The Maid(48)

“I most certainly hope not. I’ve done nothing wrong!”

“Do you have a valid passport?”

“No.”

She cocks her head to one side. “If you’re lying, I’ll find out. I can look you up, you know.”

“And when you do,” I say, “you’ll find that I do not have a passport because I’ve never left the country in my life. You’ll also find I’m a model citizen and that I have a completely clean record.”

“Don’t go anywhere, you understand?”

It’s precisely this kind of language that always trips me up. “May I go to my home? May I go to the store? To the restroom? And what about work?”

She sighs. “Yes, of course you can go home and to all the places you’d usually go. And yes, you can go to work. What I’m saying is we’ll be watching you.”

Here we go again. “Watching me do what?” I ask.

Her eyes drill into mine. “Whatever it is you’re hiding, whoever you’re trying to protect, we’ll find out. One thing I’ve learned in my business is that you can hide dirt for a while, but at some point, it all comes to the surface. Do you understand?”

“You’re asking me if I understand dirt?”

Smudges on doorknobs. Shoe prints on floors. Dust rings on tabletops. Mr. Black dead in his bed.

“Yes, Detective. I understand dirt better than most.”





It is three-thirty when Detective Stark dismisses me from the white room. I walk myself out the station door. No courtesy ride home this time. I haven’t eaten since the morning, and I haven’t had so much as a cup of tea to tide me over.

My stomach roils. The dragon awakes. I have to pause a moment on the sidewalk in front of my building just to keep from fainting.

It’s my deception, not hunger, that’s having a deleterious effect on my nerves. It’s the fact that I haven’t disclosed fully about Giselle nor about what I currently have hidden over my heart. That’s what has me in such a state.

Honesty is the only policy.

I can see Gran’s face, twisted with disappointment, the day I came home from school at the age of twelve and she asked me how my day was. I told her it was ordinary, nothing to report. That, too, was a lie. The truth was, I ran away at lunchtime, which was far from ordinary. The school called Gran. I confessed to Gran why I’d run away. My classmates had formed a ring around me in the schoolyard and ordered me to roll around in the mud and eat it, kicking me while I obeyed their order. They were keenly inventive when it came to tormenting me, and this iteration was no exception.

When the ordeal was over, I went to the community library and spent hours in the bathroom washing the grime off my face and mouth, scraping the earth out from under my fingernails. I watched with satisfaction as the evidence circled down the drain. I was so certain I’d get away with it, that Gran would never find out.

But she did find out. And she had only one question for me after I confessed to being bullied. “Dear girl, why didn’t you just tell the truth right away? To your teacher? To me? To anyone?” Then she cried and embraced me with such force that I was never able to answer her question. But I had an answer. I did. I didn’t tell the truth because the truth hurt. What happened at school was bad enough, but Gran knowing about my suffering meant she experienced my pain too.

That’s the trouble with pain. It’s as contagious as a disease. It spreads from the person who first endured it to those who love them most. Truth isn’t always the highest ideal; sometimes it must be sacrificed to stop the spread of pain to those you love. Even children know this intuitively.

My stomach settles. Steadiness returns. I cross the street and enter my building. I bound up the stairs to my floor, heading straight for Mr. Rosso’s door. I extricate the wad of bills I’ve placed by my heart for safekeeping. I was aware of them the whole time I was at the police station, but far from being a nuisance, they felt protective, like a shield.

I knock loudly. I hear Mr. Rosso padding down his hallway, then the scratchy squeal of the lock twisting. My landlord’s face appears, ruddy and bulbous. I hold out the bills in my hand.

“Here is the rest of this month’s rent,” I say. “As you can see, I take after my gran. I’m a woman of my word.”

He takes the money and counts it. “It’s all there, but I appreciate your diligence,” I say.

When he’s done counting, he nods slowly. “Molly, let’s not do this every month, okay? I know your grandmother is gone, but you need to pay your rent on time. You need to get your life in order.”

“I’m well aware of that,” I say. “As for order, it is my express wish to live as ordered a life as possible. But the world is filled with random chaos that often bedevils my attempts at arrangement. May I have my receipt for full payment, please?”

He sighs. I know what this means. He’s exasperated, which does not seem fair. If someone were to place a wad of bills into my hands, rest assured I would not sigh like this. I’d be grateful beyond measure.

“I’ll fill out a receipt tonight,” he says, “and give it to you tomorrow.”

I would much prefer to have that receipt in my hand tout suite, but I defer. “That would be acceptable. Thank you,” I say. “And have a lovely evening.”