“Summer” and “school” were two words that struck terror in the hearts of most kids when put together in the same sentence but, to an only-child, it was the social life-line that filled my empty, summer days. It had the further benefit of adding credits to fulfill my graduation requirement -- a fact that was to become very important to me at a later time. . .
I found the office door of the Mills Temporary Employment Agency, took a deep breath and went inside.
Upon completion of the mountainous application form, my name was called by a blonde, middle-aged woman dressed smartly in “business attire” and I was amazed to learn that the agency actually had a job referral for me. I was to report to a small motel in town called “The Townhouse” to interview for a part-time job, three days per week, as a “motel maids’ helper” -- a job that would last through the summer until school started in the fall.
The job was on the other end of town but I could ride my bicycle to get there since my shift didn’t begin until 9:00 a.m. and it paid more than the $1.50 per hour minimum wage at that time for students -- a whole fifteen cents more. . .
Located directly across the street from the largest hotel in town, the El Rancho Tropicana, the Townhouse was owned by a Mr. and Mrs. Cross -- a couple in their late fifties. As I followed Mrs. Cross around the next day, she began by showing me how to run the dishwasher that was located in the small apartment on the motel grounds that she shared with her husband.
I was to be responsible for seeing to it that the three maids who worked there were supplied with clean, sterilized drinking glasses wrapped in waxed paper sleeves emblazoned with the motel’s logo. I would also see to it that the sheets, pillowcases, towels and washcloths were washed and dried using the Townhouse’s three large washing machines and driers located in a small utility room at the rear of the motel.
The same utility room housed the supply of guest soaps and tiny packages of instant coffee, creamer and sugar for the small, courtesy coffee makers in each room but, best of all, the Townhouse Motel boasted a small swimming pool that Mrs. Cross invited me to use at the end of each day’s work shift if I desired.
Things appeared to be looking up for me after the horrors I had experienced during the winter of 1966 and 1967, I thought as I pedaled home on my bicycle after the interview with Mrs. Cross. The year of 1966 had been a whirlwind of starting my first year of high school in the fall, meeting the love of my life, Wally, a boy with a bad reputation who was a year ahead of me in school and the boy to whom I gave my virginity.
My mother hated him but she learned to hate him even more when she found out that I was pregnant by him at 15. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I’d miscarried four months into the pregnancy and almost hemorrhaged soon after. . .
My mother swore out a restraining order against Wally that forbade the two of us to come within 150 feet of each other but, of course, I still saw him “on the sly” by means of complicated arrangements made possible by my friends -- always with the fear that we would be discovered and that my mother would make good on her threat to send me off to permanent residence in a group home.
But, on that particular day, I was feeling good. The sun was shining and I was riding my bicycle home to tell my mother the good news: I got the job!
Over the next couple of weeks, I came to know and like two of my co-workers at the Townhouse. . .
Phyllis was a “born again” Holy Roller. A former prostitute, she lived in an apartment on the shabby end of town with a cat named “Spooky” that she'd once given a tab of acid to (hence the name). Phyllis drove a two-toned, blue and white, 1958 Chevrolet sedan one of her “customers” had given to her long ago and believed that it started only because, every time she turned the key, she prayed to Jesus as she did. Phyllis had a black boyfriend named “Spider” -- another “convert” -- who had recently also accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior.
Carol was a full-blooded Pomo Indian in her late 20s -- about the same size in height as width -- a Taurus, she was married to a sweet, evenly tempered, black man (a fact that was not well-received by Carol’s family even though the two had been married, by that time, for more than ten years) named John.
John was an auto-mechanic whose ’58 Impala was (to use the “carboys’” vernacular of the time) “tricked-out”. But, the greatest thing about Carol and John was that the love they shared was like some tangible thing. You could almost see it pass between them when they were together -- despite Carol’s sharp tongue. . .
Carol was one of those people with a gift for dry, sarcastic humor. She could toss an off-handed, bored-sounding, quick-witted comeback into the conversation under her breath with an acuity that took most people several minutes to appreciate. Carol never failed to make me laugh. . .
In the small town of Santa Rosa, California, in the 1960s, the entire population of black people numbered in all of only two or three families, so, it was not remarkable that Spider and John had known each other all of their lives nor was it remarkable that Erica -- a tiny, red-haired girl who lived next door to Carol and John -- would be carrying John’s cousin’s, Roger’s, child.
That summer, Carol and John -- on a purely emotional level -- made it their mission to “adopt” me. The two of them found it easy to relate to Wally’s and my tragic situation, I suppose. After all, no one could have understood more about what it was like for two people in love whose families disapproved of their relationship more than Carol and John did.
After two weeks on the job, the head maid walked away and never returned. The following week, Mrs. Cross asked me if I thought that I knew enough about the job to take over cleaning the head maid’s assigned rooms five days per week. I told her that I did and, with that, I was promoted to full-time at an entry-level maid’s full salary.
Being promoted to full-time maid at the Townhouse made my daily bicycle ride to work that much more dangerous since it meant that I would need to start out in the mornings before daylight, so, my newly “adopted” friends, Carol and John, agreed to pick me up each morning and give me a ride to work in exchange for a couple of dollars each payday for gas.
Most workdays, Carol, Phyllis and I would pile into Phyllis’ Chevy and head over the overpass to Zip’s Drive-In -- a greasy spoon on Sebastopol Road in Santa Rosa’s Roseland District for lunch.
Zip’s had been somewhat of an institution since the Forties and was still owned by the same family who'd owned it then. From our vantage point at one of the four or five decrepit picnic tables in front of Zip’s, we would wave at people we knew as they drove down Sebastopol Road -- a testament to fact that, even with a population at that time of almost 30,000, Santa Rosa was still a very small town in those days.
Because the three of us went to work so early in the morning, we normally finished cleaning all of the Townhouse’s rooms by two o’clock or so in the afternoon. This left us plenty of time on those long, summer days to engage in various recreational pursuits.
Carol usually wound up arranging some type of group outing after we got off of work or on our days off such as a picnic in the park or a day swimming and barbequing on the beach along the nearby Russian River.
On one particular day-trip, Carol and John stopped by Wally’s house to pick him up in order to give us some time together. Not being informed of these plans, of course, the fact that my mother had given us such a cordial send-off caused us to laugh and giggle almost the entire way to the river.
As we descended in several vehicles upon a choice swimming hole, we must have seemed like an odd crowd to the comparatively insulated populace of Sonoma County during 60s -- a veritable United Nations with representatives from the black, Native American and various Caucasian races. Certainly we received a great deal of attention from the locals wherever we went. . .
When we all piled out of the caravan of cars at the Russian River beach at Mirabel, near Forestville, California, with barbeque grills, ice chests and bags of food, the local fishermen stopped what they were doing and stood -- staring at us -- for what seemed like hours. . .
Their interest was not lost on Roger who grabbed a huge watermelon from one of the grocery sacks and -- lifting it aloft with a flourish -- balanced it in one hand while proclaiming in a voice loud enough to benefit our “observers”, “Laudy, laudy, ah sho’ luvs them watahmelons! Yessah, massah, sah, I sho’ly duz!” before plunging it into the water at the river’s edge to cool for the evening’s consumption.
As darkness descended and we all gathered to feast on hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad and, of course, slices of watermelon, I glanced towards the perimeter of the firelight and could barely make out the figures of the same local fisherman who had found us so fascinating all day, standing in a line -- graduated according to height -- and still staring. . .
Their scowls were especially directed toward the red-haired, fair Erica (who was in her pregnancy’s eighth month) and the obvious love of her life, Roger.
I ambled my way over to Carol. “What is their problem?” I asked her, gesturing toward the group of fishermen with my head.
“Who?” she said as she absently poured some ketchup on top of her hamburger, “Oh, you mean those guys?” she asked -- straining to make out their shapes in the gloom.
“They’re ignorant rednecks. . . Just ignore them. They don’t cotton to the idea of lily-white Erica here and Roger being together, that’s all. . . They better get used to it, though, because that’s the way the world is headed -- whether they like it or not. . .”
“I read somewhere that, eventually, all the races on Earth will be blended into one,” I said with a slight smile, “I think that would make them all really beautiful people. . . They’d have exotic almond-shaped eyes from the Asians, permanently sun-tanned skin from the black people with a slight coppery tint from the Indians and, maybe even blue, green or hazel eyes from the white race. I think they’d be just about the most beautiful human beings there has ever been, don’t you?”
“I guess they would be,” Carol said haltingly, studying me.
“You’re a strange kid. Do you know that? But, you’re okay. . . You’re a good kid even if you are pretty strange. . .” she said, turning her attention back to her plate, “Go on and finish your burger. We should get going pretty soon. We promised your mom we’d have you back before 10:00.”
After the summer ended, I saw Carol and John around town sometimes and, sometimes, I went by their house to visit for a while and chat.
I knew that Carol desperately wanted to have children but had been told by the doctor that it might not be possible for her.
As things turned out, though, I read in the local newspaper several years later that she’d finally been able to deliver a child -- a boy -- who was born during the same summer that I gave birth to my daughter. I didn’t have a chance to congratulate her until a couple of years later, though, when I ran into her by accident in line at the local bank.
She was still the same old Carol with her dry, biting wit. Carol “bubbled” for nobody, least of all for me, “the strange kid”. . .
About five years ago, I came across another statistic in the local paper. . . This time, though, it carried the sad news that Carol, only in her early 50s, passed away of cancer. . .
I went to her funeral. It was held in the largest room at the largest mortuary in town -- and it still couldn’t hold all of her mourners. People were crowded out of all the exit doors and lined up outside around the entire building.
But the saddest thing about it was the sight of her beloved John . . . Once a tall, proud, black man with a quiet grace that seemed to exude a kind of strength from within that was unassailable and eternal, now bent almost double with grief -- the perennially serene face that I remembered now tortured and drawn. . .
He was a man lost. . . Lost without she who was his love and his life -- his Carol. . . It was a truly, truly heartbreaking sight. . .
But there beside him, holding him up, was their “miracle child” -- the young man who had been born the same year as my daughter.
As I gazed at him, I thought that I could just barely discern something familiar in the set of his jaw. It was that same determined, indomitable look I’d seen so often on his mother’s face. . .
I knew that he would see his father through this horrible time -- become his rock -- because he was, after all, his mother’s son and he showed it. . .
“30”
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