ALICIA PADILLA
Alicia Padilla’s alarm clock timbers through her two-bedroom apartment in Harbor City every weekday morning at 6:00 a.m. It’s usually still dark out when the 59-year-old opens her eyes, but she knows her twelve hour days means it will be dark when she gets back too. It is routine. The same it has been for the past twelve years.
She walks past her apartment building and the other identical looking ones on her block to meet the friend she is going to work with for the day at the 232 bus stop on the Pacific Coast Highway. Commuter traffic has not picked up yet. The streets that are usually animated with loud honks and children running up and down the gum speckled sidewalks seem to still be asleep. There is noise though, and it’s coming from the other housekeepers starting their days as early as her, who are congregated at the bus stop together.
Padilla and her friend take the 232 to the 344, which takes them to Palos Verdes, where the other housekeepers work, too.
“There’s so many of us. Everyone’s joking and laughing,” she said. “The only person that’s not happy is me because I know I’m about to work really hard.”
The bus rides seem to take them a world away even though the trek is really only six miles. As Padilla and her friend walk through the neighborhoods of Palos Verdes to get to work, they admire the cliff-side views and gulp in the crisp air that comes with being so close to the water. The homes’ manicured front lawns and shiny vehicles parked in steep driveways make it seem like those inside them have no need for housekeepers, but the familiar sound of leaf blowers and the voices of the same women from the bus making their way down the same streets reminds them of their importance to each other.
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Her and her friend split cleaning duties. Padilla cleans the homes’ three restrooms, the kitchen, and one living room. When the job is done hours later, she walks away with fifty dollars. Fifty for her and fifty for her partner. $6.25 an hour has not been California’s minimum wage since 2001.
“When I get tips, it’s a really happy day,” Padilla chuckles.
Money comes and goes, she says. What weighs on her mind are her energy levels. Just three years ago, Padilla said her body could handle working a lot more.
“Years of work leave your back tight and your hands rough. Maybe, it’s my age too. I just get so tired now,” she said. Padilla could retire in only a couple of years, but she quickly waves the idea out of her head. There are bills to pay. Mouths to feed. More houses to clean.
“See, the hardest part of coming to Los Angeles wasn’t moving,” Padilla said. “It was having to work.”
She called Jalisco, Mexico home until she was 31-years-old. It was there where she studied accounting, using the same hands she drops exact change into the buses that take her to Palos Verdes to sift through financial statements. It was there where Padilla met her husband, the man who worked on and off in Los Angeles, introducing the idea of moving into her head. Now, Jalisco is more of a distant memory than a place that she could miss enough to call home.
Padilla joined her husband in Harbor City almost three decades ago, after too many years spent waiting for him to come back just to leave again. He worked. She stayed home in the same apartment she lives in now with the kids once the two were born. There was no need for her to apply for jobs when her motherly duties kept her hands full until there was.
Padilla’s children no longer needed her to take them to school anymore, and soon after, her husband got sick and could no longer support their family. It was her turn.
Without knowing how to drive, spending years no longer practicing accounting, and a steep language barrier, Padilla did what many do when they are stressed and pressed for time. She went to church. There, a friend invited her to try housekeeping in Palos Verdes. Thus, Padilla’s morning routine began.
The first time Padilla smiled widely during our interview was in her living room when she pointed her wedding portraits and framed photos of her children out to me.
“They all help me so much. I think they’re thankful,” she said.
They are who Padilla has in mind when she lifts her rough hands to shut off the alarm clock that signals every start of her work days.