The Nannies Page 2

  That heart attack changed everything. Her father recovered, as did the accountant, but the incident made her parents take a long, hard look at their lives. Also at their daughter, who was nagging them for another palomino pony so that her first one wouldn’t be lonely. That self-examination led to some kind of joint spiritual epiphany: their privileged Texas lives were empty and meaningless. Which was how it came to be that six months later, the Chandlers sold their worldly possessions, donated the proceeds to Doctors Without Borders, and moved south. Way south. Dr. Chandler would practice medicine in the bush. Mrs. Chandler would be his learn-on-the-job physician’s assistant. Which was fine for them. Hey, they picked it. But Lydia had not. What really bit Lydia’s butt was that her parents were the rare ones who, once they decided to Help Mankind, never looked back.

  Hours later, after Dr. New Jersey finished ministering to the natives and Lydia piloted the boat back downriver to the squalid hamlet that she called home, sweet home, she trudged into her family’s hut. She never failed to notice how its square footage was roughly equal to her old walk-in closet.

  “Airdrop today, there’s one for you,” her mom said. She was busy sterilizing some medical equipment on a bed of hot coals. “How’d it go with Butkowski?”

  “The usual,” Lydia replied as she reached for some dried and salted snails—junk food in Amazonia. “Love was in the air, though; one of the Amas fell for him.” She pawed through the mail and spotted the aerogram addressed to her, in her aunt Kat’s loopy handwriting.

  Before Lydia’s parents had lost their minds, Aunt Kat had been the blackest sheep of the Chandler clan. An excellent athlete, Kat was the best female tennis player in Texas by age fourteen, with a feature story in the Houston Chronicle. However, when she came out as a lesbian at fifteen, no such press coverage ensued.

  Kat didn’t let the moralizers stop her. She attended the University of Texas as a broadcast journalism major, captained their tennis team, and left after her sophomore year to join the women’s circuit. She reached the round of sixteen at the U.S. Open twice, but sustained a serious knee injury at twenty-four that sidelined her forever. After she retired from competition, she went to work as a tennis commentator for ESPN.

  Kat’s longtime domestic partner, the Russian tennis star Anya Kuriakova, had been a chief rival for years. There were good-natured titters when Kat and Anya announced that they were a couple; their marriage in Massachusetts had made national news. Now, Kat did her broadcast thing, and Anya coached promising young Russian players. The couple lived in a Beverly Hills mansion with a son and daughter who’d been conceived with the aid of a sperm donor. Which meant—sexuality aside—that Lydia’s aunt and her family were now basically living Lydia’s old life.

  Lydia tore open the aerogram and scanned the usual news of home and family. But she nearly choked on a snail when she got to the next paragraph.

  “ESPN has made me a terrific offer to double my on-air time. If I accept, I’ll have to travel quite a bit more. Anya and I have decided it’s time that we hire a nanny for the kids—I’ve always been more the hands-on mom type, you know. So I thought you might want to come back to the States and take the job.”

  Holy shit. A lifeline. One that led to 90210.

  The engine in Lydia’s brain kicked into high gear. Her parents had to say yes. If they tried to stop her, she’d hike into the rain forest and go on a hunger strike. She’d threaten to get it on with an Ama—not that any of them found her skinny, pale flesh, or the lips that had never been pierced by sticks, very appealing. But still. She’d do whatever the hell it took to get out of the jungle.

  Goodbye, rain forest. Hello, Beverly Hills.

  3

  Esme Castaneda: Echo Park, California

  A sheep, Esme thought as she stared at her reflection in the cracked mirror over her dresser. There was space for her to stand between her single bed and the dresser; together, they practically filled her tiny room.

  You look like a damn sheep.

  Ignoring the jagged part created by the cracked mirror, she brushed raven hair off her face, then straightened the neckline of the soft pink sweater she’d found at Goodwill. She liked this sweater a lot—it clung to her curves and cast a soft glow on her ochre skin. She knew it made her look pretty. So pretty. She loved and hated that, at the same time.

  “Oye, chiquita, what’s up? You lookin’ fresh!”

  Esme had been thirteen and living in Fresno when she’d heard those words shouted by a golden boy who leaned out the driver’s-side window of a spit-shined, cherry red Cadillac. She kept walking, heading home from Our Lady of Mercy School. But the boy trolled along in his car, still calling to her.

  “Pretty little linda. ¿ Qué pasa?”

  Esme recognized him; she’d seen him around the neighborhood. He was so cute: bulging muscles, full lips, heavy-lidded eyes. She didn’t need to examine the colorful dragon tattoo on his right bicep to know he was a banger, a Diego (after a different boy who’d come to Fresno from San Diego—the guy was now doing life at Vacaville for murder, but the Fresno gang he’d organized still thrived).

  There were two gangs vying for control of Esme’s neighborhood: the Diegos and the Razor Boys. This handsome Diego boy—Esme knew he could have gotten any girl, one of the older ones who already knew how to work their curves and paint their lips and do whatever it took to keep a guy interested. So why was this movie star Diego paying attention to her, a knobbykneed kid in a stupid Catholic school uniform?

  When Esme was born, her parents were sharing the cheap three-bedroom home of Esme’s maternal aunt, uncle, and their five kids. Spanish was spoken at home and at church; Esme didn’t learn English until she started kindergarten. She mastered it quickly, though. It was like a puzzle to her, and she loved to solve puzzles. On the rare occasion when her parents were forced to converse with a norteamericano, Esme was their translator.

  All Esme’s cousins went to Our Lady of Mercy, so Esme did, too. But even with aid from the church, it was difficult for the parents to afford the tuition. The adults did without so that the kids could stay at that school; that’s how important it was to them. Esme’s mom cleaned houses and her father was an off-the -books day laborer. The adults were hopeful that God and the church would keep their kids from joining gangs.

  And their hopes were realized. For a while.

  But Esme’s cousin Ricardo soon threw down with the Razor Boys. He wore baggy black pants and black tees with the right sleeve rolled up to show off his new RB sign, a python tattoo. He started bringing home hundred-dollar bills from selling coke. The adults prayed he’d come to his senses, but it didn’t do any good. Ricardo said the frigging church wouldn’t put food on their table or buy them a decent car or him new Nikes. His father threw him out of the house. He never came back.

  Esme had been ten then. She missed Ricardo—he was her favorite cousin. She’d see him sometimes, with other RBs. He became a gang patrón— a big guy—fast. But when he saw Esme, he looked right through her.

  It wasn’t long after that when the terrible thing happened. Esme’s father, Alberto Castaneda, had stopped for a beer at a tavern with his friend Carlos. Some white boys came in, flying on crystal meth and looking for trouble. One of them dumped his drink on Carlos. The boy wouldn’t apologize; Carlos wouldn’t accept the insult. He threw the first punch. But the meth made the white boy superstrong. His friends joined the fight. Esme’s father stopped Carlos from getting killed by stabbing one of the white boys in the gut.

  Alberto didn’t wait around to find out what happened. There were too many witnesses, and he was in America illegally. So he ran with his wife to the Echo Park section of Los Angeles, to live with distant cousins. Esme was left in Fresno. The plan was to wait for the trail to grow cold, and then bring Esme to Los Angeles.

  Esme missed them, a lot. But there were letters and even the occasional phone call. After a few months they found decent jobs working off the books for a Hollywood producer and his wife. It
was a long drive from the Echo to the producer’s Pacific Palisades estate, but they were treated well and got paid every Friday. In cash.

  On the day that the handsome Diego boy called to Esme from his badass car, it had been a year since her parents had left her in Fresno. The pain of it had numbed down to a dull ache in Esme’s chest. But she never let it show. To prove that she didn’t need anyone, she became self-contained and self-sufficient, a quiet girl, a good girl who got good grades. The nuns told her how smart she was, how much potential she had. She could go to college. Do anything. Be anyone.

  Though Esme and her friends had started sneaking lip gloss and rolling up the skirts of their uniforms and flirting with boys in the park, they’d giggle and run away together if a boy came on too strong. After all, they were just seventh graders. They had classmates who were already in gangs, and four girls in their grade were already pregnant. But Esme and her friends were light-years from either sex or gangs. They knew they didn’t want to be mothers; they saw what gang membership had done to Ricardo. Both were dangerous.

  Looking back, sometimes Esme thought it was the dangerous part that had made her talk to that Diego in the Caddy that day. And then, to get in his car, with one hand on the door handle in case he tried anything. His name was Nick. He was sixteen. He didn’t do more than hold her other hand. She felt so grown up, sitting there next to him in that fine car.

  She started looking for Nick after school—she loved showing him off to all her friends. He invited her to parties, and she went. The Diegos accepted her. Some of them called their girlfriends “sheep” and said that ho sheep were only good for one thing. Sometimes they even hit these girls in front of everyone to prove how macho they were. Esme saw how the girls put up with it, because their boyfriends set them up with apartments. Many of them had babies; some had more than one. All of them were still teenagers.

  But Nick wasn’t down with any of that. Even when he and Esme got more intimate, he treated her with respect. When he saw that Esme was interested in his tattoos, he got one of the gang members to show her how it was done. She asked to handle the needle, and quickly became a skillful tattoo artist. She did tattoos for any Diego who wanted one. They paid her. She didn’t allow herself to think about where the money came from, or how Nick had paid for that fine ride of his, or the gifts he bestowed upon her—jewelry and expensive perfume that she hid from her aunt. After she left the house, she’d change into the sexy clothes he bought her and trick herself out like the hottest sheep. By the time she gave him her virginity, she was so in love that she would have done anything for him.

  Then one day, she had to prove it.

  Girls were made part of the Diegos in two ways: by being jumped in—fighting all the girls in the gang at once—or by sexing up as many boys as a roll of a pair of dice. Snake eyes? You were lucky. Double sixes? Get ready for the train. Esme was petrified that Nick would ask her to do one of these two things. But he didn’t. Instead, he taught her how to drive.

  She loved it. She loved him. One night, after they’d had sex, Esme was lying in his arms. He said he wanted to go for a ride and wanted Esme to drive. She felt so safe, cuddled next to his heartbeat, him smoothing hair off her face and kissing her forehead, that she said yes.

  Esme was behind the wheel when it went down. Nick was in the passenger seat, two more Diegos in back. The RBs strode out of the neighborhood Taco Bell carrying tostadas to go, laughing about something. Nick called to them: “Eh, Razor Boys? Diegos rifan! Diegos rule!”

  The gunshots were deafening. Four RBs fell, their Taco Bell salsa mixing with their blood on the sidewalk. One stumbled down the block before he fell, too. A sixth RB got away.

  The car took off. Esme felt it wasn’t really her foot on the gas or her white-knuckled hands on the wheel. Nor was it really Nick who sneered at her, “How you like that payback, little ho sheep?” before he pushed her out of the car, his friends laughing and jeering from the backseat.

  Esme still liked puzzles; the pieces of this one came together in less time than it had taken Nick to murder her favorite cousin, Ricardo. Making her his girlfriend, taking her virginity, teaching her to drive, making her drive his car, it had all been a setup to hurt Ricardo’s gang in the worst way possible. He had used Esme to do it, just because he could.

  She’d called her parents immediately and said she had to come to Echo Park immediately. She was out of Fresno before Ricardo’s coffin was in the ground, but discovered that the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles was just as rough as where she’d lived in Fresno, just as gang-infested. Same shit, different toilet.

  But she did everything she could to put her past behind her. For two years now, she’d gotten almost straight As, stayed far away from the gangs, and tried to forget the terrible thing she’d done. She’d even found a best friend, a guy named Jorge Valdez. He was one of the Latin Kings, a group of guys who fought for the rights and prosperity of the universal Latino movement. In Jorge’s case he did it through poetry, and the hip-hop lyrics he wrote for some local rappers. His raps were always about bettering la Raza, staying in school, or cautionary tales about gangsta life. When she was with Jorge, she could almost forget.

  But sometimes, at the oddest times, it came back to her. Like now, as she got ready to meet her boyfriend, Junior. Twenty-two and a veterano, a gang veteran, Junior had gotten out of the life. The homies respected him because he respected them. He’d become a paramedic, the one who’d come to the Echo when other paramedics would rather sit on their fat asses and eat donuts than make a run to the latest gang bang.

  Unfortunately, Junior and Jorge didn’t get along. Junior thought Jorge was a coconut—a Latino trying to be white. Jorge had an equally low opinion of Junior. Ever since she’d hooked up with Junior, she and Jorge had been drifting apart. She missed him, but not enough to put up with his negative attitude toward Junior.

  It was something, to be the girlfriend of one of the most powerful boys in the neighborhood. Esme enjoyed the status it gave her, and she liked to please him. Pleasing Junior meant dressing like a girly girl; he liked to be proud of his woman in front of his friends. Usually, Esme liked it, too. But not when she remembered. “How you like that payback, little ho sheep?”

  “Esme, Junior está in the house. He says to come rapidamente, please!” Esme’s six-year-old cousin Maria sang out in Spanglish from downstairs.

  “Gracias,” Esme called back.

  Junior was driving Esme to pick up her parents at the Goldhagens’ estate. The television producer and his wife had recently sold their place in the Palisades and moved to an even larger property in Bel Air. The good news was that Esme’s parents had a shorter drive to get to work—a half hour with not too much time on the freeway. But today, their ancient Chevy had broken down, so they’d taken the bus. Now, Junior and Esme were going to bring them home.

  Esme came downstairs and kissed Junior while Maria watched, wide-eyed. Junior winked at Maria. “Someday you’ll have a boyfriend too, pretty girl.” Maria blushed and bolted, which made Junior chuckle sweetly.

  They followed the directions that her father had given her— 134 freeway to the 101, then over the hill at Benedict Canyon. It dropped them into Bel Air, which was like visiting another planet. Row after row of mansions on lush properties, perfectly landscaped by people like Esme’s father. Some of the homes were hidden behind high iron gates, where visitors had to be announced before the gates to paradise would open.

  There was just such a closed gate guarding the Goldhagens’ new estate. When Esme and Junior pulled into the driveway, they were stymied. No guard, and apparently no intercom system. Junior got out of his car to search for a way in, but it was fruitless. He peered between the bars to see if he could see anyone. Nothing. Esme joined him, but to no avail. Normally, Esme was a model of efficiency, yet she hadn’t remembered to bring the Goldhagens’ telephone number. No way was it listed.

  It was so humiliating standing there that Junior kicked the gate in fru
stration before slamming back into the car. The idea of driving all the way back to Echo Park, Land of the Have-Nots, for the phone number, and then again to Bel Air, Land of the Haves, made them both feel small.

  When Esme heard the approaching sirens, she wondered where the fire was. She had no time to adjust that thought before two Bel Air community patrol cruisers roared into the driveway behind them and smoke-skidded to a stop.

  “Both of you! Out of the car! Hands in the air!” came over one cruiser’s bullhorn.

  Holy shit, Esme thought. They mean us.

  4

  “Where are they going to meet us?” Jeanne McCann fretted as she and her daughter Kiley strode past the endless gates in Terminal One at Los Angeles International Airport. It was late Sunday afternoon; the airport was insane. It seemed like everyone and his mother was on his way to or from a flight.

  “Baggage claim,” Kiley told her mother for the third time. “There’ll be a guy waiting down there for us. Don’t worry.”

  “How will we know it’s him? What if he’s late? What if he doesn’t show up at all?” Mrs. McCann asked. She and Kiley dodged past a large Sikh family—the men in big turbans and beards—and then avoided a girl with green hair wearing a see-through shirt with nothing on underneath but massive implants. “Did you see that, Kiley?”

  “Couldn’t miss it, Mom. Calm down. Everything is going to be fine.”

  “Kiley, what if there’s no one here from that show of yours?”

  “There will be, Mom.”

  “But if they aren’t there, where are we supposed to go? Kiley? Kiley?”

  Danger. Red alert. Kiley heard her mother’s rising vocal tone and knew that she was but moments away from a full-blown, stop-her-in-her-tracks anxiety attack right in the middle of LAX.