5

Los Angeles, 1913–1920

Learning to Breathe

It’s funny how you have such a clear picture of certain things in your mind—even things that didn’t actually happen to you, like the scene at the Colegio Francés the day that Don Gustavo died—while other things just disappear from memory. It’s like they never even happened, even though you know they did, they must have, because afterward, everything is different. Take, for example, the trek from Mexico City to Los Angeles. I don’t remember much, only a few gruesome scenes: a man with his eyes gouged out hanging from a tree, a dog with a human foot in its mouth. At the edge of a village a pretty little girl, probably a landowner’s daughter, all dressed up in a lacy dress with a pink sash and shiny black shoes. She could have been on her way to a party...except that she had no head. They’d cut it off and placed it on her lap, propped her up on a rock, probably as some kind of warning. I didn’t scream. I didn’t vomit. I just stared at her—a little girl like me, like Lola, like Anita or any of the girls in my class. But dead. Headless. After that, I kept my eyes to the ground. I took one step after the other without looking up. I forced myself to go numb. Yet even now, after all these years, the image of that child returns to me when I least expect it. It makes me shudder. I think of my own children, my grandchildren, and...and...the tears just come...

The ground was so hot, it burned through our sandals as we fled. It smelled like scorched tortillas. At some point, Tía Emi gave a man a few coins to let us ride his donkey. He had two. One he rode, and the other he led with a rope. Tía Emi and I crawled up on the second one, she in front, me behind her with my arms wrapped around her waist. I rested my head on her back, and I guess I fell asleep because the rest is pretty much a blur until we got to the Río Bravo—what Americans call the Rio Grande, but that doesn’t make any sense at all because it’s not grande. In fact, it’s so narrow and shallow that we waded across it in the moonlight with no trouble at all.

Once we made it to El Paso, Tía Emi spent another couple of coins, this time for a ride on a rickety train to Los Angeles. I was worried because I knew she didn’t have many pieces of copper, even though she’d saved every centavo that Doña Sara paid her. I’d never been on a train before, and I stared out the window at the wide, dry landscape, afraid we were going to hit a rut in the track, and I was going to land on the floor.

The ride took more than a day. At last we were in Los Angeles, a sprawling mass of nothing. Tía Emi pressed the pillowcase containing everything she owned to her chest, and we ventured out into the street. The sounds were recognizable, yet different. The clip-clop of horses’ hooves against cobblestone, the clang of a streetcar, the scream of a policeman’s whistle, the beep of a claxon—all that was familiar, but not the clipped syllables and lazy vowels of English. Words I might have recognized in a schoolbook were unintelligible when they gushed from people’s mouths. Floods of words that all ran together—heybuddygedoudamyway! And then I’d hear a familiar syllable or two—¿quiubo, mano?—that dangled in the air like a priceless ornament, only to dissolve into the din.

As we stopped to take it in, I became aware of my own breathing, my chest expanding and contracting unevenly. My inhalation felt shallow, as though I was afraid to draw in this new, unfamiliar air. The sky was blue, but as though seen through a faintly smoky glass. The odor of horse dung mingled with cumin and chili, just like at home, but there were strange aromas as well—aromas I would eventually learn were of sauerkraut and frankfurters, corn fritters and roasted peanuts, collards and fried catfish—the wares of street vendors and eateries in this bustling corner of Los Angeles. I’d never seen so many snow-white arms, so many straw-colored heads, all in one place. And I’d never seen so many Black faces. Los Angeles was a relatively small city, with less than six hundred thousand inhabitants, while Mexico City had over a million. But there, most people were different shades of coffee, while here, the variety of hues, from vanilla to espresso, was astounding.

“¡Hola, mana!” The woman who stood before us looked Mexican and spoke Spanish, but the way Tía Emi peered at her through the slits of her half-closed Chalchiuhtlicue eyes made it clear she didn’t trust her.

She had a boardinghouse, she said. Were we looking for a place to stay?

“¿Cuánto?”

“One dollar a week. That includes meals.”

“I don’t have that kind of money.”

“You will. Besides, there’s two of you.”

I waited for Tía Emi to say she could get rid of me, but instead she said, “She doesn’t eat much. She’s a little thing.”

“She can work. She’ll help pay for the room.”

What Tía Emi said next left me dumbstruck. “She’s not going to work. She’s going to go to school. She already knows how to read.”

“Well, fuck,” said the potential landlady. “Been here ten minutes and already putting on airs!”

Tía Emi held her ground. “I’ll give you eighty cents, and even that is a lot for us.”

“No puedo,” said the women, but in the end, she gave in.

We followed her to a ramshackle, one-story house in a seedy-looking neighborhood. She shoved us into a room not much bigger than an outhouse, but at least, she said, we wouldn’t have to share it with anyone. Her name was Nuria.

“I get paid in advance, the first Sunday of the month. You can pay me now.”

Tía Emi took out her coins.

“What’s that crap?” said Nuria, scowling. “That’s not real money. José the money changer will take care of you. He takes his cut, of course, but it’s not too much.”

Tía Emi picked up her pillowcase. “I don’t think so,” she said. She took my hand and we walked back to the train station. On the way, she didn’t say a word.

Well, I wanted to ask. What now? But it was clear she was in no mood for talking.

The station was full of people running in every direction. I eyed a stand where a man was selling what looked like twisted bits of bread. They smelled good.

“I can’t buy anything,” Tía Emi said. “All I have is Mexican coins, and they won’t take them.” She pulled a dry tortilla from her pillowcase and handed it to me.

We wandered around the station looking for a bench to sleep on, but we wound up settling against a wall in a little corridor where brooms and buckets were kept.

“You sleep,” said Tía Emi. “If I close my eyes, someone will steal the pillowcase.”

“We can take turns,” I offered.

“You think you’re going to fight off some motherfucking thug for me? You really do have shit where your brain should be.” But she laughed gently and squeezed my wrist.

She must have dozed off anyway, because the next thing I remember was screams.

“You bastard! You son of a bitch! I shit on the mother who gave birth to you!”

I opened my eyes in time to see a boy in a shabby sombrero disappearing behind a corner, the pillowcase dangling from his fist. The sun was just coming up. Dusty rays were creeping through the huge station doors.

I started to cry. Tía Emi bopped me on the head.

“¡Puta madre!” she said. “What’s the point of sniveling?” She was laughing.

“What’s the point of laughing?” I rubbed the back of my skull. “He just ran off with everything we own.”

“Yeah, but imagine the surprise of the pendejo when he opens the sack and finds there’s nothing in it but a couple of ragged shifts and the used bloomers I stole from Doña Sara.”

I imagined the boy holding up the bloomers, sniffing them, and vomiting into a trash bin.

“What about the money?”

“It’s in my blouse. You got your stuff?”

I’d wrapped a change of clothes into a little bundle, which I used as a pillow. We stumbled out into the street. Nuria was there again, offering her squalid room to newly arrived Mexicans. Apparently, she had no takers, because a few minutes later she caught sight of us and came ambling over.

“Listen,” she said. “You look like an honest person, and in my business, I have to be careful. I’ll take your Mexican money, and I’ll help you find a job.” She smiled broadly. Her teeth were yellow, crooked, and tinged with black, like the kernels of a rotting ear of corn.

Tía Emi thought about it a moment, but we didn’t have many options.

“Está bien,” she said finally, “but I won’t give you a centavo until you find me work, and they pay me.”

Nuria looked Tía Emi up and down. “I don’t think you’ll get much for that sack of bones. You look like you’ve got cobwebs in your cunt.” Then she looked at me. “But maybe the baby...”

“We’re not whoring her out. Me cago en la leche.” Whenever Tía Emi didn’t like something, she’d say, “Me cago en la leche,” “I shit in the milk.” What sense did that make? I didn’t ask. Nuria shrugged, and we followed her back to the house.

Breakfast, comida, and supper at Nuria’s were rice and beans, just like in Durango, but at least we had a roof over our heads. Within a few days, Nuria found us a job cleaning floors and toilets in a beauty shop—in those days, we said “beauty parlor”—about three miles away, an easy walk. For the moment, there was no more talk of school, and I began to think that Tía Emi had mentioned it just to get Nuria to lower the price of the room.

The owners of the shop told the customers they were from Paris because it seemed more elegant. I guess they thought that to Americans, all foreign accents sounded the same. But I knew they were lying, because I’d hear them arguing in the back room, and the language they were speaking wasn’t French. I’d heard Lola speak French, and it sounded different. They called themselves Mr. Edmond and Miss Kathy, although I don’t think those were their real names. I once asked Mr. Edmond where they were from.

“We have to pretend we’re French,” he said. “Women aren’t going to pay to have their hair cut by a Romanian.” He winked and patted me on the head.

Mr. Edmond spoke some Spanish, which, he said, wasn’t that different from his native language. “You say casa,” he said. “We say casă. It’s almost the same.”

They paid us seven cents an hour, and we worked from seven in the morning until seven at night. We thought it was a good deal. Tía Emi was able to pay Nuria on time and buy us both something we had never had before: hairbrushes.

I couldn’t believe the things ladies did to their hair. Some of them had it rolled up into ringlets or twisted into elaborate updos, with braids coiled into neat buns on either side. Most ladies had their hair arranged at home by servants, but Mr. Edmond bought advertisements in newspapers to expand business, and it had worked. “The latest styles, right from Paris!” he advertised. “The most advanced techniques in hair styling!” Usually customers—in those days, we called them “patrons”—had their hair washed at home, before they came to the beauty parlor. (Back then, people only washed their hair about once a month.) Sometimes they brought in copies of Photoplay, the new film magazine, to show the hairdressers—we called them “beauty operators”—the hairdos they wanted. Mr. Edmond didn’t believe in cutting ladies’ hair. For a bob, a lady would have to go to a barbershop. But he could dye hair with the exotic new German coloring products he ordered. Only Mr. Edmond was allowed to apply color, and he did it very carefully, like a seamstress embroidering a delicate gown.

Soon we started hearing rumors that Mr. Edmond was going to open another shop, this one in Hollywood, on Las Palmas Avenue, and that he would be offering a new hair treatment called a “permanent.” It would take all day and cost nearly a hundred dollars!

“I hear he’s going to transfer his most accomplished girls over there,” whispered Miss Marie, breathless. “He’s going to have a trainer come in to teach us to apply permanent wave lotion. Everything will be different at the new place. Modern and glamorous!”

I noticed she said “teach us to apply permanent wave lotion.” Miss Marie had studied at the Marinello School of Beauty in Chicago and clearly thought she would be chosen.

“He’ll definitely take Elaine,” whispered Miss Marie to one of the other operators. “He’s got his eye on her, if you know what I mean. Someday I’ll have my own shop and won’t have to put up with pigs like him.”

To our amazement, when Mr. Edmond finally made the official announcement, the first ones chosen for the new shop were Tía Emi and me.

“The place has to be spotless,” he said. “You’re good workers, and I can depend on you.” He turned to Tía Emi. “Maybe you could even learn to brush out the wigs.” In those days, women used hairpieces to fill out their hairstyles.

“Yo no quiero ser peluquera,” said Tía Emi, a little too imperiously for a toilet cleaner. “I don’t want to be a hairdresser.”

Brushing out hairpieces is better than cleaning toilets, I thought. Tía Emi should be happy. I remembered when I used to comb Lola’s hair and tie it into fancy plaits.

“I could brush out the wigs,” I whispered. But no one was paying attention.

Apparently, Mr. Edmond hadn’t consulted Miss Kathy about his decision, because she jumped into the conversation and asked Tía Emi if she knew how to cook.

“Claro que sí,” said Tía Emi. “I was the cook for the president of Mexico.”

That wasn’t exactly true. She was a kitchen maid who helped prepare meals, peeling potatoes and shucking corn.

“I need a housemaid,” said Miss Kathy, “to cook and clean and take the dog for walks.”

“How much?”

“Four dollars a week, plus room and board. A half day off on Sunday. Mara can keep on working at the shop.”

“Mara has to go to school.”

I flinched. How did Tía Emi have the gall to make demands? And when did she suddenly remember that I had to go to school? School seemed to come up only when she was trying to negotiate a better deal for us.

“You’re right,” said Miss Kathy, to my amazement. “There’s a grammar school near the house. She can go there, and after school, she can work in the new salon. It’s walking distance.”

I didn’t realize at the time that elementary school had become mandatory in California.

“I’d like to learn to brush out the wigs,” I piped in.

Mr. Edmond smiled. “You’d make a wonderful operator, Mara,” he said. “You’re very beautiful yourself. You could even be a model.”

“Actually, I’m a costurera,” said Tía Emi dryly. “A seamstress.”

“Really? Do you know how to make a dress with a pattern?”

“I don’t need a pattern.”

Miss Kathy looked skeptical. “If I bring you a piece of cloth, could you make me something?”

At the end of the week, Tía Emi paid Nuria what she owed her and told her we were leaving. Nuria spat in the sink and shrugged.

“Too good for this place now that you’ve made a few bucks at the beauty shop I found for you, right?” she hissed.

“Right,” said Tía Emi.

We traipsed the three miles to Mr. Edmond’s beauty shop, the old one, not the new one. He told us to get our things together and climb into his automobile, a Dodge Touring with soft black leather seats and a top that you could open or close, depending on the weather. Miss Marie and Miss Elaine were already in the car that would take us to the new shop... I mean salon. We were supposed to say beauty salon, not shop. I’d never been in an automobile before, and I was terrified. There wasn’t much traffic, but as the car wove its way through boulevards filled with horse-drawn carriages and other motorcars, hitting runnels and bumps, swerving this way and that to avoid pedestrians, peddlers, cyclists, and animals, I held my breath. I’d never seen such a world—roads lined with crimson oleanders or towering palm trees that looked too slender to withstand a gust of wind. Bright green lawns, manicured and endlessly hosed. Lovely Spanish-style villas, with stucco walls and wrought iron fences. Lush gardens, with orange trees bulging with fruit. On the horizon, low-lying hills dotted here and there with graceful mansions. It all seemed unreal. The salon was at the end of a residential street that abutted a new and burgeoning business district with elegant dress boutiques and an Italian shoe shop called Ferragamo’s.

That evening, Tía Emi and I went home with Mr. Edmond and Miss Kathy in the Dodge Touring. They lived in a yellow stucco duplex with an orange tree in the front yard. It was not a grandiose house, but they’d converted the garage into a bedroom, which was to be ours. It was the largest room I’d ever slept in, and it had a window. In the morning, the sun’s rays danced along the windowsill and nestled in the folds of the curtains, then scattered among the floor tiles, illuminating the clay inlays. I was in paradise.

Miss Kathy’s dog was a poodle named Yap. Tía Emi refused to go near it, so it was my job to walk it in the morning. I didn’t like the idea. I had never lived in a house with a dog, and I didn’t know what it might do to me. It was a little thing, and it had curly white hair with poofs on the top of its head, the tip of its tail, and its ankles—a ridiculous-looking animal. In Durango I’d seen farm dogs, stately and serious, dogs with a job. You didn’t play with those dogs. You stayed out of their way. In the city, I’d seen guard dogs, dogs that meant business, dogs that protected homes or shops. But this dog was different. Miss Kathy picked it up and cooed over it as though it were a baby. She had no children, so I guess that’s why.

The school was nothing like my school in Mexico. Boys and girls sat together in the same classroom, and no one wore a uniform. There were all kinds of kids—rich, poor, and in-between. In Mexico, girls like Lola went to fancy private colegios, but in those days, there were no private colegios in Los Angeles, aside from parish schools. Bells told you what to do—when to come in, when to have lunch, when to leave. I was always hungry because instead of a big midday meal, we ate lunch, a snack you brought in a cloth bag and ate out in the patio instead of going home and taking a siesta. Worst of all, you had to speak English all day.

One day a girl named Clara asked me for a pencil. “Psst, ¿me prestas un lápiz?”

Pum! My skull smarted as though someone had lit a firecracker in my hair. My eyes filled with tears. I turned quickly enough to catch sight of my teacher, Miss Grunwald, a ruler with an edge as sharp as a blade in her hand.

“No Spanish,” she snarled.

“Yes, ma’am,” I whispered.

Clara and I were told to leave the room and stand in the hall. I was only a kid, but I already understood that Mexican was not a good thing to be.

After that, I was careful. I stayed away from Clara. I remembered how Lola had practiced French pronunciation when she was with the Sisters of Saint Joseph, sitting in front of a mirror for hours at a time, shaping her lips just so, placing her tongue just so. I began to get up earlier than usual so I’d have time to practice my English. “Yes, not jes,” I told myself. “Sheet, sheeeet, sheeeeet, not shit.” I’d grown to like Yap. He was playful. He jumped up and down when he saw me take the leash off the hook for his walk. I began to speak to him in English. “Come here, Jap... I mean Yap. Seeet dow’.” He was generous. He never made fun of my pronunciation. That’s the nice thing about dogs. They’re forgiving.

At the shop, I sometimes helped Miss Marie when she was giving a permanent, passing her end papers and rollers, and I asked her to correct my English when I made a mistake. When I had a free moment, I’d go into the back room, where they had a couch and copies of Photoplay and Modern Priscilla, and I’d read them aloud to myself. Learning English felt like learning to fly! At first, I flapped my wings and nothing happened, and then, suddenly, I could feel myself lifting off—making sentences, paragraphs even! I was soaring!

At school, I could answer questions in class. The popular girls let me jump rope with them. It helped that they thought I was pretty. I still stayed away from Clara. She was a poor little brown-skinned thing, with pigtails and ragged clothes. Now I feel ashamed, but back then, all I wanted was to fit in.

At first, things didn’t go so well for Tía Emi. Miss Kathy was not impressed with her cooking. Mr. Edmond’s favorite dish was sărmăluţe în foi de viţă vine leaves stuffed with ground pork and topped with a cream sauce, but Tía Emi couldn’t make it. She resorted to serving enchiladas de pollo whether they liked it or not, and Mr. Edmond started eating out more and more.

It went a little better with the sewing. Tía Emi made Miss Kathy a few serviceable skirts and blouses, and Miss Kathy thanked her and paid her extra. Eventually, Tía Emi learned to make uniforms for the operators and chemises and petticoats for Miss Kathy.

We settled into an easy routine, with Tía Emi cleaning, sewing, and preparing Mexican delicacies in the kitchen, and me going to school and working in the salon.

Before I knew it, I was in sixth grade. I was taller than Tía Emi, and I’d begun to fill out. Boys had begun to notice me, especially Nick Wasserman, the cutest boy in the class. Sometimes he walked me home. “Stay away from him,” hissed Tía Emi when she caught sight of him. “I already raised one kid who isn’t my own. I’m not going to raise another one.”

“What are you talking about? All he did was carry my books.”

“That’s how it starts. You must be about eleven already. Going on twelve. You have to be careful.”

Suddenly, Tía Emi looked ugly to me. I hate her! I thought. She’s stupid. She can’t even speak English.

“How come you don’t have a boyfriend?” I snapped. “You’re not that old.”

Tía Emi just stood there staring at me with her stone-hard Chalchiuhtlicue eyes. “I know about boyfriends.” Then she turned and went into the kitchen.

“Why don’t you come with me?” Mr. Edmond said one night when he was leaving the shop... I mean salon. “I’ll teach you how to drink wine.” I figured he was teasing and ignored it.

The customers at Mr. Edmond’s new salon were stylish. The most daring had ditched their corsets and wore loose-fitting tunics that draped gracefully over the body. Some were movie actresses or the wives of rich businessmen. I wanted to be like them. I didn’t want to wear the simple jumpers and skirts Tía Emi made me. The shop was full of mirrors, and I began to study my own image. What I saw was a ridiculous-looking kid with braids and a cheap peasant skirt. The girls at school—at least the popular ones—wore store-bought, drop-waisted sailor frocks or frilly blouses with puffed sleeves.

“It seems frivolous to be thinking about clothes when a war’s going on,” Miss Kathy said when she noticed me reading a fashion magazine.

“What war?” I asked. I’d heard people whisper about the possibility of war, but I hadn’t heard any shots or seen corpses lying in the road, so I didn’t pay much attention. I didn’t read newspapers. I didn’t go to the movies and see the newsreels. I had no brothers who were going to be shipped off somewhere. Besides, I was eleven, and when you’re eleven, what interests you most is your own life, not what’s happening to other people.

“Not here,” said Miss Kathy. “In Europe. Germany against France and England. But now the Americans are probably going to get involved, too, fighting against the Germans.”

I didn’t see what that had to do with me. But then I thought, what if the Germans barge into the beauty shop and grab Mr. Edmond, the way the Huertistas went after Don Gustavo and Don Francisco?

I must have looked worried because Miss Kathy said, “It’s far, far away, Mara, but eventually, Americans will have to tighten their belts to support the war effort.”

I imagined the ladies who came into the shop tightening their belts until their faces turned blue and their eyes bulged like frogs’. It was scary.

“I know about war,” I said. “We had a war in Mexico. That’s why we left.”

I’d already decided that I didn’t want to be a seamstress like Tía Emi. I wanted to be a beauty operator like Miss Marie. I wanted people to call me Miss Mara, and I wanted to have a job, earn money, feel important.

Mr. Edmond liked to watch me work. “You’ll be a wonderful operator someday, Mara,” he said. “And you’re so pretty. That’s important. Your own looks are your best advertisement. Why don’t you let Miss Marie do your hair?”

That evening, I went home with a glamorous updo. Miss Marie had pinned a form around the back of my head and swept my hair into a soft roll that went from one side to the other. I felt very grown-up.

Tía Emi took one glance at me and exploded in laughter.

“¡Puta madre! You look like a monkey with a turd on its head!”

I froze. “You’re just jealous!” I screamed. “I hate you!”

“I think she looks lovely,” said Mr. Edmond from behind me. “She’s a beautiful girl. Anyhow, I’m the one who told Marie to put up her hair.”

Miss Kathy and Tía Emi exchanged glances.

I went to the room I shared with Tía Emi and brushed it all out.

By the time I turned fourteen, in 1920, the war had been over for two years, and Marcel curls were the rage. I figured that as soon as I finished eighth grade, I’d work full-time for Mr. Edmond. He’d promised to let me apprentice with Miss Marie.

“You’ll have to learn to marcel the hair,” he said, running his fingers through my waves and twisting strands around his thumb as though it were a curling iron. His touch felt like a feather flicking across my skin. He smiled and winked, and I felt giddy.

A couple of days after that, Miss Kathy and Tía Emi were sitting at the kitchen table when I came home from school, drinking coffee and smoking. It struck me as odd. What was Miss Kathy doing home so early? And when did she become so cozy with Tía Emi? Doña Verónica and Doña Sara never sat in the kitchen schmoozing with servants.

“¡Puta madre! If he ever lays one finger on her,” Tía Emi was saying, “I’ll string him up by the balls, then hang him on some cactus so the vultures can peck out his eyes.”

“I’ll help you,” said Miss Kathy.

I imagined Mr. Edmond naked, strung up by the balls on a big desert cactus with thick prickly green arms. I felt sorry for him.

Then, out of the blue, Miss Kathy announced that she’d found Tía Emi a position with an acquaintance of hers, a lady who came into the salon once in a while, a couturière—“That means dress designer,” she explained—who needed an assistant. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for both of you,” she concluded.

“But I can keep on working at the salon, can’t I?” Her words had thrown me off-balance.

“No. You and Emi will live with Madame Isabelle. There’s a high school nearby.”

High school? “I thought I was going to apprentice with Miss Marie.”

“You can apprentice with Madame Isabelle. You can learn to sew her designs and create elegant dresses! Besides, you’ll meet actresses... She makes costumes for films. And at the same time, you can go to high school.”

“No!” I screamed. I threw down my books and ran into the garage.

But by the following fall, I was registered for classes at Gilmore Secondary School.