The Dirty Sublime

 Most of my adult life I lived in Los Angeles, where Mexican and Central American people performed a disproportionate amount of the unpleasant labors, such as scrubbing toilets, digging holes, and washing dishes. On weekends, my then-husband enjoyed construction as a hobby of sorts, a bizarre relief from his 60 hours a week at a desk as an executive in a large corporation. For me construction was an onerous task, even though I too sat at a desk all day as a newspaper editor. Unfortunately, I acceded to his demands that we had to do this to save money. 

We remodeled our home and backyard and then tore it all down and built a three-story home. We dug trenches until our hands were blistered and raw inside the gloves, hauled cement block, and smashed an entire driveway to bits using sledgehammers. Once I was nearly electrocuted. 

We both came from working class backgrounds, and had different views of labor: I was willing to do unpleasant labors only to a point. I hated construction and did not have the biceps to do it swiftly or easily. I had no qualms about hiring professionals to do the work.

My ex believed that as long as we could still stand, we should do everything we could physically do to build our new house. To him, it was a disgrace to allow others to do work we were able to do, not matter how taxing. Eventually (way too long into this process) I limped away from the construction site and refused to do backbreaking labor from 6 am to 11 pm. He was forced to hire a few professionals (he was too cheap to use our substantial savings account, but he also trolled the building supply store parking lots for day laborers.

Every Saturday and Sunday a passel of men would arrive via our van and work all day in the hot sun. Some were old but most some were young men escaping extreme poverty and armed conflicts in their countries. Each lived with at least a dozen other men, women, and children in a one-bedroom apartment near downtown Los Angeles. They all worked incredibly hard. Their presence meant that I was promoted to translator, lunch maker, and errand runner. At this point, an icy diet coke and the air conditioner blowing on my face made up for the fact that I spent most of the day at Home Depot, Pizza Hut, and Bob’s Electric Supplies.

My ex felt virtuous because he worked along with them. For me, it was a dilemma that was right in front of me, not far away in Nicaragua. Should I be hiring people who desperately needed work but were living illegally in the United States? Or should I donate money to organizations better able to help them? Should I feel guilty when I see workers at the end of the day still hoping for a day’s pay? Should I find people who were living here legally to this work? Does day laborer work encourage them to encourage others to come to the United States and do the basest work at a wage not sufficient to live in a large city? Was I ensuring that they retained membership in the lowest socioeconomic class?

In the end, I adopted what I considered the civil disobedience/humanitarian route. These people needed jobs and no one was going to offer them steady work and a 401K plan. They were hungry and so were their families. We brought them to our home and treated them decently, which was new to them. We insisted they take breaks, fed them lunch, paid them double the minimum wage, and drove them to the bus stop or all the way home at the end of the day. Hiring them was illegal but I believed I had a moral obligation to help them survive. It felt right given the fact that my ex was going to hire them anyway. Did I really help them or merely perpetuate their misery and assuage my own guilt over my inability to affect poverty on a global level? I still don’t know.

P.S. (I divorced that jerk.)