks at me with a question. I put my arms around Williamo.

  “I want to talk to the woman you know,” she says.

  I need something, so we go for a second coffee, and I use pennies.

  “Lo siento,” I tell Williamo, “means you are sorry. Ikinalulungkot ko.”

  “They really hanged him from a tree?”

  “Scuze, you the nanny?” a stranger says. “Estás la doméstica?”

  “In a sack?”

  “That’s one beautiful boy.”

  “Williamo, what do you say? The lady said you are handsome.”

  “Doo-doo head.”

  “Mischievous, huh? I like that.” What does she want with us? “Anyway, his mug could be worth money. I’m a talent representative, and if you think his parents would be interested, I’ll give you my card.”

  “You are a Hollywood agent?”

  “I handle kids. Through teens.”

  “You want to make Williamo movie star?”

  She laughs, silver, between a fish and a robot. Her earrings, silver also, tinkle. “Everyone asks that. I can’t promise the big screen. That’s one out of a thousand, don’t you know? But we place a lot of commercials and print. What do the parents do?”

  Even though I am proud of the profession of my employer, I do not say. This lady, it is hard to tell if she is good. “I will give to them your card.”

  When we walk in, I see Claire at her old stove. While Claire examines the card, we tell the story. “We were discovered by a Hollywood agent! So, Tom he will have to change his opinion about coffee shops. Because of Starbuck, you will now become rich.”

  “Hey, you two, I’ve got some change.” She puts pennies, nickels, and a quarter on the table.

  Williamo begins to tell how we are spending. I interrupt. “Go get the globe.” I would rather not dwell on candy.

  “When I was little,” Claire says, “I saved pennies to buy pagan babies.”

  “Maybe we were your pagans.”

  “You’re Catholic, Lole. That’s the opposite of pagan.” The phone rings. “Esperanza,” Claire whispers. “More love trouble probably.”

  I am the one they call for romance advice! And I do not even believe in it. My weekend employer, Jeff, he told me, the ones who make the dreams cannot live in them. We know, Lola, just how flimsy dreams are.

  But Esperanza she is sobbing. “He will spend his birthday with his ex-wife.” She is sorry, though, what she said to him. She did not mean it. She will deliver to him roses from the garden of Beth Martin and she wants me to compose the note, in English.

  “Go ahead,” I dictate. “Spend the birthday with her. Just save the rest of your life for me.” I should be on the payroll of Hallmark too. Bong Bong, he has drawn over one hundred holiday cards. The Christmas in the Philippines series.

  “All better?” Claire asks when I hang up.

  “Never all better. Not until you are old like me. My son is the only one my children who gave me problems for romance and that is because I spoiled him. He wanted to study philosophy. For what you will do that? I asked. Then, taking his courses, he would tell his sisters the philosophies of love; I cannot remember them all anymore, the friendship kind, all different kinds. I told him, You do not need to pay a class. You see any American movie to learn that.

  “He said, Mom, whether you know it or not, there are bigger kinds of love.

  “Maybe so, I said, but forget those. They are only for the top one or two percent. And you are not good-looking enough. You have inherited my nose. For a while, he was spending for nothing—bowling parties, ballroom dancing. I told him, This better be courtship, because you are allowed only once. But he married an Ilocano, very good cook, and he is now working computers.”

  “What’s your son’s name?” Claire asks.

  “Dante,” Williamo says, from under the table.

  I want to tell Claire my offer. Just so she will see me as a one-hundred-ten-dollar-a-day nanny. But instead I say, “Jeff bought Helen a new car. Station wagon Volvo. Silver. So you should be hinting to your husband.”

  She laughs. “You know I’m the one who does the money here.”

  That is true. Every week, she counts out my cash. “You are the family CEO.”

  Then the doorbell rings. It is Lil, the one Claire calls long-distance, visiting from far away. I take my plate to eat while I bath Williamo. After I tuck him, I return to the kitchen. Will the noises of cleaning bother their talk? But I want to be done, so I start the pans from the stove. I sweep around their feet. The friend Lil, she is beautiful but wearing a strange skirt and ugly sandals.

  “I know, I know,” my employer says. “I’ve got it on my list.”

  Maybe it is something she wants me to do. I see her list on yellow lined paper on the counter. Number 1 says, TONIGHT! PAUL!

  “What I can’t figure out is the dread.”

&n
bsp; They talk while I am wiping down the counters.

  “There’s that radio song, All you gotta do is say yes.”

  “‘Yes I said yes I said yes.’” Claire’s hands keep busy with invisible things, over the now clean table.

  My hands, they are busy with the sponge.

  “Remember John Adams? I probably should have slept with him.”

  It takes me a moment to really know what they are talking. But my employer, she is not this kind of person. She is showing off, maybe, for her friend.

  “Well, you could’ve. He was raring to go.”

  “I was too worried about my career. Joke’s on me. I didn’t get so far anyway.” She makes a bad laugh.

  “Who knows? It might have helped.”

  “Might have helped me anyway. With my life.”

  They remember I am here and they forget. It is the way they would be in front of a pet. But her marriage, it is only average, for five years. Wood anniversary, in our country, that is practically newlywed. I am past silver. Almost pearl. You have a good life, I want to say. Do not complain. God will hear. If someone listened to our marriage, would it sound like this? Bong Bong still sends me a card every week.

  “Paul’s cute enough,” Lil says.

  “Oh, much better looking than I deserve. But I hug the pillow, and say Night.”

  I empty the dustpan, seal the bag, and walk out to the alley. When I return, the house is dark. I will just check the stove and the locks. But Claire sits in the dark.

  “You think your weekend employer is more in love?”

  Why is she saying to me? Because I told her the new car? Claire, she is not one for romance. I never wanted to be a romantic heroine, she said once, ’cept for a few years in my twenties. Mistake. Silliness, waste.