Class conflict in the kitchen

One of the richest – and weirdest – experiences offered to middle class Brazilian children is the possibility of sharing their lives and space with women of very different cultural and social backgrounds: the housekeepers. As a heritage from the slavery days, many families hire a lady that will sleep in a small (more like minuscule) bedroom in the house, working long hours, setting the breakfast table, cooking and cleaning, babysitting and washing the dishes in the evening. More than a few of these women entered the career when they were children or very young teenagers. Their bosses would use an euphemism to describe this situation: “peguei esta menina para criar“, meaning “I am raising this girl”, which, of course, didn’t reflect a reality of hard work and sometimes, but definitely not always, night school.

It is, as you can imagine, a very intense relationship. In some cases, the housekeepers are very involved with the family’s life, watching TV together, easting simultaneously (but not necessarily in the same table). They are sometimes harassed by the teenagers in the house – more than one of my friends had their first sexual experience that way. In other cases, they wear a uniform, watch TV in their rooms and distances are sort of kept.

Things are changing very quickly in this domain, not only because  more households feel obliged to respect labor laws, but also because domestic work earned better status and organized trade unions. These days, it is more common to find domésticas that prefer to spend a few hours on the bus to keep their little house or apartment, somewhere in the outskirts of town, instead of occupying the infamous quarto de empregada.

Growing up, my family always hired empregadas – some of them lived with us, some chose to keep their own homes. I am very glad to say that my parents were always particularly respectful of these professionals, and that contrasted a lot with what I saw in other homes. This allowed us to interact with a huge sample of Brazilian society, from different parts of the country (Paraná, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Pernambuco) and backgrounds.

Most of them had very, very sad stories. Among others:

• a Christian devotee that fell in love with my mother (and got offended when her advances were rejected). Later, she asked my mother to be the godmother of her youngest son. My Mom politely declined;

• the sweet elderly maiden that would insist on being payed with coins  (that she kept in her mattress, despite hyperinflation);

• the lady who kept the job for only one day – she told my Mom I cried to much and she was going to throw me down the window;

• the young woman who arrived all covered in black, saying she intended to become a nun. She would go every weekend to the cemetery to spit on her mother’s tomb;

• a serial mother that raised her first baby in our home, while waiting for her boyfriend to finally propose. They have been together since, twenty-something years. She is extremely hardworking – she is studying and works in a school cafeteria -, but her husband is an epileptic that refuses medication because it is not compatible with alcohol. And he likes to drink. And to steal his wife’s money. And seducing her sisters. A real catch;

• and my favorite, a very liberated girl that had tons of boyfriends but, unfortunately, would refuse any help with treating her syphilis.

Naturally, they would introduce us to a whole different perspective and culture.  Take, for instance, popular radio. When I was a kid, I would frequently listen to radio soap operas, tuned up in high volume while the housekeeper was working. I had lots of my sexual education that way. I remember myself asking my Mom, at some point in the early seventies, what meant the great hit by Odair José, “Pare de tomar a pílula” (Stop to take the birth control pill), where a guy asks his girlfriend to allow herself to get pregnant.

I wonder how the cultural exchange worked the other way round. And if they were, sometimes, happy.