{"id":82888,"date":"2020-10-01T05:05:22","date_gmt":"2020-10-01T05:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/portrait\/jennifer\/"},"modified":"2020-10-01T05:05:22","modified_gmt":"2020-10-01T05:05:22","slug":"jennifer","status":"publish","type":"portrait","link":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/es\/portrait\/jennifer\/","title":{"rendered":"Jennifer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Lopez is a 66-year-old woman who immigrated to the United States in 1979 when she was 20 years old. As a single mom in the United States, Jennifer worked extremely hard to support her and her daughter. She worked as a housekeeper, retail store employee, and a babysitter in America.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Where is your hometown?<\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019m from El Salvador. I don\u2019t remember that much about El Salvador because I was young when I came [to the U.S.], but it\u2019s really nice. [One of my favorite memories there would be when] my mom put me and my siblings to sleep around 7 o’clock. But when my mom was asleep, we\u2019d get out of the bed and go outside and play every night. I have two sisters and one brother. When I go visit my mom, we go to the rivers and the swimming pools, but we never go to the beach. They say El Salvador\u2019s beaches are nice but I don\u2019t like to go.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was 25 years old when I came to America in 1979. I came here by myself. My siblings are still in El Salvador. I miss them. <\/span>I call them, I write to them, I video call them…but it\u2019s not the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do you live or work in Koreatown?<\/b><\/p>\n

I worked in Hollywood as a housekeeper when I came here. I worked in John Smith*\u2019s house. I took care of the mom and cleaned the house. Then, I worked in Agoura Hills. It\u2019s near Calabasas. I lived and worked in the house every day and I took care of the baby. The baby\u2019s name is Jesse. Right now, he\u2019s 29 years old. He was 18 months old when I started taking care of him. I left him when he was 6 and a half years old.<\/span><\/p>\n

Afterwards, I started working with a Korean lady at Wilshire\/Vermont at a clothing store. I was 35 or 36. I cleaned, organized clothing, and tried to sell things. There were three of us: Milly, Molly, and Mac.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We were at home when the LA 1992 Riots started. When we came back to the store the next day, there was <\/span>nothing<\/span><\/i> there. Only the hangers. They threw the register through the glass window. There was nothing left. Not even one pin. My boss fainted when she got there. When she woke up, she kept crying and crying and crying.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After all that, she got a loan from somebody and reopened the store. Her baby was five to six months old when I started working with her. I worked with her for 25 years. My daughter and her daughter would always go to Las Vegas, go to the sauna…she\u2019d always take me places with her because it was always my daughter and I.<\/span><\/p>\n

As of now, we don\u2019t talk anymore but I know she’s downtown. I don\u2019t want to bring back wrong memories. I don\u2019t think she did the right thing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One day, a man came inside the store and said, \u201cYou can\u2019t sell anything. This is my store.\u201d I said, \u201cWhat?\u201d \u201cThis is my store,\u201d the man said. So I was scared and I called my boss, confused. \u201cWhat happened? You sold the store? Why didn\u2019t you tell us? We were trying to sell clothes but this man told us not to.\u201d \u201cWhat guy?\u201d my boss said. \u201cI don\u2019t know. He\u2019s right here.\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m coming right now. I\u2019m in the parking lot,\u201d she said. But she already knew she sold the store.<\/span><\/p>\n

I felt so much pain in my heart. I told my boss, \u201c[I spent] so many years working for you. So many. And you don’t trust us to tell us that you sold the store yesterday?\u201d We worked everyday, Sunday to Sunday. I never left her. I never had time for myself, except on the holidays when they closed the store.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other girls were telling me not to cry because I was already sick. I was 38 or 39 when I got my surgery and it still affected me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I had no other place to go. I was jobless. I started crying. I was old and I couldn\u2019t find a job.<\/span> I was trying to keep my job. It was really bad. My daughter was asking me, \u201cMommy, what happened?\u201d because I was crying really bad. I told her what happened. My daughter said, \u201cMommy, don’t worry about it. I got you, I’m behind you, mommy.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She only gave me $400 for my last check. I couldn\u2019t sustain myself with that. I paid my rent, I paid my bills, I paid for my daughter, I paid for everything. I asked her, \u201cThat\u2019s it? What am I going to do with $400? I have no job, nowhere to go.\u201d And she said, \u201cThat\u2019s all I have.\u201d But she had just sold the store.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was 55 when I left the store. It\u2019s been 8 years since I left the store and I never called her back. But it\u2019s OK. I asked God to bless her. If my daughter didn\u2019t have a job at that time, I don\u2019t know what would have happened. After that, I never worked again. I went to Downtown LA so many times and other stores but I never found another job.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What have you been during quarantine?<\/b><\/p>\n

Sometimes I take care of kids. But I\u2019m too stupid. I get too attached with my kids. I actually babysat a kid last month. I made him slippers, a scarf, a hat, a little face mask…But the lady\u2019s granddaughter was back in town and so they didn\u2019t need me anymore. So right now, I\u2019m on vacation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been taking care of so many kids. One of them is already in high school. I took care of Christian, Leo, Justin, Vicki, Aiden, Javier, Naomi\u2026When I wasn\u2019t employed, I used to babysit kids. When my daughter was young, I didn\u2019t want to work because I wanted to stay home with my daughter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I tell my aunts to tell her friends and her friends tell her friends…that\u2019s how I find kids to babysit. My daughter says, \u201cMaybe one day, they\u2019ll take care of you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Are you married?<\/b><\/p>\n

I married my husband in December when I was four months pregnant in 1987. He tried to beat me up, but the police took him. We separated from there.<\/span><\/p>\n

After I gave birth, he came to the house drunk. I opened the door a little bit because I was in the night gown and he pushed the door open and pushed me down. He wanted to see my daughter but she was in my aunt\u2019s house. When he found out that my daughter wasn\u2019t there, he slapped me and I ran away to my aunt\u2019s house.<\/span><\/p>\n

My aunt confronted him and said, \u201cNever hit Jennifer again. Never come again. If you want to see your daughter, come sober.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then he saw the baby and he told me, \u201cIf you don\u2019t take care of the baby, I\u2019m going to take her away. And I was scared. Really scared. But I was angry. I told him, \u201cI carried her for nine months in my stomach. She\u2019s my baby. The police are coming so go away.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He left and he came back later that night to say goodbye to the baby because he was going to leave.<\/span><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t see him again until my daughter was five years old.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Lopez is a 66-year-old woman who immigrated to the United States in 1979 when she was 20 years old. As a single mom in the United States, Jennifer worked …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-82888","portrait","type-portrait","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portrait\/82888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portrait"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/portrait"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portrait\/82888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}