PRIVATE FACES, PUBLIC PLACES : After Cleaning Others’ Houses, Their Homework Begins

Four o’clock in the rich afternoon. On bus benches, the women wait, swollen, silent with exhaustion. Cars turn out of immaculate driveways, cars with broken headlights. Maids: $35-plus a day for lives given to polishing floors, hand-washing crystal, getting the smudges out of the cashmere throw, the excrement from the toilet bowls. And when they leave, the yogurts are counted in the fridge, the sugar bowl checked to see how much went into the strong cups of coffee--taken standing up. “She’s so slow,” wails the employer.

Five o’clock in the smog-bound afternoon. On classroom chairs, the children wait to be collected from the after-school program. Small, unblemished children with large, clear eyes. Their clothes are deceptive: Esprit hand-me-downs that came home with the blackened bananas--employers’ largess. Others in pants with tears at the knee, but clean. Smart, clever children with quick eyes and lilting smiles. Quiet, watchful children, barely trusting the peace of the schoolroom.

Despite the noise, the overcrowding, the screeching temper of Olympic Blvd. outside, Hobart is a place of peace. The clues are slight but telling. Sally, the janitor with punk graying hair and elegant bones, cleans the girls’ bathroom. Mess, water, towels let drop; she shakes her head and shrugs, finds time to smile, to share the affection for the debris of young lives. No sullen stare here, no barely contained anger at slopping out for others.

Those whose children come here lead hard lives. They are immigrants for the most part. Those who work here understand that. Jim Messrah, the principal, bustles through the school like Alice’s White Rabbit, but no one passes him without recognition, without contact. One mad eye, one sane eye, as the Russians say. He remembers, though, sleeping in a storefront as a child, nine to the narrow room, and his grandfather’s tales of the Turks and of Ellis Island. Here he fights for more than 2,000 children, 90 teachers.

During the day, all is order--noisy, life-tumbling, chattering, but order nevertheless. Children line up, take their turn, play to designated concrete patches and worry about Country Mouse faring badly in the city. Whatever else they see outside--the ghastly, searing violence--here the country mouse is safe.

These are sad days at Hobart. The cuts are deep. Teachers are laid off, shared with other schools. The price of the teachers’ lunches has doubled, in a place where strength is all and every cent counts. In this, the richest city of the richest country on Earth, these are Hard Times.

The children do not notice. The women gather ‘round and hold them safe. The strong, loving women who fill the office and classrooms. Marie Leyva, assistant principal, large and glittering in bright colors and laughter. Her husband is bedridden with cancer; she cares for him and brings up their three children. The expense must be crushing. Who knows what pain she sees in the dawn-streaked sky?

Betty Valdez, teacher’s aide, is also head of the parents’ council. A tall, stately woman from Colombia with the head of a duchess. Only the solid ankles, the worn shoes show the toll of burdens carried. When she first wanted to work at the school, her husband refused his permission. “Ah, he is strong like Spanish men. But I try; I try, I talk to him, I explain. And he is a good father, he works, he goes out all the time with me, not with other ladies. One marriage is enough.”

Her strength is deep, unfathomable. She once went to Small Claims Court, by herself. She sued a garage owner and won. “For me, going to court was like going to see the President. But I said to the man: ‘I am Hispanic but I am not stupid. I work and you’re not going to take my money.’ ”

Her eldest daughter has been invited to the Miss Teen Pageant in Sacramento; she is enormously proud. She has called her daughter’s school again and again for the papers she needs. “How lucky I am,” she says. “I know how to bother this man. Can you imagine all the people who do not speak English and who are afraid to bother people?”

At 5 o’clock, they start to come for the children. Maids to others, mothers to the small, waiting children. They have cleaned and scrubbed, unseen and mute; their own day is only now starting. One of them was fired last week; she had to register her child here and was late to work. The woman who is overdue, barely able to shuffle in with her huge belly, drops her purse and struggles to pick it up; it never occurs to her to wait for help. In this life you do everything for yourself.

“She’s so slow,” the call of the ladies cursed with maids. Slow? It is amazing that some of these women can still move through life. And that their faces will lighten with pride and kindness as their children come to them.

Golden city, iron lives.