the nanny

I wasn’t going to do it.

I wasn’t ready to write about our nanny, Dete (pronounced Detchi), the babá who watches the baby until noon while I’m at work, and then stays until 4:30 or so to do the laundry and cooking and cleaning.

I didn’t know if I could describe the immediate and intense affinity I’ve felt for her, or the turbid stew of guilt and appreciation and abject dependence that her presence stirs up in me.


But, prompted by my friend Lori's recent thought-provoking post on the subject at My American Meltingpot, I figured I’d give it a shot.

So instead of even trying to parse those feelings for the moment, instead of trying to peer into that murky caldo of class and race, gender and ethnicity and nationality, simmering in my kitchen, instead let me describe her for you.

Dete is striking. She has high Indian cheekbones and sun-mottled skin like a parchment map and a long black ponytail that she winds around and pins on top of her head.

She’s close to forty, and has three kids: Lorena, who’s twelve, Felipe, who’s eight, and Enzo, who’s five months, exactly one month older than my youngest.

Dete comes from a small town in the interior a few hours away. She left her parents and moved to Salvador when she was fourteen to live with her four older brothers and three older sisters.

Her demeanor is meek and easy-going, but you can tell you don’t want to get on her bad side.

She is playful with my sons. From the first time that she saw them, she called them papai, a term of endearment which literally means, Daddy.

She called me Miss Ellie (Mees Ellie), or Senhora, until I felt so uncomfortable I asked her if she could just call me Ellie.

OK, she said, without changing expression, so that I thought maybe I had said the wrong thing, but since then she’s called me Ellie, and it feels less uncomfortable to me.

I don’t know how it feels to her.

She still calls my husband Senhor.


At first we called her Nete. This is how we were introduced to her by the family she worked for previously, neighbors who were moving to Ecuador. She had been with them for nearly five years, since their younger child was a baby. 


After about a week another neighbor corrected us. You do know her name is Dete, don’t you?

Uh, no. We didn’t.


When I asked her about it, she shrugged. “Yeah, my name’s Dete,” she said, standing over the sink, scrubbing a carrot.


“So why do they call you Nete?” I asked.


“When I started working for Mister Douglas, Nicky was five. I told him my name was Dete. He said, OK. I’ll you Nete. 


“And I said, sure, why not. So they’ve all just called me Nete ever since.”


She laughed about it, and I did, too, but after that we started calling her Dete.