Over chicken al pesto and fish ala pobre, Kim and I found ourselves animatedly swapping childhood stories raging from our families’ odd backgrounds to the nannies and babysitters who have come and gone out of our lives. While Kim’s nanny experience briefly ended when her mom decided against hiring strangers to care for her daughter, mine turned out to be a dragging unlikely story.
Now that I was into the subject, I wondered what happened to Perla, the curly-haired bubbly barrio lass. My mother hired her when I was barely a year old so all I knew of her was squeezed out from older people's memory. Perla's family used to be my maternal grandparents' neighbor. They were poor and hungry so out of pity, Mama hired her to be my nanny. Perla was talkative, even tsimosa, as my mother distastefully described. But she was hardworking despite mood swings and helpful despite her suicidal tendencies. Mama could've sworn Perla was good so you could just imagine her horror when she saw the girl stark naked on the terrace ready to jump!
When I was four, I almost died in the hands of the big boned mountain lady named Inday. Why my supposedly prudent mother ever considered her I would never know but I certainly remember Inday’s ominous stares and untrustworthy smirk. When my parents left me in her care for a few weeks, I remember fearing her strangely callused hands as they threatened to spank me. I admit I was a mischievous kid. But then every bad little girl had a nightmare zone she dared not enter, and mine was a room with Inday. I remember how terrified of her I was. But then it wasn’t her fault she looked like a wrestler. She lived high up in the middle of a mountainous nowhere. I thought it was because she hadn’t been around people much and that she hadn’t played yaya to anyone but me that she behaved the way she did.
I understood her inexperience when she fed me junk food for dinner and forced me to gulp down the cheap tasting pineapple sold at the park while she ate my healthy food and drank all my milk. I even tried liking her even though she drove my cousins mad when she refused to let them hold me. I couldn’t help sympathizing with her. Either that or I was just too young to realize there was mentally wrong with her. Or maybe I was just plain stupid. Destined to be kept in the dark ‘til the grown-ups come and rescue me. Because I certainly wasn’t able to tell that she was feeding me less and less everyday. It didn’t register that she was sleeping inside my parents’ bedroom more and more frequently. I didn’t feel any tension that one night when my godmother kicked the door open and found her snoring like a train, one arm fully rested on a bunch of pillows stuffed on my face.
As if I my experience with Inday wasn’t distressing enough, my mother (who was too angry to say anything except “You’re fired!” upon learning of my ordeal) hired another – surprise, surprise – intellectually deprived nanny. This time it was Ana, a meek teenager who was a distant cousin of – drum rolls, please – Perla!
Ana wasn’t as bad as her porn star-wannabe cousin. She was just too quiet, too shy, and too sheltered from the world. So it didn’t matter that when I invited her to color some Looney Tunes characters, she chose violet for Porky Pig (they probably have grape-colored pigs at the farm) and orange for Bugs. It didn’t matter that she talked to herself almost all the time, and disappeared without asking permission only to come back days after saying she was just checking out the neighbor’s garden. It would’ve sounded natural if the neighbors actually had a garden.
At least Ana didn’t try to kill me (but my brother almost fell down the stairs while she was busy staring into space) and thank God my mother didn’t wait for history to repeat itself. Last time I heard of her, she got married and bore three kids. So I guess she lived happily ever after in her little cottage next to her cousin's.
We got by with little help after that. My mother never left our side long enough for another Inday-like disaster to occur and I’ve forgotten about the nannies and babysitters that came and went by our lives, until Nene came. She was a long-time friend of my mother's. She was in fact the first person who took care of me right when I was born. She was in need of a job and my mother was just too glad to offer her one. I was in second grade and my brother just turned two. We loved her instantly. She was cool and funny, and she she taught me to appreciate music and defend myself from bullies. At times when my mother seemed unfair, I ran to her for support.
But then I was more afraid of her than with Inday. She pampered us like royalty but she ruled with iron fist. She knew we were scared of her and she made sure it stayed that way. She was a jolly clown, but she cursed like a convict. She smoked marijuana and took drugs, sweet talked me into giving her money so that she can go visit her relatives, and smeared my mother's character so that I grew up hating her more. Nene was the longest-serving nanny I ever had but she was also the most feared. I knew she loved us but, as much as I tried, I couldn't force myself to respect her. In spite of my happy if obscured memories with her, all I could remember was the hopeless look on her eyes when she tried committing suicide in front of me and her pale clenched fist when she threatened my brother.
When she packed her bags and left, my 10-year-old heart felt devastated and free at the same time. I knew I was watching a part of myself move on. And as I watched Nene walk away into the distance, I knew I was saying goodbye not only to her but also to Perla, Ana, and Inday.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 wishes and swishes:
Post a Comment