For Las Amigas Only
No patronas, or bosses. Just nannies.
The no-boss rule goes into effect when a group of more than a dozen Latina care-givers within stroller-distance of each other in Pacific Palisades meets four days a week for lunch and companionship.
The women, who tenderly refer to their charges as “Mamacita,” “Papa” and “Gordo Lindo” (“beautiful fat boy”), insist the get-togethers are mostly for the children’s benefit. But the gatherings, in a community not known for its cultural diversity, serve a social function too. They give the women a chance to speak their own language, eat their own foods and listen to their own music.
“We are like a pepian,” Silvia Reyes says, likening the group to the rich assortment of ingredients in the Central American dish. “We are all different, but everybody here is equal, no matter what their background or country.”
Reyes, 50, a grandmother of six from Guatemala who speaks only Spanish and who cares for 2-year-old Gina, is “mama” to the other nannies. She organizes the lunches. She decides whose turn it is to play hostess. And she insists that the group move the lunch to a different house if the host’s patrona unexpectedly returns home.
That revelation draws nervous laughter from a few of the regulars. But Reyes, whose humor and outspokenness make her the natural leader, explains her reasoning with a smile.
“When [the mothers are] around, the kids get cranky or fussy,” she explains. “When they are not there, they play together more and have fun.”
The women are in friendly disagreement over how the lunches originated.
Reyes says they first got together on Mother’s Day this year after one of the nannies invited several others over to the house where she works and presented them with small gifts.
Rosa Centeno, 35, from El Salvador, says some of the women met on the bus about eight months ago and planned a play date for the children. The kids were having such a good time that the nannies kept them together through lunch. The next day, a few more nannies tagged along and the group snowballed.
Meanwhile, Lisa St. John, a working mother who employs a nanny to care for her two small boys, credits yet another source--herself and other mothers--for the gatherings.
In August 1994, soon after the birth of her second son, St. John and two other mothers arranged for their caregivers to meet, she recalls. At first, she cooked lasagna for the nannies and kids. Eventually, the nannies took over the planning and cooking of meals.
The get-togethers stir a different pot of cultural memories for St. John. From her perspective, the lunches represent “our own little Ozzie and Harriet for the ‘90s. It allows our kids to play with our neighbors’ kids just as I did growing up in the ‘50s.”
Whatever the group’s origins, the bonds among the nannies are real. After months of meeting several days a week, the women have developed an easy intimacy. Topics of conversation range from man trouble to diets to how to discipline unruly toddlers. Several members have joined what they call a “condina,” a kind of informal, no-interest savings plan in which members who make a weekly deposit of $25 take turns bringing home the windfall.
“Nannies don’t have a water cooler down the hall, so they need to structure a social arena where they can exchange information, give advice or just vent,” says Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, an assistant sociology professor at USC who is studying paid domestic work in Los Angeles. “It just may be everyday companionship, but it’s especially important because unlike office workers, they work in isolation.”
One recent morning in a cheerful, two-story clapboard house on a quiet cul-de-sac, several toddlers have been happily playing in a backyard sandbox for nearly an hour when the nannies announce it is time for lunch.
The women line up the children to wash their hands, then seat them in front of a little table in the dining room. The children wait patiently as their nannies bring platefuls of rice, beans and quesadillas, and spill-proof cups filled with juice.
As Mexican music plays on a radio, the nannies crouch beside the children to help feed them. Somehow, they avoid getting in each other’s way. And they don’t have to ask for volunteers to pitch in.
When one boy’s cup runs low, another child’s nanny fills it up. And when the children finish, Centeno, today’s hostess, cleans the dishes while another woman wipes faces and hands.
Once the children are settled with some toys in the living room, the women serve themselves rice, beans and queso duro, a hard, flaky cheese that Centeno brought back from El Salvador during a recent visit.
*
The women share so much laughter that it is easy to forget the sacrifices many of them endure. Reyes rarely gets to see her grandchildren. Centeno must frequently reassure her 6-year-old daughter that she does not love the girl she baby-sits more than she loves her own children.
And Vilma Alfaro, 34, who left three of her four children in El Salvador to find work here seven years ago, can afford just one phone call home every month. The tearful, one-hour conversation, which costs her well more than a day’s pay, often fills her with regret. But, she says, “It’s better with me here because from here, I can help them.”
While all the women say they are happy and well treated in their jobs, they can tell stories about acquaintances who have suffered everything from long hours and low pay to humiliation at the hands of an inconsiderate employer. One employer wanted to pay her nanny a mere $60 a week because “that is about what she would earn in Mexico,” one nanny says. Another employer refused to put dirty diapers in the trash can, leaving them on the floor for the nanny to pick up.
But for these women, the best part of their get-togethers is not the gossip but the simple companionship that most other workers take for granted.
“It’s good for the kids to get together because they learn more communication,” Centeno says. “But I like it too because without the other nannies and kids, I think [the job] would be more boring.”