Hollywood, 1945–1946
Homecoming
Mrs. Carver settled back in her chair while Marie brushed out her hair. I plopped down on a sofa in the waiting area, near enough so that I could hear their conversation.
“You know what I really love about Keep Your Powder Dry?” Mrs. Carver was saying. “The way three women join the WACs and, in spite of their different backgrounds and petty jealousies, learn to appreciate each other and work together. I mean, a socialite and a housewife who—”
“I didn’t see it, Mrs. Carver.”
“Well, Lana Turner plays Val Parks, this flighty society girl who—”
“I’m not in the mood for movies these days, Mrs. Carver.”
“Oh, of course not. Your son... But it wouldn’t hurt you to get out a little bit, Miss Marie. Something like Anchors Aweigh with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. It might help you get your mind off things. Lots of music and dancing. By the way, I saw something in Star World about that Spanish girl I liked so much.”
“What Spanish girl? You like this color, Mrs. Carver? I think it makes you look younger. What I mean is, it gives you a brighter look.”
“Yeah, well, that’s a lost cause. You can make it as blond as you want, I’m still going to look like a hag. I can’t remember her name.”
“I’m the one who looks like a hag, worried day and night about my boy Bobby and my husband. Just because Hitler committed suicide doesn’t mean it’s over. Bobby is still out there someplace in the Pacific... I haven’t had a letter in months. I just... I just can’t...”
“Don’t cry, Miss Marie. Bobby will come back before you know it. Why don’t we go out to the movies Saturday night? My husband wouldn’t mind. I mean...if he were here instead of in Germany. We could see something like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, with Dorothy McGuire. They say this new director Elia Kazan is terrific.”
“It’s about Irish people in Brooklyn. How good could it be? Anyhow, Rick...he’s in a hospital somewhere in France... I just found out. I—I’m sorry, Mrs. Carver... With my husband over there and Bobby God knows where... Have you heard from Mr. Carver?”
“No...but I think the fighting is mostly finished in Germany.”
“God, when will this war be over!”
“You really need to get out, Miss Marie. Oh, I remember now. Her name was Dolores Del Rio. Let’s go see Meet Me in St. Louis. You love Judy Garland!”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Carver. My friend Mara Estrada just came back to Los Angeles. Her husband was killed in North Africa. You remember her, don’t you? She used to work at the station right next to mine. There she is, there in the waiting area. She’s coming over on Saturday night. Maybe we can...console each other.” Mrs. Carver turned to look at me, and I waved.
It was strange being back at Marie’s. Everything was familiar, yet different. The same chairs were in the same places. The mirrors, the hair dryers, the rows of mannequin heads with their wigs and falls, the trays of brushes and rollers, the shelves with dyes and permanent wave lotion. Even most of the patrons were the same. Mrs. Carver still came in for her weekly wash and set on Thursday afternoons. But the photos showing off the latest hairstyles had changed. Now the models wore pageboys or soft, fluffy curls. A framed picture of Alice Faye, with a high pompadour and long, lose ringlets had replaced the photo of Joan Crawford, with tight coils at her temples and a cloche. But the biggest difference was that now, instead of Miss Mara, I was Mrs. Estrada, an unemployed war widow receiving a small pension, and that instead of working at the station next to Marie’s, I was leafing through magazines like a patron.
I’d left Mexico as soon as I could. I broke my contract with Films Mundiales to attend to Lola’s hair until she was done filming Bugambilia. I let the apartment go and yanked the kids out of school. But back then, you couldn’t just jump on a plane, like now. It took a couple of days to get from Mexico City to Los Angeles. By the time I arrived, Tía Emi was out of the hospital.
I was home for good, I decided. Tía Emi had converted the shed where Vince once lived into her sewing room. Gabi had transformed Gabe’s old workshop into a bedroom for Lupita and Lexie and the furniture store into a bedroom for her and Lolly. I shared my bed with Tía Emi. Once, all four girls had shared the bedroom with Gabe and me. Then when Vince married Julie and moved out, Gabe had the shed outfitted with plumbing and electricity so that Lolly and Gabi could use it as a bedroom. Now all the girls were back in the house, each with her own space.
We were a family again, except that...we weren’t. Not without Gabe. As we sat around the table—me at the head, Tía Emi at the foot, two girls on each side—I felt gratification, yes, because we were all together, but also a hollowness, as though some vital organ were missing. All over the nation, families sat down to dinner with an empty plate on the table, an empty chair at the head. Women learned to sleep next to an empty pillow. They went to the beauty shop and had their hair done up in victory curls in memory of a husband, a lover, a brother. Grief is like a tick that latches on to you, lacerates your flesh, and drains your energy. Yet you learn to live with it because you have to.
The war ended on September 2, 1945. The whole neighborhood danced in the street. People cheered, screamed, and waved flags.
“The boys will be home soon!”
It wasn’t a moment of joy for me, though, and not only because Gabe would not be home soon. Something awful happened that day, something that would make me see things in a different way.
The girls had joined the ruckus. Lupita and Lexie, in the pert red, white, and blue pinafores Tía Emi had made for them, held their flags high and hopped up and down like jumping beans in a warm hand. A man approached them—a tall, muscular man with close-cropped hair and a square jaw. I thought he was going to say something about how brave they were to carry on while their father was gone.
“What pretty little patriots,” he would say. “What valiant little girls!”
Instead, he said, “What the hell are you two shouting about?”
The children looked at him uncomprehending, wide-eyed.
“The fighting is over,” said Lexie.
“What do you care?” he snarled. “It wasn’t your war! You’re Mexican!”
What did he think? That because my children had their father’s dark complexion and high cheekbones, they weren’t American?”
“Their father died in North Africa,” I said quietly, “fighting with the US Army.”
“I bet!” he snarled again and spat on the ground.
“Come on, girls,” I said. I grabbed them by the hand and went to find their sisters.
“Fucking Mexicans!” he called after me.
Lolly and Gabi were dancing with soldiers on a neighbor’s front lawn.
“Come!” I called to them. “We’re going home!”
But Lolly and Gabi had lived for too long without parents to pay attention. Lolly waved me away. I didn’t see either one of them again until late that night, when the festivities began to die down.
“Fucking Mexican?” No one had ever called me that before. I felt as though I’d come home to find my house had burned down. It was as though I were looking at my furniture, my walls, my kitchen sink through a smoky haze. As though everything that was mine wasn’t really mine. My husband had died in combat, wearing the uniform of the US Army, and some moron had called me and my girls “fucking Mexicans”!
Tía Emi just shrugged when I told her.
“What did you expect?” she said, coughing through cigarette smoke. “You think you’re one of them, but you’re not. You’ll always be the daughter of an indiecita, a Mexican—”
“What? A Mexican what?”
“Maid,” she said, squashing her cigarette in an ashtray. “A Mexican maid.”
“Who was she?”
But Tía Emi picked up her sewing and pursed her lips.
For a few days, I raged. Why did my husband give his life for this country, if all I was to its people was a fucking Mexican, the daughter of an indiecita?
But I didn’t have a lot of time to sit around feeling sorry for myself. I had to lick my wounds and get on with my life.
Marie agreed to take me back. Now that the war was over, all the women in America wanted victory curls, and her salon had waiting lists for appointments. I worked long hours. After all, if Lolly was going to go to college, I’d have to support her another four years.
And then I began to think: Lolly will go to college! She’ll become a teacher! I may be the daughter of a fucking Mexican maid, but I have my own house and car, a cosmetology license, a steady income. All this wouldn’t be possible if I hadn’t come here. I remembered something my ninth grade teacher once told us: “It’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re going.” I took comfort in those words. I began to feel proud. Now, more than ever, I needed to find out who my mother was. I needed to see just how far I had come. My mother may have been poor, but she was someone. I come from somewhere, I thought, I have no reason to be ashamed.
A few months later...it must have been early in 1946...a letter came from Mexico. There was no name on the envelope, but I recognized the handwriting as Doña Antonia’s. Why would Doña Antonio be writing to me? I wondered. Why not Lola? Was something wrong? Was Lola ill? I had a queasy feeling as I slit open the flap.
I didn’t keep that letter, but I do remember what it said. María Candelaria had been nominated for the international film festival in Cannes! “Pack your bags, Mara!” wrote Doña Antonia. “We’re going to France, and Lola wants you to come with us—all expenses paid, of course. And bring along plenty of bathing suits! After all, we’ll be in Cannes!”
I thought about it. France! All expenses paid! It was the chance of a lifetime!
But I couldn’t just take off and go abroad. What about my children? What about my job?
“No,” I said to myself. “These people can just leave town at the drop of a hat. They have nothing to think about beside themselves. But I have responsibilities.”
I sat down to write Doña Antonia: “I truly appreciate the invitation, and I’m so sorry to decline, but...”