Letter from Los Angeles
By Linda Sandoval
"In the city of the angels all the angels tend to hide. I ain't seen an angel since I crossed the great divide."
(Frank Larrabee, singer/songwriter, Corrales, New Mexico)
The Saturday before Christmas 2006
The cardiologist is talking with the film director and one of those blonde botoxed hell-hound wives with six pounds of diamonds on her fingers. They stand positioned in the middle of a wide sloping property spotted with politically correct native gardens on the far side of the ornamental bridge that is suspended between two buildings, one a beautiful jewel box of a house unfolding itself up the fragrant hillside with two-story glass walls and curving teak floors and the other, a rather surprising structure, painted in bright colors, containing her Pilates studio and his racquetball court. A Morris Louis painting hangs in the Pilates studio, its stained rivulets of color cleverly mirroring the brightly stained stucco walls. Under the ornamental bridge is an ornamental stream lined in smooth black ornamental rocks. It cascades away from the infinity pool at the top of the hill that blends into the horizon and ocean below.
This power trio is hosting a holiday fundraiser. They want to sponsor promising poor children who are to be scouted, tested and deposited in a high-end pressure cooker private high school. It helps the rich children of the school to witness first hand some kind of meritocracy and to mingle, in the classroom anyway, with those less fortunate. This mingling will make the rich children stronger. Give them an advantage over rich children who have not had the opportunity to mingle. Anyone invited to this party is expected to write a check. Noblesse Oblige. Ruling class Los Angeles. The wealthy have come from everywhere across the globe to this city of wealth where they must labor tirelessly to measure, increase and display success.
The three hosts are discussing their Shadows. Shadows are full time life-guide/ tutors who accompany rich children into classrooms and help them through the day because of the various drugs the child must take or other problems that psychiatrists have decided the child has when the parents can pay for the diagnosis de jour. Shadows are everywhere in the private elementary schools these days. It is another sign of wealth and prestige, these giant folks sitting in little chairs helping a child with block building or intervening if violence should break out with other children. The film director needs to replace his shadow, Derek, as Derek is getting out of the shadow game and returning to graduate school. The botoxed hell-hound promises to ask around. But she has problems with her own shadow needing a pregnancy leave. In fact, the pregnant shadow promised to be here tonight but wasn't feeling well so they had to pay the nanny to stay over. The nanny is running up to them right now.
Mr. Doctor please! Terry made a fire!
And indeed, the cardiologist's son, Terry, has one of those flame throwing wand lighters and has assembled a pile of crab bodies from the hors d'oeuvre table and is setting them on fire hoping to make them explode. Instead he has ignited some dry ornamental grasses. There is quite a blaze. Terry's little sister is running toward the flames with her long fairy princess gown trailing in the blowing sparks. One fairy wing has an ember burning right through the gauze. The cardiologist stares blankly at the nanny. He doesn't talk to the nanny. Ever. But the maid is running from the kitchen with a large tablecloth. Another follows with a pan of water. The two of them get the fire out. The nanny grabs the little sister and carries her away, dusting the bits of charcoal from her dress and wings. The party is hushed for a bit, observing the diligence of the servants, but not helping them. Everyone looks blank. As though they are all watching television.
***********
The so-called loft district. In downtown Los Angeles, or a little south and east of downtown, blocks of factories and warehouses are being converted into living spaces for unattached people with good salaries. Working Hollywood types, grips, script supervisors, focus pullers or junior MBAs, attached to the downtown financial district, some ground level music industry folk, some saddened actors with a little money still missing their urban lifestyle in New York. These are the starter homes for the hip. For the educated, trying to be green, still in their twenties people who work hard and play hard and have not yet been drained by children. But these ersatz lofts are pricey. At least half a mil. A person would have to supervise a lot of scripts to afford one of these. And for what? A rather small concrete box with the heating ducts exposed, fake wood floors (or polished concrete), lower grade stainless steel kitchen appliances and huge paned windows looking out onto another wall or below to an ill kept yellowish pool with one wilted potted palm between two white plastic deck chairs. These are not places that are either affordable or favored by the actual artists who used to inhabit the unheated, vast spaces in the warehouse district during that brief moment in the eighties when there was a downtown art scene. No, these lofts are the result of attempted "urban renewal." These lofts are for the middle class and all of their stuff. There are couches and flat screen TVs and beds with upholstered leather headboards and closets with mirrors, sets of china from Crate & Barrel with matching bar ware. The places are not open and lofty but crammed to the gills with consumer items. They blink and signal from one loft to the next. This up and coming middle class is stretched to the limit with purchases. They have come from everywhere across the globe to ply their trade in this city of trade and now they have no room to move. Spiritually or literally. They are stuck with their stuff and can only hope to find enough employment to hold on to it.
The party is in full swing. Lots to drink, lots to eat. Arcade Fire is blasting from the sound system. A Secret Santa game is going on and people have pulled names from a glass bowl to exchange gifts. The bowl sits in front a life-sized fiberglass angel. These purposefully sexless angels were painted up by different artists in different ways and placed around the city in the year 2000 as beacons of millennial hope. They were then sold at a charity auction. Noblesse Oblige. Millennial angels were a good investment if you had the money. This angel has a paisley Pucci kind of look. The guests collect their gifts. More bar ware, movie passes, bottles of wine. The host, a young man with black jeans and a bandana, is talking about a gun he's recently purchased, because of what he has to drive through everyday to get to his loft.
You don't notice them after awhile, he says. They have their life, I have mine. The city is supposed to clean them out but they just keep coming back. No matter what you do they just keep coming back. I found one taking a shower in number 82, the other day. I called the cops. And then I bought the gun. I know where to get on the roof if I need to. I could pick them off no problem.
It's loud in this loft. With the music and the crowd. A tall woman with a tattoo in the shape of Australia is screaming into her girlfriend's face. It seems the she is not being invited back to the show after the first of the year because she became too personal with the actors. As a make-up artist that happens. Now she has to look for another job. She has a mortgage too.
Nothing is what was promised, she complains. Everything breaks. The condo fees have gone up. The commute is hell. I might have to drive clear to fucking Oxnard for a fucking reality show! It's bloody hard here. Bloody. Fucking. Hard.
The bandanaed host gives advice over the intercom to some stranded guests in the parking garage.
Keep to the left, he says. Take the number four elevator. Get out by the pool. Take the stairs with the red door. Then the elevator, just on your right to floor eight and then follow the corridor. Keep turning left.
The lost guests are befuddled and frightened in the huge garage. Barbed wire is strung around them and there is an armed guard at the entrance. He smiles but still, he has a gun. In the alley below a woman pulls her cardboard boxes together for the night. They look over the barbed wire and watch her as she tries to make herself safe from the streets. They watch her as though they were watching television.
*****
Downtown on the nickel. Fifth Street. Skid row. Thousands and thousands of homeless people living on the streets or hoping for a bed in one of the missions. They live in cardboard boxes, in burned out car hulks, underneath plastic garbage bags. There are users, sellers, whores, pimps, and their children. There are huge numbers of schizophrenics. There are brutal predators. There are people dumped because they cannot pay their hospital bills. A van from a local hospital pulls up and a paraplegic man is thrown to the sidewalk with a colostomy bag still attached. He is naked at the back of his hospital gown. A couple of drunks lift him into the mission but he is refused entrance. They are not equipped to take care of a paraplegic man with a colostomy bag. Who is? The hospital that dumped him. The drunks? At least they can share their wine, which they do. And this happens every night. Lost souls who are too old to remember where they live. People who have no address. The paraplegic man lived in his car, which was impounded during his hospital stay so he was brought naked and left to crawl on the nickel. There are fires on the street corners. There are shopping carts on fire. There are portable toilets where people shoot up and turn tricks. Children with Aladdin backpacks and headless Barbie's wait to use these toilets. This week, hundreds of homeless children lined up and stood for hours at the back of the mission. They were given a new toy and new shoes. Happy Holidays. Noblesse oblige. A man sits on the curb and cries helplessly into the night. He sobs in full out deep grief without shame or restraint. He rocks his poor dog that lies cradled in his arms. Dead. Shot? Stabbed? Broken by a car speeding through the chaos? The dog still wears the bright bandana wrapped around his neck. A woman arranges her cardboard boxes. She chooses not to crawl inside the boxes. She flattens them and pulls them over the top of her for warmth and because it's less inviting that way. No one can crawl in with her. What ever she has they will only take. Above her is a huge parking garage with barbed wire and if she could scale it she could break into an empty loft apartment and get a shower. Get off the streets. There are those who try that.
You motherfuckers up there! This is not a fucking movie!
No, she's real. In the parking garage there is a guard with a gun. He might call for help. If she was being beaten, he might call. So she chooses this alley right below the guard.
They have fallen here from all over the city. Those who came from everywhere but can no longer hold on and where the warm nights promise that the darkness will last forever. They labor to survive the night with only the nickel to their name.
Around the corner is the All Angel Band. Mennonites. So scrubbed and blonde but from Mexico, probably. Near the border. They are singing Angels We Have Heard on High. Young mothers with long braids and crisp bonnets stand singing with their babies held close. The young men form a brass band, the old gentlemen with suspenders and long beards call out from the bible. They are not collecting money. Why would they be? There is no money. It's exchange only in this place except for those days when the checks can be cashed and then it's drugs and beatings and robbery. But not for the Mennonites. They offer pamphlets, singing and food for those who agree to pray with them. Could someone go to Mexico and become holy and whole? Gloria. Sweetly singing o'er the plains. The Mennonites are not afraid to look closely. They see it. They don't step over it. So give them that.
*****
When she works as a maid she calls herself Anna
When she works as a prostitute at the hotel she calls herself Jasmine
When she works at the hotel cleaning rooms she calls herself Anna
When she borrows money from the loan sharks on the corner she calls herself Anna
When she sends money home she calls herself Olandia, her given name
When she takes the long bus ride to the Boys Correctional Facility in Lancaster to visit her son she calls herself Jorge's Mother
When she visits the doctor who proscribes the psycho-tropic drugs to Jorge she calls herself Jorge's Mother
When she is presented a bill for $8,000 for her son's psycho-tropic drugs she calls herself Anna and gives a false phone number
When she visits the courts to try to free Jorge from the correctional facility she calls herself Olandia
When she buys her green card marriage she signs the document Olandia
When she steals a credit card number from an employer she calls herself Anna
When she gives the credit card number to her husband she calls herself Olandia
When she signs the divorce papers for her husband who abandons her she calls herself Olandia
When she gives a false address to the credit card company she calls herself Anna
When she signs her apartment lease she calls herself Anna
When she turns in her tax forms she calls herself Olandia
When she rents out the curtained off portion of her one room apartment to two other families she calls herself Olandia
Her new boyfriend calls her Jasmine
When she brings unwanted items from rich peoples homes to sell at swap meets she calls herself Anna
Sometimes she goes to the Pentecostal church on east Pico. She would like to call herself Olandia at the church but she decides it's safer to call herself Anna
When she sits all day in the clinic to obtain an abortion she calls herself Anna
When she takes free English classes at the ESL school she calls herself Anna
When she works through the holidays to help in people's kitchens she is called Anna
But at night, after that work, she goes on to the hotel to be called Jasmine
And after the men leave she is called Anna as she changes the sheets and scrubs the toilets
And after she goes home and gives a simple wrapped package to everyone living in her room, packages of little gifts pilfered from the swap meet, she is called Angelita and she is called that with love and gratitude.
The Für Elise ring on her cell phone is for Jasmine
The Scott Joplin ring is for Jorge's Mother
The plain ring is for Anna
The ever-louder alarm sounding buzzer ring is for Olandia
Olandia who works day and night.
She has arrived in this city of workers from far away places where she labors to hold everything together for everyone else. She gives every part of herself to this work. She is alone and working. Los Angeles could not exist without her and people like her. Not the missions, not the restaurants, not the fancy houses and gardens in Pacific Palisades, not the schools, not the hospitals, not the grocery stores, not the parking garages. She does not question the work, she does not question her son in lockup and she does not question the men at the hotel. It would be foolish to question anything. Better to just keep working and keep adding to all of the work that is nothing if not noblesse oblige.
(One of the self-involved women of the most self-involved of these portraits made the mistake of asking ASK WENDY for advice in ASK WENDY SLAPS A HELLHOUND…)