Dona de Casa

Today marks the first day with a full time house keeper. Its strange, I feel like I have to keep the house much cleaner than I normally would. The old adage, "I need to clean before the maid comes"! I find I’m picking up after myself, my mom would be proud. It’s a funny feeling to have a stranger in your home all day long, cleaning up after you. Like right now, Lana, a portly-5 foot tall dark skinned woman, with kinky hair, is making our bed, and my mind is racing, trying to remember if I left my panties on the floor. Undergarments, I never thought much about them before and now all I can think about is someone else washing my panties, I’m obsessed and feel like I want to run out and buy all new undergarments, unstained! Gross!
My new role as “Dona de Casa“, has me feeling a bit uncomfortable. Four days have passed and I’m a bit less skeevo about my under panties, but more uncomfortable not cleaning! I can‘t believe it! I need to clean or do something to help out. Again, my mom would be proud. All those years of badgering me with Catholic guilt have paid off. Just when I think I’ve banished that guilt feeling and start to enjoy playing with the girls, or settle down in the hammock to read about Botswana, a place I image hotter than here, the Catholic church on the corner rings its bells, telling me to ”clean up” or “help out” with every chime. The guilt covers me like a familiar blanket from childhood. I’m hoping that eventually the guilt will subside.
A daily routine is starting to form. Every morning when Lana arrives to make our breakfast, I instruct her on what to do for the day and what to make for lunch (which is totally weird! I feel like the slave mistress). Then she proceeds to wash the dishes from the night before, wash down all the floors, clean the bedrooms and wash and iron what laundry there is ( Brazilians iron everything--sheets, socks and yes, panties!). While doing all this cleaning, she keeps sharp eye on the time, because at 11 AM she starts to prepare the lunch for the day. Lunches in Brazil are the main meal of the day and are always served with a large dish of rice and beans, a meat of some kind, gound manioc root fried in butter with onions or bacon, a veggie, salad and freshly blended juice made from frozen pulp bought at the market. This is my favorite part of lunch. I’ve grown quite a liking for maracuja, (passion fruit). Grace’s favorite is cupuaceu, a brown hairy fruit that grows on the bark of the tree and is about the size of a football. Another favorite is Caju, or cashew, there is a large fruit that the cashew nut grows on. It looks like a golden bell pepper with a cashew shaped pod on the end of it.
The daily lunch is always followed by a nice nap in an air conditioned room to escape the hottest time of the day. Around 4 PM the streets start to bustle again and shops reopen until 7 or 8 PM. While I’m settling the girls down for the afternoon nap and readying myself to have a nice sleep, I hear Lana in the kitchen cleaning up from lunch and I wonder about her nap? It seems that people of the lower working class do not have seista, it is only for the people who can afford to do so…
At 4 PM Lana calls it a day, and waits for Matthew or I to pay her 15 Reals, about $7.50. It doesn’t seem right, and I feel guilty for paying her so little. She works her ass off for a third of our dinner bill at Guadalajara. And what makes this situation even more extraordinary, is that Lana just turned sixteen! She dropped out of school in the 7th year, and is now married to the young man who delivered our furniture. When I look at Lana’s youthful face, my Ipod-myspace-15-year-old sister-n-law’s face comes to mind, the juxtaposition is striking.
Lana took time off yesterday to go to the doctors for an exam, we are not sure what kind of exam, but I think she may be pregnant…


the pics below are, the chuch on the corner, afternoon nap, and typical lunch at Cosmo's mom's house.