The author reflects on the devastating wildfires in Pacific Palisades, recounting her mother's lifelong connections to the families she worked for as a housekeeper. The fires destroyed more than just homes; they burned through a community of women bound by shared experiences and unspoken bonds.
I woke up on a Wednesday morning to mami standing outside my bedroom door holding a burnt sheet of paper. 'This was in the garden by the tomatoes,' she explained, still in her bathrobe. I skeptically looked the paper over. An announcement of devastation from flames burning 10 miles away, carried by violent winds to our tiny Silver Lake yard. The previous day, mami announced that the family she had worked with for 36 years had evacuated their Pacific Palisades home.
'La señora said she only grabbed important documents and left,' she told me. If I am being honest, I have to say that at that point Tuesday, I assumed the fires would be extinguished before they reached their home. The beautiful Palisades home my mother cared for most of her life had always been untouchable in my mind's eye. Mami came to Los Angeles in 1982 as a refugee of the Salvadoran civil war; that same year, she began working as a live-in housekeeper on Palmera Avenue in Pacific Palisades. Mami loved Mrs. Connie and her children. She worked with the family throughout her pregnancy with me, and when I was born, she named me after the family's daughter. I remember their home and the churchlike windows facing their lush backyard. It wasn't a large home; it felt familiar, like the type families on television live in. Mrs. Connie couldn't keep mami employed full time, so she sought other houses to fill her week. This is how mami came to work with Mrs. Cris on Toyopa Drive, the home that became my family's second home. When her family went on trips, we would house-sit and spend days with their beautiful golden retriever — my sisters and I swam in the pool with Cooper until mami dragged us out. On regular days, when mami worked but one of us was sick or on vacation, and there was no one to baby-sit, she took us to work and ordered us to stay in the den and out of the way. But how could a curious little girl do that in a big house full of treasures? Mrs. Cris had figurines, a grandfather clock and gadgets we had never seen. Once, Mrs. Cris asked mami if she could take me out. That was my first trip to a real bookstore and the first time I owned a new book straight off a shelf. It was a luxury I never dreamed of. Mami was simultaneously working a couple of days at another home, with Mrs. J. on Chautauqua Boulevard, the family she worked with the longest and eventually full time. If I close my eyes, I can map their home as it stood in my childhood — the daughters' bedrooms I would hang out in and watch MTV when mami let me accompany her to work; the laundry room where she ironed the señor's shirts; the pictures of their daughters when they were bright-faced little girls, the tiny garden house where my sisters and I pretended to be Snow White; their home theater that felt like a museum of cinema. Each family is part of the tapestry of my own family's memories. When Papi died, Mrs. J. and the señor came to his wake. They sat in the pew surrounded by my huge Salvadoran family, and when I glanced at them while giving my father's eulogy, I saw their eyes wet with tears. Two years ago, mami retired but we kept in close touch. They often expressed how proud they were of my writing career. When mami was diagnosed with breast cancer in May, Mrs. J. called and continued checking in. I don't know a life without them. On Wednesday, Jan. 8, I woke up to the Palisades being consumed by ravenous wildfires. The bus route mami took for nearly 40 years was in flames. I thought of all the ladies, the housekeepers and the nannies mami had befriended during the two-hour bus ride each way. A woman at the bus stop sold tamales and champurrado to them as they left for work. It was an unspoken sisterhood traveling daily from east to west. In my twenties I became one of them, too — a nanny in Palisades, a parking lot cashier in Santa Monica and Westwood, a sales associate at Papyrus. Through Instagram, I connected with Ana, also a Salvadoran woman who arrived in Los Angeles in 1982. Suppressing sobs, she told me about the family she worked with, her love for them and the pride she took in caring for their beautiful home on Bienveneda Place. 'Each new thing I remember that was burnt is a new wave of grief,' she said. The family has teenage children and all of their friends lost homes. She worries about the trauma. We reminisced over the bus stops, the women walking to their respective houses, the Ralphs and Gelson's where we all grabbed lunch, the church and the park. Ana only worked one day a week, but she laments not having asked the other housekeepers for phone numbers. 'How will we all connect now?' she wondered. At home on that Wednesday, I was hopeful that Mrs. J.'s house made it. I reached out to one of her daughters and told her mami and I were praying. Then, as we watched the news, I saw a reporter standing on Chautauqua; everything behind him was smoke and ashes. Mami's eyes reddened and filled with tears
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