The Perfect Housekeeper

ul

Some years ago, I had the dubious distinction of appearing in "Granma", Cuba's Official State Newspaper. They reprinted a piece I'd written about wanting a robot housekeeper like the one in The Jetsons, so I'd never again have to deal with finding, hiring, and keeping human help. The Granma editors must've been mad with joy at this find- surely, an example of capitalism at its most decadent! Except that I didn't need a maid as a luxury,but to watch my child while I went out and earned a subsistence level salary. A housekeeper was my only option--I had no helpful relatives to pitch in. Okay, I thought. I'd just hire someone and we'd all be happy-- I had rosy memories of live-in help from pre-revolutionary Cuba. The women who helped raise me back on the island were sweet, loyal and affectionate, REALLY like "part of the family", as the invidious cliche goes. (They were probably also grateful to get three hots and a cot plus a monthly stipend in a country where you saw beggars in every street corner). I would later discover that housekeepers in the U.S. are a wholly different story. Before they ever reach our doorsteps, they save every penny to finance their way into uncertain destinies, they leave behind loved ones and familiar surroundings, they survive dictatorships,revolutions or hardscrabble societies, cross deserts, rivers and oceans, dodge searchlights, face down dangerous people. So generally speaking, the help here is tough. And resentful of anyone who has it easier than they do. Besides, "Nobody likes to clean up after anyone else", as my mother used to say. Pride is an ever-present factor. I have turned down countless women who claimed to have been rocket scientists or college professors back in their countries. But can they clean? is all that matters--I don't want to compete for status with the cleaning lady, thank you. Servants here walk around with a humongous chip on their shoulders,itching to cut whoever hires them down to size. Insubordination runs the gamut from merely slacking off, to insolence, larceny, and even child neglect or abuse. I've suffered it all; this is the flip side of the horror stories housekeepers like to tell about their bosses. In their minds, you --who are paying them -- are no better than they, because you are all immigrants. Never mind that YOU have a college education, a profession, and command of the English language, or that YOU, unlike them, don't have to work with your hands: class differences are a tricky proposition in this country. For class lines to be clearly defined in your favor,you must have the lifestyle and resources of a one percenter. Otherwise, you're just one more schmuck, vying for position with the rest of the unwashed. Haven't you ever met a plumber who makes more than you do? When hiring a housekeeper, that's the 800-lb. gorilla in the room. Then there's the matter of availability and price. Housekeepers will want to know beforehand if your place is large, or cluttered. They'll ask you to send photos, and if it looks like too much work, they'll either beg off, or they'll quote an impossibly high fee. Like, say, $400 for a two-bedroom apartment. The situation is so dire that "pre-cleaning " has nowadays become a thing. "Pre-cleaning" is tidying up the overtly dirty spots before your housekeeper gets there. Absurd? Agreed. Unfortunately, I NEED a housekeeper; I'm asthmatic; I choke on household dust and get winded easily. But even if I didn't, if I can pay to avoid housework, I will. So I keep searching for the perfect housekeeper; hope springs eternal-- despite the peremnial possibility of pie in the face. My last misadventure involved someone I really thought was ideal: a Russian woman. A European who would save me from having to countenance another Hispanic with egalitarian notions. She was inexpensive, and, if you can say this about a housekeeper, she was talented. She was fast, thorough and even enterprising, with attention to detail and a knack for organization. She was also pleasant and deferential. In return, I tried to be amenable: she asked me to pass along my discarded clothes and accessories, and I did, she asked to be referred to other potential clients and I got her a contact in my building, she even asked me to help her find a boyfriend, and I apologized profusely for being clueless in this department. Nevertheless, she appeared to be grateful. She even told me how pleased she was with our arrangement, and gave me a big hug. Things were going great, I couldn't believe my luck--until one day, it all changed. She began to mock me with her facial expressions, she started turning up her nose at the secondhand items she had solicited before, she suddenly demanded a $10-an-hour raise and I agreed. Her initial fee had been so low that the raise seemed only fair, but then she started angling to extract even more money. She asked for tips (normally given to agency workers, not independents like her). She proposed cleaning my closets for $200 extra. I turned her down on both counts. I'm thinking now, maybe she was just trying to get fired for whatever reason. One day, she just ghosted me; disappearing at the end of her shift without a word. I never heard from her again. I was floored. Hadn't I agreed to just about everything she wanted? If she wanted to leave for a more convenient situation, she could have just given me the courtesy of a notice. It was all so abrupt, that I suspected an extraneous fly in the ointment. Over the past few weeks, I'd noticed her murmuring in Russian into the phone while she worked --and she once texted me repeating something I had said, prefaced by a few words in Russian. It was obviously meant for someone else; she was communicating with The Outside. About me. Somebody had gotten to her and filled her Slavic brain with venom. I know that I can be hard to take, that I piss off some people without even trying, the bourgeois entitlement of my early Cuban upbringing is baked into my bones. Even now, weeks after the Great Russian Disappearing Act, I still have to tamp down a surge of indignation at the thought of being snubbed by the likes of this... creature. Calm down, no es pa'tanto, I tell myself. Maybe I just forgot how hardboiled Russians tend to be, coming, as they do, from such an unforgiving environment. Vladimir Putin, bombs from Ukraine, and But I thought this woman was different, so I let down my guard--even though our initial agreement was based on a betrayal. She offered to bypass the agency that had sent her to me, so I could pay her a lower amount directly and skip the middleman. And I went along. You could say it's kharma and it serves me right, but I still need a new housekeeper. Now I'm left wondering what to do differently NEXT time, so I can perhaps be spared a new source of aggravation.