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Mexican woman accomplishes by pulling her hair back is to establish a look of severity: maybe that’s the point.
A small spray of hair, just a few bangs, jutted forth from Araceli’s forehead like the curled plume of a quail, a halfhearted concession to femininity. On this as on all other workdays, Araceli wore the boxy, nurselike uniform called a
filipina
that was standard for domestics in Mexico City. Araceli had five such uniforms and today she wore the pale yellow one because it was the newest. She took the cookies from the publicist with a frown that said: since you insist on giving these to me … The publicist suppressed a surprised chuckle.
This is one tough woman, a no-nonsense mom. Look at those hips: this woman has given birth. Of course she is irritated, because she is separated from her child, or children.
Carla Wallace-Zuberi was a self-described “progressive,” and a few days before this party she had spent twenty minutes in her neighborhood bookstore perusing the back cover, jacket flap material, and opening paragraphs of a book called
María’s Choice,
which related the journey of a Guatemalan woman forced to leave her children behind for years while she worked in California:
How terrible,
Carla Wallace-Zuberi thought,
how disconcerting to know that there are people like this living among us.
This bit of knowledge was disturbing enough to keep her from buying the book, and for the rest of the party, whenever Carla Wallace-Zuberi caught a glance of Araceli, guilt and pity caused her to turn her head and look the other way.
    When Sasha “the Big Man” Avakian appeared at the door five minutes later, his eyes caught Araceli’s directly in a way that was at once irritating to her and familiar. He was a tall, bulky man with curly chestnut-blond hair, and much darker eyebrows that were shaped like railroad boxcars. Now he raised both boxcars spryly as he made eye contact with the Mexican maid. The Big Man was the partner of
el señor
Scott in that business of theirs, and there was a time when he made frequent visits to this home, assaulting Araceli with this same impish look. A self-described “professional bullshitter,” the Big Man saw in Araceli an authenticity lacking in ninety-nine percent of the people who crossedhis path. He had no line, no clever riposte with which he could amuse and beguile this woman, the way he could with people who came from his own, English-speaking, California software entrepreneur circle. He had seen Araceli out of uniform and with her hair much longer and not tied back like it was today, and had once managed to make her laugh with a bilingual pun. The memory of her laughter, of her round face brightening and the ivory sparkle of her teeth, had stayed with him. She worked with another girl, Guadalupe, who was too petite and too fake-cheerful to hold his attention, and today he barely noticed her absence. The Big Man also knew, because he had made a point of finding out over the years, that Araceli had no children, no boyfriend that Scott or Maureen knew about (on this side of the border, at least), and that Scott considered her something of a sphinx. Scott and his wife had coined nicknames for her such as “Madame Weirdness,” “Sergeant Araceli,” and the ironic “Little Miss Sunshine,” but she was also extremely dependable, trustworthy, and a dazzling cook. The Big Man’s stomach rumbled as he contemplated the Mexican hors d’oeuvres that would be on offer at this party, as at all the others the Torres-Thompsons hosted. He entered the home ahead of his long-suffering wife, and son, without saying any other word to Araceli than a mumbled
“Hola.”
    The lingering resentment in the chocolate swirl of Araceli’s eyes confronted all the other guests too as they passed through the front door and followed the sounds of screaming children and chattering adults to the backyard. None of the mothers invited to the party had a full-time, live-in maid, and to them