Maria Elena's Story. A short story by Maria Elena

I became Maria Elena on November 18, l958, although I didn't realize it at the time. My sons, Bobby and Michael, and I, were seven hours away from New York, having descended upon Mexico City, via Braniff. We paused to survey the beginning of our new life. The airport was far more splendid than Idlewild and much more crowded. We held hands firmly, not because I expected the kids to wander off but for solidarity. We were alone among thousands of people here, and in a strange country, but we were together. We smiled at each other and squeezed hands. Although we had just flown over the miles and miles of Mexico City, down here we couldn't see anything of it through the big high windows of the airport but the brilliant blue sky, cloudless.

Each of us had one enormous new grey suitcase and the boys each had a tall, round, flashy Mexican hamper, which had been their toyboxes in New York. Interestingly, these two pink and green canastas were coming back to their land of birth, while we three Gringos, of another less colorful culture, were starting a new life here. Aduana raised their eyebrows silently at all those decadent toys, but they let us through. Anyone could see that they were not new but worn and well-loved, the essentials of life for two little boys, two and four years old. We had a little more trouble with our forty two cans of Chicken of the Sea, which were stashed here, there, everywhere, but luckily, not in the toy baskets. The five Customs Officers each asked for a can: Chicken of the Sea Tuna was almost unknown in Mexico then, but trust Aduana to know a good thing.

It took three porters to get us out and find us a taxi big enough for our trappings. We marveled at Mexico City, which in 1958 had very little traffic compared to New York. It was beautiful, because of its glorietas, a sort of out of control Paris.The boys were counting balloon vendors, formerly only enjoyed in Central Park, but here seen on many street corners. There were enormous trees everywhere, many parks, and the whole city seemed happy, full of energy and disorganization. Everything felt carefree and different but it might have been because we were suddenly at eight thousand feet of springtime, just seven hours away from the November streets of New York.

The next day when I took the boys to the park, we had great trouble crossing the splendid boulevards. The Avenida Reforma was so wide that even with a child flying from each hand, we couldn't make the light changes. There was little traffic in those days but it went at full speed. It was said that the taxis drove like burros, either at a frantic charge or at a sudden full standstill. We bought the cadillac of strollers at El Palacio de Hierro, then I could gallop around the Zona Rosa, where our hotel was, like a burro, with both boys tucked into the magnificent green stroller. A few years later, when Federico was born, I went back and got another, a yellow one, which I was happy to have on the hilly streets of Cuernavaca.

In that distant November, Mexico City was already resplendent with pointsettias, planted proudly in all the parks, in front of all the hotels, restaurants and department stores, and everywhere that there was a scrap of dirt. The glorious Christmas lights of the city were not up as yet, but we would see them next year, and we didn't even know about them yet, anyway.

Santa Claus and Christmas trees would not come to Mexico until the Sixties. Christmas Eve, la Noche Buena, was a time for church and family feasts and, if you were good, presents were brought by Los Santos Reyes on January sixth, along with the inevitable pair of new shoes. Between the fifteenth and the the twentyfourth of December, there were Posadas and Peregrinaciones and parades, Santa Claus was not missed. When Santa Claus and Christmas trees did show up, they were so popular that December got to be pretty expensive. The well-off splurged on presents from both Santa and the Three Kings. I didn't. Bobby and Michael were used to Santa Claus, and that's who came to our house. After all, we had prudently brought our Christmas stockings to Mexico with us, he knew where we were.

Mexico City was very unlike New York. Cocks crowed and dogs barked all night, Mariachi bands prowled the streets below us, tempting clients with music. Most houses had chickens and doves on their rooftops, even the hotels had their livestock in the sky, and we could see the washerwomen filching eggs before they started on the hotel's laundry in the early mornings. We had registered in the Hotel Meurice, a small elegant hotel with great food, owned by the uncle of a friend of my stepfather's, a Swiss, and we had a marvelous view of the rooftops of the Zona Rosa and the spattered top of Ben Franklin's head.

The first morning we were there, we looked over to the Hilton Hotel, and couldn't believe our eyes when we saw a real chimpanzee swinging from the penthouse. Fearless as Tarzan, he swooped over and under the two storeys of the penthouse like an acrobat, grabbing the tubing supports of the awnings at the very last minute, casually. We wondered who it was who lived in a two-storey penthouse, planted extravagantly with every kind of tropical flowers and large trees, with a chimp.

We took the blue Turismo, the original stretch limo, across the impressive mountains at ten thousand feet, to Cuernavaca and changed our lives, completely. Everything was happening in slow motion. Did the boys feel it or was it just me? Crossing the rolling fields and forests of the Tres Marias mountains, I started to pay attention to the familiarity of everything. I was not surprised as we passed through a little town that straddled the highway selling lunch from their dozens of homemade stands, I knew that I had expected it. I knew well the curves we were taking down into the valley although the biggest one was unknown to me. The driver announced that it was called "La Pera" because it was pear-shaped and it had been built only a few years ago when this new highway had opened.

The beautiful valley of Cuernavaca opened before us, not yet obscured by haze and the carbon stink of traffic. There were very few cars and many burros for the boys to count, the first they had ever seen. The sun shone gloriously on a clean blue afternoon. We could smell the rosefields of Temixco and the tuberoses growing in Chiconchuac, although we had not yet heard the names of the towns, and I had no idea what a tuberose was. I'm sure that the ancient Aztecs, Cortez, Maximillian, and everyone else who descended upon Cuernavaca for a weekend felt the same, that this was indeed the City of Eternal Springtime, if not Heaven itself.

Surely I was in familiar environs, I had been here before, lived a life here before. Somewhere in this valley was my grave, abandoned but fragrant with wet dust and flowers. In the far distance I recognized the Palacio de Cortez, which was sticking its ancient towers up above the leaves of the giant laureles in the Zocalo. I had no idea what it was but I remembered the birds that had always flown by it to nest in the trees at night, and there they were, flying by in the dusk! I was so excited. Bobby and Michael loved all the goats, cows, chickens, heretofore only seen in picture books, and especially the iguanas held up on strings by the old women by the roadside. Neither I nor the boys knew yet that they were not being sold as pets. We were all very pleased with everything, and with ourselves, for getting here. We breathed in the scents: flowers, hot tortillas, wet pavements, burros, incense......garbage. We were home.

Our destination was a charming run-down bungalow, covered with the original color of Bougainvillea, dark red, in what had been the Borda Gardens, Maximillian and Carlota's old summer hangout. Half of the Borda Gardens had been appropriated by the Governor a decade ago. He had sold the land rights, not the land, to his golf pal and best friend, Henry Fink, who had made a splendid motel cum night club and aptly named it "Shangri La". The governor conned the city to put a winding paved road, walled on both sides, around it, thus separating Henry's and Maximillian's enterprises forever. When we arrived, Henry's bungalows and buildings had deteriorated to such an extent that they blended in quite tastefully with the older ruins although there was a four hundred year difference in their provenance.

The Shangri La was quite a mess, in a charming way. The olympic-sized swimming pool that Henry had put in with such pride years ago had rotting mangos and leaves floating sluggishly in the dark emerald water. Water bugs skittered to and fro. The boys thought it very yucky, never dreaming that in a matter of days they would be having a great time, up to their necks in mangos and green sludge. They helped Guillermo, the ancient gardener, net the leaves and detritus from the half-filled pool, hurling mangos on the evergrowing pile, ultimately helping him and the plumber muck out the drained pool. When it was scrubbed down and filled with sparkling water, it was quite a pool for just two little boys and me.

To the left of the pool was Henry's night club, which he showed us with pride. The golden bar, roccocco, outrageous, and forty feet long, was dusty, its gold brocade in tatters under a filligree of spider webs. It was the first thing you saw upon entering and you just had to stand there a while, looking. The rattan and leather chairs and tables vied with the wooden dance floor for the most splinters and termites. Nevertheless, this disreputable and disgraceful night club was still in business. Every Saturday afternoon, Maria crossed the yard with her broom and gave everything a vigorous sweeping and general upheaval, ending with taking the hose to everything, even the bar. Rather surprisingly, there was still a resident grand piano, but every Saturday evening the local orchestra trudged up the hill from the Zocalo, their precious instruments flashing in the setting sun. The piano player carried the music.

Pink spotlights bathed everything, inside and out, with warm illusion, making the bar once more resplendent, its opulent not too distant past more believable. Pink dust motes danced in the air, a lingering memory of Maria's
collaboration,and made the whole room softly less tacky than in the good old days. Former glory sucks: you can usually do something with what you have left.

Leaves from the great mango trees, planted long before the uneasy days of Maxilillian, sheltered the terrace and pool, rustling in a friendly way, their pink and orange fruit bobbled wetly, shining in the water like small balloons, festive. Tomorrow, Guillermo would be fishing them out, helped by two little Gringo boys, later hosed off carefully by Maria. Nobody had told Henry never to build a pool under a mango tree, too bad.

At ten o'clock Saturday night everything was ready. The Coca Cola truck had come, the ice was hauled on a dolly from the hotel across the street, all the tables and chairs were lined up in their places, the bottles had all been released from lock and key and lined the bar. The waiters showed up and Maria put on a clean apron, just in case. Only men were waiters in nightclubs, Maria, believe it or not, was the bouncer, or the equivalent. She could squash a row or any disturbance in nothing flat, by words alone, and the whole town knew she was lurking in the darker shadows of the bar, Henry's sentinel. The first contingent to show up were the politicos in their illegal Cadillacs. When the Americans arrived in their legal Cadillacs, Guillermo put on his car park hat and Henry walked in, ready. The evening had begun.

Henry sang songs, old and new, "Will Ya Love Me In Oaxaca As Ya Did In Cuernavaca?", and tablehopped, happy , doing his thing. By this time, Henry was living on his Saturday nights, precarious at best, and on his Social Security, which was bigtime. I'm sure he was happy to get my added $50 monthly rental for our two room bungalow with a big terrace. He also lived on royalties from a song he wrote way back in 1912," You Made Me What I Am Today, I Hope You're Satisfied", immensely popular ever since, and even today sung incessantly by barber shop quartets and in ginmills everywhere. Frank Sinatra had recorded it in the late fifties and Henry had been thrilled to be invited to Las Vegas to sing it with him, thereby giving a needed boost to the royalties.

Except for his Saturday nights, Henry was seldom pally with the American set. First, he was Jewish, probably the only one in town except for a family of goldsmiths down on Calle Guerrerro. Second, he had been in show business, the owner of the infamous Club Samoa on West Fiftysecond Street in New York, whose suspect rep was not unknown in Cuernavaca, three thousand miles away. Henry's friendship with the Governor of Morelos got him into the prestigeous Club de Golf where he spent every day except Saturday, but when the Governor left office, Henry lost the clout that offset his social offenses. Henry was lonely but proud. He had good friends in Mexico City, former Mayor of New York Bill O'Dwyer, Joe and Annie White, from Sears, his lawyer Andy Leone, all of whom came down to Cuernavaca nearly every Saturday night, bringing friends. All the guys were Grand Street Boys, as my husband had been, so I had new friends.

Henry and my father had known each other for over forty years, Henry having been on the same bill with Daddy many times in his matinee idol singer days. They had never been what you could call friends, although they had the same interests, writing songs and collecting showgirls. However, it was not my father but Sophie Tucker, who had been singing his song in her act forever, who told me to look up Henry Fink in Cuernavaca. Sophie had been sending Henry Care Packages ever since he went to Mexico, books, records,old Variety's, white on white shirts, stickum for his hairpiece, always a great friend. She wrote me a letter of introduction to Henry, and I started writing him from New York: I had never heard of Cuernavaca and wanted to know why Sophie said it was heaven on earth.

Now, here we were, Bobby, Michael and I, because Henry had written back that it was indeed heaven, he guaranteed it personally. Unparalleled climate and unbelievable beauty, good schools,the standard of living , including the poor and the new middle class, higher than anywhere else in the country. He said that all the rich of Mexico City and a good smattering of Texas had impressive weekend homes in Cuernavaca, which kept the local economy high and healthy. Most everyone in town worked for them, or sold them something, or built something for them. Everyone else went to their parties. This was in l958, when the population was forty thousand people, it is now on its way to the two million mark. A great many are weekenders with homes there, but when they go back Sunday night, it hardly seems to make a dent. Everyone still walks on the same three meter sidewalks, drives on the same narrow tortured earthquake-born streets that were the Aztecs' footpaths before them, every home now with at least two cars. Impossible to widen anything, on each side are barrancas, and Obras Publicas can't do anything about that.The town could only spread out widely, swallowing little puebitos in a gulp, until the valley was nearly filled.

My first year in Cuernavaca, I was consumed with guilt. My husband was dead, my boys were in the precarious position of being brought up by a possibly starving artist in a strange country Yet every morning I opened my eyes to cobalt skies framed by crimson Bougainvillea, flowery breezes, and nosey hummingbirds eyeing me through the windowscreen, really and truly paradise. I was so happy, I couldn't stand it. So were Bobby and Michael. It was terrible.

Here we were, for better or for worse, a recent widow and two small boys, in a strange country without a peso, much less a dollar, to our names. I not only felt that I could make a good creative life and living for them, but I felt that we belonged here. I was happy, happier than I had ever been in my life, and so were the boys. I was convinced that we had all come home.

Bobby and Michael would soon abandon their happy day jobs as Guillermo's undergardeners for their first school, the Instituto Suizo-Americano. They were already entranced by the schoolbus/stationwagon, brightly painted red, white and blue, a Swiss flag, with big school letters identifying it to all. They had already learned Spanish, and I was plodding in their wake. As I had toiled quite happily through five years of Latin at Friends Academy, I understood most of the Spanish words but had a little trouble with the tenses, and my accent was atrocious. Also, like the children, I called everyone "tu" for years, not something adults do.

All I had to do was make a living, and one day, as we started downtown with the green stroller, Trini and Ray from la Galeria Trini came out to talk to us. They told me my boys were beautiful and offered each a little white dove for Christmas. When they found out I was an artist [I had been admiring their window, the first Mexican artists' work that I had ever seen except for Diego Rivera's], they asked me to bring some work in to look at and hopefully sell. I stayed up most of the night trying to figure out what I could paint that was Mexican, and I ended up bringing them some abstract fish. They were pleased with them and even more pleased that they sold them within the week. I was a lot more pleased than they were. I had no idea that Cuernavaca sported a world class gallery right across the street from our bungalow.

After my paintings started selling well, we rented a little house about three blocks up on the same street, la Avenida Morelos. We walked up from the Shangri-La, carrying things, Guillermo trudging behind us with a wheelbarrow of suitcases, canastas, plants, and two rabbits who had joined us, luckily two ladies. The house was built around a patio and the rabbits went into cages made by Guillermo when they found the flowers, mostly tasty geraniums. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a mirador with a view of all downtown and the roof of the cathedral complex. A beautiful long livingroom filled with books and thousands of Readers Digests for the renters, and a seriously Colonial diningroom. There were servants quarters for Toña our new maid, all of fifteen years old.

Henry wouldn't let me have Maria until he was finished with his Noches Sabados: either the Shangri La would collapse on all its termites, or Henry would die, being in his late seventies, whatever happened first. I knew I would get Maria eventually because by passing her on to me he could avoid paying her off for twenty years' work as his employee, Mexican law. I didn't think Henry's finances were up to paying her for three months salary for every year she had worked for him, plus I forget how much for vacation time, also for each year, all, most unfortunately required in a lump sum by the government.

When Henry visited us in our new digs, we would sing the old songs of Henry's time, in harmony for hours at a time, acapella, but loud. Henry marveled that I knew the words and music to all the songs of the Gay Nineties, and I told him that it wasn't my Vaudeville Headliner father who had taught them to me but my Ivy League one. I taught him Frank's favorite:

"In der vintertime
In der valley green
Ven der vind blows upon
Der vinderpane,
All der vimminvolk
In der Vauderville
Ride velocipedes upon
Der vestibule.
Ach, vimmin, ach men!
Ach vimmin, ach men!"

Nobody had ever heard of that but Frank, not even my mother. Or Henry. Bobby and Michael were quite embarrassed about our performances, they were growing up and developing their critical faculties, practicing on me. They were at a loss when The Evangelist sisters who had a private school next door would vigorously applaud our efforts over the high wall. From listening to my mother, who had served her apprenticeship in Vaudeville and was great at it, I had learned harmony when I was a child. She could also whistle professionally like Al Jolson, which I could never do no matter how I tried. Mother said not to worry, whistling was very unladylike anyway. I have often wished that Mother could have met Henry but he died one Christmas Eve a few years before she came to Cuernavaca. Two hambone extroverts with beautiful voices, full of Vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley stories, they would have had lovely times together. Henry Fink was absolutely the best friend I ever had in my life and I guess I learned from writing this book, that my mother was the other.

Henry had alway considered children distasteful objects, noisy and demanding. Sophie Tucker said that he had four or five children of his own, long grown now , and that he was hard put to remember the names of any of them. He started out as Señor "Feeenk", but after a while he fell in love with Bobby and Michael and became Uncle Henry.

One Saturday night after we had moved to the new house, quite late because Henry's friends from Mexico City were helping him close up, a happy effort that could take hours, two policemen showed up looking for me. They had stopped their patrol car because they had spotted two little boys in matching pajamas sitting comfortably on the doorstep, watching the traffic go by. They were thrilled when the police car stopped. "We're waiting for my Mom", said Michael, the less shy. The policemen looked at each other. These kids looked like Gringos but they spoke Spanish. The door was open and it was after one o'clock at night .They all trooped in to wake up Toña, but it proved impossible. "We told you so", the kids said. "We tried too." So they scooped the kids up, locked the door and took them for a nice ride in the police car down the few blocks to the Shangri La, where the kids said I was.

I almost died when Bobby and Michael ran up to me happily in their sailboat PJ's, thrilled with their adventure. The police followed, frowning judiciously at this errant Gringa mother, in a bar with Don Enrique, the amigo of that damned Gobernador who stole half the Jardin Borda. Luckily the latestayers included enough hotshots, Mexican and Gringo, politicos or otherwise famosos, to pacify the policemen's paternal outrage and they escorted us home in style. The kids hoping that someone would see them in the patrol car with the flashing lights, I prayed otherwise, that nobody would. All five of us trooped into Toña's room again but we never succeeded in awakening her. The next day, she was history and went back to bringing up her brothers and sisters. Four years later I bought a house right next door to her father-in-law's, where she and her new husband still lived, so I'm glad I was nice about it. A year later, we both had babies the same month, in my case, Federico, on the 30th of March. Also, these policemen remained our friends all during the time we spent in Cuernavaca and actually organized the police motorcade for Michael's funeral years later.

Before the Shangri La became defunct, and while we were still living there, since Henry was always on the golf course, I started helping out with renting the bungalows. Henry had a dim view of servants, thinking always that they were out to bilk him out of a peso or two, and for this reason he always did his own marketing, for himself and for his Noches Sabados, and even for the cleaning and gardening supplies. Naturally, it was unthinkable that Maria should be in charge of rentals. [At this point I must say that after I inherited Maria from Henry, she worked faithfully for me for nearly twenty years, going to the market and everywhere else, handling gardeners, albañiles, plumbers, and never in all that time misplaced a peso or anything else.]. So I became an illegal but also unpaid rental agent in my spare time. I had no trouble keeping track of the pesos, but I had a terrible time with the occupants. For instance, a man and wife in a nice car would show up and rent Bungalow 11 for two nights, pay his bill for a double in advance, cash only, no credit cards then, and nobody in Mexico took checks if they had any sense. They would drive away, returning immediately with a truck that had been sneakily parked on the corner by the Cine Morelos, following them. Four or five children would have appeared mysteriously in their car and the truck was piled high with mattresses, tables, pots and pans, a gas tank for cooking, and many chairs. Sitting on the chairs, in places of honor, were two sets of grandparents. A couple of little girl servants were perched on the mattresses. On chairs with lesser views were various children of the family, often holding a dog or a birdcage. All around them and on top of them were piled suitcases, bedding, towels, cartons of food and cases of Coca Cola. They would carefully find somewhere to park their vehicles that was not under a mango tree, put on their suits and go into the pool, leaving the little servants to cope with everything else. Guillermo would show up to help them with the mattresses, the cookstove that was usually under them, the gas tank and the cases of coke. He was a caballero. The first time this happened, I was at a loss. I called Henry off of the sixth hole. I was very upset, "They just laughed at me and showed me their receipt", I moaned. Henry just laughed at me too. When I moved, he stopped renting, it wasn't worth the hassle. Now, if Maria had taken over, she would have put a fast end to all that nonsense, she could have handled anything. Too bad.

I didn't realize yet that I was Maria Elena. When I found out that even painters , if they were foreign, couldn't sell paintings in Mexico, I started signing my paintings "Maria Elena", Mary Ellin in Spanish. I hoped that by modestly and cravenly staying out of sight while batting out paintings, it might make me semi-invisible, that by turning into Maria Elena it might somehow turn me into a Mexican painter. I had entered the country with my children legally, all of us under student visas, but the next year after half of Cuba entered with student visas, Mexico cancelled them all. I was now the original reverse "mojada",
and I stayed so for the next twenty two years, never leaving the country, and making a good sneaky living. Everybody knew of Maria Elena, but I never came out of the woodwork for years.

The only place a foreigner without working papers could sell art legally was Mexico City's Jardin del Arte,in Sullivan Park, and I was one of their 324 painters for years until I got into prestigious galleries who insisted on exclusivity - and paid the taxes so that sales were legal. I probably made more money there than anywhere else in my life and I hated to leave, my income went way down. Most Sundays I was out of there by ten o'clock in the morning,Federico under my arm, my forty paintings sold, on my way back to Cuernavaca. Some Sundays it rained, disaster. I remember calling up the United States Embassy early one Sunday morning, from Cuernavaca, hesitant about going all that way only to be turned back by rain. Was it raining?

They refused to tell me. At that time there were no TV or even radio weather reports, very few people had TV's and radios blared out nothing but Norteño music and Argentinian soap operas. I didn't feel I knew anyone In Mexico City well enough to call them up at seven o'clock on a Sunday morning to see if it was raining. However, I still feel that my Embassy, with whom I and my children were registered, might have done me the favor.

"Buenos dias, Embajada Americana..."
"Uh, yes, hello, my name is Maria Elena. I'd like to know if it's raining in Mexico City, please."
"Raining in Mexico City."
"Yes."
"Here?"
"Yes."
"Are you an American citizen?"
"Yes."
"Are you registered with us?"
"Yes, my whole family is." Getting miffed. "Why? All I want to know is if it's raining in Mexico City!"
"Why would you want that information?"
"I'm a painter in Sullivan Park, I live in Cuernavaca, and I want to know if it's raining because it is, it's not worth driving to Mexico City because there won't be any customers in the rain, and my paintings will get all wet, the frames will get ruined." I went on and on.
"Oh." He thought about this information. "Do you mean that you are selling your paintings there? It's against the law", he said sternly.
"It's not, it's tax-free, no cedula required, and open to foreigners. Please, is it raining?"
"I can't tell you that."
"WHY NOT? It isn't any government secret!"
"We at the Embassy do not give weather reports." Really, he said that.
"Please..."
"You are an American citizen?"
"Yes," I gave my name and address, like an idiot.
"I still can't tell you."
"Why, for heaven's sake?"
"There are no windows in this room." I thought he was kidding me, the old American Embassy was full of windows, was he in a basement somewhere in the bowels of the building?
He went on, "I've been here since ten o'clock last night," I should feel sorry for him.
"May I have your name, please?" He hung up. Ah, la diplomacia, la burocracia.

Years later,when I came out of my cueva and started to make TV appearances, one woman shows, and whatnots, people, including Gobernacion, thought I surely had my papers or I would not be doing such stupid things. After all, I had been around many years now, I was a tentative part of the art world and wanted to be out in the sunlight at last.. Although I had had my papers mouldering in Relaciones Exteriores for many years, I had a great lady lawyer and was eventually going to be legal, it was my old friend Gutierre Tibon who got me my papers. I had finally confided my "mojada" status to him, and he hustled around to surprise me with my very own FM-2 Book, and it said I was a National Treasure.. He too, had thought that I had my papers for many years. Of course, now, with all those beady eyed computers everywhere, there's no way I would have gotten away with my illegal ways for so long. I was now in possession not only of a lovely FM-2 Book, but also a cedula, which is like a Social Security Number, essential for any business, even for starving artisits. I was greatly relieved: I hadn't been in Sullivan Park for years, the only place I'd been safe. However, I had been semi-legal for a while, as my galleries paid my taxes.

I started Monday-Friday Happy Hours in my studio/gallery, I was living in Acapulco by now. My lifestyle changed, I went to parties to meet newcomers with nothing on their condo walls yet, and art-lover tourists. Over the years in Cuernavaca, my collectors had become my best friends but I had never been on the prowl for them. They found me by word of mouth, I never even gave out cards, just in case Gobernacion read the phone book. Here in Acapulco I could go looking, for clients now that I had a whole new ballgame, and I realized that I had better learn some social skills, fast. Formerly, I had been a Mom by day, a painter by night, I had never been in a situation where I could stay awake long enough to make friends, and a social life was out of the question. It never bothered me. Maybe the fact that my children were out in the world and were no longer there to keep me company shook me free of being a hermit. I came out of my cave.