At Home, part 16

I thought it would be a good idea to take on the chairmanship of one big project for the school’s parents association (it was called ACE—Amigos de la Comunidad Escolar, or Friends of the School Community). In my PTO experience in Stamford I had seen that the book fair was a good job—minimal preparation, and the whole thing was over in a day or two. I’d get to know more people that way, and I’d be a committee chair, which would pretty much get me out of any other ACE activities I wanted to avoid. I asked Amy Levine if she’d like to do it with me, and she said she would.

Betsy Pardo, the president of ACE, was glad to have someone ready to take over from Cindy Fisher, who’d be leaving at the end of the school year. “Why don’t you plan to work on this year’s book fair and learn the ropes?” she suggested. “Give Cindy a call, and she’ll tell you when the committee’s meeting to sort out the shipment of books.”

I spoke to Cindy, a pretty blonde, who was happy to have the help. “We’ll be in my basement on Wednesday unpacking books and separating them by grade level,” she said. “Come on over around eleven.”

Cindy lived in one of the big houses in Húmera, and she had been there for seven years. “We’re old hands here,” she said when she met me at the front door and led me downstairs. “But I’m ready to go back to St. Louis.”

I was in awe of the ease that she and the other old-timers on the book fair committee seemed to have. They talked comfortably among themselves as we worked, discussing the English-language book club the Húmera ladies belonged to, the relative merits of local pediatricians, and the management of household help. My real estate agent, Marilu, had found me a cleaning lady for two half-days a week—Nati, who was about four and a half feet tall—but most of these women had full-time live-in Filipino girls who kept their houses and watched their children for them.

Though I had grown up in a household where we had a full-time maid, I had never wanted more than a little cleaning help, and I definitely didn’t want anyone else raising my kids. I also knew that I was a bad manager of the cleaning help I did have—I was always embarrassed to ask an employee to do something differently. Actually, I was embarrassed to ask an employee anything.

So I was amazed as I heard Cindy and her friends talk about their asistentas (maids). “Nancy is good with the kids,” Stacy Roth said. “They’d rather have her read to them and put them to bed than me.”

“I wish I could get María to clean the way Nancy does,” Cindy said. “She’ll vacuum around clothes the kids leave on their bedroom floors. Why can’t she just pick up the clothes first?”

I kept my mouth shut and listened to these problems from a different world. We sorted the R.L. Stine horror books for the fourth graders and put all the picture books aside for the kindergartners. One by one the other women left, till just Cindy and I were working.

“How about some lunch?” Cindy asked me. “I think we’re all done here.”

“No, thanks,” I said, “I’m going to head off to the gym.”

“Are you sure?” she asked as we walked upstairs.

“Yes, thanks,” I said.

We stopped in the kitchen for a moment, where Cindy’s asistenta was wiping the counter. “María, Mr. Fisher is coming home for lunch in about twenty minutes,” Cindy said. “Would you make him a tuna sandwich?”

“Yes, Mrs. Fisher,” Maria said, and she got to work on her assignment.

I thanked Cindy for the book fair lesson and got into my car. And I spent the entire trip to the gym marveling at Cindy’s simple request for a tuna sandwich, the ease with which she made it, the quick and competent fulfillment of the order by María. I know myself, I thought. I’d rather make the sandwich than ask someone else to do it. Even this was another world for me, I thought—just as foreign as anything else in Spain.