She somehow keeps moving on

So many times in Lupe’s life, things have gone terribly wrong just when they had started to go right. Misfortune has made her stagger; fortitude has kept her moving on. Here is how she has done it all.

Lupe, of La Mirada, lives in a typical American middle-class home.

The street is wide and clean. The three-bedroom house has a lawn out front that runs into the sidewalk. Two cars sit in the driveway.

Inside, a rug is spread out neatly on polished, wooden floors. The kitchen is warm and modern, the trashcan kept out of sight in a closet. The four mats on the dining table are arranged with excruciating precision.

On the walls are many snapshots of her past — and her future: pictures of her family and children, and a 1995 Mardi Gras poster from a wild New Orleans vacation.

The television in the living room looks through glass doors into the backyard and swimming pool.

But these indicators of affluence betray signs of its owner’s financial strictures.

The grass in the lawn is overgrown. The flowerbeds have no roses. Her car, a 14-year-old Volvo, runs on faith and an empathetic mechanic. The other, which belongs to her tenant, has a smashed rear fender.

And the swimming pool is empty. It is winter. But it is also cracked. It would cost her $30,000 for repairs.

Lupe’s house is a symbol of her successes and her many setbacks. It has been a home of her dreams; it is also her compromise. It is in a middle-class city near Los Angeles, but she is not quite there.

It has been a long journey for Lupe, 44.

Lupe’s family moved to Watts in 1960 from Guanajuato, in central Mexico.

Luck had turned a little for her father, who had gone to the United States ahead of the family in search of a better life. A woman who used to rent him a room in the neighborhood offered to sell him the house. He only had to take over the lease, not find money for a down payment.

It was enough for him to call the rest of them from Mexico.

He worked at a metal polishing workshop in Watts. But since it did not pay enough to support his wife and their seven children, he worked two jobs, sometimes three, for “a little extra money.”

But the money was never enough.

“The first 10 years, we stayed at home,” Lupe said. “We could never really do anything.”

“My dad was very loving” and generous with the little that he had, she said. “I know it hurt my dad that he couldn’t give his kids what other families were getting.”

The only time they would get something would be the first day of school, “a new outfit or something.”

Financially, though, things started getting better as they got older, she said.

She got her first Christmas gift when she was 10: “Pajamas and a robe.”

That year the family also went to Disneyland for the first time. “We used to hear about Disneyland. I guess it was the first time he could afford to take us.”

But as it got easier, it also got worse.

Inner-city ills started infecting the family.

Drugs. Alcohol. Gangs. The three brothers — Pepe, Mario and Tony — strayed. Pepe, who was 8 years older than Lupe, was the first to go “in the wrong direction.”

“In a short period of time, his life changed dramatically.” He was good at gymnastics, and even used to coach at the school, she said.

“Then something happened. I don’t know what happened. He just started drinking.”

The other two brothers followed in his footsteps.

“My brothers never really had a stable job.”

Pepe died in 1986 of an alcohol-related disease. Mario died in 1999. Tony has spent most of his life locked up: juvenile facility when he was 13, federal maximum-security prisons now.

Tony is serving a 25-year sentence. He will be out when he is in his 60s. “I lost another brother,” Lupe said.

The sisters, however, were luckier.

Lupe said they had a good role model in their oldest sister.

Espi, who is 10 years older, was the first to move out of the neighborhood and the first to get a job. She helped the other sisters out.

She got them all jobs at a finance company she was working in. “It was funny because at one time all four sisters were working at the finance company.”

The oldest two sisters have always worked together; they do so even now.

But things were also easier for the sisters because they were sheltered.

In school and among neighborhood children, the brothers always fought it out for them. Once, there were “10 blacks against my brother,” she said, adding, “They [the brothers] did what they had to do.”

The family culture also proved to be a blessing for the girls. “My brothers had all the freedom that they wanted, but the girls did not.”

“My mother was extremely strict with us,” she said. The girls were not allowed nights out and their boyfriends were not approved of.

“But now when I think of that, that probably saved us also,” she said, adding, “Some of the kids we hung around at school weren’t the best.”

At the time, though, Lupe rebelled against it. “As a young girl, I really hated living at home.”

“In our culture, the men have the authority of a dad,” Lupe said, adding the brothers used that authority and “made our life very hard.”

“They could tell us what to wear and what not to wear. They never accepted the boyfriends,” she said. “The more they disliked them, the more we were attracted to them.”

“‘As soon as I get old enough,’ I told myself, ‘I am going to get the hell out of here.’“

Lupe started working as a receptionist at a doctor’s office when she was 15. By the time she turned 18, she had saved up enough to buy her first car: “a convertible bug.”

She moved out of the house when she turned 21. Her younger sister, Leti, who was 18 then, moved out with her.

That was when her life changed.

She met Carl, a French-Canadian immigrant, who was known best among friends for his wild parties.

At a get-together on Memorial Day weekend in 1981, he asked for her number. “The rest went very, very quickly.”

“In three months, we were living together, and I was pregnant,” Lupe said. “In my heart, I really knew he was the one.”

Soon Nicole was born; four years later, Alaina. Seven years later, Carl and Lupe got married.

He worked as a cellular phone salesman. She worked part time and took care of her daughters. She sold her convertible and bought a family car. Soon they were ready to buy a house they really liked.

And then he died.

In the February of 1991, Carl went to visit some friends. He was shot.

“I don’t even want to know what exactly happened,” she said.

But she knew, then, that her children were just 8 and 4. She knew that her husband had been the family’s sole provider. She knew her “life was turned upside down.”

It was tough, she said. “I had to be both mother and father.”

“My older daughter was very, very attached to her daddy. He was more loving, more playful with the girls. I was the one who disciplined them.”

But Lupe said her parents and her sisters came through for her. She got the emotional support from them. “I spent a lot of time with my family. I couldn’t have done without them.”

“It was only at night that I would miss him.”

But Carl’s death was a blow financially too.

Luckily, a friend, who did investments, had advised them to put money in savings. Carl had invested in a retirement fund that doubled as life insurance. He had also started trust funds for his daughters to help them start out when they turned 18.

Carl’s insurance was a blessing. She bought the house — not the one they had wanted — in La Mirada with a large down payment from the insurance money and a 30-year mortgage. The rest she invested in mutual funds and her daughters’ trust funds.

She worked “off and on.” Lupe said she figured that when her daughters were younger, it was more expensive to work than to stay at home.

“I qualified for benefits when I didn’t work,” she said, adding, “When they were younger, I had to have a babysitter or daycare, and that was extremely expensive.”

But she said she realized she had to plan ahead. The solution was at best temporary. “What am I going to do when I no longer have Social Security? I had limited skills.”

Lupe said she decided to take advantage of Social Security to prepare for life after the benefits stopped coming. She went back to school.

Things have fallen in place since then, she said.

She enrolled in Cerritos Community College in 1998. In 2002, she transferred to University of California, Los Angeles for a bachelor’s in psychology.

The timing was perfect. She will graduate in fall, her younger daughter will turn 18 this year, and Social Security benefits will stop coming in.

Education has also allowed her to stay afloat.

She got a job working weekends at a real estate office near her house. “They just needed somebody to be present,” she said, adding, “I was like, that’s perfect for me.”

The weekend job pays her $560 a month. Social Security for her daughter brings in $750. She charges her boarder $400.

But the $1,500 mortgage payment for her house takes a big chunk of her income. “It just leaves me a few hundred dollars for groceries,” she said. “I don’t shop. I used to like buying nice things but I just don’t anymore.”

But Lupe also gets $5,000 in scholarship money every 10 weeks from UCLA. After tuition and other school expenses, she said she is left with close to $3,000.

“That I just put in the bank. And as I need it, I start pulling it out,” she said, adding, “That’s how I do my Christmas shopping - compliments of UCLA.”

Going back to school, though, was not easy.

Lupe said she was not sure how she would feel being with students who were much younger. “I thought I was going to feel a bit awkward, a little strange. I am old enough to be their mother.”

“At first I wasn’t sure, but I told myself, ‘Just focus on school and don’t allow anything else,’” she said.

“On the contrary, they are very encouraging and supportive,” she said of her classmates. “They have all embraced me.”

School also competes with the time she has for her daughters. And often, she has had to choose between them.

“Before school, we used to do a lot of things together. We were never home on the weekends,” she said. “It is just time that I can never take back.”

“But then I told myself, if I were to say yes to everything, I would never get any studying done. That was, you know, a Catch-22.”

The rewards of education, though, should be worth the effort.

Lupe hopes to get a job as a schoolteacher after she graduates. She said she would want to get a master’s later so that she can become a child counselor.

For now, she said she was looking forward to getting a “real job.”

“I am tired of being broke,” she said.