Calling Home: ‘Mama, How Are You? I Miss You So Much’

Felipe Alvarez laughs so hard that his straw cowboy hat flies off his head. His 12-year-old son has just told a joke he learned at school.

It is a typical father-son exchange--with a long-distance twist. Alvarez lives in Los Angeles; Enrique and his mother and 8-year-old sister, in Mexico City. There are 1,500 lonely miles between father and family.

So the 42-year-old undocumented immigrant listens to Enrique’s jokes via telephone. He can only imagine his son’s merriment, his daughter’s hugs, his wife’s home cooking.

And he must do all this in a very public place.

At home, Alvarez, a construction worker, cannot just pick up the phone on a Saturday morning and speak to his family; he lives in an Alvarado Street apartment that he shares with five other men. Alvarez, who has lived in Los Angeles for less than two years, sleeps on the floor because he cannot afford a bed--that would cost money he says he would rather mail to his wife.

“I have a pillow,” he says modestly. “That’s all I need.”

There is no car, no closet full of clothes, no television.

And there is no phone, which is why Alvarez is at the Grand Central Market on this particular Saturday, surrounded by aisles of produce, wiping away tears.

Once, while he waited in line to use a pay phone on the street, he was robbed.

So now, every Saturday, Alvarez comes downtown to the market to use a long-distance center designed for people who cannot afford phones or who are not familiar with cheap rates and discount calling programs.

Alvarez has lots of company. Every week, 300 to 500 men, women and children--the majority of them recent immigrants from Central and South America--use the phones.

They pull out photos of sons, daughters, wives and mothers they’ve left behind. They bring lists they have been keeping all week of topics to discuss--school, money, health, loneliness and reunions--so they won’t forget necessities of life in their exuberance at hearing the voices of loved ones. They weep openly.

For most of the callers, the few minutes spent on the phone are enough to boost their spirits for another week. The brief conversations refuel dreams of unified families.

The calls are cheaper here; callers pay no taxes, and they are assisted by bilingual staff rather than an operator. Fees--most of them less than $10--are paid in cash after each call.

Carolina Castillo, 27, takes a bus from Whittier to the Grand Central Market every weekend. There is no phone in the home she shares with her husband and several cousins.

“It was so good to hear my sister’s voice,” Castillo says after finishing a call to Guanajuato, Mexico. “We are very close. I adore her. We’re going home for Christmas. That’s what we talked about--the holidays and all that we’re going to cook.”

“It was a sweet conversation,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. “Once a week is not enough,” she says. But “it is all we can afford.”

Castillo wants to avoid the pay phones on the street--they are uncomfortable, impersonal, and at times, unsafe.

By contrast, at the market, seven days a week callers can sit at one of four cubicles adorned with silk ivy arrangements and equipped with a note pad and pencils. Partitions allow a sense of privacy.

Maria and Judith Salcedo, sisters who work the weekend shift, frequently comfort the lonely.

On this Saturday, Maria explains to an elderly man that the number she has just dialed is not working.

“Please try once more,” he says.

She does. A recording, in Spanish, announces a technical problem on the line.

“I’m sorry sir,” says Maria. The caller is crushed.

“You know what, let’s try it again,” she offers. The man’s face brightens as he pulls a small phone book from the inside pocket of his jacket, flips to a page with the number and hands Maria the book.

She tries again; the number is still not working.

“Maybe later,” she says.

“Tomorrow, I’ll return,” says the man. “There are others who are waiting.”

William Deloney is among them. The 44-year-old computer systems analyst lives in El Segundo; his fiancee, in Honduras. He calls every Saturday at 11 a.m.

The two met in Los Angeles about two years ago, fell in love and plan to marry on Christmas Eve.

Deloney says he had been using coin phones to call Honduras until recently when he learned about the AT&T; center in the market. He disconnected his home phone about six months ago because calls to Honduras were averaging $500 a month.

“I wanted to talk about a lot of things,” Deloney says, “But all she wanted to talk about was the wedding.”

Rosa Corral, 48, calls her mother in Ecuador every Saturday. Even though she has a phone at her Gardena home, she says calling from the market is cheaper and convenient because she shops there regularly on the weekends.

“Mama, how are you? I miss you so much . . . please don’t cry , Mama . . . don’t cry , Mama.”

“How is everyone? Did Elena receive the quinceanera dress? Did she like it? It is beautiful, isn’t it ? I wish I could be there, but you know I can’t go.”

A niece has given birth to a boy. The quinceanera will take place at the church Corral attended as a little girl. Her mother has received all her letters.

After she hangs up, Corral pulls out a coin purse and gives Judith Salcedo $4.23 for the four-minute call.

Corral says she wanted to speak longer, but she was about to cry.

“It’s very difficult because we are so far away. My mother is getting older and she is having health problems that affect older people. I miss her but I know she is fine because I have my sisters, my brother, and a 29-year-old son in Ecuador to look after her.”

Corral is planning a trip to Ecuador in June, but it is unlikely she and her husband and their children will ever return to her homeland for good.

“I miss my country. I miss my mother,” she says. “When I call home I feel a lot of stress. I get sad because my mother cries for me. I tell her not to worry.”

And she closes every call with a prayer:

“May God take care of you , Mama . I love you.”