The Park

A Mother’s Day Story for Marissa

In the sandbox, the two little girls play well together. The olive-skinned girl with the curly black hair builds little mounds of damp sand. The chestnut-haired girl with the rosy cheeks roams the perimeter. She finds long twigs from the surrounding eucalyptus trees, which yesterday’s rain has left scattered in abundance. The girl who gathers hands the twigs to the girl who plants, and little by little a ghost forest of upright twigs takes shape.

From a nearby bench, two women keep an eye on the girls. The taller of the two women, who goes by Katrina, grabs a nearby twig from the ground to use as a bookmark and closes the book she has been reading. The pale, wolf-blue cast of her eyes intensifies her generally serious look.

The book is an experiment. Lately, Kat has been worrying that her attention span is suffering because she’s spending too much time on her phone. She used to read more. She has to admit, the book isn’t really holding her attention. Maybe it’s just the book. Maybe it’s because she has just started reading the book and hasn’t settled into it yet. Part of her suspects otherwise.

“It’s nice to see them getting along,” Kat says in Spanish to the woman sharing the bench with her. “Isabella can get so territorial.”

Kat assumes the other woman is the chestnut-haired girl’s nanny. The woman and child don’t look remotely alike. Besides, Kat first saw the little girl on one of her and Isabella’s very first visits to the park, several weeks ago. The nanny wasn’t there then. Kat assumed the little girl belonged to one of the three women who stood close together talking while their children—three little girls roughly Isabella’s age and a slightly older boy—played on the play structure.

Since then, Kat often shares the play area with the nanny. At this hour of the morning, the two women and two children almost always have the space to themselves. Perhaps the chestnut-haired girl returns with her mother in the afternoon, Kat thinks, but she wouldn’t know: She and Isabella no longer come here in the afternoon. That first day, the huddled group of women seemed so standoffish to Kat that she decided move Isabella’s play time to the late morning hour before nap time instead of the late afternoon hour before fixing dinner.

“You speak Spanish?” the nanny asks in surprise.

“A little,” Kat admits, wondering why it has taken her so long to work up the nerve to say hi. “Though I haven’t spoken it since we moved to Petal back in May. Except to place our orders at La Noria, you know.”

“Ah, yes.”

“We lived for four years in Tepotzlán. My husband was working on an agricultural project for an ejido there.”

“Your husband is Mexican?”

“It happens,” Kat remarks. She nods towards her daughter. “She looks a lot more like him than me.”

She offers a hand to the nanny. “Kat,” she says.

The nanny takes her hand lightly, briefly. “Araceli.” Regarding her, Kat notices a dusting of freckles across her cheeks, even darker than her skin.

“And who is this?” Kat asks, nodding towards Isabella’s little playmate.

“Morgan,” says Araceli. “She’s the daughter of Miss Jenny and Mister Scott. I’ve been taking care of her since just after she was born.”

“And you? Kids of your own?”

“Three,” Araceli says. “My oldest daughter is in the second grade. My son is in kindergarten. My youngest daughter is Morgan’s age.”

“They’re not with you?”

“Staying with my husband’s mother in Santa Rosa. She takes care of them during the day. I take over again in the evening. But sometimes I like to stop off at the gym for a little while first, you know?” She smiles.

Do I have time for myself? Kat wonders. Fernando’s latest trip is taking him away for more than a month, with two weeks still to go.

With her parents in Michigan and her friends everywhere but here, Isabella is her only companion.

The only time I have to myself, sort of, Kat decides, is when Isabella takes her afternoon nap. But even that’s up for debate. Isabella falls asleep across my chest and wakes up crying if I try to move her and get up from the bed.

At least I can read the News and scroll through Instagram, she half-consoles herself. And then there’s that hour or so in the evening after Isabella goes to bed. But at that point, Kat considers, after she plucks out her contacts and daubs rose oil into her skin, she’s got precious little energy for anything more than the latest episode of whatever’s on HBO or Netflix.

I should talk to Fernando, she decides. Maybe we’re doing well enough now to be able to afford pre-school for Isabella. Just a half-day. There’s that cute little place over on I Street—walking distance. Is that asking too much? I could work out and who knows, maybe even start meeting some people. Maybe get some writing done, even.

Araceli breaks her train of thought. “Before we moved here, before the kids, I was a fitness instructor in Matamoros,” she adds. “Though you’d never know it now!”

“Morgan seems like a nice little girl,” Kat remarks.

“But ohmigod is she a handful. Such a strong will. She’s a terror if she doesn’t get her way. It makes things hard with Miss Jenny sometimes. She blames me if Morgan throws a tantrum—even though Morgan throws tantrums with her all the time. But those tantrums don’t count, you know? Miss Jenny expects me to be the baby whisperer.”

“I hope they’re good to you, at least.”

“They pay me four dollars an hour more than the family before them did. That’s because the lady I worked for, Miss Suzanne, who was Miss Jenny’s friend, told her that’s how much she paid me. Me hizo un paro.”

“What happened there?”

“Miss Suzanne got transferred to Boston. Her husband, Mister Jeff, didn’t want to go but Miss Suzanne made all the money, so he didn’t have much of a choice. I used to have to listen to him complain about it all the time those last few months.”

“He was a stay-at-home dad?”

“A stay-at-home Assassin’s Creed player, you mean! Really, I took care of him, too. He never picked up after himself. But I told Miss Suzanne, ‘He can eat what Morgan eats for lunch or you can pay me more. I am not fixing two lunches, one for him, one for her.’ After that, he mostly went to Jack in the Box.”

“But are they good to you?”

“They keep putting pressure on me to become a 24-hour nanny. Just until Morgan’s in kindergarten, they say. It’s only three years from now. Not even. They tell me I can have the guest bedroom. I’m always reminding Miss Jenny, ‘But Miss Jenny, I have a family, too. They’re just a half an hour up the road.

“But you have your husband’s mother to help you with them, Miss Jenny tells me. Sometimes she gets tears in her eyes. I don’t have anybody.

“‘You have your mother,’ I tell her. ‘She lives right here in Petal.’

‘Yes, but she won’t come over. I’ve told you that.

“‘Oh, right.’”

“So where does this all end up?”

“Who knows? Miss Jenny insists on getting her way. Maybe I find a night nanny for them. My husband has a friend at the ranch where he works. The friend has a cousin who’s looking for work. She’s older. Her kids are all grown. She might be up for it, for a while. But I don't know. I think she has a taste, you know?”

“What kind of fitness did you do, back in Matamoros?”

“Aerobics, cross-fit. I always had full classes. Private clients, too.”

“Sounds like a good business.”

“It was but, you know, you get a bunch of women together and if you don’t watch out there’s bound to be drama.”

“Would you do it again?”

“Look at me,” Araceli says, looking down at herself. “Would you?”

“If you work hard enough, I’m sure you could get back in shape. That’s my plan, anyway.”

“I hope you succeed. For me, hey, I’ve got three kids.”

Araceli smiles, shrugs, gets up and tells Morgan it’s time to go. Without a moment’s pause, Morgan screams no! and pancakes herself onto the sand.

Kat lifts up Isabella and tells her that Morgan is going home for her nap. So it’s time for them to go home, too.

“Say goodbye to Morgan.”

“Bye, Morgan.”

Morgan stops bawling, looks over to Isabella. “Bye, Bella.”

“Bye, Miss Kat,” says Araceli, in English.

Kat can’t tell if Araceli’s speaking on behalf of Morgan or on behalf of herself, if this is how a friendship begins, or just another arrangement.