The Barbarian Nurseries

Maureen is busy working on decorations for Keenan, her middle child and youngest son, who will be turning eight in two weeks. Araceli helps by bringing supplies, and the two share silent communication, “a wordless acknowledgment of shared responsibilities as exacting women in a home dominated by the disorderly exertions of two boys, a baby girl, and one man” (18).

The baby, Samantha, begins to cry, prompting Maureen to go and get her from her crib. She gives her to Araceli to comfort. Araceli is anxious because the “baby girl carried the aura of a sacred and delicate object” in the house, but she “had never been close to children; they were a mystery she had no desire to solve, especially the Torres-Thompson boys” (19). Without Guadalupe, she is concerned that she will have to care for the children. Still, holding the baby, Araceli finds herself cooing and even kissing her cheek.

Later, Maureen goes outside to try to deal with la petite rainforest but ends up only spraying water over the dry and dying plants. She wants the rainforest to look healthy for the birthday party, which will consist of former MindWare workers. She feels guilty about not telling her sons that Guadalupe will not return; instead she’s been telling them that their nanny of five years is on vacation.

She goes back inside and feels protected seeing Araceli clean up the grass Scott tracked in without anyone asking her to.

Scott goes to visit with his sons, Brandon, and Keenan, who are playing video games. As a programmer, Scott understands the video games, although he tells the boys to turn them off. Looking around the room full of games and books, thinks about the cost. He also knows that the toys and books were his way to try to make their lives better than his, just as his own parents had done in being so frugal.

For a moment, he is afraid that “his God, part penny-pinching Protestant and part vengeful Catholic, would wreak holy retribution against him and his wife for wanting too much” (24). He had the same fear when his daughter was born, but it turned out that “the reckoning came from the most likely and obvious place the private spreadsheet disaster of his bad investments” (24). He worries they will have to move to a smaller house, disrupting his sons’ childhoods and subtracting something from their lives for the first time.

Guests arrive for Keenan’s birthday party, which has an Ancient Rome theme. Araceli is the one to open the door for the guests, though she is annoyed they arrive on time instead of an hour or two late, in Mexican tradition. She recognizes the people who arrive with their children from the days when they used to work with Scott at his old company.

One woman, Carla Wallace-Zuberi the former chief publicist for the company, brings cookies. She sizes up Araceli, who wears her hair in two buns over her ears and wears a traditional Mexican Filipina uniform, which resembles “a boxy, nurse like uniform” (27).

Sasha “the Big Man” Avakian arrives, Scott’s former co-founder who has always been entranced by Araceli’s authenticity. He knows that the Torres-Thompsons call her “Madame Weirdness,” “Sergeant Araceli,” and “Little Miss Sunshine,” but that she is “also extremely dependable, trustworthy, and a dazzling cook” (28).

The mothers at the party are envious of Maureen’s beauty and thin frame, but they snidely attribute this to the fact that she has a maid and no job to worry about. She is in the backyard, and the guests must walk through her carefully and expensively designed house to arrive at the party. The children go to play with roman costumes and swords while the adults sit together in the sun. No one swims in the pool yet.

The guests are all “in their thirties and forties and had programming degrees and MBAs; they were young enough to have started new careers, and old enough to begin to grow nostalgic for the adventure they had shared” (29). They reminisce together about the rise and fall of MindWare before it was bought out.

The Big man starts telling wild stories about his life as a consultant, seeing it as his gift to Scott and Maureen to entertain everyone. He mentions that he feels “there’s too many Mexicans,” making everyone uncomfortable as they all “believed themselves to be cultural sophisticates” and never mention the ethnic divide (32). He also takes the last two sopes, which Araceli had hoped to eat herself. He starts to get drunk and quote Shakespeare, his latest hobby. The guests all commiserate about the end of MindWare and the shareholders they had not liked answering to.

The children start to jump into the pool, and some of the parents follow.

Drunk, the Big Man plays with the discarded helmets, eyes Araceli, and then stumbles into le petite rainforest, quoting: “‘tis an unweeded garden and things rank and gross in nature possess it merely! An unweeded garden that grows to seed!” (37). This draws everyone’s attention to the dry and dying garden, infuriating and embarrassing Maureen. As the guests leave, she curses the Big Man for ruining the party and Scott for firing Pepe.

After the party, Araceli does the dishes and overhears a prolonged argument between Maureen and Scott over the garden and past confrontations.

Araceli puts basil leaves in water, “an old Mexican folk remedy against angry spouses” (40), and the shouting stops shortly after. Scott sleeps in his game room, while Maureen goes to bed alone and wonders if these arguments will harm her children, or if they would be better off as a family without Scott.

The next morning, Araceli finishes tidying up the house, including returning items to the boys’ room, which she calls “El Cuarto de las Mil Maravillas, the Room of a Thousand Wonders” because of its many toys and books (42). Visiting it is the only time she feels bad about her own childhood. While cleaning, she finds a picture of Scott’s father, who is half Mexican, though he never speaks Spanish to her.

The family has gone out for the day, so Araceli uses her free time after she is done cleaning to work on an art project in the guest house where she lives. It is a collage using clippings from Maureen’s discarded magazines. In Mexico City, she had gone to school to study art. She recalls her youth and her family, who now live and work all across the US and Mexico. She misses “Mexico City’s unevenness, its asymmetry and its improvised spaces. She missed those women and those voices, and her mother’s observations” (47). 

Maureen does not particularly like her neighbors or the “undeniable superficiality of the Laguna Rancho Estates” where they live (50). Although she does sometimes admit that she is in good company, she believes she is somehow better than them as well, as she did not follow the fad of plastic surgery and only wants good, beautiful things for her family. She therefore leaves to go consult her local nursery about fixing le petite jungle. She takes the children with her and Araceli to help watch them.

Maureen and the nursery manager agree that a tropical garden is too high maintenance, but a desert garden would thrive in the habitat and require less care. She reasons that they will save on water but will need to protect the children from the sharp plants. The nursery manager treats her fawningly, seeing that she has a Mexican maid with her and therefore is likely very rich. However, the manager adds to Araceli’s unease.