Immigration. And Color Codes.

May 4, 2011. It is my baby's 13th birthday today. Or was. August Blue turned into a teenager today. But I was still living at the hospital with Sophie. Her routine appendicitis turned into a nightmare. This is what I wrote the other night when I couldn't sleep for worrying about her.
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It is 3:30 am. I haven't been able to sleep even a minute - even though we are now in a private room up in the OR section and the nice people at Cedars Sinai brought a fold out cot for me.

I am worried. The nurses are worried, too. They keep coming in to fuss with Sophie and check on her. Her heart rate is too high and she has a fever. They have packed her in ice.

Our main nurse is called Suzy. She looks like an African Queen. She is tall and beautiful with very dark skin and what seems like hundreds of tiny braids pulled back from her face into a cascading pony tail from the top of her head. She has a beautiful soft,round accent.So many of the people who work here are first generation immigrants. It makes me think of one of my heroes - Lawrence O'Donnell.He has an interstitial running on MSNBC right now in which he speaks in favor of immigration. A brave thing to do in this country right now.

We are a country of immigrants. My Cuban grandmother came to this country when Castro was coming into power and never looked back. She brought her culture with her. (My mother makes the best Cuban empanadas you have ever tasted. They melt in your mouth!)

My grandmother, Dona Hilda, married a German/Irish professor. The classic American melting pot fairy tale. They bought a cute house,had 4 children, traveled, enjoyed their grandchildren and their big extended family and were in love with each other until the day they died. American,Cuban, Irish and German customs all made their way into my grandparents' house. This was a good, fun thing to grow up around.

On my father's side...it was pretty waspy. White people with black servants. The servants wore uniforms.My grandmother had a cook/maid called Willie the whole time I was growing up. When we were little, we got to stay in the kitchen with her. Watch her make chicken and dumplings or banana pudding. We ate our dinner in there, too. There was a special little table and chairs in the kitchen just for the kids. I was scared of my grandfather, so it was much better to eat in the kitchen with Willie.

She gave us our baths, too. In my grandmother's big, pink bathroom. I LOVED that pink bathroom.(Now I have a pink bathroom of my own) Then she'd wrap us up in Granny's soft, fluffy towels, put us in our PJs, tuck us into the guest bedroom beds, and sing old, Southern songs to us. Spirituals, I guess. 'Old Black Joe' was my favorite.
Then my grandmother would come in and say the Lord's prayer with us. As if Willie was the opening act, and my grandmother was the headliner. She always looked so pretty and smelled like Channel.

The Christmas that someone decided it was ok to give me a sewing machine at the ripe old age of 6 and I sewed my finger, Willie washed me and calmed me in the bathtub that evening. I had to hold my bandaged finger up high while she ran a wash cloth all over my body and talked to take my mind off of it. (I was really traumatized) She started telling me about her funeral - how she wanted it to be. A shiny black car for her son and friends, the biggest, shiniest hearse for her coffin (mother of pearl color - she had picked it out), and everyone wearing black and dressed properly.
"And I want to be in that cemetery over yonder." she said, "The one with the great big shade trees and all the yellow flowers in front as you drive in. That's the one I want. That's where I want to rest."
I burst into tears, of course. I couldn't BEAR the thought of Willie leaving me. She was my second grandmother - well, sometimes she seemed like my first grandmother!
"Now, child!" she clucked as she gathered me in a pink towel, "Ole Willie's not going anywhere for a long time!" she laughed her soft, throaty laugh. "I couldn't leave my babies!"
"You're not old, Willie!" I cried into the towel, "and I don't want you to die!"

Then one day when I was much older (a teenager), my aunt Mary said we had to go visit Willie and bring her some money and some things because she was sick. I was thrilled. I hadn't seen Willie for a couple of years. She'd retired from my grandmother's house when she was finally too old and too blind. But she still made us Christmas cookies every year like clockwork.

Driving to Willie's house was one of the strangest things I'd ever done. I couldn't believe it was real - even as it was happening. My aunt drove us from the rich, white part of town (Dallas, TX)across the railroad tracks (not very far) and it was if the tracks were a solid dividing line between rich,sunny, azalea lined houses and falling down,tiny,crap houses. Once we crossed that line, there were NO more azaleas. NONE of the houses were freshly painted. They were ALL in disrepair, the street itself was in terrible shape, and everyone was black. My aunt and I were the ONLY white people I saw the entire time we spent on the other side of the tracks.

I knew now where that expression came from. It had never crossed my mind that it was LITERAL. I had been coming to Dallas for my entire childhood, and then lived there for a few years - and I never knew this part of town existed. I was shocked.It was like a big, dirty secret - just a few miles away. In the EIGHTIES!!!!

Willie's house was a shock, too. I couldn't believe she was living in such poverty.It was like something out of a movie. A movie about poor people in 1930.

I held on to my sweet, old Willie for dear life and choked back my tears as hard as I could. I was outraged and heartbroken. I couldn't believe she made us those wonderful cookies every year from this dark,dusty,falling down, molding little house. It didn't seem possible.

On the drive back to the white side of town, I railed against my grandparents - hot tears running down my face in helpless anger.
"They didn't PAY her enough!!" I wailed accusingly to my aunt.
"Well you're partly right, Jennifer. But only partly." my aunt said kindly.
"Your grandmother has kept paying Willie for this whole time she hasn't been working, and she paid for all of Willie's medical expenses. That was a lot. She even offered for Willie to move in with her - into that cute cottage in the back - but Willie didn't want to. And the biggest reason she's so badly off now is because of her son."
"That man that was there?" I asked. Willie had said something in passing to a man who came out of the bedroom in a dirty wife-beater for just long enough to glare at us before he slammed out of the front door.
"Yes. That's Willie's son. And he's been to jail a lot of times. Your grandmother payed his bail the first time, but she wouldn't do it again. When he got arrested the second time, Mom wrote him off as a bad egg. He's really been a drain to poor Willie."

Flash forward to me, now.
I have a housekeeper. Her name is Dora. She's from El Salvador. She drives a nicer car than I do, has better credit than I do, and I pay her 20 dollars an hour to clean my house once a week. She's a terrible cleaner, and can barely heat up a pizza. But she's been helping me out since August was born, and I love her.

Willie made my whole family Christmas cookies every year until she died, even though she was legally blind for the last five of them.

My aunt and I dressed up and went to her funeral - which my grandmother paid for - and was exactly the way Willie wanted it to be.

I'm not saying that my grandmother was right, or the way she was raised was right. Not at all. I'm just saying....that's what happened.