She sighed, taking another quick sip.
„Cheers,“ she repeated to herself. „Cheers to me, the most naive girl in the world!“ Lisa lifted her cup, as if toasting someone.
But, she was alone. She was completely alone and abandoned.
She placed the cup back on the counter and opened her eyes. What an awful feeling. She was completely abandoned and tormented by her doubts.. Her doubts were such a weight on her shoulders. They tormented her soul. She focused on the cup in front of her, tightly wrapping her hand around it. Maybe it didn't have to be so bad, she thought to herself. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. This life wasn't what she was expecting at all. She was expecting a warm family and new opportunities. She was expecting to see the cities, meet people and learn about the culture.
She walked down into the basement. She was allowed to go down in the basement, though her access was restricted to other parts of the home. The family kept a guest-friendly computer down in the basement. It was also where the laundry room was, along with discarded goods. That computer was the only window to the world that Lisa had access to. She turned on the computer and waited for the start up. Once it was done, she opened her email and started writing to a friend.
"It's so beautiful over here. My host family is so sweet. They are appreciative of all my work. They even consider me to be a member of the family. They're planning a trip for the hHolidays and they asked me if I wanted to go with them. I'm thinking about saying yes. What do you think I should do?" Lisa typed. Of course, none of it was true. But Lisa didn't want her friends to worry.
Lisa read over her email a million times. She looked over the email so many times that the words started to feel foreign to her. She wanted to tell someone how she was actually feeling. She wanted to write about how horrible it was. She wanted to break down.
The village where the mansion lurked was so small. She couldn't find any people her age to meet. Only families and older people lived in the other fancy-looking houses.
Not to mention, she couldn't speak their language.
She would have gone out and attempted to make friends, but that wasn't possible. She worked too much, so she rarely got the chance to go into the village. The village near the mansion was small. There were a few other really nice homes, but there weren't many. It wasn't as large as Lisa had believed it was going to be. It was a small community, instead of a city. There were hardly any people milling around. The people she did see were always much older. There was no one around her age in the village. Even if she could meet new people, she didn't know the language very well. She was supposed to attend language courses during her stay, but she couldn't afford them. So, she decided to start studying the language through the internet. She registered to an online community, where she was able to make online pen pals. This gave her the opportunity to make new friends, as well as practice her language skills. When she was talking to her online pen pals, she was able to be more honest. She could talk about how she really felt. It was her only fresh air. Her only freedom.
She needed fresh air. She needed freedom. But that's what the internet was for. Lisa couldn't attend language courses in the village, so she used the internet. She registered in an online community where she could write to people all over the world, which allowed her to learn the local language. And even though Lisa had no pictures on her profile, it was a good start to register in the first place. The only friends she had were her new online friends.
17
After the first month, everything got worse. When Lisa first arrived, this three-story mansion seemed like a paradise, even lthough she was only given a broken down room in the basement. As time passed, the sleekly designed house seemed more like a prison than a paradise. The maid came through and cleaned the entire house every day. Never once did she clean the basement. The maid came down into the basement to do the washing and the ironing. Then she would simply head back upstairs to continue with her work. There wasn't much else of use in the basement with Lisa. The family mostly stored old things they no longer needed there. There were boxes of old toys everywhere. There was also an old computer. The host family allowed Lisa to use this computer to talk to the outside world. Still, Lisa felt lonely. She only saw the host parents on rare occasions.
She was summoned every morning to serve breakfast. No one came down and told her, they simply rang a bell. She was to be at the breakfast table every morning at 6:30 am to get breakfast on the table. Sometimes, she was invited to sit at the table with the host family. Most of the time, she was instructed to sit a separate table. This was another table for the members of the staff that the host family had hired. The maid, the cook, the gardener and herself were all to sit at that particular table. One morning, Lisa was having a cup of tea with the gardener.
"What are you doing here?" he pondered.
"I am an au pair. Or, babysitter I guess." She replied, questioning her own answer.
"Hmm, you must be earning a great deal for working so often with the four children," He joked, beginning to laugh. Lisa shook her head.
"I earn 260 dollars a month." She corrected. His laughing stopped and he stared at her for clarification.
"That is unfair. Are you crazy? No one should earn such a small amount of money for how much work you do."
"The children all say that I am a very expensive babysitter. They say that I am greedy, too," she added.
The gardener shook his head. "That's crazy. I earn the same amount as you do and I only work 5 hours a day. I also don't have to deal with the stress of looking after four children." He explained.
18
One day Lisa understood that she could not stay in the village anymore. Of course, she loved kids, but they came to her first thing in the morning, asking to cook something. Then she changed diapers. Then they misbehaved. Lisa was supposed to teach them how to behave properly. There was not even a free minute for herself. After a long workday, Lisa went to her little room, lay on her bed and started to cry. She could not endure that life anymore. The ungrateful kids told her, "It is only playing and living with us. It is not a job."
The host parents were often not at home in the evenings. The host mother visited a fitness studio three times a week. The host father was more often at home than the mother, but also left sometimes. Even on weekends, the parents left Lisa alone with the children, as they drove to the cinema, a restaurant, or the opera. Clara flew to different places on some weekends with her girlfriends. Lisa took care of the children in the late evening hours, sometimes even putting them to bed.
Her host family thought that spending 24 hours a day with four kids was the best thing in the world. "Children bring happiness and a ray of sunshine to a home," they said. No one was grateful for Lisa's sacrifice of living in the village and bringing up four naughty kids. As a live-in au pair, she found that the family took advantage of her being in the house at all times and relied on her to work far more than her prescribed working week of forty-nine hours.