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Donald and Fontaine hired Cindy to be a nanny for the family's children, not a housekeeper. But as happens often in these kinds of domestic situations, Cindy says she was soon asked to do the kids' laundry. Then Donald and Fontaine's laundry.

Then to feed the family cat and golden retriever, and wipe the dog off when it came into the house wet.
Pay was $300 a week, regardless of Cindy's duties. When she was asked to look after the three little Sheridan boys on the weekend, usually at her own one-room apartment in Massapequa, she was given $10 a day.

The problem in the nanny's mind, however, was not the money or the extra duties.
The problem, as she sees it now, is that her employer had been calling her a "nigger" in her head for all the time that she cared for her children.
"I've been caring for her family for three years," Cindy says.

"I took care of her house, her children, and she treated me very, very badly."
With so many upscale families in metropolitan New York, area residents employ about 600,000 nannies, according to Domestic Workers United (DWU), a nonprofit group in New York City dedicated to getting justice for women who often don't know what they are entitled to. Situations vary, of course, depending on the nanny and the family, but harsh treatment is not uncommon, say organizers from DWU.

The problems domestic workers face have "everything to do with racism, classism and sexism," says Priscilla Gonzalez, a DWU organizer. Mostly these women come from Africa, Latin America and Asia. They often don't speak English or are undocumented.

They probably don't know that the country's Fair Labor Standards Act entitles them to the minimum wage, regardless of their status in this country.
Ai-jen Poo, another DWU organizer, says that the group receives about 10 complaints of abuse from domestic workers in the New York metropolitan area each month. The type of abuse varies; Poo cites everything from getting fired for being pregnant, to racial or sexual harassment, rape, unpaid or low wages, no vacation days or no days off.

Abusive treatment of nannies is far from uncommon, even if "the front-page story is always when a nanny steals something or abuses a child," says Gonzalez, whose mother was a domestic worker. "But these are people's lives. They are facing constant humiliation.

"
"There's a way in which, every day, workers are faced with disrespect and a level of dehumanization because their work is not really seen as work," Poo says. "The workers aren't recognized as workers or human beings."
One of the phrases Fontaine yelled during the driveway incident, according to both Cindy and a witness, was: "No one's going to listen to you—you're an immigrant.

I'm an upstanding citizen of Massapequa!"
At first, at least, that was true. Luckily for Cindy, there were a couple of witnesses that day, both inside and outside the house.

A Jamaican nurse named Blossom Wright had been living in the Sheridan house for a few weeks, taking care of Fontaine's mother, who is sick with ALS she says. In Wright's opinion, "Fontaine was a walking time bomb," a person she further describes as "very, very intimidating."
On the Wednesday morning of Cindy's final day in the house, Wright describes how Fontaine "went off like a volcano" after Cindy mentioned that she had not yet fed the dog that day.

"She was pointing her finger up in Cindy's face," Wright says. "I thought she was going to hit her. I jumped in the middle and said, 'This is not the way you go about things.

You're very angry. Calm down.'"
From there, Wright says, Fontaine physically pushed Cindy outside, yelling, "Get out of my house!

"
Cindy called a cab and left. Within an hour, according to Wright, Fontaine asked her to go get Cindy, who does not drive, and bring her back to the house. Cindy agreed to return, but says she thought to herself, "It's not over.

She likes to have a part two and a part three."
After Cindy returned, Fontaine went out to do errands, a time Cindy used to pack her belongings into a suitcase and two large plastic garbage bags. When Fontaine returned, she asked if Cindy would consider waiting to speak with her husband, but Cindy replied that she'd rather just leave.

That's when her temper went off, Cindy says, when the cursing and throwing of clothes happened—Fontaine said she needed to make sure that Cindy, the nanny to her children for three years, wasn't stealing anything on her way out.
"[Fontaine] tore those bags like crazy," Wright says. "Fontaine kept pushing her," she adds.

"I sat down and watched her," Cindy recalls, shaking her head. Then she called Fontaine's friend, Patty, which Patty confirms. "It's happening again," Cindy told Patty.

Next, Cindy says that Fontaine knocked the phone out of her hand and "slapped me around my face. She pushes me down three steps off the porch. I fell forward.

"
By then, Wright says, Fontaine's mother and children were crying: "Trevor was saying, 'Mommy, Mommy, stop, stop. Please don't hurt Cindy.'" Wright also confirms that Fontaine repeatedly called Cindy a "nigger.

"
For her part, Fontaine told a Press reporter in a phone call: "My lawyers advised me from saying anything about this case," and then hung up. Her husband did not return a phone call, and several other attempts to get the Sheridans' side of the story were unsuccessful. According to the District Attorney's office, no lawyer has yet appeared on behalf of Fontaine in this case.

When asked if she raised her hand against Fontaine, that day or ever in the past, Cindy looks stunned: "Friends told me, if [white people] hit, don't touch them. If you hit these white people you'll be locked up."
Police arrived at the apex of the scene, after Cindy had fallen—allegedly pushed by Fontaine—backward over paving stones at the edge of the driveway, twisting her leg and back and hitting her head on the sidewalk.

Already, a neighbor backing out of a nearby driveway had run over to help Cindy get up and was told by Fontaine to get away from her, Cindy says. The neighbor, who confirms what Cindy says, retreated to her car and drove off.
When it comes to how police responded to the situation, the stories diverge.

Cindy says she told the two officers from the 7th Squad, Dwyer and Geelan, "I'm hurt," and that she wanted Fontaine arrested. But instead of arresting Fontaine or taking Cindy to the hospital, Cindy says they told her she had to leave the property, since that's what the homeowner wanted. The police report does not specify that Cindy wanted an arrest, says Officer Vincent Garcia, a spokesman for the Nassau County Police Department, and Cindy alleges that the officers literally tried to get her to sign away her desire for an arrest at the scene.

According to Garcia, even if Cindy fell and was not hurt, Fontaine could still have been arrested on a charge of harassment: "It's a violation the equivalent of a traffic ticket, versus a misdemeanor when it's an assault."
But Cindy was hurt. The next day, she called the police again, who sent an ambulance.

The same officer, named Dwyer, went to Cindy's house to fill out a report.
According to hospital documents, Cindy suffered contusions to her back and leg, and was referred to orthopedic specialists.
For now, no one is saying whether the officers were at fault for not immediately arresting Fontaine.

"It becomes a judgment call," says Steve Lloyd, director of Intercultural Relations at the Nassau County Human Rights Commission, who is looking into the case. "He's saying the woman declined [to have police make an arrest], so that was it. The question then becomes, who do you believe?

Did the woman go home the next day and realize her injuries were more serious and decide to press charges?"
Cindy, who has been walking with the aid of a cane since the incident, denies this, charging that the two women were dealt with quite differently by the police: One was notified that she should come to the stationhouse days later; the other says she was denied her request for an arrest at the scene. Fontaine was arraigned on July 27 for third-degree assault, but was released on her own recognizance to await a court date on Aug.

29.
"She had an opportunity to walk in nice and calm with her attorney, and me, I had all the embarrassment of people passing me while I'm lying on the sidewalk," Cindy says. "They saved her that.

"
"Incidents" had occurred prior to that day, Cindy says. A memorable one involved being pushed down the stairs. Cindy describes how she was carrying a basket full of laundry and had just reached the step before the landing on the second floor of the house.

She says Fontaine came out of her bedroom and said, "I'm sick of seeing you!" and pushed on the basket hard enough that Cindy fell backward, down the stairs.
There were milder incidents.

Cindy alleges that Fontaine slapped her across the face, pulled her braids or pushed her into doors occasionally when she was displeased, which brings to mind Cindy's own sarcastic nickname for Fontaine: The Lady of the Mansion.
Another time, Cindy claims, Fontaine became frustrated with the nanny's inability to fasten one of the children's car seats on an outing and ended up stopping the car and shoving Cindy out the door, onto a high snow bank at the curb. Fontaine drove off, but reversed the car a minute later and told her to get back in.

Leaving Cindy behind would have left Fontaine alone with three little boys she was unable to devote herself to looking after, according to Cindy.
"These boys mean everything to me," Cindy says. "I gave them their first bath.

I do everything for them. She's just a person who drives us from point A to point B."
Merchants and neighbors in Massapequa attest to Cindy's good conduct with the children.

Most of them preferred to withhold their names for fear of "getting involved," but Shariyka Bey, a customer service representative at the local Stop Shop, says of the nanny: "She's the best. You'd think she was the mother of the children."
Whether a worker is in the country illegally or not, "you have basic rights," the DWU's Poo says, as in the right not to be hit or demeaned.

For instance, if a domestic worker chooses to bring a civil case against her employer for back wages and overtime, her status in this country "has no bearing," says Tony Lu, a lawyer with the Urban Justice Center in New York.
"Sometimes employers will use aggressive tactics and will start asking about immigration, but lawyers have convinced judges that this is not relevant," he says.
DWU has been lobbying in Albany to create a domestic workers' bill of rights.

Two different bills have recently been sponsored, by Assemb. Keith Wright (D-Harlem) and Sen. Nick Spano (R-Westchester), and have received considerable support from organizations like the New York State AFL-CIO and the New York Immigration Coalition.

The proposal would grant domestic workers stronger labor protections, such as mandated paid holidays and sick days, and set minimum pay at $14 an hour. As it is, most domestic workers are not paid when they are not on the job, even if they require time in the hospital, as Cindy did more than once in follow-up treatments for a thyroidectomy.
"We always say that domestic workers have existed for hundreds and hundreds of years," Gonzalez explains.

"Now we are trying to make them visible."
Why domestic workers put up with the pushing and pulling of a controlling employer can most easily be explained by their own precarious circumstances: Most of these women have little money and few options to make any. Add to that the fear of deportation in some cases, or the needs of families back home who rely on funds sent from America to feed and clothe them.

"When you're in such a desperate situation, you don't think about things like that—being thrown out of the country," says Marina Lopez, another domestic worker currently in a legal dispute over her treatment and pay. "You think about doing the work with a lot of drive to meet the needs. I had nowhere to go.

"
Lopez, 65, has coffee-colored hair that matches her mocha skin. She speaks softly in Spanish and recounts through a translator how she lived in the basement of a College Park, Queens, home for two years, and then with the family in their Roslyn house for nearly a year. She was there to care for the teenage son, who is wheelchair-bound with cerebral palsy and often soils himself, she says.

After a while, in addition to caring for the boy, Lopez says she was required to clean the house, iron clothes and cook for her employer's two other teenaged children—and live in what she says were unsanitary conditions.
DWU has calculated that Lopez was paid roughly $2 an hour, and is currently attempting to recoup back wages for her.
Regardless of all she's been through, however, Lopez cannot swear that she will never work in such a situation again.

"Since it was a fixed job I could send money home," she says. "Being here without work—what else is there to do?"
Her circumstances are not easy, and she knows it: Many people have since declined to hire her because of her age or her inability to speak English.

So if someone offers her a steady income in another home, she might take it.
"You have to deal with what you get," she says quietly.
Cindy also believed she had to deal with what she got.

More than once, she says, Fontaine told her, "Don't tell anyone what's going on in this house. You don't have papers." And the moment police showed up on that violent day, the first thing Fontaine told them was that Cindy is illegal—a "really common tactic," says Priscilla Gonzalez of DWU.

Given that Cindy is in a position to be forced from the country, it seems curious that she is so forthcoming about everything that has happened to her. One of her lawyers, Brian Figeroux, who successfully represented Abner Louima in his 1997 assault case, says, "Anyone who is a victim of crime, Immigration will not go after. They only come after people who commit a crime.

" He adds that police encourage victims of crime—no matter their immigration status—to come forward.
Beyond that, Cindy's pursuit of justice comes down to a kind of basic human need for closure.
"She's not even sorry," Cindy says with amazement.

"I would put my life at stake to protect those boys. I'm not going to let her get away with this.