The Nannies (2 page)

3

Esme Castaneda: Echo Park, California

A sheep,
Esme thought as she stared at her reflection in the cracked mirror over her dresser. There was space for her to stand between her single bed and the dresser; together, they practically filled her tiny room.

You look like a damn sheep.

Ignoring the jagged part created by the cracked mirror, she brushed raven hair off her face, then straightened the neckline of the soft pink sweater she’d found at Goodwill. She liked this sweater a lot—it clung to her curves and cast a soft glow on her ochre skin. She knew it made her look pretty. So pretty. She loved and hated that, at the same time.

“Oye, chiquita,
what’s up? You lookin’ fresh!”

Esme had been thirteen and living in Fresno when she’d heard those words shouted by a golden boy who leaned out the driver’s-side window of a spit-shined, cherry red Cadillac. She kept walking, heading home from Our Lady of Mercy School. But the boy trolled along in his car, still calling to her.

“Pretty little
linda. ¿ Qué pasa?
”

Esme recognized him; she’d seen him around the neighborhood. He was so cute: bulging muscles, full lips, heavy-lidded eyes. She didn’t need to examine the colorful dragon tattoo on his right bicep to know he was a banger, a Diego (after a different boy who’d come to Fresno from San Diego—the guy was now doing life at Vacaville for murder, but the Fresno gang he’d organized still thrived).

There were two gangs vying for control of Esme’s neighborhood: the Diegos and the Razor Boys. This handsome Diego boy—Esme knew he could have gotten any girl, one of the older ones who already knew how to work their curves and paint their lips and do whatever it took to keep a guy interested. So why was this movie star Diego paying attention to
her,
a knobbykneed kid in a stupid Catholic school uniform?

When Esme was born, her parents were sharing the cheap three-bedroom home of Esme’s maternal aunt, uncle, and their five kids. Spanish was spoken at home and at church; Esme didn’t learn English until she started kindergarten. She mastered it quickly, though. It was like a puzzle to her, and she loved to solve puzzles. On the rare occasion when her parents were forced to converse with a
norteamericano,
Esme was their translator.

All Esme’s cousins went to Our Lady of Mercy, so Esme did, too. But even with aid from the church, it was difficult for the parents to afford the tuition. The adults did without so that the kids could stay at that school; that’s how important it was to them. Esme’s mom cleaned houses and her father was an off-the -books day laborer. The adults were hopeful that God and the church would keep their kids from joining gangs.

And their hopes were realized. For a while.

But Esme’s cousin Ricardo soon threw down with the Razor Boys. He wore baggy black pants and black tees with the right sleeve rolled up to show off his new RB sign, a python tattoo. He started bringing home hundred-dollar bills from selling coke. The adults prayed he’d come to his senses, but it didn’t do any good. Ricardo said the frigging church wouldn’t put food on their table or buy them a decent car or him new Nikes. His father threw him out of the house. He never came back.

Esme had been ten then. She missed Ricardo—he was her favorite cousin. She’d see him sometimes, with other RBs. He became a gang
patrón—
a big guy—fast. But when he saw Esme, he looked right through her.

It wasn’t long after that when the terrible thing happened. Esme’s father, Alberto Castaneda, had stopped for a beer at a tavern with his friend Carlos. Some white boys came in, flying on crystal meth and looking for trouble. One of them dumped his drink on Carlos. The boy wouldn’t apologize; Carlos wouldn’t accept the insult. He threw the first punch. But the meth made the white boy superstrong. His friends joined the fight. Esme’s father stopped Carlos from getting killed by stabbing one of the white boys in the gut.

Alberto didn’t wait around to find out what happened. There were too many witnesses, and he was in America illegally. So he ran with his wife to the Echo Park section of Los Angeles, to live with distant cousins. Esme was left in Fresno. The plan was to wait for the trail to grow cold, and then bring Esme to Los Angeles.

Esme missed them, a lot. But there were letters and even the occasional phone call. After a few months they found decent jobs working off the books for a Hollywood producer and his wife. It was a long drive from the Echo to the producer’s Pacific Palisades estate, but they were treated well and got paid every Friday. In cash.

On the day that the handsome Diego boy called to Esme from his badass car, it had been a year since her parents had left her in Fresno. The pain of it had numbed down to a dull ache in Esme’s chest. But she never let it show. To prove that she didn’t need anyone, she became self-contained and self-sufficient, a quiet girl, a good girl who got good grades. The nuns told her how smart she was, how much potential she had. She could go to college. Do anything. Be anyone.

Though Esme and her friends had started sneaking lip gloss and rolling up the skirts of their uniforms and flirting with boys in the park, they’d giggle and run away together if a boy came on too strong. After all, they were just seventh graders. They had classmates who were already in gangs, and four girls in their grade were already pregnant. But Esme and her friends were light-years from either sex or gangs. They knew they didn’t want to be mothers; they saw what gang membership had done to Ricardo. Both were dangerous.

Looking back, sometimes Esme thought it was the dangerous part that had made her talk to that Diego in the Caddy that day. And then, to get in his car, with one hand on the door handle in case he tried anything. His name was Nick. He was sixteen. He didn’t do more than hold her other hand. She felt so grown up, sitting there next to him in that fine car.

She started looking for Nick after school—she loved showing him off to all her friends. He invited her to parties, and she went. The Diegos accepted her. Some of them called their girlfriends “sheep” and said that ho sheep were only good for one thing. Sometimes they even hit these girls in front of everyone to prove how macho they were. Esme saw how the girls put up with it, because their boyfriends set them up with apartments. Many of them had babies; some had more than one. All of them were still teenagers.

But Nick wasn’t down with any of that. Even when he and Esme got more intimate, he treated her with respect. When he saw that Esme was interested in his tattoos, he got one of the gang members to show her how it was done. She asked to handle the needle, and quickly became a skillful tattoo artist. She did tattoos for any Diego who wanted one. They paid her. She didn’t allow herself to think about where the money came from, or how Nick had paid for that fine ride of his, or the gifts he bestowed upon her—jewelry and expensive perfume that she hid from her aunt. After she left the house, she’d change into the sexy clothes he bought her and trick herself out like the hottest sheep. By the time she gave him her virginity, she was so in love that she would have done anything for him.

Then one day, she had to prove it.

Girls were made part of the Diegos in two ways: by being jumped in—fighting all the girls in the gang at once—or by sexing up as many boys as a roll of a pair of dice. Snake eyes? You were lucky. Double sixes? Get ready for the train. Esme was petrified that Nick would ask her to do one of these two things. But he didn’t. Instead, he taught her how to drive.

She loved it. She loved him. One night, after they’d had sex, Esme was lying in his arms. He said he wanted to go for a ride and wanted Esme to drive. She felt so safe, cuddled next to his heartbeat, him smoothing hair off her face and kissing her forehead, that she said yes.

Esme was behind the wheel when it went down. Nick was in the passenger seat, two more Diegos in back. The RBs strode out of the neighborhood Taco Bell carrying tostadas to go, laughing about something. Nick called to them: “Eh, Razor Boys? Diegos
rifan
! Diegos rule!”

The gunshots were deafening. Four RBs fell, their Taco Bell salsa mixing with their blood on the sidewalk. One stumbled down the block before he fell, too. A sixth RB got away.

The car took off. Esme felt it wasn’t really her foot on the gas or her white-knuckled hands on the wheel. Nor was it really Nick who sneered at her, “How you like that payback, little ho sheep?” before he pushed her out of the car, his friends laughing and jeering from the backseat.

Esme still liked puzzles; the pieces of this one came together in less time than it had taken Nick to murder her favorite cousin, Ricardo. Making her his girlfriend, taking her virginity, teaching her to drive, making her drive his car, it had all been a setup to hurt Ricardo’s gang in the worst way possible. He had used Esme to do it, just because he could.

She’d called her parents immediately and said she had to come to Echo Park immediately. She was out of Fresno before Ricardo’s coffin was in the ground, but discovered that the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles was just as rough as where she’d lived in Fresno, just as gang-infested. Same shit, different toilet.

But she did everything she could to put her past behind her. For two years now, she’d gotten almost straight As, stayed far away from the gangs, and tried to forget the terrible thing she’d done. She’d even found a best friend, a guy named Jorge Valdez. He was one of the Latin Kings, a group of guys who fought for the rights and prosperity of the universal Latino movement. In Jorge’s case he did it through poetry, and the hip-hop lyrics he wrote for some local rappers. His raps were always about bettering
la Raza,
staying in school, or cautionary tales about gangsta life. When she was with Jorge, she could almost forget.

But sometimes, at the oddest times, it came back to her. Like now, as she got ready to meet her boyfriend, Junior. Twenty-two and a
veterano,
a gang veteran, Junior had gotten out of the life. The homies respected him because he respected them. He’d become a paramedic, the one who’d come to the Echo when other paramedics would rather sit on their fat asses and eat donuts than make a run to the latest gang bang.

Unfortunately, Junior and Jorge didn’t get along. Junior thought Jorge was a coconut—a Latino trying to be white. Jorge had an equally low opinion of Junior. Ever since she’d hooked up with Junior, she and Jorge had been drifting apart. She missed him, but not enough to put up with his negative attitude toward Junior.

It was something, to be the girlfriend of one of the most powerful boys in the neighborhood. Esme enjoyed the status it gave her, and she liked to please him. Pleasing Junior meant dressing like a girly girl; he liked to be proud of his woman in front of his friends. Usually, Esme liked it, too. But not when she remembered.
“How you like that payback, little ho sheep?”

“
Esme, Junior está
in the house. He says to come
rapidamente,
please!” Esme’s six-year-old cousin Maria sang out in Spanglish from downstairs.

“Gracias,”
Esme called back.

Junior was driving Esme to pick up her parents at the Goldhagens’ estate. The television producer and his wife had recently sold their place in the Palisades and moved to an even larger property in Bel Air. The good news was that Esme’s parents had a shorter drive to get to work—a half hour with not too much time on the freeway. But today, their ancient Chevy had broken down, so they’d taken the bus. Now, Junior and Esme were going to bring them home.

Esme came downstairs and kissed Junior while Maria watched, wide-eyed. Junior winked at Maria. “Someday you’ll have a boyfriend too, pretty girl.” Maria blushed and bolted, which made Junior chuckle sweetly.

They followed the directions that her father had given her— 134 freeway to the 101, then over the hill at Benedict Canyon. It dropped them into Bel Air, which was like visiting another planet. Row after row of mansions on lush properties, perfectly landscaped by people like Esme’s father. Some of the homes were hidden behind high iron gates, where visitors had to be announced before the gates to paradise would open.

There was just such a closed gate guarding the Goldhagens’ new estate. When Esme and Junior pulled into the driveway, they were stymied. No guard, and apparently no intercom system. Junior got out of his car to search for a way in, but it was fruitless. He peered between the bars to see if he could see anyone. Nothing. Esme joined him, but to no avail. Normally, Esme was a model of efficiency, yet she hadn’t remembered to bring the Goldhagens’ telephone number. No way was it listed.

It was so humiliating standing there that Junior kicked the gate in frustration before slamming back into the car. The idea of driving all the way back to Echo Park, Land of the Have-Nots, for the phone number, and then again to Bel Air, Land of the Haves, made them both feel small.

When Esme heard the approaching sirens, she wondered where the fire was. She had no time to adjust that thought before two Bel Air community patrol cruisers roared into the driveway behind them and smoke-skidded to a stop.

“Both of you! Out of the car! Hands in the air!” came over one cruiser’s bullhorn.

Holy shit,
Esme thought.
They mean us.

4

“Where are they going to meet us?” Jeanne McCann fretted as she and her daughter Kiley strode past the endless gates in Terminal One at Los Angeles International Airport. It was late Sunday afternoon; the airport was insane. It seemed like everyone and his mother was on his way to or from a flight.

“Baggage claim,” Kiley told her mother for the third time. “There’ll be a guy waiting down there for us. Don’t worry.”

“How will we know it’s him? What if he’s late? What if he doesn’t show up at all?” Mrs. McCann asked. She and Kiley dodged past a large Sikh family—the men in big turbans and beards—and then avoided a girl with green hair wearing a see-through shirt with nothing on underneath but massive implants. “Did you
see
that, Kiley?”

“Couldn’t miss it, Mom. Calm down. Everything is going to be fine.”

“Kiley, what if there’s no one here from that show of yours?”

“There will be, Mom.”

“But if they aren’t there, where are we supposed to go? Kiley?
Kiley?
”

Danger. Red alert. Kiley heard her mother’s rising vocal tone and knew that she was but moments away from a full-blown, stop-her-in-her-tracks anxiety attack right in the middle of LAX.

If only her mom would get an actual prescription for her condition! But Mrs. McCann had been raised in the Christian Science Church and didn’t believe in medicine. Family legend had it that when Jeanne McCann had fallen from a tree at the age of six and broken her arm, no doctor had been called. Kiley’s grandmother and her daughter had prayed for the arm to heal, and it had.

Well, Kiley had done plenty of praying herself—about a decade’s worth, in fact—that her mother would get a grip and see a doctor who’d prescribe some heavy-duty pharmaceuticals. Those prayers had gone unanswered, and the panic attacks had worsened. Mrs. McCann did try herbal remedies; the way she saw it, herbs did not count as chemical intervention. Nor did they work particularly well.

Kiley gently pulled her mom to one side of the corridor and let the bodies slide past them. “Just take some deep breaths. Nice and easy. In and out.”

Mrs. McCann leaned against the wall, eyes closed, breathing. Kiley could see the pulse in her mother’s neck slow a bit. “Better?”

Mrs. McCann nodded and opened her eyes. “Thanks, sweetie.”

Kiley was still amazed that her mom had agreed to come on this trip. Since Kiley was only seventeen, the producers of
Platinum Nanny
had insisted that a parent accompany her. Should Kiley actually win, her mom would either have to stay in Los Angeles or sign legal guardianship over to Platinum. Kiley had downplayed the giving-Platinum-legal-guardianship thing. One step at a time, she figured.

She gave her mom a reassuring smile. “Ready to go?”

“Absolutely.” Mrs. McCann hoisted the strap of her bag up her shoulder. They joined the flow of traffic again, dodging as an airport golf cart went by. “Kiley?”

“Yeah, Mom?”

“Do you know the name of the hotel? Have you checked to see that there’s really a reservation for us?”

Kiley gritted her teeth. “Yes and yes.”

They trudged on. Five minutes later, they’d negotiated a people mover and an escalator that deposited them on the baggage claim level.

Kiley spotted the gorgeous young guy in the tieless black suit right away. He held a sheet of cardboard with McCann printed in thick black letters. For the first time since they’d left La Crosse very early that morning, Kiley relaxed. Doing her best to reassure her mom that everything was under control was hard work.

Mrs. McCann waved her arm at the driver. “We’re McCann!”

The young man nodded. “Great. Welcome to L.A. Let’s get your bags. Everyone else got here five hours ago. Where’d you come in from, anyway?”

As the driver led Kiley and Mrs. McCann to their baggage carousel, Kiley’s mom launched into an extended, adrenaline-fueled monologue about La Crosse, including a proud boast about the town being the home of the world’s largest six-pack of beer.

This was true. At the brewery where Kiley’s father worked, water for the beer was stored in six huge cylindrical water towers. The towers were painted like beer cans, complete with the La Crosse Brewery logo. Aside from the periodic floods that swept through downtown, that six-pack was La Crosse’s claim to fame.

Minutes later, bags in hand, the cute driver led Kiley and her mom to his black sedan. He loaded the bags into the trunk and ushered his passengers into the backseat. Then he snaked the car through airport traffic, heading for the exit. “We’ll make the Hotel Bel-Air in about twenty minutes. Don’t worry.”

The traffic was bumper to bumper; Kiley wondered how they’d possibly be at the hotel so quickly. Instead of turning north toward the 405 freeway and Beverly Hills, the driver went south toward San Diego.

Mrs. McCann panicked. “Excuse me, young man, I think you’re going the wrong way!”

“We’re taking a shortcut.” The driver flashed a movie star grin in the rearview mirror. Moments later, he pulled the limo alongside a helipad, where a six-seater chopper waited with its engines roaring.

“We’re riding in
that
?” Kiley asked, incredulous.

“You betcha.” He rolled down the window as two people from the show approached his door. Kiley recognized the young producer with the multiple piercings who’d interviewed her in Milwaukee. Except now her hair was black.

“Hey, great, you’re here, let’s go, we’re late,” the producer bellowed over the chopper’s noise, then faced the driver. “Get their bags inside, dammit!”

Kiley turned to her mom. “Are you okay with this?”

Mrs. McCann’s hand fluttered to her chest.

When the cameraman shoved his camera against the window of the sedan, Kiley took it as their cue to exit on the opposite side. The cameraman kept filming as they made their way into the chopper and strapped themselves into two empty seats.

“You ladies ready?” the pilot asked as the producer climbed aboard. “Doors closed. We’re good to go.” The pilot flipped a few switches and handled the controls; instantly, the helicopter jerked straight up into the air. “We’ll be cruising at two thousand feet,” he told his passengers. “ETA at the Hotel Bel-Air in eight minutes. Service with a smile.”

Moments later, the chopper was heading north, high above the 405 freeway; Kiley could see the traffic at a dead standstill in both directions. Mercifully, her mother had been scared silent.

“Mrs. McCann?” the cameraman said. “You look a little green.”

“Mom?”

Her mother closed her eyes and started to hyperventilate, lips pressed in a thin line. This was not good. Kiley spotted an airsickness bag tucked behind the pilot’s seat. She grabbed it and placed it in her mother’s hands.

“Breathe into that, Mom.” Her mother complied. The camera guy grinned and kept shooting, which pissed Kiley off. She splayed her hand over the lens, not about to let her mother be humiliated on national TV. “Stop. Now. I mean it.”

The producer frowned. “Look, let’s get this straight,” she shouted over the noise of the helicopter. “You signed up for this gig. You don’t get to tell us what to film. Check the contract!”

Jeanne McCann opened her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered to no one in particular, the paper bag in her lap. The camera guy produced a bottle of water and handed it to Mrs. McCann. She took a couple of careful sips.

As they headed north, Kiley pressed her face against the helicopter’s curved window. The west side of Los Angeles sprawled beneath them—they were passing over UCLA. The view was jaw-droppingly beautiful, clear enough to see well out into the Pacific, where aqua water stretched to the horizon.

The ocean.
Her
ocean.

Think Scripps,
she reminded herself.
I am here for a reason. But
I don’t have to put up with these people being assholes to me or to my
mom.

She turned to the producer. “Can I ask you something?” Kiley took her cocked eyebrow to mean yes. “In La Crosse— that’s in Wisconsin, by the way—we do this thing called introducing ourselves to each other. How it works is, one person says her name, and then waits for the other person to say hers. And then they shake hands. Hi, I’m Kiley McCann.” She stuck out her hand toward the producer. “You’re—?”

The producer offered an eye-roll, then a limp hand. “Bronwyn Brown. Associate producer.”

“Nice to meet you, Bronwyn. I think it’s time that I told you the real reason why I came here.”

“What?”

Kiley let a small smile curl over her lips. “I came to win.”