The house that once vibrated with laughter, songs, and the smell of homemade bread now smells of paint on the walls, broken toys, and pent-up tears. My daughters, God, my daughters. Mariana, the eldest, is 12 years old and has the sharpest mind I’ve ever seen in a child; she leads her sisters as if they were a small army waging war against the world.
She was the one who told me on the day of her mother’s funeral, “No woman will ever take her place, Dad. No one.” Since then, every nanny who comes in becomes an enemy to be defeated. Then there are the twins, Beatriz and Bianca, 6 years old. Two little girls who smile as they plot. They put fake insects in shoes, block doors with glue, hide food in drawers.
Their laughter, when they’re planning a prank, sounds almost like a defense mechanism against the pain. Ten-year-old Laura has a different kind of battle. Since Claris died, she’s been pulling out clumps of her own hair. There are bald patches on her head, marks of anxiety that even the most expensive psychologists haven’t been able to stop. Nine-year-old Julia suffers from panic attacks, especially at night.
Sometimes I hear her scream her mother’s name from across the hall, and I freeze in front of the door, not knowing how to help her. Sofia, 8 years old, has started wetting the bed again. Not by accident, but out of fear, due to the emotional regression her mind can’t control. And finally, Isabela, my little 3-year-old, who hardly speaks since losing her mother, barely whispers a word or two and only eats when she falls asleep.
Today, as I watched through the window as the last nanny ran out, her uniform torn and her hair dyed green—the result of some cruel prank by the twins—I felt a mixture of shame and despair. 37 in two weeks. 37 women who said the same thing before leaving. These girls don’t need discipline; they need a mother, and I don’t have one to give them.
My personal assistant, Augusto, called while I was still watching the taxi drive away. “Mr. Mendoza, there are no more agencies on the list. The last ones have categorized us as a hopeless case.” “Then we’ve exhausted all professional options,” I replied listlessly. “There is an alternative, sir.”
We can hire a housekeeper at least to keep the house running while we find another solution. I sighed. At that moment, anything that restored even a modicum of order seemed like a miracle. Do it. Anyone who agrees to come in. A few kilometers away, in the round cape, a young woman named Luía Oliveira woke up at 5:30 in the morning. She was 25 years old and had the permanent exhaustion of someone who works for two and dreams for ten. Her father was a retired bricklayer.
Her mother was a candy vendor. Since she was 18, she had been cleaning houses to pay for her night classes in child psychology. That morning, as she was getting ready to take three buses to her regular job, she received a call from the agency she occasionally worked for. “Luía, we have an emergency.”
