The Housemaid(9)

I dig my brand-new cell phone out of my pocket. The screen jumps alive at my touch, filling with little icons for text messaging, calls, and the weather. These sorts of phones were not ubiquitous back at the start of my incarceration, and I haven’t been able to afford one since I got out. But a couple of the girls had one at the halfway houses where I went when I first got out, so I sort of know how to use them. I know which icon brings up a browser.

I type into the browser window: Translate pericolo. The signal must be weak up here in the attic, because it takes a long time. Almost a minute has gone by when the translation of pericolo finally appears on the screen of my phone:

Danger.





FOUR





I spend the next seven hours cleaning.

Nina could not have made this house dirtier if she tried. Every room of the house is filthy. The pizza box on the coffee table still has two slices of pizza in it, and there is something sticky and foul-smelling spilled in the bottom of the box. It has leaked through and the box is fused to the coffee table. It takes an hour of soaking and thirty minutes of intense scrubbing to get it all clean.

The kitchen is the worst of it. In addition to whatever is in the garbage bin itself, there are two garbage bags in the kitchen, spilling over with their contents. One of the two bags has a rip in the bottom, and when I lift it to take it outside, all the garbage goes everywhere. And it smells beyond terrible. I gag but don’t lose my lunch.

Dishes are piled high in the sink, and I wonder why Nina didn’t just put them in their state-of-the-art dishwasher, until I open the dishwasher and notice that it is also packed to the brim with filthy dishes. That woman does not believe in scraping plates before putting them in the dishwasher. Or, apparently, running the dishwasher. Before I am done, I run three loads of dishes. I wash all the pans separately, most of which have food caked on them from days earlier.

By mid-afternoon, I’ve gotten the kitchen at least somewhat habitable again. I’m proud of myself. It’s the first hard day’s work I’ve done since I got fired from the bar (completely unfairly, but that’s my life these days), and I feel great about it. All I want is to keep working here. And maybe to have a window in my room that opens.

“Who are you?”

A little voice startles me in the middle of putting away the last load of dishes. I whirl around—Cecelia is standing behind me, her pale blue eyes boring into me, wearing a white frilly dress that makes her look like a little doll. And by doll, I’m of course talking about that creepy talking doll in The Twilight Zone that murders people.

I didn’t even see her come inside. And Nina is nowhere to be seen. Where did she even come from? If this is the part of the job where I find out Cecelia has actually been dead for ten years and is a ghost, I’m quitting.

Well, maybe not. But I might ask for a raise.

“Hi, Cecelia!” I say cheerfully. “I’m Millie. I’m going to be working around your house from now on—cleaning things up and watching you when your mom asks me to. I hope we can have fun together.”

Cecelia blinks her pale eyes at me. “I’m hungry.”

I have to remember that she is just a normal little girl who gets hungry and thirsty and cranky and uses the bathroom. “What would you like to eat?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what sorts of things do you like?”

“I don’t know.”

I grit my teeth. Cecelia has morphed from a creepy little girl to an annoying little girl. But we just met each other. I’m sure after a few weeks, we’ll be best friends. “Okay, I’ll just fix you a snack then.”

She nods and climbs up on one of the stools set up around the kitchen island. Her eyes still feel like they’re boring through me—like they can read all my secrets. I wish she would go in the living room and watch cartoons on her giant TV instead of just… watching me.

“So what do you like to watch on television?” I ask, hoping she’ll take the hint.

She frowns like I offended her. “I prefer to read.”

“That’s great! What do you like to read?”

“Books.”

“What kind of books?”

“The kind with words.”

Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be, Cecelia. Fine, if she doesn’t want to talk about books, I can change the subject. “Did you just come back from school?” I ask her.

She blinks at me. “Where else would I have come from?”

“But… how did you get home then?”

Cecelia lets out an exasperated huff. “Lucy’s mom picked me up from ballet and brought me home.”

I heard Nina upstairs about fifteen minutes ago, so I assume she’s in the house. I wonder if I should let her know that Cecelia is home. Then again, I don’t want to disturb her, and one of my jobs is to look after Cecelia.

Thank God, Cecelia seems to have lost interest in me and is now rifling around in her pale pink backpack. I find some Ritz crackers in the pantry as well as a jar of peanut butter. I spread the peanut butter over the crackers like my mother used to do. Repeating the same act that my mother used to do for me so many times makes me feel a little nostalgic. And sad. I never thought she would abandon me the way she did. This is it, Millie. The last straw.

After I’ve spread peanut butter on the crackers, I slice up a banana and put one slice on each. I love the combination of peanut butter and bananas.