Free My Hollywood by Mona Simpson Page A

oranges. They let her out to buy ingredients. I told her to get sunblock, too, and we put white zinc on the noses of the retardeds.
    “Lola! They are liking my cooking,” Cheska said. She was proud!
    The olds next door hung with their fingers in the fence and they got wet from the kicking. The ones who made the flyer did not want that I would teach the retardeds to swim. But if they cannot swim, they should anyway know to float.
    “If anything happened,” the younger one told me, the best relative, “the parents could sue. With life jackets, they’re safe.”
    “But what if they fall in with no jacket?” Tommy sleepwalked. Three or four times we found him at night rattling the fence.
    The best relative shrugged. The old lady controlled all.
    The first time I saw Ruth outside the fence, I knew she could save us. A heavy middle-age woman wearing a T-shirt, the hair chop short. She looks like a hundred mothers, back home in the Philippines. She came Sunday morning when we were alone there. The ones who made the flyer locked us in when they left for church; Ruth rattled the gate and said she had heard about us here. Now I know Ruth goes to that place every month. She knows about their flyer. That day, she told us she had jobs, good jobs, one weekends, in a mansion taking care two children and the other an old lady.
    “We can do that.” I told Cheska to bring the pineapple-and-coconut-milk tea drink. “We are looking for a place to live.” I went fast because church would be over soon.
    The tall glass would not fit underneath the fence so Lucy held it, and Ruth leaned close to drink through a straw. She closed her eyes. “I have room,” she said.
    I wanted to leave. I could climb the fence and the sisters too, but not Tatay. A sprinkle of water hit my back. I remembered then, the retardeds. We cannot leave! But if we put them in their rooms, I thought, with the windows open on the top, they will not suffocate. Less than one hour. We will give water.
    “One load in the wash, one in the dryer,” Lucy said.
    We will leave the wet, I said. I was hauling their huge suitcase when I saw the brown car slide in. It felt I am shot. I dragged my body, a bag of sand.
    The ones who made the flyer unlocked the gate.
    “So I have given a job to your friends,” Ruth said. “Weekends.”
    “And Ruth has been so nice.” I looked down. “She has a place in LA we can rent.”
    “But here you don’t have to pay,” the old lady said.
    “It is okay,” Lucy said. “We do not like to be charity case, like that.”
    The old lady made a sound that is her laugh. “Can pay us, then.”
    “Well, we better get going,” Ruth said. “The bus comes at noon.”
    I picked up their suitcase and nodded to Cheska. Poor Cheska, she was very confused. The tatay was saying, in Cebuano, his wet clothes over there, and Lucy said, “It is okay.” We were almost out the gate; Cheska turned and said, “Thank you, goodbye.”
    Then there was a noise. Like an animal, big, but human. It was Tommy running at me, I heard all at once he is shouting “No!” and the word stretched oval. That was his face, what he means. I cannot go and leave him. He spread over his side of the fence, still bellowing as we walk away. We follow Ruth and I heard a splash. Tommy ran and jumped in the pool, wetting the ones who made the flyer and the olds. On the other side of the fence, Sri Lankans stood clapping.
    Right away, the first night, Ruth asked, Baby or elderly?
    “Wherever I am needed,” I said.
    “You wait,” she told me. “We will find for you a full-time.”
    Lucy hugged Ruth. She told me she expected her to smell like sugar, like her mother. But Ruth, she really has no smell.

Claire
THE COUPLES’ DATE
    Paul and I hadn’t eaten together on a weeknight for more than a year.
    “Wanna go out?” he asked on the phone. Usually he left in the morning and came back after it was all done. But apparently Jeff Grant had asked if we were free.
    “I told