Note from the Author:
What follows here are excerpts from the journal I kept while looking
for Bea Franco. This occurred from 2008-2010. At one point, around summer of
2009 I was starting to get desperate, and had decided I would give up my search
for her and just write the book based on what little I did know. I had hired a
Private Investigator named “Adreann,” and this is who I am referring to here.
It would be a year after these entries that I would finally locate Bea Franco.
July 29, 2009
Adreann wont let me give up. I
emailed her with the news that I’m done searching for Bea. If I don’t stop now
I’ll go crazy, I explained. I’m a writer, and this will have to be a book of
fiction, connected loosely by historical facts from what I already have. I
don’t need more info, I stress to her, I have enough to move forward. But she
wont let up. We’re almost there, she says, so close, can’t give up now. She
sends me this message in a text. She’s a private investigator, so I guess it’s
her job to be persistent. In any case, the retainer fee’s already run out and
last week she told me she was doing this pro bono. This book has to be
published, she said, and I don’t want it to fall short because of me. I tell
her I wont hold it against her. I’ll still put her in the credits. It’s done, I
say, and thank you for all of your work on this, Adreann, I appreciate it,
really. No problem, she replies. The next day she sends me an email; more
questions, possibilities, new doors opened.
August 15, 2009
Today I dialed
every last Franco in both the Fresno and Selma Yellow Pages, starting with the
only two Bea’s. The first one lived near Peach and Olive. I drove out to the
shoddy apartment complex the whole time thinking to myself, there’s no way Bea
would live out her remaining years in this dump. I just couldn’t see it. With
its faded orange stucco and black iron gates wilting in the dry heat. My cell
phone was dead so I had to call from the payphone at Lucky Liquors across the
street. A woman’s soft voice answered.
“Hi, I’m looking for Bea Franco.”
“I’m Bea,” she said.
“This is gonna sound crazy, but I’m
writing a book about a woman named Bea Franco.” I had to talk fast. “I know
you’re not her because you sound too young, but is it possible that you are
named after a grandmother? Or aunt? Or…”
“I’m sorry, you have the wrong person,”
she said politely.
“Wait,” I said, before she could hang up.
“Just in case you are related to a Bea Franco, can I give you my number?”
“Sure.”
I gave her the number and hung up.
A short while after, an idea struck me. I
opened the Selma phone book again and dialed the number of the Superintendent
of schools. He answered, and I told my dilemma, asking him about the elementary
schools that were in Selma during the early 30’s. Before we hung up he gave me
two names.
“There are only two Franco families in
this town,” he said.
“Any chance you could put me in contact
with them?” I asked.
“Let me see what I can do.”
The next morning there was an email in my
inbox from his secretary. It read:
Mr. Hernandez I
am a good friend with both Franco families in Selma. This is why
Mr. Scarbrough
asked me to email you. Below are the phone numbers to both
families. Good
luck! –Yvette Salazar
*
Mrs. Salazar,
thank you for your help with locating the Franco families. Will they be
expecting me to
call them? Tim
*
Mr. Hernandez
I called them last night to ask if it was okay for you to call them. It is
fine. They know.
Good luck. –Yvette
*
The first number I
called a young girl answered. I asked to speak with her father or mother. She
said they were not there but that she would pass my message on to them. I told
her about my book, and the research, to which she replied, “I don’t think we’re
the Franco family you’re looking for. All of my relatives live in Texas. My
family hasn’t been here that long.”
“Still,” I said, “could you please have
your father contact me?”
I tried the second number.
When the woman answered the phone I could
tell by her voice that she was elderly. She was reluctant to speak with me at
first, until I told her I was a friend of Yvette Salazar’s. She agreed to
answer a few questions.
“I’m not the woman you’re looking for,”
she assured me.
“If you don’t mind I’d like to ask you
some questions anyway, just to make sure?”
“Go right ahead.”
“How long have you lived in Selma?” I
started in.
“All my life.”
“Would you mind telling me how old you
are?”
“Eighty seven.”
I could feel my stomach roll over. Her age
was about right. “Do you have any brothers or nephews, or maybe even a son,
named Albert?”
“Why are you asking me this?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, it’s just that the
woman I’m looking for has a son named Albert.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she said. “My boys
names are George and Felipe.”
“How about a daughter named Patsy, or
Patricia?”
“I told you I’m not the person you’re
looking for. You got the wrong person.”
I had to talk fast. “Ma’am,” I said, “can
you answer just two more questions? Was there ever cotton in Selma?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay, right, well, do you by any chance
know where there used to be a labor camp here in Selma back in the late
forties?”
“I wouldn’t know that, we were truckers,
not fruit pickers.”
Her frustration was obvious. “Ma’am, if
you have any relatives with these names I gave you, would you mind giving them
my number?”
“Look,” she blurted, “I just don’t want
you writing about me—you hear me?”
Silence.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t go writing things about me, I
said.”
“No ma’am, I’m not writing about you. I
mean the woman I’m writing about is…well, her name is also Bea Franco, and she
was from Selma, but…” I stammered.
“Just don’t write about me.”
“I wont,” I said.
Another woman grabbed the phone from her.
“Hi,” the voice said. “Sorry about my mother,
she’s tired, she’s old and tired, she hates talking to people, especially on
the phone.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Look, I
was telling her that I’d like to give her my number in case she remembers some
of the names I was asking her about.”
“That’s fine,” the woman said, “I’ll make
sure she gets it.”
“I’m sorry, but can I ask what your name
is?”
“Oh, I’m her daughter, Paula.”
Paula sounded friendly. “Do you happen to
have a brother or cousin named Albert?”
“Sorry,” she said. “Now what’s your
number?”
I hung up and was left thinking about the
tone in the woman’s voice. There was a sense of paranoia, as if she was hiding
something. “Just don’t write about me. You hear me?”
August 25,
2009
Today I went into
the Fresno County Hall of Records and told them I was looking for my great
Grandmother’s marriage or death certificate. Either will do, I said casually. I
had to wait in this long line for over an hour. The whole time feeling like an
imposter. I mean here were people really going for something, a lost bit of
something, and here I was, on a self-appointed mission. The clerk called me
forward and after filling out some papers she had me follow her to a back room.
These are all the old files, anything before 1950 would be here, she said. She
pulled out a book the size of a Cadillac and opened it to the index and began
looking for your name. After fifteen minutes we agreed it wasn’t there.
Probably a good thing, I figured. At some point before securing the goods I
would’ve had to show proof I am related to you. Last week I was at the
Genealogy Department at the Fresno Library. I poked around for a couple of
hours, scrutinizing all the Francos listed but none of them had the right
details. As I began walking away the woman helping me asked, “Are you sure she
isn’t still alive?” I chuckled and replied, “What farmworker do you know lives
to the age of 90?” She agreed, but added, “It’s just that dead people are easy
to find. Living people are almost impossible.” This stuck with me days after.
September 13, 2009
It’s a strange thing, calling up
cemeteries for records of a woman who I’m not sure is dead or alive, and even
more awkward, claiming her to be my great grandmother. I feel like such a con,
but how else to get the information? So today I phoned over twenty-two
cemeteries in Fresno, Selma, Fowler, Dinuba, Sanger, Parlier, Kingsburg,
Hanford and a few other crumbs in between. Each conversation opened up with,
“Hello, I’m looking for a family member who is deceased and I believe she might
be buried in your cemetery. Can you check on this for me?” The voice at the
other end usually asks for the last name, I give it, then the first name, and
then some variations of it. There is a pause, long or brief depending on how
quick their typing skills are or how accessible their computer files are. They
return on the line, “Sorry, no one here by that name.” In two instances they
asked, “Are you sure she’s deceased?” Both times I laughed. It’s funny to me.
This game of dead or not. Are you sure? How sure? Yes. No. And yes. This is
what I tell Adreann, because she keeps asking me if I know for sure. “Are you
sure she’s dead, Tim? Alive?” I tell her, your guess is as good as mine.
Possible Answers to the
Disappearance of Bea Franco
First possibility:
Bea and her family were immigrants, undocumented and living beneath the radar
indefinitely, no paperwork, and therefore will never be found, not in the
states anyway—dead or alive. A ghost, a phantom figment of this writer’s
imagination. The possibility most biographers who’ve included her name in their
books have subscribed to.
Second possibility:
She was an immigrant, became a naturalized citizen on the coattails of the
Bracero program, and then in ’54 was repatriated during Eisenhower’s Operation
Wetback, seven years after her tryst with JK. Either died in Mexico, or still
lives there. Or avoided repatriation and lives here or died here, but will be
impossible to locate because all proof of her existence is lost in a political
void.
Third possibility:
She was a U.S. born citizen, still alive, living somewhere not so far away, the
Mayfair District perhaps, or maybe Fowler, Los Angeles. Angelinos never leave,
my tia Ofelia who lives in Boyle Heights once told me. They only get away long
enough ‘til things cool off, then come back. The only problem is that this
possibility poses more questions than answers. Did Bea leave the valley? Did
she come back? Did she keep JK’s letters? Does she have at least one photo of
their time together? Does her family want this story told? It was after all, an
affair. Do they know? If none of this is answered, then all the paper, numbers
and letters I have filed away amounts to nothing more than trees, carbon,
illusion.
