Click here to buy this book!
Lulu
Lulu.com
Category:
Mainstream
Publisher: J Russell Rose
Type: Fiction
Pages: 393
Copyright: July 1, 2006
Looking Down on the Moon is the story of a woman born to an affluent Houston family; of life in a home with material things, but devoid of love; and of her struggle to find life with purpose and meaning
The story of the life of Dolores, born to a wealthy Houston, TX, family in the early 1950's. A child of mixed, albeit unexplained ethnicity, she soon learns valuable life lessons - that wealth and privilege do not equate to happiness and the color of your skin can make you different.
A tragic accident which claims the life of her parents propels her forward away from Houston to the rugged mountains of Northern New Mexico, where she encounters a sub-class of people, immigrants who work the fields. Devoting her life to her cause, she is one person who makes a difference.
Excerpt
As she drove to town, thoughts of her past filling her mind, she tried to decide exactly when this rivalry between herself and Paul had begun. She could no longer clearly remember the times when they were playmates. Distant faint images sometimes entered her mind unbidden, but they were more like memories of a book or a movie than her own life. Those times and places, so far removed from the years of her adult life, were a part of someone else’s life, having nothing to do with Dolores de Los Rios, or even the life of Diedra Dyane Summers of Houston.
The sun, now high in the sky over the New Mexico desert, shone down on the mud-splattered Explorer at just the right angle, flooding the front seat area with a rainbow of color broken apart by the windshield prism. She saw a scene from another time; a bedroom, a child on the floor playing in the field of color created by the Houston sun shining through a stained glass window.
The child, blond hair but very dark eyes and dark skin sang a song to herself. The noises in the background; the yelling, the occasional crashing of some item, had nothing to do with her. She got up, closed her door and returned to her artist’s palette floor, resuming her play.
They both loved her, they swore. But, they never had any time for little Deedee. Her only friends were the maid, Lupe, and her brother, Paul. She didn’t really know any of the Anglo children (as Lupe called them) on her street.
She had begun trying to imitate the accent and broken English of her friend, Lupe. She listened intently when Lupe was talking in her native tongue to someone, usually a maid or housekeeper from a neighbor’s house. She loved the musical sound of the words, the rhythm of the speech pattern, the passion with which they spoke of events that had happened.
Of course, on the rare occasion when she and her brother had dinner with their parents, she was on her best behavior, speaking only to answer a question, and then in her best English.
As a child, she was never really quite sure what her father did at work. He had an office in a tall building in downtown Houston. She had gone there once, with Lupe, to drop off some very important envelope he had forgotten. A woman with stiff blond hair and too much red lipstick met them at the door, almost snatching the envelope from Lupe’s hand.
Noticing the little girl, she bent down and with a huge clown-faced grin, pinched a cheek saying, “Well, aren’t you just the cutest little brown-skin sweetie. Did your mama bring you to the big city?”
Lupe, almost snorted, in perfect English, as the child retreated behind her, “This brown-skin sweetie is Mr. Summers’ daughter.”
“Oh! I am so sorry,” the woman said in a quiet tone of confidentiality, looking around nervously, hoping no one had heard Lupe’s response or her comments. Then ushering them out the door, and following to the elevator, she almost whined, “I am deeply sorry. I didn’t know. I mean, I knew he had a daughter, I just never saw her before. You won’t tell anyone, will you? I could lose my job.”
Lupe just glared at the woman as they entered the elevator, leaving her standing there with her mouth open, words and pleas going unanswered, unheard, as the door closed. “Stupid Anglo!” Lupe muttered almost spitting out the words.
The taxicab, which was waiting as requested, sped away from the buildings and traffic and returned them to the quiet of River Oaks. Lupe did not say a word on the ride home. The child sensing something she could not quite understand placed her head against Lupe’s shoulder and slipped her small hand into the protective grasp of her best friend.
That day was the beginning of her “real-world” education. It was her first encounter with prejudice, though far from her last. She soon learned that brown skin and dark eyes, even with the blondest of hair, were a liability to you in Houston, in 1952. However, many other things were becoming clearer: Why her mother insisted that she not be allowed to play in the sun; why the medicinal smelling shampoo was used on her hair once every week; and why her mother said things to her like, “Deedee. I think that hospital must have given you to the wrong family, you sweet little thing.”
She wasn’t sure what was wrong with brown skin. Lupe’s skin was even darker than hers. She guessed she would find out eventually. But for the moment she was content, playing on her floor, as the sun would soon move away, taking the colors with it. Oh, how she wished she could somehow stop the sun’s movement, keeping the colors on her bedroom floor forever.
As she drove on toward the town, the colors having stayed only briefly on the seat of her car, annoyed with herself for the mental digression from the task at hand, acquiring food for her brother's visit, she forced herself to focus on the harsh realities of life in this arid region. Nothing grew without extensive irrigation and the backbreaking work of many peasants, the campesinos, mostly illegals. Wetbacks, a word she detested, they were called.
|
