America's Dream (30 page)

“Spring fever,” Karen remarks one morning when they all giggle at nothing in particular as she’s serving breakfast.

Karen shows up with bunches of flowers one evening, and they fill vases and put stems in the family room and den, in the master bedroom, children’s rooms, and even in América’s room. They have no scent, which América finds unusual. These beautiful flowers, which last for days, give off no fragrance.

Charlie doesn’t like spring as much. “Allergies,” he explains when he comes down one morning, his eyes puffy, his voice nasal.

It’s difficult to keep Kyle and Meghan at home. Even though there is a play structure in the backyard, they prefer the play- ground, where there are other children to chase, to argue with over who can climb higher, to push and be pushed by in the swings.

On any given day, América is likely to meet Adela, Mercedes, Liana, or Frida, and sometimes all of them. She likes some of them more than others. Adela, she still thinks, is too free to reveal confidences, and América is careful when she’s around

not to say anything she doesn’t want to hear repeated. Mercedes is young, with a raunchy sense of humor and fun that América admires even as she wonders how someone can be so free-spir- ited. Liana is somber and serious, and whenever she’s around her, América gets depressed. Frida is the oldest, in her late forties, with a take-it-as-it-comes attitude that América finds comforting. All of them have left behind children to come to the United States, where they care for other people’s children.

“In another month I’ll be able to send for them,” Liana tells Mercedes and América. “My father has already arranged it with the coyote. They’ll come in through México.”

“But what are you going to do once they get here?” Mercedes asks. “Where will they live?”

“An apartment in White Plains. My sister Genia will take care of them while I work.”

Liana has not seen her two boys since they were toddlers. Now eight and nine, the boys know their mother from photographs. Every other week she calls a telephone center in a town ten miles from their village and talks to her children, tells them she loves them and that she will send for them. Until two months ago, she also talked to her mother, who watched the boys. She died of a blood infection, and Liana’s father insists that she either come back to care for her children or send for them.

“Will their father help you?” asks América.

Liana came with her husband, properly married, she explains. The only work she could find was as a live-in maid. He worked for a landscape company. Like Adela and her husband, they saw each other on weekends, until Liana found out he lived with an- other woman weekdays. “I don’t even know where he is,” she says. The three fall silent, recalling perhaps, their own men’s in- tractability.

“It’s going to be so nice for you to have them near.” América brings the subject back to the boys.

“Mrs. Friedland is giving me two weeks paid vacation,” Liana adds, and everyone murmurs about Mrs. Friedland’s generosity. “Only, I have to arrange it during spring vacation, when they’ll all be in Disney World.”

Then the murmurs are about how difficult that’s going to be, given that Liana’s elderly father and two children have to travel by land from El Salvador through Guatemala to Mexico and who knows how long they’ll have to wait to be walked into the United States. The air around them is heavy again.

“Hola, mujeres,” says Frida, walking up. In another minute Adela, too, joins them. The two girls she watches chase each other to the slide.

“I have to find another job,” Adela says without greeting them. “I can’t take it anymore.”

“What happened?”

“Ignacio lost his job.” This is not the first time this has happened. Ignacio gets fired almost as often as he works. With uncharacteristic reticence, Adela never says why, but América suspects he’s a drunk. “I asked for a raise, and they said no. I’ve worked there three years, you’d think they’d be more consider- ate!” She’s fuming. Her dark eyes are hidden by a deep frown, and her mouth is tight across her face, as if she were biting back what she doesn’t want to say.

“But didn’t you get a raise last Christmas?” asks Frida. They all know what the others make. When they first come to one an- other’s houses, they look at the size, the number of children, whether there are animals, whether they cook or not, in order to assess their situation against one another’s. América excepted, they all clean other houses on their days off from the live-in work. Even the ones with men have to supplement their income with part-time jobs.

“I’ve been with them three years,” Adela repeats, “but I make less than any of you.” Adela’s employers, whom she refers to as Ella y Él, so that none of them have ever heard her say their names, don’t live in a mansion. Their house, while large, is in town, without the broad lawns and protective woods around them, and is not considered, by the maids, the home of rich folks, the way the Leveretts’ is, or Liana’s Friedlands’.

“Did you quit?” Mercedes asks, worried.

“I’m desperate but not crazy,” snaps Adela. If a maid wants

to leave her employers, she notifies the other maids first, in case they know of a better situation.

“I haven’t heard of anyone looking,” says Frida, whose network extends to three states, since her sister and daughter work as maids in Connecticut and New Jersey.

“What I’d like to find is a situation for a couple. That would solve all our problems.”

“We’ll keep our ears open,” says Liana, whose sister Genia works only day jobs but occasionally hears of a house that needs a live-in.

The truth is, none of them would recommend Adela, who, they have noticed, is not a particularly through housekeeper. Then there is the problem of her “husband,” whom none have met but whose frequent run-ins with employers does not bode well. Adela describes him as proud, which probably means that, like her, he thinks he’s too good for the kind of work he does.

“Did you hear about Nati?” Mercedes asks, and they all turn to her, grateful for the change in topic. “They had to send her back.”

“Oh, dear Lord, why?” Liana’s gasp is like a sob. “She went crazy.”

“Who’s Nati?” América asks.

“She was an empleada from Peru. A young girl,” Frida explains, “what was she, twenty-one, twenty-two?” The others nod in agreement to both figures. “She worked for two brothers who live together. Two old men, alone in this big house. She was worried at first that they might try something, you know.” They all know.

“Maybe if they had, she wouldn’t have gone crazy,” Mercedes jokes to lame laughter.

“They left while it was still dark and didn’t come home until eight, nine o’clock. She had to clean the house, take care of their clothes, and make them dinner, that’s all.”

“And they didn’t make that much of a mess, since they were never there,” Liana adds.

“So Nati was alone all day in this big house. She spoke no

English. She didn’t drive.” They all shake their heads. “Stuck in that house alone day after day, with no one to talk to.”

“She went crazy,” Mercedes repeats. “In six months she was like an old woman. She didn’t take care of herself, since there was no one to appreciate it. She talked to herself. The viejitos couldn’t understand what she was saying, but they thought it was Spanish.”

“Didn’t she try to kill herself?” Adela asks, her face still fur- rowed. She turns to América. “The viejitos found her one night on the kitchen floor. She took aspirin or something that made her throw up but didn’t kill her.”

“So they sent her back,” Mercedes concludes. “Didn’t anyone try to help her?” América wonders.

“What could anyone do?” Frida asks. She focuses on removing a pebble caught in the sole of her sneaker.

“I called her a couple of times,” says Liana, “but she was kind of aloof.”

“She was probably crazy when she came here,” reasons Adela. “Poor thing.” América murmurs, and the empleadas allow how sad it is, and how this kind of thing happens, and how you

have to live with it.

The gloom is broken by a scream from the swings. As one, the women run toward a little girl crumpled on the ground. Her mother, who had been sitting in the sun reading a magazine, reaches her at the same time as Mercedes, who kneels down to console her.

“Don’t touch her,” the mother screams, and Mercedes freezes in place. The woman scoops up the little girl and takes her away, soothing her. “It’s all right. It’s just a boo-boo. Let’s get a Band- Aid, okay?”

América, Adela, Frida, and Liana gather the children they watch, check them for bruises on arms and legs, even though none of them cried. Mercedes finds the twins she cares for, in- spects them, sends them off.

“We’re leaving soon,” she warns as the children resume their play.

The women return to their places on the edge of the play- ground. They stand close together, like five birds on a line, pro- tecting one another.

“What was wrong with that woman?” Mercedes pouts. “I was just trying to help.”

“You’re not supposed to move a person that’s fallen until you check them,” Adela says with authority, “in case they broke a bone.”

“I didn’t move her.”

“You know how these gringas are,” explains Frida. “They panic at any little thing.”

They fall silent again, thinking about the same thing. The wo- man panicked not at her daughter’s fall but at the sight of a dark- skinned stranger bending over her.

“‘Don’t touch her,’” she said, like I’m contagious or something.” “You’re reading too much into it.” Frida pats Mercedes’s

shoulder. “Don’t make yourself crazy.”

They saw the mistrust in the woman’s eyes, the resentment, the “why don’t you go back where you came from” look. It’s a look that follows the empleadas everywhere they go. In stores clerks hover over them, expecting them to steal whatever they touch. On buses and trains people won’t sit next to them, as if sharing a seat were too intimate an association. On the street, people avoid looking at them, as if not seeing them will make them disappear.

“It’s like they need us,” Mercedes continues after a while, “but they don’t want us.”

“She didn’t mean anything,” Adela protests. “You know how scared of strangers these gringas are.” But none of them are so willing to dismiss the woman’s scornful look, the deliberate turning of her back on them.

Later, as América drives Kyle and Meghan to their swim les- sons, she tries to remember if she’s seen this look directed at her. In Vieques she saw something similar. The tourists couldn’t say, “Go back to where you come from,” because they were the guests. But she thought they saw her as a different species of

creature from themselves. She felt like part of the tropical land- scape they came to experience, something to be started at with curiosity and forgotten the moment they returned home.

But here, she says to herself, they can’t forget us. We’re every- where, and they resent us for it. It’s incomprehensible. If it weren’t for us, none of these women would be able to work. And their husbands wouldn’t have it so easy, either. If we weren’t here, who would clear the tables at their restaurants? Who would mow their lawns and build the stone fences around their properties? Who would clean their offices, restock store shelves, disinfect hospital rooms, make their beds, wash their laundry, cook their meals?

“América, can we go to McDonald’s?” Kyle asks as they drive past it.

“No, we dinner home after swim.”

“But I’m hungry now,” he whines, and Meghan adds her little voice so that América feels guilty until she turns the car around and drives up to the take-out window, where a young man with a pronounced accent serves them.

“You no make mess in car,” América warns, and the children, used to her rules, quietly munch their Chicken McNuggets and salty french fries, dutifully using their napkins rather than the cuffs of their jackets to wipe away the grease from their faces.

Isn’t it strange, she smiles to herself as she pulls into traffic. They’re learning so much from me. Karen and Charlie hardly ever see them, between their jobs and the kids’ weekend play dates. Frida, Mercedes, Liana, and Adela are teaching the children they watch. All these Americanitos are learning about life from us. We’re from a different country, we speak a different language, but we’re the ones there when they’re hungry, or when they take their first step, or when they swim across the shallow end of the pool on their own.

At the health club she joins other women walking briskly with their children, equally as many mothers as empleadas. She can always pick out the mothers, because they’re expensively dressed. They open the door to the club with a sense of entitle-

ment, while the empleadas seem to be apologizing for taking up room where they don’t belong. The brown and black ones, any- way. The white-skinned ones behave like the mothers, with the same confidence and unapologetic decisiveness.

Adela claims the white empleadas are paid more than the Latina and black housekeepers, and they work less. As house-keep- er/nannies, América and her friends are in charge of both the house and the children. The European au pairs and white nannies usually do little or no housework. That’s why Frida and Mercedes, Liana and Adela have day jobs cleaning the homes of people who have help. Most of the time the help is white, like the household- ers, and they look down on the “cleaning lady,” who does the work they refuse to do.

“Well, that didn’t last long,” she says to Ester, surprised at her anger.

“Irving is a good man, but I’m too set in my ways and so is he.” By the sound of Ester’s voice, América can tell she’s had a few drinks. That’s what she means by she’s too set in her ways. “Besides, someone needs to take care of this place. The garden is beginning to look like a jungle.”

América imagines Ester’s unruly garden, the rosebushes that attack anyone who dares enter the gate, the profusion of herbs planted in crooked rows in back of the house, the lemon and grapefruit trees, their thorns sharper and harder than any she’s ever seen. If that garden can look worse than it did when she lived there, it’s worth whatever it takes to get Ester back to tend it.

“Did you have a fight?”