Land of Stars - Memoir (and)

YVONNE CANNON

Land of Stars

I’m ten. After the divorce, Daddy flees to Mexico, my mother

& I cram into my grandma’s Woodmere apartment, then

we move to East 84th. The Third Avenue El rumbles through

my dreams & I race past the Nazi Bund headquarters,

afraid they’ll snatch me.

I’m twelve. It’s the third anniversary of Pearl Harbor

& we move cross-country. Here is the big sky, the lighted city

spread out below Mulholland Drive. I can’t get over

handprints of the stars pressed into the sidewalk

of Grauman’s, the white-blooming yucca, those odd palms.

I want to be a radical L.A. girl, writing, painting, a life in art.

I’m thirteen, visitor from Hollywood, rope-soled espadrilles

laced at the ankle, peasant blouse slipped off one shoulder,

long hair blowing. I saunter down Fifth Avenue, ignore wolf

whistles, catch the one o’clock from Penn Station to Woodmere,

to my best friend, old neighborhood, former house.

Joanie’s away at tennis camp. Her mother sits at the hot mangle,

ironing sheets. I tell her I live next door to the stucco castle

of a famous film composer & I play touch football

on Doheny Drive with his son, who goes to private school

with Elizabeth Taylor. I love him. He loves Elizabeth.

I don’t say that Mother & I rent a villa’s musty servants’ quarters,

that I’ve not yet seen a movie star, that Woodmere looks smaller.

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