by Anna Burke
We had no trouble crossing the border into the U.S. once our visas had been checked. What I noticed first, in San Diego, was the fragrance of citrus. There were groves along the highway in those days. Guillermo made a point of driving through downtown so I could see what it looked like. Buildings were everywhere, many of them tall and crammed in close together so that not even an inch might go unused. Everything was paved, too, not just the streets, but flat concrete areas where people walked from one building to another or gathered to talk.
Not far from downtown was the harbor. That was enormous compared to San Felipe. There were marinas containing boats of all sizes and shapes, parked in long rows, close together like the buildings downtown. Much larger ships could be seen, too, some as tall as buildings, and one so long and flat that planes could land on it.
“Not the kind of planes that fly overhead, Bernadette, but planes used to fight,” Guillermo said.
“Fight what?” I asked.
“Enemies of the United States, during a war,” he replied. Then, he pointed out a monument that had been put up in honor of a previous war. I had read, in school, of many wars—world wars, even. This was the first time I had considered what it might take to wage such wars.
Cars were everywhere too, big cars with tail fins like sail fish. They were even bigger than the station wagon Guillermo drove. He had borrowed it so he could fill it with gifts to take with him when he drove to San Felipe from Los Angeles. It was loaded now with our wedding gifts and my belongings. The roads kept getting more and more filled, until there were cars on all sides of us. Sometimes we drove very slowly and at other times faster than I had ever gone before. All the while, the blue ocean followed along as we headed north. Like everything else in California, the Pacific Ocean was bigger, noisier, and moved faster than the water in the Sea of Cortez.
In Oceanside we stopped to eat our lunch near the beach. There were fewer cars here and very few people. At the gas station when we filled our tank and bought icy cold drinks to go with our lunch I saw more navy men. Some dressed all in white, but most in dark blue shirts and pants, with white caps.
“More fighting men from the sea,” I said pointing discreetly to the sailors. “There sure are a lot of them in California. But, why do they call this Oceanside when everything we have passed has been beside the ocean?”
“That’s a very good question, Bernadette. I don’t know, but maybe they took the name first and wouldn’t let anyone else use it,” he laughed as he answered that question. We kept driving and talking until we got to another big harbor—Long Beach. More ships, many of them loaded with crates. Cargo ships, Guillermo called them. These were ships of commerce that brought goods to California from all around the world. It was one of the busiest ports in the world then, as it is now. There were more navy ships and navy men, too. I just couldn’t get over it.
“If there’s no war and they don’t need them to fight, why don’t they send them all home? Or put them to work fishing?” I wondered aloud.
“The United States has a standing navy, Bernadette, that has to be kept ready even when there’s no war,” Guillermo explained. That sort of made sense to me at the time since most of the navy men we had seen that day seemed to be doing little else but standing.
I thought California would never end. Guillermo asked me to take a look at the road map he had brought along and I could not believe my eyes. Los Angeles was not even halfway up on the great coast that went from the border with Mexico to a place called Oregon. I recognized a lot of saints names used for towns and cities. I knew a little of the history shared by Mexico and California so that did not surprise me. One of the things I hoped to do when we were settled in was visit the missions that had been set up in California by Father Serra.
“Maybe when they ran out of saints names, Guillermo, they had to name things after the ocean and the angels,” I reasoned, studying that map.
“That could be, Bernadette. While I am studying you can read a book about the history of California and figure this out for us.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” I said, studying the map, trying to place our location as highway signs flashed by. At some point, Guillermo exited the highway and found a large street called Wilshire Boulevard. Our street where we lived was not too far from there, in Westwood. We pulled into an underground place to park our car at a building many stories high. Guillermo shut off the car and turned to me.
“Bernadette, we’re home,” he said as he leaned over and kissed me. “Our apartment is above us, several floors. Let’s go upstairs and take a look. Then, we have a lot to do.” We got out of the car, picked up a few bags from the back, and rode up to our floor on an elevator. My first ride, ever, on an elevator. I loved it and felt thankful that we would not have to carry all we had brought with us up stairs. When it stopped we got off and walked a short distance to a door. There were several doors in the hallway. Guillermo must have read my mind.
“4a is ours, Bernadette,” pointing to the number and letter beside our door. When we walked into that apartment I could not believe my eyes. It was beautiful, at least to me, at the time. The room was bright and inviting. There was a living room with a sofa set against the wall in front of a low table. A large chair sat near me in the same dark brown fabric as the sofa. It was close enough that I could touch it, smooth and squishy to my touch, like a ripe fruit. Another, smaller sofa sat across from the big one. All the furniture was arranged around a fireplace built flat against the wall, behind glass.
“How can the heat reach you?” I asked. Guillermo showed me that the glass was a door that opened so the warmth could fill the room.
“The flames come from natural gas, much like the propane used for your stove at home.”
Across the room was a small dining area with a table and four chairs—the only seats that I could see that were made of wood. Dark and shiny, they sat next to a large window that went from the floor to the ceiling. It was not a window, as Guillermo pointed out, but a “sliding door” that opened to a small area outdoors, a patio, suspended above the ground.
Sunshine poured in, sparkling on the surfaces of the wood—not just the table, but shelves lining the walls that seemed to be hanging, as if by magic. When I looked closer, later that day, I could see they were fixed to the wall with brackets of some kind.
Under that table, on the floor, was a shiny material in a sandy color, with gold stars and specs scattered on it. “Linoleum,” Guillermo said. “A material that is easy to sweep and mop if there are spills at the table.”
The floor, where I stood near the entrance, was covered in carpet that looked almost like blades of grass—shag, Guillermo called it. I took off my shoes and sank into it.
“Soft, like sand, Guillermo, but it doesn’t stick to your feet. How do you clean this?”
“With a machine called a vacuum cleaner, Bernadette. I’ll show it to you later. You will be amazed.”
Guillermo picked up the bags we had brought with us from the car. He motioned for me to follow. We headed toward a hallway and passed the kitchen, which I could see a little from the living room. Half the wall had been cut out and a counter with stools allowed you to sit and look into the kitchen. Lights in the shape of gourds hung from the ceiling over the counter area, just like the ones hanging over the dining table a short distance away. We stopped for a moment at the archway that led into the kitchen.
“If you fix our breakfast in here I can watch you while sitting on a bar stool. Isn’t that great?” I nodded, fascinated by the kitchen. Walls in the color of butter were lined with dark wood cupboards. Counters with rounded edges were covered in something that looked like the linoleum on the floor. Guillermo said it was Formica. Drawers that slid in and out sat below the counter, and there were more of those cupboards below them. A large sink with faucets sat under a window looking out to blue skies.
“The golden refrigerator is bigger than the one at home! Why is the door split like that?” I asked, stepping into t
he kitchen and pulling on the door. I soon discovered that one side was much colder than the other. There wasn’t much in it on either side.
“They call it side by side, Bernadette. One side is for freezing and the other for keeping things cold. We will have to go to the grocery store to pick out what you want to fill it for us.”
“And a golden stove, too,” I said. “But what is this?” I stood in front of another golden door.
“That, Bernadette, is a dishwasher. In California, a machine washes your dishes for you, and another one eats your garbage,” Guillermo laughed as I stood there, gaping. “Come with me, Bernadette,” I moved on down the hall with him. He passed double doors that were closed. “Look in there, Bernadette.” I struggled for a moment then, figured out how the doors folded open.
“Those are machines that wash and dry our clothes.” I looked at a drawing on the lid showing clothes being dropped into one of the machines, so as impossible as it seemed. it was true. I caught a whiff of some cleaning substance when I opened the doors and another gust when I closed them.
Behind Guillermo was another door, already open. A bedroom contained a large bed—a double bed, bigger than the one I shared with my sister. Like the living room and hallway, the floor in that room was covered with carpet. In front of Guillermo and across from that bedroom was a bathroom. “This bedroom is where your sister will stay when she visits and that is the guest bath, Bernadette, ours is in here. Follow me.”
“Two bathrooms?” I asked in utter disbelief.
“Yes, Bernadette. This is a very modern apartment building.”
Our room was bright with more windows. In addition to the bed there were side tables with lamps, a large dresser, and two closets, one on each side of an area that led into the bathroom. This bathroom was even larger than the first. It had two sinks! There was no shiny porcelain tub, like in that first bathroom, but a shower area with glass doors that slid open so you could step in and out. That shower looked like it could hold two people, too.
“Is everything double here in California?” I wondered aloud as I looked at two closets.
“Pretty much, I think. They call these ‘his’ and ‘hers’ closets. One for you and one for me,” Guillermo said as he placed one bag in each of the closets that he opened by sliding one door behind the other.
For the next couple hours we unloaded the car and started to unpack. Guillermo showed me more marvels in that apartment, including a cabinet in the living room with two compartments, of course. One opened in the front to reveal a television! The other opened from the top and set inside was a phonograph. I had my first lesson in how to operate the machines around the house, found all the light switches and door locks, including the one that let us step out from the dining area onto a balcony. The air was cool and moist—different from the air in San Felipe or that ranch in Chihuahua.
“No cooking tonight,” Guillermo said. “Tomorrow we’ll go grocery shopping, but tonight we’re going to walk to my campus. Then, on the way back, we’ll stop and have dinner.”
That walk through Westwood, was amazing. Here, too, everything was paved—streets, alley ways, sidewalks, and even parks had paved areas to walk and sit. The streets were lined with cars, parked bumper to bumper. Restaurants and stores were everywhere, one right after another. People, too, most in more of a hurry than we were. Guillermo pointed out a favorite restaurant where, later on, we stopped for dinner and I had my first Chinese food. It was delicious and became a favorite of mine, too.
The campus area was more open than the business streets, with more greenery, trees and bushes that were mostly unfamiliar to me. There were palm trees, of course, and a few plants that looked like yucca or cactus, but so many other varieties that I had never seen or heard of before.
I was dazzled by nature in California, as much as by all the paved roads, tall buildings and machines. The ocean that had roared loudly as we drove past it, became a favorite place to visit on weekends. When Guillermo was done with his study for the day, we would drive to one of the beaches nearby and go for long walks. We would often stop for a soda or a snack at Santa Monica Pier or one of the other beach front areas, content to watch the sunset.
I quickly understood what Guillermo meant when he described universities in California as cathedrals to learning. From the outside, I could easily have believed the library Guillermo showed me that first day was a cathedral. A place across the way, called Royce Hall, had great towers and arches like that picture Guillermo had shown me of the Cathedral to Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Juarez. The area also reminded me of one of the missions that Guillermo and I visited soon after we settled in.
The campus was a quiet, peaceful place, when we visited that afternoon, with other buildings containing classrooms, places for research and study. Not that it was always that way, as I later learned. It was the sixties and campuses were also full of protests and demonstrations. That first day, though, and many days after, I walked to campus along the same route. We would often meet to eat a lunch I brought to Guillermo. We would sit on a bench or a blanket, reading quietly, side by side, after we finished lunch. This was a sanctuary for Guillermo, especially when compared to dealing with that family of his, or the tasks that went with ranching or hauling fish in from the sea. I had never seen him happier or more at ease. Once, when I said as much he asked,
“Why shouldn’t I be? I have everything that could make a man happy, you, most of all Bernadette.” He set his books down for a few moments and pulled me close to him. The two of us leaned back on that blanket, gazing up through the branches of the trees at blue skies. It was one of those timeless moments that might have lasted forever, if we lived in a world without clocks.
Of course, that didn’t mean our lives weren’t busy. My scholar worked so hard, but he was doing well in school. I was working hard, too, trying to manage my new role as a wife and learn how to become a Californian. Mostly, we were so happy—could not believe our good fortune. Once in a while, though, I would catch a glimpse of El Pinto. On occasion, when after three tries, I could not get Guillermo to answer me. He could become so lost in his books, finally looking up at me dreamily. Even then he had not heard me so I had to ask my question again.
He found it hard to understand why it bothered me. Then, one day I was reading. I was fascinated by a story of a complicated family, like Guillermo’s in many ways. Trying to read the book in English I had become lost, so I had the Spanish version open, too. Moving back and forth between them I must have been concentrating very hard, because I suddenly felt a tickle on my neck, followed by a kiss.
“My beauty has fallen into a dream state and must be awakened by a kiss. Now, I understand how you could be bothered by my disappearance into books. I became alarmed when you did not hear me call you three times!” We both laughed about that and other small ways in which we had already begun to take on the habits or mannerisms of the other.
In those months, after we arrived in California, I met many of Guillermo’s friends. His friend were mostly young men like him. Students, some of them with wives. My English grew better the more I read and interacted with his friends, all helped along, too, by watching television. Guillermo and I went to church at St. Timothy’s where we met several other students living in the area, also from Mexico.
I even met several of the faculty who taught courses Guillermo was taking or had taken the previous term. They were kind to me and very complimentary toward Guillermo. Guillermo’s faculty advisor, assigned to help him make decisions about his course of study, was a woman. She was not quite as old as Grandma Consuelo, but wise beyond what she had learned in books. She was certain that Guillermo’s future was to be found among all those books he was reading, and not back on the ranch with his family. I felt so proud that Guillermo had made such a good impression, and I thought that professor spoke the truth.
By the end of his second term at UCLA, Guillermo knew it too. He was a man of books and would build a life around them, somehow. I was reli
eved to hear him say it. When this reality sank in, he became increasingly intent on talking to Grandma Consuelo about the idea. He felt he owed her so much. Not only because of what she done for us when it came to our marriage, but she had set up a trust fund for Guillermo that allowed him to study without needing to work. He felt obligated to explain, in person, that by choosing a life of books he could helping all ranchers and stewards of the land, rather than just his own. I understood how he felt.
Her support meant I didn’t have to work, either. Soon after arriving in LA, Guillermo suggested that I start taking adult education courses to earn my high school diploma. He was convinced that my English was good enough to do well. The following term, when classes started again for Guillermo, they started for me, too. That made the time flow even faster.
When that term ended, after completing his first year of college, Guillermo would travel to Chihuahua. He would tell his grandmother that he wanted a life of books, as a teacher or a scientist. Guillermo was convinced he should speak to her about these matters, in person, rather than by letter. He also hoped she would agree to leave the ranch, sign over control to his father, and return with him to California. If she agreed, the following year we would move to a larger apartment, with three bedrooms, so that we would still have room for my sister or other guests, or to use as a nursery, eventually.
While he was in Chihuahua I would visit my family in San Felipe. Guillermo would drop me off and then fly from Tijuana to Juarez where someone from the ranch would pick him up. Theresa had come to visit me not once, but twice already, but I had not seen other members of my family since we were married, so a visit would be good. Unhappily, it would be the first time since our marriage, that Guillermo and I would be apart. He wanted to make it a short trip. If I went along it would extend the visit, obligating us to social engagements with extended family and friends. I shuddered at the thought of having to visit the witch birds that lived in Chihuahua. At least in San Felipe there would be only one to hover at the edges of my life, staring with her hawk’s eyes.