#287 Okie- Antonio Ruiz-Camacho

#287 Okie- Antonio Ruiz-Camacho

Bernardo and his family have moved from Mexico to Palo Alto, fled is more like it. Nobody will tell him why they had to move or when they will move back. He is insecure and quiet and feels weird in his new school.

The teacher gives him special attention until he can find friends, which he does. Children are resilient but sensitive. It’s hard to fit in if you’re the new person, from a strange place with a weird way about you. But things change if you are patient.

He has a journal to write in, but he doesn’t need that as long as he can talk with his live-in nanny, Josephina (seriously, how many stories do we have with rich kids and live-in nannies...seems like every other one), but even that he will grow out of.

Rating: 8-7-7-8 Total= 30

#274 Coins- Mona Simpson

#274 Coins- Mona Simpson

It seems that stories about foreign nannies taking care of American children is a popular short story subject. We’ve seen a few by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and we just had another by Edith Pearlman a few days ago. While each has it’s own theme, I find most of them to feel very similar.

Here we have a Philippine live-in nanny. She jokes that people always want a nanny from the Philippines: “Like a BMW…we are status symbols.” I find that way too true to be funny actually. Like the other stories, the parents seem to be loving and well-intentioned, but aloof, guilty, and slightly jealous of the closeness between their children and their employee.

“Dee told me, when I first came here, I don’t need to teach you children. You have been a mother to five…Children they are not hard. But most you need to think about the mother. Here, the mothers are the ones that throw tantrums.”

What a weird system. The nanny is here raising another couples children so she can send money to her own children. Her services are needed because the couple is so busy working to give their own children—the ones they put in the care of a stranger—the best life they can.  Seems we’ve become a satire about ourselves. This has nothing to do with the story, just a thought while this topic keeps popping up in my reading.

Rating: 7-6-6-7 Total= 26

#272 Dream Children- Edith Pearlman

#272 Dream Children- Edith Pearlman

Willa is a live-in nanny for a family on Manhattan’s upper west side. They are a nice family, thoughtful and careing and probably a little over-protective. She notices how controlled their environment is:

“In her country there was a TV in every village bar, and in the island’s capital city even the poorest family owned a set. But in this New York apartment—none.”

She quietly and gracefully takes care of the children, quietly watching her privileged employers and their friends. She gives them comfort and piece of mind, and even though they don’t recognize their lucky place in the world, she is understanding on a very human level. Their neighbor is losing her apartment and with it the office where her dentist practice is. Instead of taking the opportunity to move to a diferent neighborhood and take a position with another dentist office, she is intent on wallowing in self-pity. Willa sees her in a sympathetic light:

“Back home this woman would have been respected. She would not have been forced to work. People would have brought her stew and beer and smokes, and she would have sat on her porch and looked at the sea.”

Two stories in, and although I see grace and shape in her writing, I have yet to feel a personal connection with the subjects or characters in her stories. That happens.

Rating: 8-7-7-6 Total= 28

#216 Sleepy- Anton Chekhov

#216 Sleepy- Anton Chekhov

The Masters are asleep and the thirteen year-old nanny, Varka, is tending to their child. She is exhausted, cannot keep her eyes open, but she must. The child needs care and if she sleeps, the masters will beat her. All night, she falls into half awake half dreamlike states, never getting enough. When the morning comes, even without sleep, she is expected to work:

-Varka, light the stove.

-Varka, set up the samovar.

-Varka, clean the master’s galoshes.

-Varka, wash the front steps.

-Varka, run and fetch the bottles of beer.

-Varka, rock the baby.

Night after day after night, reality is a myth. The baby is the enemy and must go. Then she can get sleep. Chekhov does a great job creating tension and anxiety. You really feel tired and angry and want this poor girl to get some rest.

Rating: 7-8-9-7 Total= 31

#103 Unseen Translation- Kate Atkinson

#103 Unseen Translation- Kate Atkinson

Missy is a high-end nanny.  “She had a reputation, like Jesuitical troubleshooter, a Marine Corps. Mary Poppins—when all else failed, call Missy Clark. They expected her to drop in from the skies on the end of an umbrella, like a parachute floating into a country in the middle of a civil war, and rescue their children from bad behavior.”

She took on Arthur, the son of the rich and famous. He was surprisingly well put together for such a child and Missy liked him a lot. She took him around to museums and tried her best to instill  bits of advice and knowledge to his day treating him not as an 8 year old boy, but as an adult worthy of the world. “Missy believed that knowledge was best taken in small, digestible doses. “

“…stoicism was a virtue that was badly in need of reviving.”

“from Echo- an unfortunate nymph. Show me one that isn’t.”

But an 8 year old boy is still an eight year old boy and when your mom is famous and distant, and your father is a neglectful rock star, you are bound to have some issue. This is a charming story, nothing too deep, but nice to read. It’s hard to identify with anyone in the story.

Notable Passage: “There are many places. So many places that you need never come back to where you started from.”

Rating: 9-7-8-7 Total= 31

#69 On Monday of Last Week- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#69 On Monday of Last Week- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

New to the U.S., Kamara takes a job as a nanny to a seven year old Josh. His father is a overly protective but supportive Jewish man married to an African-American artist who is locked up in the basement working on her latest project.

Kamara is over qualified to be a babysitter, but until her green card comes in she cant get a job more befitting her Master’s Degree. However the work seems to suit her, and she falls into a nice groove as Josh prepares for an academic competition.

Her understanding of the local culture has a bit of a learning curve as she “…had spent the past months watching court TV and had learned how crazy these Americans were.”

She sways back and forth between liking the Father’s parenting and judging it harshly:

“She had come to understand that American parenting was a juggling of anxieties, and that it came with having too much food: a sated belly gave Americans time to worry that their child might have a rare disease that they had just read about, made them think they had the right to protet their child from disappointment and want and failure.”

She finally meets the mother and is overwhelmed with emotions, meeting a woman that free, and open was intoxicating: “What had happened in the kitchen that afternoon was a flowering of extravagant hope…”

Another good story from this collection, artfully written. These are true short stories, complete and fully executed, perfect pacing and length.

Notable Passage: “…she still said nothing, because all he seemed to need, desperately need, was her listening and it did not take much to listen.”

Rating: 9-8-10-8 Total= 35