Laura Bennett - Didn’t I Feed You Yesterday?

Best (or maybe worst) of all, she accused me of dressing the boys in various hues of Polo Ralph Lauren shirts. I ask you, why would I ever spend good money on something like that when L. L. Bean features just as many colors for half the price? Doesn’t that nice lady know what kind of shoes I could buy with the difference?

Now I am certainly no stranger to angry comments. I take full responsibility for everything I say and the wrath that comes along with it; I just didn’t expect a website that once featured a blogger called Slut Machine to go so self-righteous and judgmental on a woman because she has help. I guess I should be thankful the folks at Jezebel aren’t calling me Sextomom.

Trust me, I’m not at the spa while someone else is raising my brood. Kids in New York need planned activities; they don’t just run out to the backyard or meet up with the neighborhood gang for a game of kick the can. There are music lessons and organized sports, pediatrician and orthodontist appointments, birthday parties, and playdates. Inevitably these events take place at different ends of Manhattan at the same time. It’s a complex matrix of times and places, requiring a team effort to make it happen.

If our household is a team, Alicia is the captain.

“Don’t forget to pick up Truman after your meeting because Nicole will be with Pierson at reading. I spoke to Peik. He is coming home on his own. I’ll take Larson to speech and meet you back here at four-thirty.”

Roger that. Dependable and organized, Alicia calls the plays by telling us all where we need to be on any given day. She expertly handles as many as ten speech and language sessions a week for Larson’s learning disability; she knows all the therapists’ names and has friended them on Facebook. I can count on one hand the days of work she has missed in the thirteen years she has been with our family. I think it’s wonderful that my children love this woman, who has cared for them since they were babies. And if she felt disrespected by being referred to as “girl,” would she still be here after so many years?

Alicia is a single mother to two boys, Warren and Christian, who have grown up alongside my boys. My philosophy is that if Alicia is happy, I am happy, so I attempt to make her life as stress-free as possible. Having her boys around where she can keep an eye on them makes life easier for all of us. Of course, this puts the boy count in the house at seven on most afternoons. Scan the loft and you will see scattered about the apartment glassy-eyed boys of various sizes and colors planted and staring into screens of some version of mind-sucking technology. Until, of course, they all decide it’s time for a game of monkey in the middle. Then they pound about until the downstairs neighbor starts beating on the pipes.

Alicia is petite, well spoken, and well dressed. She never hesitates to use her knowledge of style on me, saying things like “You’re not going to leave the house in that, are you? You look like Secretarial School Barbie.” Or “Explain to me why you are wearing a tuxedo at two o’clock in the afternoon.” Thanks to an addiction to exercise and fitness magazines, she is superfit. When she arrives at eight-thirty in the morning, she has already been to Boot Camp or kickboxing or on some other blood-rushing, muscle-building endeavor. She has a passion for designer handbags and can describe in detail the latest It bag. Once, when I was pitching a fashion game show to a network and needed a display of designer loot to demonstrate the game, I turned to Alicia to borrow what I needed.

“That Chloé bag is gorgeous,” said a network executive.

“I know, don’t you love it? I borrowed it from my nanny.”

“Your nanny? I want to be your nanny.”

“Oh, no you don’t.”

DESPITE HER QUIET DEPENDABILITY, ONE LOOK AT HER FACEBOOK profile photo gives you a clue that Alicia has a wild side. Wearing a wig and a fitted hot-pink dress, photographed from behind showing off her well-toned rear: this is the Alicia I see only occasionally.

“Is that Alicia?” a father asked me at a school Halloween party.

“Catwoman? Yeah, that’s her.” I smiled.

“That’s my sexy nanny!” Pierson added, proud to be there with the masked girl in the tight leather pants carrying a whip. Costume parties always bring out Alicia’s wild side. She tends to look like one of the girls on the Leg Avenue packages at Ricky’s. The sexy cigarette girl. The glamour gladiator. The dark angel. Every costume features Alicia’s hard-earned abs.

She doesn’t get mad often, but when she does she is capable of a crippling silent treatment, which renders me defenseless. The silent treatment is the worst for me. Yell at me, hit me, just get it over with. I have tried to convince her that keeping her anger in is unhealthy, and it would better and more cleansing for her to express why she is angry, but I think she knows I am just saying that because I can’t bear her torture.

Alicia has been a part of our family as long as Peik has. And when I say “a part” I don’t mean some organ we could live without if necessary, like the spleen. Not one of my sons knows a world without her. She knows everyone’s favorite snacks and makes sure they are stocked in the pantry. She is the softy in the house: the boys go to her when they feel unloved or in need of some extra attention. To be democratic, she refers to them all as “Boyfriend.” When Peik was a baby, he pronounced Alicia “Sheesha,” which has stuck so completely that even my friends and neighbors think that is her name.

“I called the house and spoke to Sheesha yesterday,” Larson’s class mother told me, “She is so lovely. She said it would be no problem to make her banana bread for the bake sale.” They know better than to ask me.

Larson has improved upon this moniker by adding “Mom,” as in “Sheesha Mom,” and sometimes just plain “Mom.”

“You are Lawa,” he tells me, “and Sheesha is Mom.” When he calls out “Mom!” from somewhere in the house, if I respond he will sometimes say, “Not you, Mom, my other mom.”

That my children have no problem letting me know exactly on which side their mommy bread is buttered doesn’t bother me at all. I’ve known women who have fired nannies for less-obvious attachment, but my feeling is that if I’m going to entrust my children to another woman, I’m glad they love her. And she, unquestionably, after all these years, loves them right back.

WHEN I MARRIED PETER, ZOILA WAS IN THE PRE-NUP. OR AT LEAST, she would have been if there had been a pre-nup. The first time I came up to Peter’s apartment, I couldn’t help but notice that he already had a wife: there she was, putting away the laundry.

“Laura, this is Zoila,” he told me as she was pulling on her coat and I was taking mine off. “She knows where the bodies are buried.”

Nice job description, I thought.

“Nice to meet you, Miss Laura,” she said. I liked her instantly. She wears ankle socks, and a cardigan, and she changes her sneakers for Dearfoams slippers when she is in the house. The woman is standard-issue sitcom—Alice from The Brady Bunch , with a Guatemalan accent.

“Mr. Peter, I picked up your shirts and bought some new vacuum cleaner bags—and here.” She handed him a little pile of business cards, receipts, and what looked like pennies wrapped in lint. “From the laundry.”

After Zoila left, Peter explained to me that he’d been seeing her for nearly twenty years. She had outlasted every girlfriend, casual date, and broken betrothal. Some women had objected to his deep connection with Zoila, claiming that they, too, could starch a collar or take a complete message, with area code, should he not be at home to receive a call. Those women are history; Zoila remains.