There are three principal characters in this story, me and a Mexican mother and daughter. The daughter speaks English fairly well but the mother's command of our language leaves a lot to be desired. She is working on improving it but it is going to take some time. Fortunately the daughter and I both work with her on it. All of that being said leads me to tell the reader that I have done all of the interpretation of their use of our language and have put it in a form the reader can understand.
I have lived in California for most of my adult life and love it. One of the many advantages it offers is that it is fairly easy, and inexpensive, to get live-in housekeeping help. Most people simply put an ad in the paper and then get out of the way when the mobs come calling. I take an altogether different approach. I go down to Mexico, go to any one of a number of cities and advertise for help in their local paper. I've even had the parish priest announce the opportunity from his pulpit.
The reason I do it that way is that my offer is different than most of the others. I am a single 32-year-old guy and have a two-bedroom home with an attached garage in Pasadena, Calif. I have a great pool in the rear and fortunately the house is at the end of a cul-de-sac and on a slight hill so the way it is situated the pool is higher than any of the neighboring properties and I have complete privacy whenever I am using it. In addition, above the garage is a fully equipped one-bedroom apartment with a bedroom, kitchen, bath and living area. I am a research specialist for a major news magazine in addition to doing similar type of work for a book publishing company. I can work at home almost full time if I so choose. The money is fabulous and my boss is terrific.
One of my offers to a new hire is: they will only have to work about three hours a day taking care of my place, they will have a nice place to live, I will give them a decent salary with full medical benefits. I will pay all of the required employment taxes and for whatever food they order from the local market, AND I will deposit $50 a week in a bank account for them. They cannot have the money in this bank account until their one-year of employment is over. NOT BEFORE. I do not want to be changing help every month or so and the protected deposit that can't be withdrawn until the year is up is one of the best ways I have found to do it. I will also make sure they are trained in driving a car and will help them get their license as quickly as possible.
I have been doing this for over five years and it has worked very well for everybody. All of the previous girls are working in the area and are doing very well. One is working in a bank as a liaison between the immigrants (legal and not so legal) who want to have a bank account but don't know anything about how to do it. Another is working for the State as an intermediary between immigrants and the government and has earned enough to be able to buy herself a nice car and she has a great apartment that her mom comes to every now and then for a visit. Three others are working in offices that have needs for people that are bilingual.
This may sound a little strange but I am not just hiring help. I am also giving these girls a chance to better themselves they would never have in their own village. In the free time they have while working for me I enroll them in a local school that specializes in teaching immigrants everything from our language to our culture. I am not demeaning their homeland but I am certain they will have a much better chance of getting a decent job here in the States than they ever would in their own country. I also enroll them in a computer familiarization class so they can at least become somewhat computer literate by the end of the year.
When I go into their village I ask to have a room in one of the schools set up with a projector and I set up a little slide show explaining all of this. I don't speak very much of their language so I have an interpreter with me. The interpreter I use is the girl they will be replacing whose one-year with me is up. Her presence adds a lot of credibility to my job offer.
The day of my presentation goes almost the same year after year. The young gals attend along with their fathers who have a ton of questions all centered around the safety of their daughters. It's nice to see they care so much.
After that session I winnow it down to maybe three or four candidates and then invite them in for one-on-one questions and answers. Their dads are also welcome to join in. I am looking for girls that really want to make a go of it here in the States and are willing to work hard at doing so. The girls all have to be at least eighteen and in good health and an ability in English is certainly an advantage. I don't want one who is romantically involved for that would be a sure failure after a few months. The girls will miss their folks enough never mind having a love affair tugging at them.
I finally decided on a young gal whose name I couldn't even begin to pronounce but who I will call Rosie. She is just a little thing but was the soccer star at her high school so she has plenty of energy. She is cute but doesn't have any figure to speak of. Just in case you are wondering I have had sex with one of the previous five gals and never even made the slightest move on the other four. You don't want to ask how I will get Rosie into the country as well as the other five that came before her. Ah well, since there are very few, if any, US girls who are bilingual, she won't be replacing an American at whatever job she gets when her one-year term with me is up.
Carla, her predecessor spent the next couple of days showing Rosie all that would be expected of her around my house and she appeared not to believe everything that was happening. She said that it sounded as if she was in a fairy tale. I took them both out to lunch and then in the afternoon I drove them up the coast to a nice restaurant in Santa Barbara and treated them to a great dinner. Carla will spend the next day showing Rosie where the washer dryer and vacuum and where all of the linens are.
That night we sat around watching TV and I had to excuse myself for I had some work work to do but didn't feel bad leaving Rosie alone since she had Carla right at her side. Carla promised to stay for a week to get Rosie started off right. One of the things that Carla spent sometime on was Rosie's appearance. Like many Mexican women Rosie used some heavy oil on her hair that to an American looked horrible. Again like many Mexican women she seemed to go for loud colorful print clothing. Carla got her to use a very minimum of hair oil and toned down her choice of colorful clothes. She looked a thousand percent better and even she seemed to like her looks better.
A week or so later after a tearful goodbye for Carla I asked Rosie if she would like to walk around the neighborhood to get a feel for it; then afterwards we could take a ride around the town to give her a better idea of where she was living. I could see that she was nervous as hell but I thought that this might be something that could help break the ice for her. She jumped at the idea.
The neighborhood is quiet and fairly well established and Rosie seemed to like it. By now she was calling me "Mr. B." rather than just "Bill."
"Mr. B, I don't see any young children playing. Aren't there any here?"
"Oh sure but it is only one o'clock and they are all at school. They'll be home in a couple of hours. Do you want to have a bunch of babies when you get married?"
She broke into loud laughter saying, "We'll I would like to have some but not a 'bunch'."
I joined in her laughter.
Well, Rosie fit into the neighborhood perfectly. I introduced her around as a close friend of my mother and that went over well. She had a ball playing with the kids after school every day. I found out as time went on that she never had that opportunity as a young girl herself. Her dad did not have a very good job and it took every penny he earned to feed and clothe the three of them. Rosie had to get a part time job after school to help out with finances so she had no time for play.
Her education went along great. It wasn't long before she was more accomplished with my computer than I was so I bought her one for herself rather than have her monopolize mine. Her typing skills still needed some work but her command of our language was equal to that of those who had been in the country for years longer than her. Now her driving skills needed more than just a little improvement. She had great difficulty mastering backing out of my garage and into the street without running up over the curb of the house across the street. Fortunately that house didn't have any major shrubbery for Rosie to get familiar with!! Parallel parking was something that baffled her completely and I worked diligently with her on it. I finally bought an old clunker for her to use to go back and forth to the supermarket rather than let her use my Volvo.
All in all I was very proud of her and extremely pleased with her work. Her mother came to visit after a couple of months. She stayed with Rosie in her apartment and was tickled to death with everything I had provided for her daughter and treated me like a king. I was pleased with that for it made Rosie's life a lot better. She didn't have to worry herself that her mother wasn't happy.
After a few months it was hard to tell that Rosie hadn't been in this country for years. She did great with our language; she finally learned to parallel park and was able to back out of my garage without going up and over the curb across the street. Her skills with a computer were beyond description and I found myself asking her for help with some of the software I had to use.
It was a warm day in August and I was taking a dip in the pool when Rosie appeared at poolside asking if I would like a drink of anything. I jumped at the chance of an ice cold scotch and water. As I was sipping it I asked if she would like to join me in the pool. As I said, it was a warm day and I thought she might like to splash around. She jumped at the chance and hurried up to her apartment and slipped into her bathing suit.
When she got into the water I thought I had an Olympic contestant in the pool with me.... the girl swam like a fish. Damn, she made me look like a real dodo. She did lap after lap until I was tired just from watching her. I got out of the pool and sat on one of the poolside chaise lounges while she finished her exercise program, or so I called it. She jumped out of the pool and quickly brought me another drink and I told her to get one for herself if she wanted it. She just looked at me strangely and when I asked what was wrong she stuttered something about she couldn't drink with her boss....that wouldn't be right. Oh shit, class distinction.
I reached down and took her hand and gave one huge yank and she was out of the pool and sitting on the chaise lounge. I told her to sit right there and went in and came back out with a scotch and water for her.
"Oh Mr. B. I couldn't."
"B.S. Rosie. You can and you will if you want the drink. I don't want to hear things like you can't do that with your boss."
She lowered her eyes and sipped the drink and sputtered after the first sip or two. This was her first Scotch and as everyone knows, scotch is an acquired taste and she was about to acquire it.
