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We have a maid. As did most of the residents we know, we inherited her with our apartment. At no point during the lengthy negotiations that culminated in our signing of the one year lease on our digs did anyone mention her. Not our landlady, nor our neighbors (friends with whom we share the compound). The first we knew of her was on our first day in residence (we had moved in late the night before), when she ambled over from next door to announce herself.

Guadalupe is her name. She is about 40, short, broad, energetic and good humored, and she does windows. She lives out of town, and it takes her about an hour to get here from home on the bus, after she has seen her husband and their four children off to work and school. She takes this trip five days a week: two for the landlady, two for Joan, and one for us.

The minimum wage in Mexico is 26 pesos per 10-hour day (about $2.35 u.s.d.), but on the average, unskilled employees earn around 50. Upon her request, last year, we raised her wages for the three to four hours she works for us, from 50 to 70, as did Joan.

At first, our landlady was unhappy about this, claiming that our failure to understand the culture (we are gringos) made Lupe discontented with what she was getting from her. We told our landlady (she is Mexican) that we understood just fine, and thought that Lupe should be discontented with what she was paying her. She muttered "cultural imperialism"; we muttered "cheapskate"; we agreed to disagree. Later, I heard she had a change of heart, and raised her pay to 70.

Most of the time, it feels like it is Lupe who has employed us. This probably has to do with her terms of employment, of which she informed us when we agreed to use her services, and to which she adds new rules from time to time as things come up.

For instance, she gets paid whether we are here or not. If we go off for a month or two, we must pay her the regular salary, before we leave, in a lump sum. This in spite of the fact that her duties are greatly reduced (no laundry, no need to clean the bathroom, etc.). She NEEDS what we pay her, to live (she informs us in a no-nonsense manner) and if we want to go gallivanting off on some trip or another, why should she have to suffer? Why indeed?

She can't go home for lunch, so we have to furnish it (but not while we're gone). This even though she is only here for less than four hours. This is a commitment which Diana takes very seriously. "Don't touch those leftovers! They are for Lupe's lunch."

"You are giving me too much laundry," she informed me one day early on in our relationship. "You can wear your clothes a little longer." Whereupon she charged me an extra 20 pesos for having to do too much laundry. Whereupon I re-examined my habits, and found that I could indeed refrain from changing my t-shirts so often.

Like many Mexicans, Lupe is a family member first, and a domestic worker second. She has an aged mother to take care of, and a sister who was injured in a car accident. She has to be home to make sure her kids get off to school in the morning, and to return home to feed the family a late afternoon comida. As a result of these pressures, she sometimes doesn't make it to work. We seem to be the ones she skips when the going gets tough: I guess she just knows that we are more likely to flex. She doesn't charge us for days that she skips.

This relationship has been going on almost two years, now, but it is soon to end: we have opted for technology, in the shape of a washing machine. Lupe is about to be displaced.

We probably wouldn't have done it, but recently she came to us with the news that she was going to open up the front room of her house as a neighborhood grocery store, and would have to cut back on some of her work. Diana says it would be unkind of me to mention that the above-average wages we pay her are probably what she used as capital, and I agree with her. "Good on ye, Lupe" is what I say. I hope she makes a better living off her store than she did as a maid. But even if she doesn't, it's a chance for her to spend her time where she is most needed -- at home.

So we went shopping, and came up with this very compact washer that is only one step up from the laundry basin and the washboard. We fill it with a hose, and when the wash cycle is done, we drain the soapy water and refill it with clear, to rinse. When you want to empty it, the process is simple: slip the hose that clips to the back down into the drain in the floor near the washer.

I confess I won't miss hanging around the house on "Lupe Days", without being sure that she will make it (my kid has the flu); but I will miss the whiter-than-white t-shirs, and the small amounts of chisme (gossip) we engaged in from time to time. And of course it's unnerving when friends who I have exhorted from time to time to make their contribution to the local economy by employing someone, raise a well-deserved eyebrow at me and harumph in my direction. Still, given that we are gone so much, traveling around Mexico and visiting family in the States, and that it was Lupe that gave us notice, the timing seems right.

We look forward to attending the grand opening.

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