Helper, No Helping!

As is common in Brazil, my grandmother employs someone to clean the house and cook lunch for her. In previous years, it wasn’t a lot of work as it was a fairly small house. However, as my grandmother has gotten older, she does need more care, so the workload has increased. Her employee was informed about this and given the choice to stay or move on; she chose to stay. The family around her helps as much as possible, but as we all work full-time, we need someone there. I’ve moved over fairly recently, and while I can speak decent Portuguese, I’m not fluent.

One day as I am teaching, I get a phone call from my grandmother’s employee. The line is pretty bad, and her accent is quite thick for me, so I don’t always understand her.

Employee: “Hi, [My Name]. [Grandmother] is not feeling well. I’ve tried calling your uncle and his wife a few times, but they are not picking up.”

Now, what you have to understand is that [Employee] is only supposed to call me in an emergency. Her calling at this time of day is unusual in itself, and I immediately think of the worst-case scenario. She really sounds upset as if my grandmother is not responding to her.

Me: “Okay, what’s going on? Is my grandmother okay?”

Employee: “[Grandmother] is not feeling great. Can you come over to look after her?”

Me: “Okay, I can come if it is an emergency. Is it an emergency?”

Employee: “Ah, she needs help.”

Me: “Is it an emergency?”

I get some non-committal noise, so I say I’m on my way and hang up.

My student has heard my side of the conversation and accepts my apology when I say something has come up and I need to go. My uncle’s (my grandmother’s son) wife rings to ask what is going on, and I fill her in. She says she can arrive in the afternoon but to call her when I get to my grandmother’s house.

I get there about thirty minutes later to find my grandmother looking a bit haggard. I establish that she isn’t in pain, though, and things are normal for her. [Employee] says that she was in pain but is okay now. I call my uncle’s wife to tell her everything seems normal and I’m not sure what the problem was. I’m a bit annoyed to be called out and worried out of my mind when nothing seems to be wrong.

Suddenly, [Employee]’s family arrives just after lunch is ready, and now I’m really confused. We give my grandmother her lunch, and I have a few leftover bits as no one was expecting me there. After that, [Employee] packs up and leaves. I text my family to let them know she has suddenly left while keeping an eye on my grandmother.

My grandmother soon goes for an afternoon nap, and not long afterward, the cavalry arrives in the form of my uncle’s wife at the same time that my boyfriend arrives to drive me back to our flat. (I don’t have my own car.) Here, I finally get the full story.

You see, in Portuguese the second- and third-person singular are treated the same with only the pronoun changing the person. However, unlike in English, it’s not common to say the pronoun, so many people will say “tá bem” meaning “you are well” or “she is well”. During the phone call I got, [Employee] wasn’t feeling well and was calling to ask if I could take over as my grandmother cannot be left alone. Therefore, when I thought [Employee] was talking about my grandmother, she was talking about herself.

But here is the problem. [Employee] has done this before — calling in sick suddenly when she’s just feeling a bit tired, and the rest of the family knows to double-check this. Except for me, as I’ve just moved to the city. In reality, I could have finished the lesson and gone afterward, but [Employee] didn’t want to do anything she didn’t need to do. She has a history of also arriving late without explanation or not turning up at all if she doesn’t feel like working. (When she is sick she tends to actually tell us she can’t come in and she sounds ill those times.) While my grandmother was well, it was a situation between [Employee] and her, but now she needs help and can’t be left alone, so this situation can’t continue.

We are having a family meeting to decide if we should give the worker her tenth chance to change her mind and attitude or to say she can’t keep looking after my grandmother, or if we should make that decision for her.