The Maid(19)

It’s funny the way memories bubble up whenever I clean. I do wonder if that’s the same for everyone—for everyone who cleans, that is. And though I’ve had a rather eventful day, it’s not today that I’m thinking about, not Mr. Black and all of that wretched business, but a day long ago when I was about eleven years old. I was asking Gran about my mother, as I did from time to time—What kind of person was she? Where had she gone and why? I knew she’d run off with my father, a man Gran described as a “bad egg” and “a fly-by-night.”

“What was he during the day?” I asked.

She laughed.

“Are you laughing with me or at me?”

“With, my dear girl! Always with.”

She went on to say it was no surprise that my mother got caught up with a fly-by-night, because Gran had made mistakes, too, when she was young. That’s how she got my mother in the first place.

It was all so confusing at the time. I had no idea what to think about any of it. It makes more sense now. The older I get, the more I understand. And the more I understand, the more questions I have for her—questions she can no longer answer.

“Will she ever come back to us? My mother?” I asked back then.

A long sigh. “It won’t be easy. She has to escape him. And she has to want to get away.”

She didn’t, though. My mother never returned. But that’s okay with me. There’s no point mourning someone you never knew. It’s hard enough mourning someone you did know, someone you’ll never see again, someone you miss dreadfully.

My gran worked hard and cared for me well. She taught me things. She hugged me and fussed over me and made life worth living. My gran was also a maid, but a domestic one. She worked for a well-to-do family, the Coldwells. She could walk to their mansion from our apartment in half an hour. They complimented her work, but whatever she did for them, it was never enough.

“Can you clean up after our soirée on Saturday night?”

“Can you get this stain out of our carpet?”

“Do you garden as well?”

Gran, ever willing and good-natured, said yes to every request, no matter what toll it took on her. In so doing, she saved up a very nice nest egg over the years. She called it “the Fabergé.”

“Dear girl, would you pop down to the bank and deposit this in the Fabergé?”

“Sure, Gran,” I’d say, grabbing her bank card and walking down five flights of stairs, out of the building, and down two blocks to the ATM.

As I got older, there were times I worried for Gran, worried she was working too hard. But she dismissed my concerns.

“The devil makes work for idle hands. And besides, one day it will just be you, and the Fabergé will see you through when that day comes.”

I didn’t want to think about that day. It was hard to imagine life beyond Gran, especially since school was a special form of torture. Both elementary and high school were lonely and trying. I was proud of my good grades, but my peers were never my peers. They never understood me then and rarely do now. When I was younger, this vexed me more than it does today.

“No one likes me,” I’d tell Gran when I got picked on at school.

“That’s because you’re different,” she explained.

“They call me a freak.”

“You’re not a freak. You’re just an old soul. And that’s something to be proud of.”

When I was nearing the end of high school, Gran and I talked a lot about professions, about what I wanted to do in my adult life. There was only one option of any interest to me. “I want to be a maid,” I told her.

“Dear girl, with the Fabergé, you can aim a little higher than that.”

But I persisted, and I think deep down Gran knew better than anyone what I am. She knew my capabilities and my strengths; she was also keenly aware of my weaknesses, though she said I was getting better—The longer you live, the more you learn.

“If being a maid is what you’re set on, so be it,” Gran said. “You’ll need some work experience, though, before you enter a community college.”

Gran asked around and through an old contact who was a doorman at the Regency Grand, she learned of an opening for a maid at the hotel. I was nervous at my interview, felt sweat pooling indiscreetly at my armpits as we stood outside the hotel’s imposing, red-carpeted front steps with the stately black-and-gold awning looming over it.

“I can’t go in there, Gran. It’s far too posh for me.”

“Balderdash. You deserve to enter those doors as much as anyone. And you will. Go on, then.”

She pushed me forward. I was greeted by Mr. Preston, her doorman friend.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said, bowing slightly and tipping his hat. He looked at Gran in a funny way that I couldn’t quite comprehend. “It’s been a while, Flora,” he said. “It is good to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Gran replied.

“Better get you inside then, Molly,” Mr. Preston said.

He guided me through the shiny revolving doors and I took in the glorious lobby of the Regency Grand for the very first time. It was so beautiful, so opulent, I almost felt faint at the sight of it—the marble floors and staircases, the gleaming golden railings, the smart, uniformed Reception staff, like neat little penguins, tending to well-dressed guests who milled about the stately lobby.