I had become narrow and short-sighted at my desk. I’d forgotten about boldness, that it was even an option. If I couldn’t write the scenes, then I should really go all the way with not writing them. I decided to remove myself from my computer and the implication that I might be on the verge of a good idea. I would meet with every PennySaver seller who was willing. I would make myself do this as if it were my job. I would get a better tape recorder and drive all over Los Angeles like an untrained, unhelpful social worker. Why? Exactly. This was the question that my new job would answer.
I had to force myself each time I dialed a stranger’s number, but I made myself do it, because this was the end of the road for me; not calling would be the beginning of not doing a lot of other things, like getting out of bed. I started with the first item for sale (a pair of matching silver champagne flutes engraved with the year 2000, twenty dollars) and made my way down the list. Most people didn’t want to be interviewed, so when someone said yes I felt elated, as if they had said, “Yes, and after you pay me fifty dollars for the interview, I’ll pay you one-point-five millon dollars to finance your movie.” Because that was the other problem I was now having. In the time it had taken me to write the movie, the economy had turned to dust. Suddenly all the companies that had been so excited to meet me a year ago were not financing anything that didn’t star Natalie Portman. Which kind of brought out the Riot Grrrl in me — I walked out of polite meetings in Beverly Hills with visions of turning around and walking back in, naked, with something perfect scrawled across my stomach in black marker. But what was the perfect response to logical, cautious soulessness? I didn’t know. So I kept my clothes on and drove to the home of someone who had said yes to me, sight unseen. A woman selling outfits from India for five dollars each.
PRIMILA
—
OUTFITS FROM INDIA
$5 EACH
—
ARCADIA
—
I had presumed that very wealthy people didn’t use the PennySaver, but as we drove up to a house with turrets and perhaps even balustrades, depending on what those are, I reconsidered my presumption. And as I listened to the long tones of Primila’s musical doorbell, I considered reconsidering everything — my sexuality, my profession, my friends; they were all up in the air for as long as the chimes pealed. Was this what church sounded like? What if I became born-again right now? I crossed my arms to keep this from happening and reminded myself to be attentive to mysterious advice and coded messages. In any vision quest–type scenario, one had to be very alert; I was keeping an ear out for something like “The trees have eyes.” It would make no sense at the time, but later it would save my life.
A middle-aged Indian woman opened the door. She wasn’t wearing an outfit from India, just a normal suburban-mom outfit. She held a flyswatter and warmly welcomed us inside while savagely slapping flies.
Miranda: Thank you so much for having us here.
Primila: So do you want to tell me again a little bit more about what this is for? Do you have any brochure or write-up on things that you do, or your company?
Miranda: I’m just interviewing people. I’m really interested in just getting a portrait of the person and what they’re interested in, and a sense of their life story. I’m a writer and I usually write fiction, but this is — you know, I’m always curious about people. So this is a chance to —
Primila: You write fiction? Do you have any particular themes or any commission or fashion?
Miranda: They’re — I mean, gosh. They’re usually about people trying to connect in one way or another and the importance of that. And the different ways people sort of make that harder than it needs to be.
Primila: I’m just curious, because out of the blue —
Miranda: I know, I know. So, I know you told me a little bit on the phone, but now that I’m recording, what led to you putting — what are you selling in the PennySaver?
Primila: What I’m selling are some outfits from India. I have quite a few of them. I’m trying to do two things. One is get them to people who would probably appreciate it who normally wouldn’t have a chance to have this kind of ethnic costume. But the whole thing started, I think it was a year ago in July. We had gone to India, and we went to a village. My husband has a special interest in that place because his grandmother hailed from that village. Of late, because of the lack of rainfall and because of all that, the crops have been failing. These people from the village said, “Can you help us and send us money? We need a motorized irrigation system.”
So I had an open house and sold all these Indian outfits that I brought from India. I did that for two days, two Saturdays, and I raised about… I think it was a few hundred, and I sent it all there, and they got this motorized pump.
In April my husband went back, and they’re very happy with the irrigation system but now they want to expand their fields. I thought, Let me put an ad in the PennySaver and maybe I will reach people who want to buy the stuff. One lady came, and she got a lot because she works as an extra in the movies and she’s a Latino lady. She said sometimes they want her to dress up as an Indian lady. So she loved that.
Miranda: Where in India are you from?
Primila: Bombay. My dad was a meteorologist at the Bombay airport. So we built a house right near the airport. A huge, big three-story house.
Miranda: And can you tell me your earliest memory?
Primila: Yes. I was two years old. I was traveling on a ship from Bombay to England. It was like a big doll’s house. In those days people didn’t fly, they went by cruise liners. I was just two and I can remember so clearly. My name is Primila, but I would tell everyone my name is Mrs. Haggis. I don’t know why or how. My mom tells the story of how this little girl — I had ringlets — there would be a group around me saying, “What’s your name, little girl?” And I’d say, “Mrs. Haggis.” I insisted that was my name.
I’d never even eaten haggis, so I don’t know where it — or maybe I’d heard about haggis and I thought, you know, that’s an English dish.
Primila showed me around her house. It was immaculate and girlish, with white carpet and arrangements of large dolls dressed in frilly dresses. And though she knew I wasn’t a reporter or anyone of consequence, she began to tell me about herself the way Michael had, as if this interview really mattered. It occurred to me that everyone’s story matters to themselves, so the more I listened, the more she wanted to talk.
Primila: I write poems with a theme or a message. “Each Day Is a Gift” was a theme. Then after Thanksgiving I wrote “Ten Reasons to Be Thankful.” There’s another one, “Look for the Rainbow” — because I’ve had so many things happen and I try always to still be upbeat and positive, no matter what. I lost my sister very tragically to cancer years ago. She had fourth-stage colon cancer. She was thirty-five years old with four little kids. They wouldn’t give her the visa to come to America, and she was in the last month. I talked to the embassy in India and every time it was no, no, because they didn’t believe it — she looked so healthy and so they didn’t believe.
It was Thanksgiving here in America. So the next day I woke up and I said I’m going to call the top official. His name was Tom Fury, I still remember. And they’d never let you through. It was all this hierarchy of people. Finally he came on the phone and I said, “Mr. Fury, I just want to tell you one thing. If my sister doesn’t make it, I’ll be at peace because I’ve done everything I can. And she knows how much we love her.” But I said, “Whoever has been instrumental in denying her this last opportunity will have to live with that for the rest of their lives and will have to answer for that on the Day of Reckoning.” That’s all I said, and “Thank you so much.” And this had been going on for three months, not granting the visa.
At 2 a.m. the phone rang. It was my mom in India. “Primila, you won’t believe this. The embassy called. They’ve granted the visa to the whole family.” And when my brother went down to get the visa, they said this had never h
appened before in the history of the embassy.
She passed away on December 24. We buried her on December 31 at Forest Lawn. Then I kept her children and raised them. So whatever happens, I always try to share things that we can learn from what happens in our lives, how we can help others.
Miranda: And what do you do for a living?
Primila: I’m director of rehabilitation at a hospital. I’ve worked there twenty-three years. I’m so passionate about my work that in twenty-three years I’ve never had an unscheduled absence. I never picked up and said, “I’m not coming in today.” But today I locked my door — I always lock my bedroom door when my husband’s in India — and I realized my purse was still inside with the car key. I didn’t know what to do. I went up and I shook the door. It wouldn’t open. So I thought, What do I do? Let me call my son. My son tells me, “Mom, you’ve never called in sick. I’m busy. Maybe today’s the first time in your life — you have a reason: you don’t have a car.” I said, “Are you kidding? I would never do that.” The day I drop dead I won’t show up at work. So I went up again and I just shook the door and I managed to budge it.
Miranda: You broke down the door?
Primila: Yes.
Primila took us upstairs and showed us the door, hanging off its hinges, and then she pointed out two places in the house where a tiny square of wall had been removed. She asked me to guess what these holes were for, but I said I couldn’t even begin to imagine.
Primila: Okay, I’ll tell you because it’s a funny story. One day I was at work and my nephew Benny calls me and he says, “Auntie, I’m hearing voices from the wall. Not from the roof, but from the actual wall.” I said, “What nonsense.” But when I came home I listened, and sure enough, in the closet, behind the wall — in the wall — there was a little meow meow. So my son-in-law cut a hole in the closet wall and he put a little food there. Then in the morning there was the cutest little black and white kitten, just two weeks old.
And then a week or two later, just behind the water heater, he calls me up and says, “Auntie, there’s another meow going on there.” And sure enough, we cut a hole there and another kitten came out. And then it happened again! There was a tree that had grown over our wall, so the cat from there had climbed up, made a hole in our roof, and got into our attic to have her kittens. And then they were falling through the insulation. My daughters are married and I’m waiting for grandchildren, but the joke is that the stork brings only four-legged babies to my house.
Before we left, she showed me how to wear a sari properly. As she wound the fabric around my hips I realized I would join the Latina actress when Primila told her story about people who had answered the ad. I had thought of myself as outrageously forward, but PennySaver sellers weren’t hung up about inviting strangers into their homes. So I didn’t have to be so nervous — I could drop the Leave It to Beaver voice and focus on the secret clues each person was trying to convey to me.
That night I wrote down: (1) Each day is a gift, and, (2) Look for the rainbow. Gift. Rainbow. Primila was a hellcat, breaking down doors and threatening officials with eternal damnation. She had adopted four kids and had three four-legged grandchildren. I crossed out clues one and two. These were obviously decoy messages. Of course the truth wouldn’t be sweetly concealed in a motto, because I wasn’t Hansel or Gretel. My inquiry was open-ended, but it wasn’t pretend, I wasn’t in a fairytale or a fable. I shut my eyes and absorbed the silent whoomp that always accompanies this revelation. It’s the sound of the real world, gigantic and impossible, replacing the smaller version of reality that I wear like a bonnet, clutched tightly under my chin. It would require constant vigilance to not replace each person with my own fictional version of them.
PAULINE & RAYMOND
—
LARGE SUITCASE
$20
—
GLENDALE
—
Pauline had been eager on the phone; she’d begun telling me about her life even before I asked the question or offered the fifty dollars. She lived in a pretty part of Glendale, my ex-boyfriend’s neighborhood. As I exited at the familiar exit, I thought what if it was the same street, the same house, what if it was him selling the suitcase, what if the suitcase was mine, something I’d forgotten, and what if I bought it and inside there was myself as a child or my dad as a child, or my child as a child, the one I hadn’t found time to have yet? But my ex-boyfriend’s name wasn’t Pauline, so we drove right past his street and parked on one a few blocks away. The house was big and grand, again. Pauline was in her seventies, and she immediately began showing me pictures and telling me stories about her amateur singing group, the Mellow Tones.
Pauline: We sang “Two Sleepy People,” “Hello Dolly”…
Miranda: What’s this photo where you’re holding the gun?
Pauline: Oh, that’s me — oh, yeah. Well, in other words, you could call me a ham. That’s my Cohan medley — I forgot the name of what I sang. “Hello My Honey,” I guess. I can still sing but I had an operation on my ear because of a little growth and it turned out to be two cancer cells. So they had to dig harder. And somewhere along the line, I lost some of my hearing and so it comes out foggy for me. I don’t know what I sound like. So I dropped out of the singing groups I was in.
Miranda: So it’s your suitcase that you’re selling through the PennySaver?
Pauline: The suitcase? Oh, yes, I have it in the hallway. Do you want to see it?
Miranda: Maybe we should see it.
Pauline: Of course, that’s what you came for.
I nodded but shrugged, to suggest that my reasons for coming were ever-evolving and expanding.
Miranda: Why are you selling it?
Pauline: Well, when my daughter and grandson moved in, a lot of things had to be sold. She said, “Where are you going to make room for my stuff?” So I had to get rid of a lot of my books and condense everything. I’ve sold sheets — bedsheets — and mattresses. I’ve sold paintings. What else did I sell? The bed.
Miranda: How do you place the ads? Do you have a computer?
Pauline: I call it in. I write up an ad — there’s a special way of doing it, you get only so many words. The PennySaver will advertise your item for free if it’s under a hundred dollars. So that’s a big boost. But to sell one item at a time, it takes forever.
Miranda: And so when did your daughter and grandson move in?
Pauline: About two or three years already. Or four?
Raymond: Seven years.
This was Pauline’s grandson — he had appeared out of nowhere. He was in his mid-thirties and wore a hearing aid. A very skinny dog wearing a striped rugby shirt followed him into the room.
Pauline: Seven years? You’re joking. Oh, no. Where has the time gone?
Raymond: I started working a year later.
Miranda: Where do you work?
Raymond: I’m a driver for a company. I deliver mannequins.
Miranda: You deliver mannequins?
Pauline: Naked mannequins.
Miranda: Naked ones.
Raymond: We make them, we sell them, and we rent them. And repair them.
Pauline: He’s met a few people, too, haven’t you?
Raymond: I’ve met a lot of people.
Pauline: Celebrities.
Raymond: Not very many.
Pauline: You could name a few.
Raymond: I’ve met a few. Cameron Diaz — I met her, and Mark Jenkins.
Miranda: Neat. Do you have any pictures of you with mannequins?
Raymond: I have a mannequin upstairs.
Miranda: Okay, maybe we’ll go up there.
Raymond: I can bring it down.
Miranda: We can go up there. I don’t want you to have to bring it down.
As we climbed the stairs, I began to realize the grandeur of the house was an illusion. These were the poor relations of the former owner. The mother and grandson both kept food and small refrigerators in their rooms, living in them like t
iny studio apartments with a shared kitchen and bathroom. Before we looked at the mannequin, Raymond showed me a picture of himself with the actress Elizabeth Hendrickson from All My Children.
Raymond: I met her at Disneyland. We had to get in line and we had to wait two hours.
Miranda: What is she like? What do you like about her?
Raymond: She’s friendly. And she’s beautiful, she’s pretty.
Then he showed me the mannequin. It looked just like Elizabeth Hendrickson.
Miranda: So this — I mean, it kind of looks like her. Why does it look so much like her?
Raymond: I took this from this picture here.
Miranda: So did you make her face?
Raymond: My boss.
Miranda: Oh, your boss.
Raymond: Yeah, he made her.
Miranda: From the picture. And did he do that just for you?
Raymond: Yeah.
Miranda: Oh, that’s nice.
Raymond: He put it in the mold.
Miranda: Is that expensive? I mean, did you have to buy that?
Raymond: If a regular person would buy it, it would probably be about fifteen hundred dollars. He gave me a discount.