The Irish Side

The despised and the beautiful

Irish are Spaniards who got lost in the mist. . .

—Spain Rodriguez

The first person in my mother's family who came to California was my great-aunt Tessie Halloran, who went to make her living as a governess in a Hollywood home.

She came home to Minnesota one Christmas, a success, loaded down with navel oranges and wearing a two piece suit the color of a peach. No one in my family had ever worn any other color than blue or black or brown. The children didn't know that a peach-colored fabric existed, and when they touched Tessie’s outfit, they worried that it would melt away like ice cream.

In St. Paul at the time, there were signs on respectable establishments that said, “No Dogs, No Indians, No Irish.” There was no work in the ghetto, and Tessie’s good fortune out West was intoxicating. Soon one Halloran after another was either joining the service or moving out to San Francisco to work in the Hunter’s Point shipyards.

My mom stopped speaking and corresponding to her blood relatives when I…