My Hollywood

by Mona Simpson

  “Everything is over. She knows. I just don’t want you to blame her. Blame me.”

  “Okay, I blame you.” But I am joking really. We have been apart too long.

  On the phone, Laura says Lola and Bong Bong are like the end of a story the teacher read from Junior Great Books. The Odyssey Abridged. I request from our library. It had to be transferred from another branch, but when I finally obtain, I call to tell her, we did not mean to have our lives apart. We had our youth together and those are important years for love. Until now, Bong Bong and I, we talk every other week.

  I had to go to America. Once upon a time, the Trojan War maybe, the men went out. But in our life, I was the one who could earn. When I signed up to be a mother, it was already decided. And I was success! In all, I sent home almost a million. Imagine. From taking care kids. Sometimes Bong Bong talked about coming too. But what could a Filipino man do there? “In America you will not be anymore executive Hallmark,” I told him. “Here you will be an immigrant. Jobless.” And Bong Bong has a good position. Now more than two hundred Filipino greeting cards, drawn by him.

  The cousin of Lita told me about her job in California, then I saw the flyer, and we bought the ticket. If someone looks inside, that is the contents of Lola; that I went to America and took care kids. By loving them, I was able to pay the tuitions of my own, so they are now professional class. My children, they will not have to go anywhere. They can stay home. That is what I did for my life. “And I made some women laugh along the way,” I say. “America was my adventure. With the other babysitters.”

  Also, I tell Laura, I am not like the one in her book. I stopped trying to keep everything inside the same. I did not every night unravel. “By the time I came to you, I wanted to move forward, I was no longer waiting.”

  “I’m glad you’re there now,” Laura says, “in your hammock.”

  I do not tell her, but I cannot anymore rest.

  The librarian suggests for me other series; I try Sherlock Holmes, but why should I read a drug addict?

  On the new arrivals rack, I see a picture of Aleph Sargent, Clarisse on the back, a tree, lipstick painted over bark. Star Mom: Aleph’s Nanny Tells All. In the first pages I read, She lies about her age. The next chapter says that she is always shopping. But it is her money! Why should she not spend? I check out the book to read on the phone to Lita and Ruth.

  She said she never slept with him, Clarisse wrote about the first director. She told me her stepbrother molested her. “I was trying to grow my virginity back at that time.”

  But we know Aleph is good, from Jean, next-door Claire. Two years ago, after her husband left, Jean drove her kids to see the snow. It was their first time staying in a hotel. “I just did it,” she said, “and we ordered room service if we wanted hot chocolate and cookies. We took cross-country ski class.” She held her breath when she went to the counter to pay, but the man said the bill was already taken care of. Aleph had called and put it on her card. Clarisse will never write that in her book.

  Coming back from the library, I stop to get the mail and there is a letter. My hands shake. I put the brake on the double stroller of my grandsons. I mumble our little prayer, and then tear it open.

  Dear Lola,

  I had to take the cell phone away from Laura. After your calls, she can’t calm down. She loves you, but she has to adjust to her life, accept Willa and treat Allen with respect. We’re working on having another child.

  I’m sure you’ll understand.

  Love,

  Judith

  I stand in the sun holding that. Every night, before bed, I write Laurita a card, but now I bet he just throws them, like the Winnie-the-Pooh magnet.

  So I will stay away. But the voice of Laura, it was so much!

  My older grandson looks up at me. There is nothing I can tell.

  I want to send her a present, but it has to be small small. I shop for a week, then buy a charm. For the fifth birthday, I bought a bracelet with the state of California. Before I left, we added on an ice-cream cone. Now a tiny Philippines. Fourteen karat.

  I send to Claire, ask, will she give it to Laura while Judith is at work? Claire, she still owes me for the chop.

  I know Laura will not show to them.

  One month I do not hear anything. Then a Wednesday, the phone in the hall rings, an old ring.

  “Lola, is it you?” Claire, the world away, with static. “I visited while they were at work. The new babysitter arranged it. Willa. On the phone, she told me, Laura said, ‘I love Judith, but Lola is my mother.’ I went a little after three and the babysitter opened the door. The mother and him, they are witches, rata, she said, right away. I don’t love that girl, I don’t even like her. Then I saw Laura. We sat at your kitchen table. Laura wanted ice cream and she went herself and got the box from the freezer. There was a squirt bottle of chocolate. No, Laura, that’s enough, I said, when the babysitter didn’t do anything. The babysitter grinned. She wants it, she will get it, she said. The mother is trying to diet her. Rata, she said again.

  “And, Lola, the mom’s right. Laura’s put on weight. Her belly and her arms strained the blouse. She wants it she will get it, that woman said. Laura put on more and more chocolate, lines like a spiderweb, then just a smeary mess. And she ate it all.”

  My Laurita.

  “She slipped your box in her pocket. I don’t know, Lole. You bring her with you to the Philippines, that’s the happy ending.”

  “That I would raise her in my house? The mother would never let me.”

  “But the mother works all the time.”

  “I work all the time too. That does not mean I will give to you my children.”

  “I have to call Judith and tell her that babysitter is no good.”

  “But the Spanish they are like that. When you chop me, Esperanza said, See. I told you. It is only a job.”

  “Esperanza works in Funcare now at Will’s school.”

  “Did she every marry?”

  “I don’t think so. She has a daughter, though. A big girl.”

  I stand shelving books at our branch library—my friend gave me a fill-in job. Even libraries, they do not keep books forever. I arrange according to a list. Alphabetize on the shelf or take down and put on the cart with wheels for the fund-raising sale.

  Someone taps my shoulder, I turn and it is her—Claire, in Tagaytay!

  Claire

  TAGAYTAY

  “So, what you do here?” Lola said.

  I told her right away, both of us standing in that branch library. “Judith wants you back. She called me three days ago. I guess she’d quit her job; they’d been trying to have a baby. Then the boyfriend moved out. She has to find work again, but nobody wants D-girls over thirty, she says. The bad babysitter left too. Abandoned ship. I want to keep the house, Judith told me. She looked terrible. And actually, before she called, I’d already started writing you a letter, to ask you to come back and help me take care of my mom.”

  We both still stood there, our legs cooled by a rotary fan. She didn’t answer.

  “Judith says you can let the house go, forget everything, just take care of Laura. She said to tell you absolutely no ironing. She can’t pay you that much, but she says at the end of the year, whatever she’s made, you get fifty percent.”

  “Half-half,” Lola said.

  “And I was thinking, since Laura’s in school till three, you could help my mom in the mornings. You’d make two salaries.”

  She looked at me. “You come here for something music?”

  “No, just to see you.” This embarrassed her so I fumbled in my bag. “I have stuff from Cheska to deliver to her kids. I wanted you to know things were dire.”

  “Come,” she said. “I will take you to the house of Cheska. You want a tour?”

  “I’m only here two days. Paul took William for the weekend to Las Vegas with guys from the show.”

  “A long flight for a short stay,” Lola said.

  The ste
wardess had said the same thing, reading my ticket. Business or pleasure?

  Neither really. Or, both, I hope.

  Next to me on the plane had been two guys, young, a little heavy-set, easy around the jaw. I got a glimpse of one’s iBook. Square postage-stamp-sized pictures, one of a tiny brown hand around a large penis. They were taking off on a sex junket.

  In an open field, goats and a sign saying GOATS 4 SALE.

  “We like to eat goats,” Lola said. Chickens roamed the dirt street, dogs chained to slim-trunked trees in front of cinder-block houses barked, and an animal I didn’t recognize dreamily grazed. “Caribou.” She pointed.

  Cheska’s house looked hand built, cement, with plywood patches. “Here,” Lola tells me, “there used to be trees. India trees.” Inside, two teenage boys slouched in a living room with a giant TV, wearing new basketball clothes their mother must have sent. Both studied at University Santo Thomas, Lola said. The eldest boy was handsome, big mouthed. “He plays street basketball under the bridge,” she said. “He is a Manila boy.”

  “Are there Manila girls?”

  Their yaya, Charita, said something and Lola translated. “No, there cannot be. Cheska tells him, he cannot get married. He has to think of his studies.” Charita was small and solid; both still and busy at once. She set down plates to serve us lunch.

  “Charita is a mommy to them,” Lola said. “Since Butch is one year old. She is from their place. Her mother was the one in the house. Only thing she cannot do is homework. So they always have a cousin boarding. Noli is college graduate.”

  The college graduate came downstairs just to eat. “She wants to be policewoman, but she is too short. So she is studying criminology.”

  Then I noticed: They are wearing my shoes. Lola always had a box in the corner she was sending home. Charita was wearing moccasins I bought on Melrose one breezy afternoon with my mother, in a store with a brown-and-white-striped awning. “Get ’em,” my mother had said, still young. Noli had on my old running shoes. A trainer once told me, Throw out your shoes the minute the first layer of rubber wears off. Noli took her plate to the counter and returned upstairs to her books.

  Charita said something. “She is telling Butch he will be late for the game.”

  “I am the star.” He grinned, “They will wait for me.”

  “Where you sleep?” Lola asked. “You will sleep in my house?”

  I dug out the slip of paper from my bag, with my reservation.

  “Makati, that is where the rich people live,” Lola said. “Maybe you invite them to see.” She talked to Charita, who giggled, a very high light sound. “She says slippers are not allowed in Makati.”

  Slippers? The boys wore rubber flip-flops. How can a whole neighborhood ban flip-flops?

  “What will Charita do if the boys go to LA?”

  “She will just stay in the house.”

  The jet lag slammed me like another body. I said I could take a taxi to the hotel. Lola talked to Charita in fast Tagalog. “Charita, she is yelling at me, for taking you on the jeepney. You are American. This is a poor country. Too many snatchers.”

  We rode in a semiprivate cab. In the car with us, two young people bent over their laps, each studying a thick paperback TOEFL. This whole country was studying to get out.

  Asia. Here it was. Tall towers. Swarming traffic on narrow roads without lanes. A flashing giant TV-screen billboard: Samsung. A cigarette pack, called USA.

  I pulled out a device I’d bought in a stationery store. You could record a fifteen-second message and show a picture. Years ago, Paul had given one to William to carry around. I opened the clamshell to Laura’s picture and her voice singing From a distance …

  “Ah, did Judith pay for your ticket here?” Lola said.

  “She would have. But she has no money. And I need you too.”

  “You are rich now?”

  “I don’t have money either, I just have airline points. Frequent-flier miles.”

  Three girls strolled by drinking something from rubber-banded Baggies through straws, their arms swinging like girls anywhere.

  “Coke,” Lola said. “Cheaper, Claire. You do not have to pay the bottle.”

  In the bed, I fell down into sleep. When I woke, Lola stood waiting to take me to dinner with her family.

  We went to a restaurant that could have been in San Francisco. At the table next to us, a beautiful girl in spaghetti straps sat with a nun in full habit.

  “I live in the house during the week,” Lola’s eldest said, in perfect English.

  “Who stays with your children while you’re being a vice president?”

  “The yayas,” she said. No American woman I knew could say that so simply.

  I loved the dessert, called quinumis, served in a coconut half. There was a milky coffee drink, sweet, with little flakes and gummy tapioca balls you ate with a spoon.

  By the end of the evening, I began to think class here had something to do with hair. Lola’s daughters had long, smooth hair, straight, combed out on their backs.

  The next day Lola took me to Antipolo, the church they go to, to pray for a good voyage. There, I heard what sounded like a eunuch choir. “Who’s singing?”

  She pointed to a tiny room, far up on the wall. The old modal scales.

  “Paul called,” I told Lola. “You know who they saw in Las Vegas? Lucy. She’s working in the M&M store.”

  Alone, I told Lola about my mother, her memory loss.

  “It’s bad,” I said. “She can’t find anything. She thinks people are stealing from her.”

  “Does she still have Tom?” Lola asked.

  “Yes. She wants Tom to live with her now. But he says she’d drive him crazy and she would. Every time she uses the sink she wipes the faucet so there are no water drips. He lives with stacks of old newspapers. The guy keeps a pet crow in his dining room.”

  “Your mother, she is very difficult,” Lola said. “I sold my car. I could have a bed at the place of Ruth.”

  “We have room, Lola. Your old place.”

  “There with Judith, she will want me live-in.”

  “So you’ll have two salaries. Two rooms. For your weekends. Your offs. You can bring Laura too. I want it to be your American home.”

  She doesn’t answer me.

  “So will you come?”

  “I will go for Laura if I am needed.”

  Outside I bought red candles shaped like men and women, made with cookie cutters, thinking like a tourist already. I wrote down the addresses; I’d send American jeans and computer programs for Lola’s grandsons, money at Christmas.

  FEEL LIFE, it said on a billboard, out the taxi window on my way to the airport. JOLLIBEE. BE HAPPY.

  A day later, I picked up William from Paul.

  “So Lola’s coming back. She’ll live with us again,” I said. “Sound good?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t remember Lola.”

  Lola

  MY HOLLYWOOD

  I visit each my children. I meet the radiologist asking Issa to the movies. But she says no, she is studying; she wants to pass the test for residency at UCLA. My second youngest, the lawyer, she earns more than her papa, already associate in the firm. She tries to give me her card. I say, I do not need that. I know your name. I gave it to you.

  “Magmahalan kayong magkapatid, dahil kung wala na kami, walang ibang magtutulungan kundi kayo din.” I delegate in advance.

  My kids, they are asking me to stay. I say, “Only if you will pay me a salary.”

  “Okay,” my son says. “We will pay you, but your salary it will be in pesos, not dollars. We are five here. Why you are going back for one?” But Laura is young. Maybe she will still need her Lola.

  Because I have been gone a long time.

  Really, I don’t know why.

  I will give Bong Bong to the lady who loves him. He is different than he was to me, unlocked. I could not do that for him. I did not know how. It is okay; because I had my love, too, mine not th
e shape of romance. But I am old enough to understand it is the same as big, the same as true. And now I love people in two places.

  Then, the week before I am scheduled to leave, we watch the plane going into the tower on the television, again and again. “Now you really cannot go,” Bong Bong says.

  “It is not there I am flying. I live in California,” I say. “No one will bomb Hollywood. Even Muslims, they like to watch movies.”

  “Wanda, look at Mindanao. They do not even want electricity,” Dante says.

  “But I have nonrefundable ticket.” They all stare at me.

  America, it is like a drug addiction.

  My last day Bong Bong and I amble through our house. Issa lives here also, but she is at the hospital. My son, his wife, and their boys have the second floor, but they are out too. The downstairs, it is worn from years of children. Cracks, fingermarks, leaks—the kitchen, it really needs fixing. But even broken, it is a good house, in a neighborhood with old trees, better than the houses of Claire and Laurita where I am returning. My daughters wear soft sweaters, slender gold chains with each one a tiny diamond. They are what I wanted them to be: polite, modest, educated women. My son, like me he is the clown. It is easier to do the job I am going back to if you see everything for class. But I cannot anymore—it will not fit. I remember Claire, the way she sat on the floor by her heating vent and ate alone.

  “Why you want?” my husband asks. “You have achieved your goal.”

  I look around, cracks web the ceiling. “I will just go until we have money to fix the kitchen.”

  “I think you are done, Lola. You have worked hard enough.”

  “Only a little more.”

  He does not answer. All my children and grandchildren stand in the airport as I climb back up the ladder onto the plane.

  “Lola is still big in the Philippines,” Dante says. The clown.

  It is strange arriving back, past my mark. LAX, it is not Ninoy Aquino—you stand under concrete, cars zoom on top your head. Fine soot floats in the air; the sky has a dirty sparkle. My hands rub together, beginning again—here, where the world is.

  Danny drives me through the marina. On Washington, we pass banners for the Venice Art Walk and the picture they use is a rusted bed frame with grass growing up from a wooden sandbox. UNMADE BEDS: NEW WORK BY NATALIE BERSOLA. So she is the artist she always talked about being. Danny frowns. “But she look old.” LA seems bright, scrubbed. Everywhere flags. We pass a flower shop with a huge banner: WE WON’T LET TERRORISM HAPPEN HERE!