Arts & Entertainment

Book Excerpt: Hollywood Is One Bad Mother

Journalist Nancy Rommelman reads from her new novel about Hollywood street kids Thursday at Skylight Books. Patch brings you this excerpt.

As a Los Angeles journalist, Nancy Rommelman spent a lot of time writing about the grittier side of Hollywood.  She's tackled groupies at an L.A.P.D. cop bar, people living in Sunset Boulevard's dicier digs and a crew of gardeners in the Hollywood Hills. Her work has appeared in the New York Times magazine, the L.A. Weekly, the Los Angeles Times and other publications.

Recently, Rommelman published her first novel, The Bad Mother.  Though she lives in Portland now, the author returned in her mind to Hollywood to write about street kids and the choices they have to make.

She's also physically back in town Thurday night to read from the book at 7:30 p.m. at Skylight Books.

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Here's an excerpt she picked just for Patch about 14-year-old Mary, who's just had a baby at County Hospital and has to get back to Hollywood.  Maybe she's riding along Sunset Boulevard through Echo Park:

"Mary didn’t want to name the baby; she wanted to wait for Dean to come, but when they released her the following evening there was no one to meet her, so she signed the papers with her last name, and picked the first name Angelyne and set out for the bus back to Hollywood.

"She had to stop to rest three times, carrying the baby and the bin of baby stuff the hospital gave her. Getting onto the bus she thought she was going to pass out. That’s when her milk came in, and it hurt so much she started to cry. Two Mexican women sitting across from her watched.

"'Bena qui,' one said to her. Mary didn’t know what that meant.

"The women moved to either side of her. One spoke soft Spanish to the baby and the other told Mary what to do; she must get in the shower when she got home and run the hot water on her teetas and push, and that will get out some of the milk. Also, when the baby is little like this, feed her when she wants, and later feed her every three hours. Mary nodded and used the tissues the women gave her and let the one who spoke English hold and pat her hand.

"Then the bus was slowing, the women were gathering their bags, and Mary felt like the ground was falling out from under her; she thought about picking up the baby and the tub of stuff--or just leaving the tub--and following the women off the bus. Maybe just for a few days, if they could just show her. The bus stopped, the women got off, and the one who had held her hand and nodded from the top step and said, 'God bless.' Then she was off the bus too and the bus was moving away.

"Mary took the bottom of the bay’s blanket and brought it to her mouth and cried into it. She cried into it until it was wet, and then Mary was crying out loud in the back of the empty bus, not thinking about the baby, only about how she wished one of the women, the one woman, would have taken her home."

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