The Other Woman

I’ve wanted to write about Amalia for a while, but lacked the guts to do so. It’s hard to write about the woman who spends more more waking hours a week in my home than I do, and who shares a bond with my son that I can only witness in quick glances as I rush out the door to work. I have so many conflicting feelings about the whole relationship that it has been easier to just accept the situation without much reflection.

But Tiago just turned one. My hormones are getting almost back to normal, and the fog in my brain is slowly lifting. Lately, I’ve been thinking that it’s time to confront and make peace with the warring ideas in my head about Amalia.

Let me first introduce her. Amalia is a lovely 50-something year old woman from a small town in the state of Guanjuato, Mexico. She has two grown daughters of her own, several grandchildren, and lives with a roommate who also cares for other people’s children to make a living. I don’t ask what happened to her husband, and she doesn’t mention him. She is clearly an experienced pro when it comes to childcare – that much I could tell the first time she entered my home and picked up my child. She’s always been extremely conscientious about providing references, DMV records, etc. – but I’m pretty sure I had better avoid running for political office anytime soon and risk having her immigration status scrutinized. (Don’t even get me started about the cynical politics of immigration reform – that’s for another blog post).

She dotes on Tiago, calls him mi corazon, mi vida, mi amor. His eyes light up whenever she enters the room. He falls asleep only on my chest, his father’s, his grandmother’s, or Amalia’s. She cooks him healthy, delicious meals the way she had them growing up, and washes and folds his clothes neatly. She even washes my hastily stacked dishes in the sink. She is never even a minute late. We can call her whenever we need a sitter, even at the last minute, and she’ll drop everything to do it. Without being asked, she hand-stitched a Pillsbury Doughboy Halloween costume for Tiago, just because I said I thought it would suit him perfectly. On top of all that, she knows just what to do for diaper rash, or teething, or nap rebellion. She is part of Tiago’s inner circle, and she provides me with sanity and peace of mind. She is special, and we don’t quite know why she’s so incredibly awesome.

She once alluded to me that she could make more money working for one of those rich families in Pacific Heights, like she used to. My eyes must have betrayed my panic. But she quickly said that she would never want to leave “her precious Tiago.” Another time she told me that Tiago had rolled off the bed while taking his nap. When I thanked her for her honesty, she said “Of course. You are his mother. You need to know. That’s my job to tell you.”

So here is where it gets complicated. I would love to stay home with my son, and avoid hiring an outsider to love and care for him while I work. But my husband is a teacher, so we all know that means we can’t live on his income in this country. And like so many Americans, I live far away from family. So I must work full time to pay the bills, and half of my salary goes to paying Amalia. I could pay less and send him to a legal, certified daycare – but we had a depressing tour through the daycare centers that we can afford and decided that we would stretch our dollars to pay someone to come to our home until Tiago is a bit older.

Of course, it is a luxury and a privilege to do this. And on one level, it’s exploitative. Amalia has few options for employment in this country, and though she makes a decent enough wage – she’s uninsured, has no retirement savings, no security for old age beyond faith in her daughters to take her in. Considering that she is caring for the most precious thing in my life, I’d love to offer her those things that she lacks – but then, there would be no point in me working at all.

Does this sound like a classic case of white guilt yet? You better believe it. I took women’s studies and labor history classes in college and learned all about the structural racism that underpins our economy – ironically, only because I was on the winning side of that same system. I read an ethnography of domestic workers in Los Angeles and felt loathing towards the wealthy women it described, who failed to treat their employees with the basic dignity and respect they deserved. I lived in Mexico, and looked down upon the upper class families I saw there who took for granted or patronized the muchachas who raised their children and tended their houses for slave wages, all the while risking molestation or rape from the men in the household. For years, I worked to help domestic workers gain legal status, and held their hands through immigration hearings. I’ve worked on documentaries about the dynamics between women and their servants in India, Bolivia and the U.S. I never thought I might end up becoming the kind of person I despised.

But here I am – facing the existential dilemma of many a privileged, progressive, over-educated mother. I am outsourcing my maternal obligations, and I’m doing it as cheaply as possible without sacrificing quality. I am taking advantage of the very f-ed up, racist laws that I’ve so often protested. My own mother was raised in the South by a black woman so that her mother could work as an educator and civil rights activist, so I’m repeating history. Then again, my paternal great-grandmother fled the starving peasantry in Germany to become a domestic servant in this country – so maybe I’m reversing it.

I get a queasy feeling on my rare days off, when I take Tiago to the local park and see it filled with Latina and Southeast Asian immigrant women pushing white babies in strollers. I sometimes overhear these women chatting with each other about the stupid or careless things their employers do. As they wipe noses and dry tears, there seems to be consensus that North American women don’t dress their children warmly enough, or feed them right. Yet the strollers are Euro chic, the clothes are expensive, and the snacks are organic. I feel that I’m back in Victorian times, observing a class of people with few choices who are forced to sacrifice their own children’s best interests as they care for the offspring of the lucky.

On the other hand, is it really so bad? I’m giving an elderly woman a job during tough times. I am providing my son with a warm-hearted surrogate mom who is teaching him Spanish and how to walk. She can save up for her own place, and I can continue to work on documentaries about exploited workers. Tiago doesn’t seem to notice the difference, as long as he is fed and cuddled. We all win in the end, right?

I honestly don’t know the answer. All I know is that I am deeply grateful to Amalia for loving my son, for not judging me (to my face, anyway), and for helping me with this damn difficult job of raising a decent human being. I hope he remembers her fondly, and understands how blessed he was to have known her.

Annelise is first off mother to T-bone, and a filmmaker and media educator living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She designs curriculum and community engagement strategies for the Independent Television Service when she’s not singing Elmo songs and pureeing baby food. She blogs at T-Bone Chronicles.