HOLLYWOOD—Candelaria grew more frantic after her brother’s phone was disconnected. Outside the few dozen Mexicans and Central Americans crammed into this clammy basement, her brother was the sole person in Los Angeles who knew she existed. His phone number was her only link to another soul in the sprawling metropolis. Worry furrowed Candelaria’s brow. Her nerves frayed, and the healing consolation the Sandman brought was denied as she twisted and turned on a ragged, filthy mattress.

The unpaid captors now seemed to begrudge her daily rations of ramen and Coke. The young one had always made her laugh when he joked with her about being “on vacation.” He used to tell her, “You’re going to become a star in Hollywood.” But now he grew stern with Candelaria. When it was mealtime, he grabbed her arm and turned her over roughly on the mattress, thrusting the styrofoam cup of soup with a violent motion, which caused the scalding liquid to spill.

Candelaria had heard terrible things about what happened to migrants whose families didn’t pay up. They had been beaten, drugged, transported to remote cities to sell their love to strangers, or what passed for love. If her brother didn’t show signs of life, Candelaria dreaded what lay ahead.

Following Don Ignacio’s advice, she assuaged her looming problem and summoned the sweet seasons of memory: the rich fragrance of damp earth rising up in her country after a summer rain; the piglets squealing on her grandmother’s farm in the Morazan province; the dazzling sight of multicolored clothes wind-whipped on a clothesline; playing in the green cathedral of cornstalks that blotted out the sky, a piece of serrated blue, that shone through the silky green razor-sharp leaves…

*   *   *

The army had massacred Candelaria’s family, leaving her orphaned. She and her brother were the sole survivors of the El Mozote massacre. Their grandmother raised them, and a succession of good years followed. Then there were lean years: seasons when the sky held back its tears and the cornstalks withered, the pigs’ rib cages showed through their hide, babies suckled a dry breast, cracks and fissures opened in the parched earth and the powdery soil blew away in the softest breeze. Candelaria’s grandmother welcomed a wasp-wasted lady from the city who offered to buy a six-acre parcel of land. It was to be for a country house near their waterfall, the scene of cherished family outings. But more cherished, the pouch of money offered by the wasp-waisted woman: it meant seeds and piglets and food on the table, and within minutes of its receipt, the rains came—a symbolic blessing of this blessing upon their family.

When Candelaria’s uncle Lucas, who had gone all the way to the sixth grade, read the papers her grandmother had signed, from the morass of fine print there leapt out the figure of 1000 acres. For a few measly Colones, this lady had acquired 1000 acres. It was highway robbery and must be avenged. The city lady was a lawyer, though, and if you shook her family tree, down from its limbs would tumble a passel of mayors, sheriffs and magistrates. There was a law, all right, and her family was it. The despoiling of the farm set in motion the humble diaspora that drove Candelaria’s brother to the United States at an age when he could barely grow a mustache. Candelaria and her grandmother moved to the city. There bloomed in her grandmother’s chest a poisonous flower that was her deliverance. Cancer, the doctor said, but really the vigorous old woman died of a heart that was broken and severed from the soil.

Candelaria held her grandmama till the old woman’s hand went cold in hers. That chilly skeletal hand accompanied her every step of the way to the border, and through the Arizona desert, to this nameless suburb. Here: a basement crammed with three dozen refugees who hadn’t bathed or brushed their teeth in days. Through a break in the fogged glass dungeon window, Candelaria caught a glimpse of the mechanical rains over the emerald lawns and the coming and going of muscular pick-ups so high you needed a step ladder to get in them. In vain, Candelaria sought to discern a hint of the Hollywood sign in the distance. She yearned to replace that ghostly hand in hers, with her brother’s warm fleshy hand.

(to be continued)

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Grady
Hollywood humorist Grady grew up in the heart of Steinbeck Country on the Central California coast. More Bombeck than Steinbeck, Grady Miller has been compared to T.C. Boyle, Joel Stein, and Voltaire. He briefly attended Columbia University in New York and came to Los Angeles to study filmmaking, but discovered literature instead, in T.C. Boyle’s fiction writing workshop at USC. In addition to A Very Grady Christmas, he has written the humorous diet book, Lighten Up Now: The Grady Diet and the popular humor collection, Late Bloomer (both on Amazon) and its follow-up, Later Bloomer: Tales from Darkest Hollywood. (https://amzn.to/3bGBLB8) His humor column, Miller Time, appears weekly in The Canyon News (www.canyon-news.com)