Minding Ben

by Victoria Brown

  “When?” I always wanted to ask. “When between six o’clock this morning and now was the position filled? When did you take calls, set up interviews, interview, call references, debate with your husband the merits of the old sitter versus the younger, the Bajan over the Trinidadian, choose and call back?” How did I miss this every week?

  The phone rang again at 11:45.

  “Hi,” said a high-pitched voice, “may I please speak with Grace?”

  “This is she.” I tried to match the beat of my voice to hers.

  I told her about myself, lying about my age and trying to sound more experienced than I was. In truth, I had mostly played with Mora’s children in New Jersey and by the end felt more like their older sister.

  “You sound wonderful,” she said after I was done reminiscing about building forts and baking cookies and bedtime stories.

  “Thank you, Mrs.—”

  “Moira,” she said, “like your Mora, but with an i in the middle. Let me tell you what we’re looking for.” The job she described sounded easy enough, and although I had never even held a newborn, I didn’t think it could be all that hard.

  Moira laughed like a little girl. “Silly me, I forgot to tell you the most important thing. We’re paying three hundred dollars a week.”

  I smiled because three hundred dollars was exactly one hundred and thirty-five dollars more than Mora had paid me.

  “You’re from the Caribbean, Grace?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re so articulate. And you have a green card?”

  The End.

  Every time.

  However they phrased it—“Are you legal?” or “Can you work on the books?” or “So, you’re authorized to work, right?” or “And, you have a green card?”—the question was always the end of my interview.

  I took a breath. “Actually, no. I don’t have my papers yet.”

  “Do you have a social security number?”

  I still wasn’t sure what exactly that was. “No.”

  “Oh, Grace, you sounded so perfect for baby Ezra. But Peter and I are both lawyers, and, ethically, you’d be a conundrum. We have to hire someone on the books. Oh.”

  I felt the room shrink around me; the walls came in closer, and the old shag of the carpet grew like rainy-season mildew. I wanted more than anything to be back home on the island.

  Dame sat on the couch, smiling at the TV. I felt bad making him watch with the sound off.

  “Get me a job, Dame. Any job,” I said.

  Bo came out of the bedroom, scratching his chest with both hands like a silverback gorilla.

  He changed the TV from thirteen to eleven.

  “Come on, Bo. Dame watching that.” I looked at my watch. “Wait ten more minutes, please.”

  Without looking at Dame or me, he dropped heavily to the floor and rested his bare back against the couch’s torn plastic. “Dame tell you he know what going on? I done tell Sylvia he retarded. Anything make him smile.” He turned up the volume.

  The phone rang again at one. Dame was down for another nap and Bo for the count on the carpet.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello” came back a faint woman’s voice. “Did you place the ad?”

  “Yes, I’m Grace.”

  She giggled. “I need a nanny after work, Gracie.”

  I didn’t understand. “So I work an evening shift then?”

  “When I come home at five-thirty, I need you to undress me and give me my bubbly bath and help me into my jammies. I like my curls brushed for a long time and for you to sing to me and then feed me my bottle.”

  I could not bring myself to end the call.

  “Sometimes, like if I’ve had a really hard day, I might want to breast-feed—”

  Horrified, I hung up the phone and laughed so hard I crashed against Sylvia’s kitchen table.

  “Grace, girl,” Bo yelled from his spot on the living room floor. “Stop making so much fucking noise in my head.”

  BY FOUR DEREK AND Micky were home and Dame was up. “And how was school today?” I asked, rooting around the fridge to find them a snack.

  “Fine,” they answered together.

  “What do you mean by fine? Tell me about your day. What’d you do who’d you see what’d you read who’d you play with? Details, please.”

  Micky grinned. She had twined a pastel strand of sour candies around her wrist and cracked them loudly off the string. Derek got up from the table and went to his bag, coming back full speed with a painting. “Look, Grace, I draw home.”

  I had to concede, it looked exactly like the island. A turquoise rectangle of seawater in the background, and a bright yellow sun in the clear sky, two tall coconut trees with spiky green fronds, and a little wooden shack with a smoking chimney. I could almost see my father sitting on the front steps.

  “Who’s that?” I pointed to the three stick figures holding hands in the foreground.

  “Me, Micky, and Dame,” he answered.

  “Micky, Damien, and me. So I’m not in your picture? I like home too.” And I missed home.

  “Derek, I could see your picture?” Micky asked.

  “I think we have to put this masterpiece on the fridge for everyone to see. Micky, go in the breakfront and bring the Scotch tape, please. Derek, pick a spot,” I said.

  After, we lolled about in the living room, not an entirely unpleasant space when Sylvia was not around. I read on the couch. Micky did her homework, screwing up her face with every bite of sour candy. Derek practiced the running man in place. And Dame knelt on the warm radiator box, gazing through the childproofing bars on the window, picking at the flecks of paint and putting the salty scraps in his mouth.

  By nine Derek and Micky were in bed. Sylvia snored on the couch as she watched her shows. I was half asleep in the old armchair that Derek told me used to be his father’s favorite, going through The Irish Echo. I figured I might as well read about New York City’s Irish. The Ancient Order of Hibernians was threatening to cancel this year’s St. Patrick’s Day parade if the homosexuals were allowed to march, the Irish homosexuals were planning a protest march this coming weekend, and the city was stockpiling dye to make the rivers run green. The phone rang. Sylvia twitched to. “Somebody answer that.”

  I picked up.

  “Sorry to be calling this late, but can I speak with Grace?”

  “Who is that on the phone?” Sylvia demanded.

  “For me, Sylvia.” To the woman on the phone I said, “This is Grace.”

  “You placed the ad in the Echo?” She sounded like she had a cold.

  “Yes, that was me. Are you looking for a sitter?”

  She laughed. “I’m looking for more than that.”

  “Okay.” I couldn’t find any enthusiasm. This day had drained me.

  “Before I waste your time and mine, I should tell you we can only pay two hundred dollars, and it’s nonnegotiable.”

  It was so much more money than I’d had in a long time. “Where do you live?”

  “Near Union Square, in the city.”

  Two hundred dollars for Manhattan? I’d heard that women working in the city came home with $450 to $500 a week.

  “Are you interested?” She sounded wheezy.

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “Good. My name is Mrs. Bruckner. I have a four-year-old son. Well, he’s almost four, and we need someone to live in and take care of him full-time, Monday to Friday. Give him his meals, his baths, take him to the park and his activities and playdates. You have to come in on Sunday nights because my husband and I both work. You get off at seven on Fridays. One Friday a month you’ll have to work late. You get paid extra for this, of course; five dollars an hour, but no cab fare. If it’s too late for you to take the train, you can spend the night and go home on Saturday morning.”

  She paused.

  And then went on.

  “And there’s housework. I need someone to do laundry and keep the apartment clean. You’ll have to mop the fl
oors and keep on top of the dust and do the bathrooms. And we need someone to cook and to clean up after we finish eating. My husband gets in from work late some nights, so you have to make a plate and leave it in the microwave for him. I’d prefer for you to wash up after him before you go to bed. Our son wakes up about eight. You can either get up before he does, take your shower, and be ready for him, or, if you want, you can shower after you put him down for his afternoon nap. There’s ironing, mostly my husband’s shirts, but sometimes I might want you to iron a shirt or a pair of shorts for me. Does this sound like something you’re interested in?”

  No.

  Sylvia shouted, “Grace, I find you staying too long on my fucking phone you know.”

  “Yes,” I said to Mrs. Bruckner, who either did not or pretended not to hear Sylvia.

  “Good. Do you have references? How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one, and yes I have a reference. I worked in New Jersey for one year.”

  “Only one year’s experience?”

  “It’s not a long time, but when you talk to Mora I’m sure she’ll have plenty good to say about me.”

  Mrs. Bruckner interrupted me. “What’s your accent?”

  “Caribbean.”

  “Very articulate. And can you read?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you work on the books?”

  I slumped against the wall, careful to avoid the smudged cockroach streaks. “No.”

  “Well, that’s okay. We’re looking for someone to be part of the family, someone we can sponsor maybe. So shall we set up an interview?”

  “You’re willing to do a sponsorship?”

  “For the right person. You want to come in for an interview?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, good. We’re interviewing this Thursday, on Purim. Can you come in at ten?”

  “Ten is fine.”

  She gave me directions and said, “Please be on time. We have a few interviews already set up, and if everyone comes when they’re supposed to, we can move along.”

  “Of course. Thank you for calling.”

  Sylvia was upright on the couch when I walked back into the living room. “Who was on the phone?”

  “A lady from the city,” I said with a big grin. “I have an interview Thursday morning.”

  “Which Thursday? This Thursday here coming?”

  “Yeah, day after tomorrow. Ten o’clock.”

  She pivoted in the seat and pinned me against the breakfront. “So who watching Damien on Thursday morning, Grace? And these children don’t have no school on Thursday, to boot. You should of come and ask me if I have anything for you to do on Thursday before you make your interview. That is the proper way to do things.” Sylvia looked around the living room and told her furniture, “You see how nigger people ungrateful? That is why the good Lord say you not suppose to take strangers in your house.” Turning back to me, she asked, “And what time you think you coming home after this interview?”

  I’d only ever been to Manhattan once before. I wanted to take the rest of the day to walk around and see that place. Eastern Parkway from Nostrand to Brooklyn Avenue had become my new world. Sometimes a bus ride with Sylvia and the children to Pitkin Avenue, and, even more rarely, the subway to Conway downtown on Fulton. Whenever I told Sylvia I wanted to see the city, she started muttering about young girls and men, and wanted to know what in the city was calling my name.

  I stepped away from the breakfront. “Late,” I told her. “The lady living near where Kathy working, and I thought I’d go and see her.”

  She didn’t give in. “So you have to go and see Kathy Thursday?”

  The relief from Mrs. Bruckner’s call made me bold. “I don’t have to, but I’d like to go say hello. We did A-levels together.”

  “And watch where you is now,” Sylvia said, sneering, “going to wipe white people children ass. I bet you didn’t think that is what you was going to end up doing when you was writing A-levels. Go ahead and see your friend, Miss Grace. Just make sure and come back in my house before dark for me please. I don’t like people going in and out of my house at all hours. I have a girl child to set example for.”

  “All right,” I said. “Leave Dame by Dodo for me to pick up.”

  “And what about Monday?”

  “What about Monday?”

  “You don’t have nothing plan for Monday?”

  Not unless I got a job. “No, I’m here. Somebody coming?” Apart from Bo and Dodo, hardly anyone ever came to the apartment.

  “Yeah, the landlord. I finally get him to give me a paint job. Make sure if he ask to tell him you is my cousin from Flatbush come to watch Dame and let him in, you hear?”

  “Okay. What is his name?”

  “Jacob. One of them Jew man and them with the hat and suit from down the road.”

  Sylvia—one, two, three—heaved off the couch to take Dame to bed. I sat on the couch, but rose again immediately as a rancid smell steamed up from the upholstery and through the sweaty plastic. I sat on the tatty red carpet with the radiator warm behind my back and my legs stretched out, and tried to think of the better days ahead.

  Chapter 2

  Sylvia was up early, watching me get ready.

  “So what time you say you coming home today, Grace?”

  I hadn’t said.

  “I don’t know. I’m meeting Kathy for lunch after the interview.”

  “So why you can’t come home and eat lunch? Look how much turkey wing I cook last night still in the fridge. You have too much money to waste to go and buy them white people food.”

  I just shrugged.

  “Grace, before you start to dress, make a quick bottle for Dame. Look it on the floor.”

  “You want anything else from the kitchen?” I asked, knowing that, as soon as I returned with the formula, she would think of some reason to send me back. Dame was cuddling in his mother’s lap. Derek lay on the top bunk in a restless sleep. Micky was awake, propped up on her pillow watching everything. I brought the bottle in and started to get dressed.

  I didn’t exactly have interview clothes, just jeans and sweaters and sneakers. Clothes easy to take care of children in. The night before I had laid out a black turtleneck and a pair of nice black pants I’d bought at Conway and never had a chance to wear.

  “Makeup?” I asked Sylvia. Cosmetics were a vanity forbidden in my mother’s house, but I had come to love the way my eyes looked when I lined them with black pencil.

  “Nah, them white people and them funny. They don’t like you to wear too much makeup when you taking care of they children. How much years this child have?”

  “The mother say three—nearly four.”

  “Well, maybe you could get away with some eye makeup, but you don’t want to go in the people house looking too pretty pretty. Especially you. White woman funny with they husband, yes.”

  I walked over to my drawer. “Grace, what stupidness you doing?”

  “What?” I stopped. “Going for the pencil.”

  Sylvia laughed. “I could really see you come from the bush, girl. Put on your jersey first, then do your face.”

  That made sense. Sylvia could be so normal when she wanted to. I pulled the turtleneck over my head and lifted my hair out from behind.

  “If is one thing you have, Grace, is nice hair.”

  “All hair is nice hair, Sylvia.”

  She pressed her fingertips to her chest to help release a burp. “How all hair is nice hair? You want to tell me picky head is the same thing as long, straight hair?”

  “Is not the same thing, but that don’t mean straight hair better.” Micky lay on the bed listening to every word. She passed her hand over the rumpled cane rows I’d done for her day before yesterday. I looked sideways in the mirror, frowning at the absence of breasts in my profile.

  “You is a real ass,” Sylvia said. “Before these children spoil my figure, I used to look just like you. I see you want to laugh, but is truth. I was tall and s
lim, not thin thin like you, but slim-thick with nice big breasts. Now look at me.”

  I didn’t need to look. Sylvia was soft and mushy. She spread out over the mattress like hot lava.

  “I’m sure after I have children I’ll flesh out too.” I didn’t want to spoil the good mood Sylvia was in this morning.

  When I reached for my pants, she said, “Outside cold, Grace. Put some tights on under them pants.”

  “Nah, this is wool. I’ll be all right.”

  “Every once in a while I know what I talking about. Is fifteen years now I living in this America. These people apartment could be far from the subway. Then too, today is a holiday. You know how long you might have to wait for a train?” Dame finished his bottle and grinned up at his mother. “Morning, Guy Smiley,” she said.

  I slipped my pants on when Sylvia turned to Dame. The truth was, I didn’t have tights. I finished up with my hair and eyeliner and pulled on my boots.

  “I look all right? Businessy enough?”

  Sylvia turned down the corners of her mouth in approval.

  “You look nice, Grace,” Micky said from the bed. “I could come with you, Grace? We don’t have no school today.”

  Sylvia started before I had a chance to explain. “What the ass is this I hearing? Grace is your mother? You always stick up under Grace ass like is Grace what skin-up to make you.”

  I knew where this was going, but I had to leave. I picked up my things and walked the long corridor to the door. I felt bad leaving Micky to Sylvia, but this time I couldn’t stay.

  I GRINNED UP AT the blue sky. No one knew I was on my way to a nanny interview. I was like everyone else, wearing my good pants and my boots, walking to the station to take my train to work in the city. The grin must have been wide on my face because the clerk looked up at me and smiled. “Here you go, honey,” he said, as he slid two small brassy tokens through the slot.

  The ride was fast. Usually on the short trips down to Fulton I liked standing on the crowded train with my eyes closed, both hands holding the overhead bar, my body swaying as the driver gunned between stations. Zip past Brooklyn Museum. Zip past Grand Army Plaza and Bergen Street. Then a determined stop at Atlantic. Another at Nevins. This morning I was embarrassed to stand because so many seats were empty. I looked at the people sitting around me, even though you weren’t supposed to.