Oswaldo Estrada’s story, “The Swings,” is one of twelve pieces of short fiction from his 2020 collection Las locas ilusiones y otros relatos de migración [Wild Dreams and Other Stories of Migration], winner of the International Latino and Latin American Book Fair Prize at Tufts. “The Swings” poignantly captures the dilemma of mothers who care for other women’s babies in order to support their own sons and daughters whom they have had to leave behind. The narration stitches together snippets of conversation over time of an anonymous nanny from Mexico who speaks with a new nanny at the park where they push “their kids” on the swings. The story offers haunting insight into the offloading of domestic labor and love to vulnerable immigrant women. I find particularly compelling Estrada’s representation of the paradoxical monetizing and stigmatization of Spanish, and the precarious position of caregivers who simultaneously need to forge a strong bond with children while never posing an emotional threat to the parents who employ them. In translating this story, I was challenged to find a balanced oral register with a decidedly Mexican lexicon. It was a rare pleasure to revise this translation with Estrada in a gentle back-and-forth process befitting the title of the story.
—Sarah Pollack, translator
Each generation paints them
a different color
(highlighting their childhood)
but leaving them as they are
—Fabio Morábito “The Swings”
I like these cold, early mornings, bathed in sunlight. The trees begin to fill with a pretty green, and even the park seems painted a different color. Maybe it’s all the kids who are drawn outside after the winter, like birds leaving their nests. Those who were crawling only a few months ago are already walking, and those who barely toddled around like ducks are now up to mischief.
You’re new, right? From miles away, it’s easy to see that you’ve just arrived. Here, we all know each other. My girl’s the little blonde running around over there. How old is yours? She’s still in diapers? You should take them off, take advantage that it’s hot. Trust me. Here they train them when they’re about to go to school. Some baloney that children will let you know when they’re ready. That it’s best not to rush them. That they’ll be traumatized. Nonsense. Look at them. Little whoppers with shit up their backs. It doesn’t bother you now, but imagine in a year.
I trained mine in a week. Because it was summer, I put her in undies. That’s how they learn. They feel when they’ve wet themselves and don’t like it, and they’re the ones that ask to be taken to the bathroom. She doesn’t even wear a diaper at night. She wakes herself up, runs to the toilet and goes back to sleep. I hear her because my room is next to hers, but I don’t get up. You have to teach them when they’re young.
Her parents really trust me. They know I have older children. That I know about fevers and colds, tummy aches and those horrible coughs that only an inhaler can get rid of. Since both of them are doctors, they need someone with experience, like me. Did I mention that they even leave me overnight with her? When they have night shifts, they can be gone twenty-four or thirty-six hours. Besides, el señor travels a lot. He’s invited to give talks in France and Italy. Or they need him in Tennessee to operate on a shoulder or to replace a titanium knee, as if they didn’t have doctors who could fix broken bones over there. I guess he must be a real luminary. But he’s really down to earth. His name is Jack, and he doesn’t want me to call him doctor. Neither does she. At the beginning, it felt strange calling them by their first names. So overfamiliar. But Lilly told me that’s how I should address them. When she’s home, she’s always doing research. She spends hours locked in her office with books on the floor and piled on her desk. She forbade me to organize her mess of papers. The only thing I do when she’s on night shift is remove the coffee mugs and plates that she sometimes leaves on the floor or sofa. She’s a gynecologist. She studies the development of placentas that detach too early. I didn’t know what that was. She always tells me about the cases she saves. About all those babies she helps come prematurely into the world who wouldn’t have had a chance before.
The other day I kept thinking about you. Since I hadn’t seen you here by the swings, I thought maybe your girl had gotten sick. Sophie was the first to notice. Every five minutes she would come asking for Ellie. Is my friend coming yet? Are we going to eat lunch together? I had to make up stories that your kid had gone on a trip with her parents. On a train with many cars. With people standing on the platform waving goodbye. I made up the story as if it were an old soap opera. The kind I used to like with Ana Colchero and Ernesto Laguardia. She was asking me for Ellie so much that when I got in bed, I kept on thinking about you. If it’s hard for me, it’s got to be even more so for her. We cross anyway we can. We come from Oaxaca. From Guerrero. There are girls from Tamaulipas and Michoacán, too. Those who come from furthest away are from Honduras. But there are few of them. You really do come from another world. And you can’t say I’m tired, and tomorrow I’m going back. Because even for that you have to get a bundle of cash together. You can’t return like that, with empty hands.
I imagine your country has got to be beautiful. With its tall mountains and those cities you talk about, made of massive stone and not even a drop of cement. We also have ancient constructions, but because I haven’t been, I can’t tell you anything. Here, I’ve watched documentaries they sometimes play on channel 11. The Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, and some Mayan fortresses in the south, almost on the border with Guatemala. But I’ve seen so little of the world. I’m from Rancho La Luz, just off the highway that goes to Dolores, and I know little beyond that. When I asked a friend from Guanajuato to take some money to my family, I had to give her really clear directions. You tell the driver to drop you off on the road going down to El Choco. You take a dirt road for a few hundred meters, and then you’ll see an arrow with the name of the rancho. Keep going down the path next to the prickly pears, and pretty soon the dogs will come out to greet you. I even told her the color of the earth and the location of some boulders so she wouldn’t get lost. And she made it. With a stack of bills. Glad to meet my parents and eat frijoles de olla and the corn tortillas that are only made in my country. Whenever you want, I’ll take them more cash, she told me, contentedly.
It’s great that you’re taking night classes. I want to go, too, but whenever would I have the time, if they keep me round the clock? When Sophie falls asleep, the only thing I do is sit and watch my soaps. I like the Turkish ones. You too? They’re so beautiful, right? I’m fed up with the Mexican ones. Always the same story. And they don’t show the Brazilian ones anymore. I swear, the Turkish ones even make me cry and laugh out loud. Besides, they teach you a lot about life. You tell me, isn’t it unfair that Karim is locked up when the real rapists are wandering free? The good thing is that his wife finally seems to want him. Didn’t you see how they embraced in jail? I got goosebumps seeing them so happy.
When la señora is home, my schedule is different. That’s why I sometimes get together with Vero, the short girl, or with Lucero, the one with the two-year-old twins who still can’t speak. We go to Monterrey for dinner, and if there are mariachis, we start singing like crazy. Me cansé de rogarle. Te pareces tanto a mí. Tres veces te engañé. They’re my favorites. They call us “the tone-deafs,” but it doesn’t bother us. At any rate, it’s only people like us who eat there. The laborers who stand on the corner of Folsom asking for work.
I got into the nanny business to learn. The woman I stayed with when I first came told me that’s how she learned English. The kids teach you while you’re playing, and you pick it up quick. Inglés sin barreras. That must have been back then. The doctors made it very clear to me. With their daughter, not a word of English. Puro español. And you can see Sophie speaks better than my own children. The only thing is you have to follow the rules even when they’re not around. If they catch the kid speaking to you in English, you’re out. That’s what happened to Julisa, the one pushing the black boy on the yellow swing. They caught her speaking in English to the girl she used to nanny for, and by the following week she had no job. That’s why I don’t risk it. Even the cartoons that I put on for her are in Spanish. The doctors are really good to me, they treat me like family. But they’re gringos. Any minute they tell you with a little smile that they’re really sorry but they won’t be needing you anymore. And I have to provide for my kids.
At least you don’t have children. It’s rough spending days and nights taking care of other people’s babies when you have to leave your own to be taken in by someone else. Sometimes Sophie calls me mamá. Poor thing. She gets confused, even though my skin’s as dark as my luck. I always correct her. God forbid that la doctora get jealous. No, my love. Your mom’s working. She’s a really smart, really fancy doctor. She dresses in all white. But she insists. And big tears escape me when I push her on the swings. Because I think about my Juan Carlos hiding between my sister-in-law’s legs when he sees me. I left him when he was tiny to come here to work, so he hardly knows me. My Yesenia, who’s nine, is more affectionate. She runs to hug me. She tells me about her school. About her little classmates and her teacher. She never asks me to stay, but when I say goodbye after two days, her little eyes weep.
I’d prefer to stay with them in the town of Merced. But we’d die of hunger. The houses they just built by the university are all vacant. And in the fields, they always prefer men. Even the drunk ones have more endurance. That’s why I came when they told me about this job. I left my babies with my sister-in-law, Antonia, who’s the kindest soul. She knows the bastard of my husband abandoned us. He doesn’t even come around anymore. With the money I earn from the doctors, I can provide for my children, and hers. She’s got three. It’s not like my sister-in-law is public services or welfare. The bad thing is they’re so far away. It takes me more than three hours to get there. And here they need me until Sunday and on holidays.
Since you know how to cook, make her lunches and dinners. Don’t give her food from those jars that have who knows what in them. When they first hired me, they told me to give her a little jar in the morning. This can at noon, and this other one at night. As if she were a cat. From the very first day I started cooking my own food. Oatmeal with apple and orange zest. Noodles. Chicken soup. Stews. Beans. Smoothies. Just so la señora wouldn’t get mad, I opened the jars in the fridge. I’d put them all clean in the recycling. Afterwards, I told her the truth, and of course she was grateful to me for taking care of her daughter as if she were my own. If only you saw how she gobbles up her quesadillas. Her gorditas. Offer her one of those jars and she won’t touch it. Even if you beg. Because of that, I have to prepare food for la señora whenever I leave. The doctor laughs when he sees the tuppers full of frijoles charros, rice, even homemade milanesas that are nothing like those infamous chicken nuggets.
I have trained her well. She only knows songs from my country. Have you ever heard her pronounce the words to La Adelita? She’s so funny, mi güerita. When I put her to bed, I read her a story, and another, and one more. She loves the one about a rabbit that sleeps in a giant bed and dreams that his cow is flying over the moon. When I jump a page, she tells me no, that I skipped one. And if I change the story, she corrects me and explains that it doesn’t go like that. We’re always laughing together, and I even pray Our Father for her, cross her, and she tells me that she loves me with that little voice of hers that completely disarms me.
How many kids must have sat on these swings? If every day some thirty, forty come, do the math. That’s why I don’t get attached. We’re like these swings that come and go, moving up and down, from here to there. The kids grow and forget about you. Come on a Saturday, a Sunday, and you’ll see that I’m right. Stand over there in a corner and watch them all happy, as if you never existed. Mommy, Daddy, they squeal with glee, as the swings chirp and continue their motion without the help of a maid.
When they’re old enough to go to school, the parents tell you thank you very much, and they leave you out to dry. That’s why I tell la doctora to have another one, that it’s not all work. She kind of thinks it over, but she has so much research. The placenta thing is very complicated. Instead of attaching to the uterus over here, over there, or somewhere, it sometimes grabs onto the walls down below. It’s very dangerous. Not only because it blocks the exit for the little one, but also because after six months, as the uterus expands, the placenta tears and begins to bleed. First a little. Then more. Until the uterus breaks at the seams and there’s no way to stop the river of blood. It’s called placenta previa, and if it happens during one pregnancy, it’s likely to happen with the others. And even more so if you’re forty, with your expiration date approaching.
I believe that’s why la doctora doesn’t dare. Sophie was born at seven months, and she already was up in age. She doesn’t look premature, does she? I don’t know how many days she was in an incubator. Now you can’t tell, but when they first entrusted her to me she was tiny, and she was behind in everything in comparison with my children. It took her a long time to roll over, sit, and begin to walk. But at two, you can’t even tell they were born early. Look how quick she is on her feet. Sometimes I think she’s going to break her neck from so much jumping.
Why don’t you try, señora, I tell her every once in awhile. Surely it won’t happen to you again. Give it a shot. So Sophie can have a little brother. Then I regret saying anything because I see her get sad. I think she feels old. Or she doesn’t want to bleed out. That’s why I’m looking around, over here, over there. If you hear of anything, let me know. It’s better if they’re newborn. So they last me a little longer.
Translated from the Spanish by Sarah Pollack
Oswaldo Estrada (1976, Santa Ana, California) is a Peruvian-American writer and literary critic. He is a professor of Latin American literature and culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has authored and edited several books of literary and cultural criticism. His short stories have appeared in journals and edited volumes in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. He is the author of a children’s book, El secreto de los trenes (Mexico: UAM, 2018), and two collections of short stories, Luces de emergencia (Granada: Valparaíso, 2019) and Las locas ilusiones y otros relatos de migración (Salem: Axiara, 2020). He has recently co-authored and edited the book Incurables: Relatos de dolencias y males (Chicago: Ars Communis, 2020). He won the 2020 Premio de la Feria Internacional del Libro Latino y Latinoamericano en Tufts, and two of his books won Latino Book Awards in 2020.
Sarah Pollack is an associate professor of Latin American literature and translation studies at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center. Her literary translations from Spanish to English have been published in journals such as Bomb, Gulf Coast, The Brooklyn Rail’s InTranslation, Reunion: The Dallas Review and International Poetry Review, and include the collections of poetry Reason Enough (Host Publications) by Uruguayan poet Ida Vitale, Eloise (Unicorn Press) by Mexican Silvia Eugenia Castillero, and the novella Passages (Chatos Inhumanos) by Argentine Mariana Graciano. Her translation of Mexican author Alain-Paul Mallard’s novella An Evocation of Matthias Stimmberg is forthcoming with Wakefield Press.
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