Bonding with my Cleaning Lady

She stood in my doorway, six feet tall, with short hair, broad shoulders and a take-no-prisoners attitude. "Hi, I Erika," she said in Hungarian-accented English, extending a firm handshake. Her eyes swept across the expanse of my living room and kitchen. "Mees, your house ees a mess!"

I quaked in the face of her Eastern European contempt and shamefacedly showed her to the cleaning supplies. I have had other cleaning ladies before -- young and old, some who liked to chat with me, others who liked to talk on their cell phones. Some had been slow and meticulous, others slap-bang efficient. But I had never had anyone like Erika.

Yes, she washed my floors and cleaned my bathrooms, but she also reorganized my closets and repaired my appliances. She was old enough to be my mother, yet she carried three heavy loads of laundry, stacked one atop the other, down two flights of stairs to my basement with frightening speed. There was nothing she couldn't do, and I was terrified of her.

"Gila, isn't this what we're paying Erika for?" my husband would ask as I feverishly swept through the house on Tuesday nights, picking up every stray speck of dirt on the floor. But he didn't understand. He didn't have to undergo her silent inspections, to see her raised eyebrow as she encountered a kitchen full of dirty dishes from the night before. All my inadequacies were exposed to her, and I felt the need to utter periodic comments about my kids, shaking my head in exasperation as we’d enter a bedroom full of dirty laundry on the floor. I also made constant reference to my work, to helpfully remind her that even though Wednesday was my day off, I did work the other days of the week, and it only looked like I was home all day and still couldn't manage to keep my house straight. But we both knew that I wasn't fooling anyone. I was sure that if I walked into Erika's apartment, I would see color-coded closets and garbage cans you could eat out of, even though she worked full time. At the beginning, Erika would complain about how hard she worked by me, and several times she threatened to leave if she found an easier job. She did eventually find her dream job, an older couple with no little children and a small, neat house, who were willing to pay her even more than I was. But Erika didn't leave me. She rearranged her schedule to fit both of us in.

She loved my children. I sometimes wondered if that's what kept her coming. My 3-year-old would cry, "Erika! Erika!" as she walked through the door, and she would lift him up, giggling, until he touched the ceiling. She had a 5-year-old son, and on the Wednesdays when school was closed, she would bring Daniel to play with my boys while she cleaned. One day, she told me that she had given up her job at the dream house. I was surprised. "They not want me to bring Daniel there,” she explained. “When school is closed, what I should do? But they not want small children. Not nice people, not like you." I glowed with pride. We were beginning to understand each other.

Erika had two daughters still living in Hungary, both in their 20’s. She had not seen them since she came to America more than ten years ago. She and her husband started a new life here, with Daniel, their American son, and she was strong and proud. I wondered about her, wondered how it felt

not to have seen your daughters for ten years, to start over in a new country, with a new language, at her age -- or at any age. She was complacent, but not happy. As we passed each other, she carrying the laundry, I on the way in and out from my errands, we would greet each other with a sigh, she from her load, I, in commiseration, with mine. Life is hard, she was always saying, and she was worn out from it all.

She rarely mentioned her daughters. Once, I asked about them, asked whether they were married. Were there grandchildren? She shook her head, as she gazed at my children playing. “Maybe someday,” she said sadly. Erika stayed with us for a year and a half, and in the end, it was I who left her. When I told her we were moving overseas, she was upset. "Oh, mees, why you leaving? You not like it here? America not so bad." I offered to take her with us to Israel and she gave a rare chuckle. "Eef you think my English bad, you hear my Hebrew!" As the moving date approached, she would ask with increasing frequency, "You really going, mees? Maybe I come with you." I marveled at her attachment. Here she had seemed, when we first met, so strong and independent and proud. But inside she needed what we all need -- love and warmth and acceptance. In the end, it didn't really matter that she was uber-organized and I just barely muddled through my days. Or that I was the employer and she the foreign worker with poor English skills. We'd both gotten past our condescension and prejudices, and life, after all, does have a way of humbling and equalizing all of us, as I was about to find out with my own immigrant experience. I appreciate now what Erika went through. What it feels like to be spoken down to, as if you are a child, by people who may not have anywhere near your education or life experience, just because the broken words coming out of your mouth sound childlike. How it feels for a formerly competent adult to be reduced to squinting in confusion when filling out forms, or speaking to appliance repairmen and being asked kindly, condescendingly, if there's someone around who can help translate for you.

I especially appreciate the courage required to pick up a family and pack up a life, and start over in a foreign land, even if it means you might never rise above cleaning houses for a living, in order to grant your children a chance for a better life.

At the same time though, there was a world of difference between my immigrant experience and Erika's. She made the drastic move in search of better economic conditions, and perhaps to escape some of that Eastern European repression. I was not escaping anything and was certainly not expecting to better my life financially. Rather, the day I made aliyah was one of the most spiritually exhilarating days of my life. As I stepped off that plane, I bore not only the weight of my 17 suitcases, but also the weight of history. Sure, I couldn’t properly conjugate my verbs. But I was not a foreigner, not a "greener." I did not have the identity crisis that Erika had, or that my great-great-grandparents no doubt had when they immigrated to America, trying to figure out who they were in this strange new world and where they fit in a society they did not understand. No; on that momentous day, I knew exactly who I was. I was a Jew coming home. That is not to say that I haven't since felt like a bumbling immigrant. But, like Erika, we've worked and struggled and gotten through some rough spots, because we wanted to grant our children a chance for a better life -- to live as Jews as fully as possible, in the land that Hashem watches over lovingly. While I may never rise above that telltale American accent, my children will, God willing, be Children of Israel in every sense of the word. And, unlike Erika, I am lucky enough to carry with me a conviction that what I am doing is deeply significant -- both for me and the Jewish people as a whole -- which keeps me smiling even through the rough spots and keeps me from falling prey to Erika's worn-out sighs. I called her a few months after we moved to Israel.

"Mees! How are you?" She exclaimed. "How are children?" "We're all doing well. How does Daniel like school this year?" "Very good. He learning to read now," she said, with obvious pride in her voice. Maybe she would always be an immigrant, but her son was learning English as a full-fledged American. I related to that now as I could not have the previous year before we went through the same experience. "So, mees" she continued, "I miss you. When you coming back?"

“When are you coming to Israel?” I rejoined. We both laughed. We knew that for each of us, there was no going back.