I hadn’t planned to see The Help. Another noble white savior of black victims? No thanks. I’d read two books on the subject of black maids in the South and thought I’d spent enough time on the subject. David Denby’s review in The New Yorker changed my mind. Apparently the film put the black maids front and center, and the acting was terrific.
I heard a professor from the Association of Black Women Historians on NPR, who said that the maids need to tell their own story, and people should read the historical and fictional accounts of domestic workers by black authors. And then a black caller said that she loved the movie This caller said that as they exited the theater, the white audience was crying and the black audience was smiling.
I didn’t grow up in the south, nor with black servants. But I have my own story, about life with our Argentine cook, Elisa. Memory is fiction; fiction can be truth. Much of my memory comes from my parents’ conversations about Elisa, conversations infused with affection and condescension.
My sister Luli and I were born in Argentina, where my father was lawyer for an American communications company whose tentacles reached around the world, fomenting or preventing revolution as its bottom line required. My brothers spent their childhoods in Buenos Aires, but we returned home when I was a baby and Luli a toddler. And my parents, who had not lived in the States for many years, brought with them not one, not two, but THREE servants: Jackie, to nurse my brother who had polio, Theresa the maid, and Elisa the cook.
CHRISTMAS IN LONG ISLAND, 1948. ELISA (THE TALL ONE) AND THERESA, IDENTIFIED ONLY AS “SPANISH MAIDS”
Life in Long Island was dramatically different from life in Argentina. No more hobnobbing with diplomats and government officials in Belgrano, parties at the polo club, weekends in the country. Many of the neighbors had a weekly maid, but no one had live-in servants. Jackie went home to Argentina. After a couple of years Theresa moved to Queens and joined the other South American women who worked as housemaids. But Elisa stayed.
She stayed for 18 years. I grew up in Long Island, Cambridge, and Ann Arbor with my sister, my mother, and Elisa. My father traveled a lot. When he was there he seemed distant and imposing. He looked like Eisenhower, and until I was five I thought he was The President.
I adored my mother, and trailed around after her like a puppy. But Elisa was a close second in my affection. She cuddled and fed me, welcomed me in the kitchen, let me visit in her room in the afternoon, took me with her to Catholic church. My mother was small and thin; my father said with pride, “I always told Marcy I would divorce her if she became fat.” Elisa was tall, stout and solid, with big strong arms.
When I was little I called her Lili, but graduated to Elisa. My parents called her Elisa, and she called them Senora and Senor. She refused to learn English, though I’m certain that she understood every word of it. She was proud, and I think she didn’t want to feel stupid, the way you do when you are learning a language. My parents offered her classes, but she considered herself, as an Argentinian, superior to the other new immigrants.
She was an exceptional cook. I remember her chicken fricasee, her deep dish apple pie. I watched her roll out the ravioli dough and put down spoonfuls of filling made with beef and pork, cover it with a second sheet and press it into squares with a rolling wheel. She stuffed the homemade canneloni with calves brains, prosciutto, and spinach. When I had my first apartment, I asked her how to make meat loaf, and she gave me a stalk of celery, an onion, a green pepper and a few pinches of sage.
My sister and mother were often at odds, and Luli spent a lot of time in the kitchen with Elisa. She herself became a professional cook, but even Luli can’t duplicate the rich, sweet crust on the deep dish apple pie, or the fricasee gravy.
Elisa cooked delicious meals, served them to us at the table, and ate alone in the kitchen. But when my parents went out, we’d have a special treat: frozen pot pies or TV dinners with Elisa. For dessert, we made banana splits.
ELISA JOINED US AT THE TABLE FOR LULI’S WEDDING CAKE.
When I was eighteen, Elisa went back to Argentina. I remember her in a grey suit, with a purple orchid on the lapel, when we took her to the airport to fly to Buenos Aires. She was eligible for Social Security, but there was some rule against non-citizens collecting if they lived abroad. I don’t know how he did it, but Dad spent years in bureaucratic wrangling to get it paid to her. The income made her relatively rich, and she lived comfortably with her niece’s family.
ELISA GOES HOME
When I was twenty, my mother’s breast cancer spread to her bones. Elisa agreed to come back to help. They were living in a three-bedroom apartment in Silver Springs, Maryland. I visited them there, and found a very unhappy trio.
Elisa cooked in the little kitchen, and tended my mother in the bedroom. My father told me with amusement that she strenuously objected to wearing her old uniforms but, “Of course I insisted.” Elisa had left her life in Argentina, where she was an honored matriarch, to help my parents, who had always claimed she was part of our family. She returned as a friend, and they insisted she was a servant. She left after a few months.
I was furious. A child accepts whatever she sees; a teenager sees no one but herself. Now I was old enough to begin trying to imagine Elisa’s life.
She was in her early forties when she came to the States in 1948. In 1957 she went back to Argentina for a year while our family lived in Bolivia. Except for that year, she had no contact with her family except letters.
She had a day off every week, but only occasionally took the train to Queens to visit with friends. Her friends never came to the house. I think she had no lovers. Sometimes she went to church.
In every house we lived in, she had her bedroom, and sometimes a bathroom of her own. She spent her days in the kitchen, and afternoons in her bedroom, listening to the Spanish-language radio and reading “La Prensa.” She watched television with us in the living room; Perry Como was her favorite. My parents bought her a television so she could watch in her room, but she never used it. Occasionally she went to the movies with Luli and me.
She opened presents under the tree with us on Christmas mornings in her maid’s uniform, then made Christmas dinner for a big group of friends and family. After my father carved the turkey, she fixed herself a plate, and ate dinner in the kitchen. She attended family weddings in her Sunday best.
Elisa’s story echoes that of southern black maids in so many ways. She was a wonderful cook and caregiver. She was called one of the family, and reminded of her second-class role at every turn. She demonstrated exceptional loyalty. She knew every family secret, and we never knew hers.
I failed when I was twenty, and I fail now, to understand what it was like for her. I could create a fictional character out of these sparse facts, but I have no confidence it would contain Elisa. My character would enjoy her work and be proud of her skill, but she would be lonely, angry, resentful. If that was Elisa, she hid it remarkably well for the eighteen years I knew her.
LIZ, ELISA, LULI
My stepdaughter, majoring in African American studies at Oberlin, denied that Elisa could have loved me. But Elisa was cut off from her family, had no children of her own, never married. She was not like the black maids who “lived out.” She had no children whom she must neglect to take care of us, no home other than the one we shared. Not just because she was so important in my life, but for her sake, I hope she did love me and my sister.
My mother died when I was 24; Elisa died two years later. She would have been in her 70’s. After long neglect, I was just getting ready to send her a picture of me and my son. Her death left me with grief and guilt.
So what did I think of the movie? The two black maids, Minnie and Abilene, were full, breathing women, with a chorus behind them of sympathetic victims. Their white employers, Hilly and Celia, were respectively bully and bullied, with a chorus behind them of paper doll Barbies. Abilene’s crude revenge was perilous and implausible, and diminished her. The movie was like a full painting and a pencil sketch glued together. If you’re looking for insight as well as entertainment, I’d recommend the books listed by the African American history professors, or one of those below.
Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow (book)
Telling Memories Among Southern Women (book)