The Go-between

1

A Mexican Fairy Tale

My mother, María Carolina Josefina del Valle y Calderón, was cast in her first telenovela when she was just a few years older than I am now. She was eighteen when she was cast as Bianca in Mundos sin Fronteras, a telenovela about a mission in Alta California in the early 1800s. In the series, she aged twenty years in twelve months. Viewers loved the story of a poor Mexican woman who moves to Alta California, the northernmost region of California when it was still part of Mexico and considered the Wild, Wild West. In those times, and in the TV show, because the region was so sparsely populated, women were allowed to own property, and a handful became very rich. My mother’s character evolved over the course of the telenovela from a humble but drop-dead-gorgeous (of course) cattle hand to the wife of an older, cold, and abusive ranch owner, and then to an independent widow who runs a prosperous business. Finally, in her thirties, she married for love. Do I sound like I know the whole thing by heart? Does it sound predictable? Who cares. My mom was a hit. I’ve seen it about thirty times.

Mexican TV viewers have always loved this genre of telenovela, romance histórico, or historical romance. But Mundos sin Fronteras became--unintentionally, my mother says--a feminist touch point, igniting a spirit of independence in women that was unprecedented. Millions of viewers tuned in to watch the show, and from the first episode until the last, the series set ratings records that are unbroken to this day.

When my mother got depressed--although not often, it was still, for me, too often--she lay on the couch and watched videos of Princess Diana. Cocooned in her favorite silk robe, my mother, Carolina, started off with the Charles and Diana wedding video. It was a video I’d seen so often, I could recite the archbishop of Canterbury’s lines by heart: “Here is the stuff of which fairy tales are made. The prince and princess on their wedding day.” Then she cycled through Diana’s life, the fashion evolution and the red carpet, her meeting with Michael Jackson, her friendship with Elton John. She was bawling by the time Diana became a mother the first time, then the second time.

At this point, because my mother had called in sick, the phone was ringing off the hook. But my mother wouldn’t be distracted by such pettiness, because now we were deep into the footage of Diana the activist. By the time we got to Diana the land mines activist, my mother had dried her tears. It was a catharsis, this viewing, and like Diana, my mother had put aside her grief and private heartbreaks in search of something more meaningful.

What chilled me, and my father, and my brother when he is back home, was the last round of videos. It was always an array of videos about Princess Diana and the paparazzi, leading to Diana’s tragic death. I didn’t know anyone who’d ever ridden in a car with a celebrity while SUVs filled with photographers and TV crews raced you down a highway and through tunnels who could watch that footage and not feel the fear. It was like a police chase on steroids, all for a stupid photo.

For as long as I could remember, people had been taking my mother’s picture. It tapered off over time. I was very young when she first became truly famous, and sometimes it seemed more like a movie I saw than something I lived, the little girl turning in to the folds of her mother’s dress so that the cameras that pop, pop, popped with their lights and their long lenses didn’t get a picture of her face. There used to be dozens of photographers at all times back then, and sometimes when my mother went out shopping or to lunch with a friend, they would surround the car so that it couldn’t move. Even after my father hired full-time security, a guard for each of us, the paparazzi were always there yelling to my mother: “Bella, bella, guapa, guapa, mira aquí.” Beautiful. Gorgeous. Look over here.

When she wasn’t sad and feeling a kinship to the Princess of Wales, my mother told us stories about how early on, when she first became famous, she allowed her relatives to sell “exclusives” to the tabloids. “That’s how all my primos bought their houses,” she said. “If those papers are going to make money off me, then it’s only right that mi gente gets to eat too.”

My mother had been famous for so long that photos of her were no longer such a “get.” There were, however, always four or five stalwarts staked out at our house and at the studio where my mother shot her novelas. The minute our huge black car rolled down the long driveway and the giant gates that stood like sentinels opened, you could hear the photographers--the clicks of their cameras rapid like machine guns.

Now everyone had a camera in their phone, which meant it wasn’t just the pros who grabbed photos of my mother. When we went out to a restaurant, you could see the people who were pretending to be looking at their phone but were actually snapping her pic.

What this meant was that my mother had to be camera ready at all times. Her glam squad--Andy, who did her hair, and Regina, who does her makeup--practically lived at our house.

I loved them. Andy not only did hair, but he made the most amazing jewelry. He made a necklace for my quinceañera. It was a gold disc meant to be the moon, with my star sign drawn in tiny diamond specks. Regina was a great person. I loved her impression of my mom!

The thing about telenovela culture was, it was all about bigger is better. Shoulder-length hair wasn’t good enough. Your hair had to be Rapunzel-long, for when the wind machines get going. It was ultra-dramatic. The dresses were tight, the heels were high, and the makeup was two ticks away from being drag-queen-worthy. My mom did it well. She was considered the best telenovela actress in Mexico because no one could out-bombshell her.

For me, my mother without makeup was . . . beautiful. It was like she was a superhero in reverse. Her beauty was only revealed when she took the mask off.

But as famous as my mom was, the person I always worshipped is my father, Reinaldo. It didn’t hurt that he voiced Buzz Lightyear in the Spanish-language version of Toy Story. He did the job years before I was born, one of his first big breaks. But when I was a kid, the movie seemed to me entirely brand-new and as larger-than-life as its makers intended. I remember at five or six being genuinely shocked that the voice that grumbled “Buenos días” to me each morning and told me bedtime stories each night was also on my TV. I wondered how it could be that my father was a superhero toy astronaut who came to life the minute all the kids left the room. For a year, I insisted he whisper “Al infinito . . . y más allá!”--“To infinity . . . and beyond!”--to me instead of the typical “sueños dulces” or “sweet dreams.” And in first grade, for my mother’s annual Día de los Muertos party, my father dressed up as Buzz Lightyear. I was dressed up as Jessie, with a costume handmade by the best seamstresses at TexCoco, the big studio in Mexico City where my mother shot all her telenovelas. I also had a bright red wig made of real human hair, fashioned by my mother’s favorite wigmaker.

My parents were good at their jobs, so we lived in this amazing house--ten bedrooms, fourteen...