Marianne, Who Is My Neighbor (Part 1)
Photo above: Marianne, her father, and mother, 1983 in front of the house that makes her my neighbor. (Used by permission.)
"Can you tell me the story of moving into the house that makes you my neighbor? You can go back as far as you want to to get to this house."Marianne, who is my neighbor, asks, “So I have to start with when we move here, right?” I nod and add, “If you wanna go back further, it’s okay.”“No, no,” she says. “It’s 1972.”Seated at my patio table on a fine Tuesday afternoon, this is how we begin. I confess that I hesitated to set up this interview. But the torrent of words I expected—based on driveway chats when I explained the project—is a hesitant trickle now that we're face to face. Is this because the story I ask for is nearly fifty years old?I say, “Of everyone I’ve talked to so far, you’ve lived on the block the longest.” Marianne nods but disagrees, sure that our neighbor Marlene and her husband held the record. But no, Marlene told me herself that she moved to our street 35 years ago.
A jumble of facts & memories
Accepting my calculations, Marianne continues. “Before, we live in Montebello because my father bought three units and before (I think she means before Riverside) is Los Angeles.” I ask, “When you say we, who were you with?”“My mother and father. And my sister was here in Los Angeles." A jumble of facts and memories spill out. "And my niece Priscilla was born here in Los Angeles—that is 1970. So, we are 1970 in Los Angeles because my father work for CBS TV station.”Curiosity piqued, I ask, “Oh, really. What did he do?” “Painting,” comes the one word reply. I repeat the word trying to elicit more specificity. "Painting...painting..." Marianne helps me out. “Painting the star’s room. Glen Campbell and the other stars, they over there.”“Wow. I didn’t know!” I say. With a small laugh she goes on. “Yeah. It’s a long long story. So, he was working over there for the CBS station.” Marianne doesn’t offer further details, so I ask, “Was he already a painter before he got that job?”Marianne nods, “Yes. Back in Hungary. And he is a contractor.” To confirm what I've heard I say, “So, he painted the inside and outside of house.” “Yeah,” she says. “The whole thing,” I say. “Yeah,” she says again.
Circle back
I circle back and ask, “How old were you in 1972 when you moved here?” Marianne, a little uncertain, answers, “Fifteen, sixteen. Maybe more a little bit...eighteen. Maybe a little bit more. So, I help my father with the houses, painting and cleaning the houses. It’s a long time (ago),” she says with a nervous laugh.“Wait,” I say, flummoxed with the timeline. “Let’s back up. When you lived in Los Angeles, did you go to high school there?” Marianne nods. “Yes. Fairfax High School.”My body stays on a dark green patio chair across from Marianne, but my imagination travels back in time. What was it like for Marianne—whose Hungarian accent is distinctive today—to be a high-schooler in LA in the 1970's?The exercise stirs the pain of my own high school memories. I reel my imagination back in and just ask, “What was that like—going to high school right after you moved from Hungary as a teenager?
Plot twist
“I was fifteen,” is all she says. Silence. More silence. I wait. The discomfort of what being fifteen meant to Marianne fills the void; the memory and the silence entwine. Then I remember one of our driveway chats."Texas!” I say into the long pause. “I think you told me you lived in Texas,” my voice trails off as I try to remember the places she mentioned living. Finally, Marianne says, “Three. I was three.”I breathe in, hold, and let go. Marianne doesn’t offer more, so I reflect what I think I’m hearing. “You were three when you moved to Texas. What year was that? Do you remember?”Without pause, she replies, “Nineteen-fifty-six.”Once again I repeat what I hear. “In 1956 you moved to Texas. And then do you remember when you moved to Los Angeles?”What Marianne says in reply to this question births an inkling of awareness in me: Her early life, and so all of her life, was shaped by the shadowy machinations of history and the heart. I listen to what she says and what she doesn't say, sketching a kind of mental map. This map includes the traceable travels of Marianne and her family as well as vague geography of her singular, unrepeatable Self.
1956
Marianne's family left Hungary in 1956 because of the Hungarian Revolution. My European history is wobbly, but according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev openly criticized Stalin.
Encouraged by the new freedom of debate and criticism, a rising tide of unrest and discontent in Hungary broke out into active fighting in October 1956. Rebels won the first phase of the revolution, and Imre Nagy became premier, agreeing to establish a multiparty system. On November 1, 1956, he declared Hungarian neutrality and appealed to the United Nations for support, but Western powers were reluctant to risk a global confrontation. On November 4 the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to stop the revolution." ~ Encyclopedia Britannica
According to Marianne, Soviet-supported leaders demanded that her father give them the keys to his business, a paint shop. That was it. They joined some 200,000 Hungarians refugees who fled the country in the wake of the Revolution.
"I think so they take a train first and they have to walk, you know, to the border. So they carry me. I was three years old." Marianne was three when her parents, eight-year-old brother, and thirteen-year-old sister walked across the border into Austria with only the clothes on their backs. Marianne tries to keep her story on-track. She says, “We came to Montebello in 1969.” No doubt looking a little confused by this leap forward from 1956, I say, "Okay."“It’s a long story,” she shrugs. I assure her, “That’s all right. I’m up for a long story.”“So my mother’s side have relatives here, that’s the way we came here, the United States. San Antonio, Texas.” She shows me a black and white photo.
“Dr. Steuart McBirnie’s church ponsor us at that time.” It takes a moment for me to understand the meaning of ponsor. Then I nod, “Having a sponsor is so important.” Marianne continues, “My mother’s side have the Florida relatives. That’s the way we came here, you know.”The mental map of their journey reconfigures as I say, “Oh! Florida before Texas.” Then I recite the stops aloud. “Florida, Texas, California.” “Right,” Marianne says. “So your mom has relatives in Florida. Who was in Texas?” I ask. “Nobody,” she replies. “Steuart McBirnie ponsored us in Texas.”I think I've got it: Because of the relatives in Florida, the family sought refugee status in the U.S. However, their sponsor was a church congregation in San Antonio, Texas, far from any family.
A family divided
“You told me at one point your father moved back, right?”“No,” she says. “My mother. My mother was homesick. So in 1958 we are the three children and my mother go back to Hungary.” I inhale in amazement. She goes on, "And we was over there a few years, ’58 to ’69.”With economy of language, Marianne paints a stark picture. I almost gasp. Instead I say, “That’s quite a while. A big chunk of time.”How does a child process so much change and uncertainty? Trauma is one focus of my own informal studies: family trauma and inherited trauma. This study, and my own confused and lonely childhood, stirs my empathy. I see my neighbor in new light. At age three, Marianne is taken from all that is familiar because of Soviet violence. Then the blur of Austria, Florida, and finally Texas. Two years later she is packed up with her siblings, separated from her father, and taken back to Hungary.“Yeah,” she continues, “I go to school over there.” Five-year-old Marianne spoke the English she learned in Texas. She was more fluent than her mother or siblings. Speaking American English, Marianne began kindergarten and attended the communist-run elementary school in Hungary. There, her scant Russian vocabulary and poor accent distressed the Russian-speaking teachers. Whenever she spoke, she might be thumped on the head with a "big book".
Primary Passport
“Then I came back,” she says. Marianne doesn't say way her mother rejoined her father in 1969 in Montebello, East LA. “I don’t know any English,” she admits, making her only reference, however oblique, to any sadness or frustration she may have felt.As I write this entry, I stop and wonder. Understanding—mutual comprehension of meaning—forms the basis for healthy social connections and one’s sense of belonging. Language is our primary passport to understanding. As a child, did Marianne feel she was understood by others in this basic way? Did she understand others, or was she perpetually confused and lonely? What tools did she have to create her own sense of stability and identity, connection and belonging?Before our shared melancholy can be named and swallow us whole, I assure Marianne, “Right! Of course not! You didn’t need to speak English. You were in school in Hungary, living with your relatives and friends."“My grandmother and grandfather,” she agrees.Marianne left Hungary twice; first as a three-year-old, and again as a 15-year-old. How does one hold this kind of loss, or ever process this level of disorientation?
A beautiful city
“What’s the city or the town where you lived in Hungary?” I ask. “Budapest,” she says. “You were in Budapest?! Oh my god!" I gush. "That’s a beautiful city! I’ve only visited once or twice but…” the happy memories leave me speechless. Picking up on my excitement, Marianne says, “You have to go the internet!”I feel crestfallen. The internet? I try to explain my joy in being there. "You cannot eat the fresh bread on the internet," I argue. Marianne laughs. She says, "The Hungarian food is too good!" I agree and remember aloud, "I ran out of paprika once. I came to borrow some and you have SO much! It was delicious. It was wonderful." She grins, "And that’s real. That came from Hungary, not here. Is different—real Hungarian paprika."Which of us is more relieved by this pivot from pain to paprika?Marianne warms to the topic. She says, “Budapest has twelve bridges. The parliament is between two bridges. I don’t know which ones. It looks like White House. The Danube,” she coos with a grin. "But you can check on the internet. ‘Specially when the bridges is light up at night. It gor-geous,” she draws out the word for emphasis. “It’s gorgeous!” I echo. She goes on to tell me several times, "Go on the internet." Before we part, she extracts a promise: I will go on YouTube and find an aerial tour of Budapest. (I have kept this promise.)
What was it like?
With what seems to be an accurate outline of her journey, I ask again, “When you moved to California in 1969, what was that like for you?”Marianne replies, “Is different.” Her long pause is all the illustration she gives for being uprooted from life with grandparents in Budapest to attending Fairfax High School in East LA. She breaks the silence. “Is beautiful here! It’s amazing. Yeah.”“You think it’s beautiful here?” I ask with a smile. After the praises and delights of Budapest one may imbibed on YouTube, I can’t resist a little teasing.Marianne says, “Hungary is beautiful, but after war is different. Everything is different. We go back in 1958, after war. War and the revelation. (She means revolution.) The second war, all the bridges is down.” I nod, trying to imagine it, and say, “So much devastation.""A lot of the damage was from the war," Marianne, who is my neighbor, says again. “The revelation too.” She pauses allowing those memories to slip back into the past. Looking around my garden, smiling at me, she says, “Is amazing here.”Yes, it is, Marianne. Yes, it is.
If you're just joining us, this interview series—Who Is My Neighbor—is part of my socially engaged art practice. The key element of socially engaged art is participation; the collaborative act of creating (here through interviews and essays) often holds more importance than the artwork itself (a possible book and/or installation). An example of socially engaged art is Rirkrit Tiravanija’s project “Untitled Free”. For this work the artist cooked rice and made pad thai that he served to all comers in the gallery. Home cooked food eaten with others.Any of the ideas shared in the WIMN series are yours to use as part of your life or socially engaged art practice. The process and my prompts are outlined in the introduction of Who Is My Neighbor HERE, and expanded and explained further HERE.Thank you for being my online neighbor,
