on live in maids, Maid and watching "Roma"

Stephanie Land and her book  Maid

Reading Stephanie Land's book Maid and watching the deeply affecting film Roma has made me think a lot about my own experience with household help.   When my husband Ben and I joined the US Foreign Service, our first overseas assignment was in Caracas Venezuela. It was 1985. We moved from a shabby shoe box of an apartment in Crown Heights to a Venezuelan penthouse with several balconies and three full bathrooms in Santa Eduviges, Caracas.

 Life in Venezuela was good back then, so good in fact, that people regularly imported ice from Miami as well as scotch for their parties, from Edinburgh, Scotland.  If you asked for a cola - it was assumed you meant a whisky cola.

 Oil was flowing back then, and Venezuela had the highest per capita income of all other countries in South America.  Back then, Venezuela was the big success story that the US government cited:  Here is democracy in action, folks. Look how wonderful everything is.

And so, as a junior officer trainee and his pregnant wife, Ben and I moved from New York City to Caracas Venezuela and instantly entered the high life.  Our apartment overlooked the Avila mountains from several different balconies.  We were not just encouraged to, but expected to hire a maid.  At first we had a day maid - Euphemia from Trinidad who lived in the barrios, and came in to clean and iron for us three times a week. But after I had my first child, we hired a live in maid - Nelly, who not only cleaned, but who looked after my two year old daughter during my pregnancy with a second child, and then after when I had my newborn son.

Nelly was a wonderful spirit and a dedicated worker.  But at some point I realized that Nelly was illiterate. She always asked for books, and I was happy to provide them - as well as a typewriter.  But one day I came across a notebook she kept, where she had practiced writing, not just my signature  but also several random notes I'd scrawled. The rest of the pages in her notebook were just row upon row of scribbled loops.  I came to the terrible realization that Nelly could neither read nor write.

After our two year assignment in Caracas, we moved to Argentina, where we found a huge apartment in Plaza San Martin.  Here we had a succession of maids - but most significantly a live in maid called Maida - who arrived with her infant daughter.  The maid's quarters in our apartment were bigger than anything we had ever had in New York.  In fact, we used to joke that we would have paid good money for the small rooms Maida inhabited at the back of our enormous Buenos Aires apartment.

The building had a doorman and the apartment had an elevator running directly to our floor.  It had three huge reception rooms in front, with tall ceilings and French windows onto the balcony in front. There were corridors for those who lived in the apartment, not to be confused with the back corridors for those who worked there.  There was also a button on the floor in the dining room, to call in the maid  from the kitchen when it was time to clear the table during dinner parties.  The apartment had - wow, I'll have to stop and count now - one, two, three, no - four full bathrooms - all with bidets,  as well as a cloakroom - and of course the maid's bathroom in her quarters.

We paid Maida a lordly sum to live in our home and clean our apartment: that is, we paid her $200 a month.  We gave her food, lodging, clothes.  I gave her all my daughter's cast off clothing for her little girl Jimena.  Jimena was raised with my own children - watching television with them, playing games with them, growing up with them side by side.  Jimena even used to greet my husband Ben  when he came in from work with my children "Daddy," she cried!

But $200 a month? It's embarrassing to think about. And yet I was frequently taken to task by my Argentine friends for paying her so much.  We were living in Buenos Aires during the 1980s, during hyperinflation. We had decided to peg her salary to the dollar, for her own security.  At one point when inflation in Argentina was at 2000%,  Maida was making more than a surgeon. She was certainly making  far more than I was making as a university teacher in Buenos Aires!

My Argentine friends in the park would tell me I was spoiling her.   I was paying too much; treating her too well.  I was also taken to task for allowing her to call me by name. She should call you senora they said. It was shocking how permissive I was.

So when I watched the film Roma, I watched with a bittersweet feeling in my heart.  And when I listened to Stephanie Land at Politics and Prose last month, talking about what it was like to be a maid, I felt a pang of guilt about the role I had once played in this two tiered system - albeit in South America.

We pay people to clean up our houses.  To pick up our shit. To sort out our messes.  I have often thought it a bit of a nerve when people refer to their household help as "part of the family." Because part of the family they are certainly not.  Yes, they pick up for you, clean up your bathrooms, scub your floors and put your children to bed - but they are not in any way part of the family. They are not treated as equals. They are hired help. They do the dirty work.

I wonder sometimes what happened to Maida.  She left us when she became pregnant with her second child.  I remember her telling me what a pleasure it had been to work for us. And I will always remember her fondly.  She was patient and poised, efficient, gentle, and a beautiful presence in our home.

Since then I have also had household help when we lived in Moscow, in Brussels and in Rome.  But somehow those stories are less compelling - less resonant when I think about the film Roma.

I wonder what happened to Maida's beautiful little girl, Jimena -who grew up in our home, and was a companion to our son Alex.  Does she even remember us?  Maida named her son Lucas Alex - after my son Alex and his best friend Lucas at the time.   Jimena and Alex would play together every afternoon.  But  I'll probably never know what became of her, or where she is now. How could Itrack her down?  They lived in the barrios and Maida's husband was a little unreliable. Their lives were so precarious.


#roma #maid #stephanieland