Break It Down

The Housemaid

I know I am not pretty. My dark hair is cut short and is so thin it hardly hides my skull. I have a hasty and lopsided way of walking, as though I were crippled in one leg. When I bought my glasses I thought they were elegant — the frames are black and shaped like butterfly wings — but now I have learned how unbecoming they are and am stuck with them, since I have no money to buy new ones. My skin is the color of a toad’s belly and my lips are narrow. But I am not nearly as ugly as my mother, who is much older. Her face is small and wrinkled and black like a prune, and her teeth wobble in her mouth. I can hardly bear to sit across from her at dinner and I can tell by the look on her face that she feels the same way about me.

For years we have lived together in the basement. She is the cook; I am the housemaid. We are not good servants, but no one can dismiss us because we are still better than most. My mother’s dream is that someday she will save enough money to leave me and live in the country. My dream is nearly the same, except that when I am feeling angry and unhappy I look across the table at her clawlike hands and hope that she will choke to death on her food. Then no one would be there to stop me from going into her closet and breaking open her money box. I would put on her dresses and her hats, and open the windows of her room and let the smell out.

Whenever I imagine these things, sitting alone in the kitchen late at night, I am always ill the next day. Then it is my mother herself who nurses me, holding water to my lips and fanning my face with a fly swatter, neglecting her duties in the kitchen, and I struggle to persuade myself that she is not silently gloating over my weakness.

Things have not always been like this. When Mr. Martin lived in the rooms above us, we were happier, though we seldom spoke to one another. I was no prettier than I am now, but I never wore my glasses in his presence and took care to stand up straight and to walk gracefully. I stumbled often, and even fell flat on my face because I could not see where I was going; I ached all night from trying to hold in my round stomach as I walked. But none of this stopped me from trying to be someone Mr. Martin could love. I broke many more things then than I do now, because I could not see where my hand was going when I dusted the parlor vases and sponged the dining-room mirrors. But Mr. Martin hardly noticed. He would start from his fireside chair, as the glass shattered, and stare up at the ceiling in a puzzled sort of way. After a moment, as I held my breath by the glittering pieces, he would pass his white-gloved hand over his forehead and sit down again.

He never spoke a word to me, but then I never heard him speak to anyone. I imagined his voice to be warm and slightly hoarse. Perhaps he stammered when he became emotional. I never saw his face, either, because it was hidden behind a mask. The mask was pale and rubbery. It covered every inch of his head and disappeared beneath his shirt collar. In the beginning it upset me; the first time I saw it, in fact, I lost my head and ran out of the room. Everything about it frightened me — the gaping mouth, the tiny ears like dried apricots, the clumsily painted black hair in frozen waves on its crown, and the naked eye sockets. It was enough to fill anyone’s dreams with horror and in the beginning it had me tossing and turning in bed until the sheets nearly choked me.

Little by little I became used to it. I began to imagine what Mr. Martin’s real expression was. I saw pink blushes spreading over his gray cheek when I caught him daydreaming over his book. I saw his mouth tremble with emotion — pity and admiration — as he watched me work. I would give him a certain little look and toss my head, and his face would break into a smile.

But now and then, when I found his pale gray eyes fixed on me, I had the uneasy feeling that I was quite wrong and that perhaps he never responded to me — a silly, inept housemaid; that if one day a different girl were to walk into the room and begin dusting he would only glance up from his book and continue to read without having noticed the change. Shaken by doubt, I would go on sweeping and scouring with numbed hands as though nothing had happened, and soon the doubt would pass.

I took on more and more work for Mr. Martin’s sake. Where at first we used to send out his laundry to be washed, I began to wash it myself, even though I did not do it as well. His linen became dingy and his trousers were badly pressed, but he did not complain. My hands became wrinkled and swollen, but I did not mind. Where before a gardener came once a week to trim the hedges in summertime and cover the rosebushes with burlap during the winter, I now took over those duties, dismissing the gardener myself and working day after day in the worst weather. At first the garden suffered, but after a time it came alive again: the roses were driven out by wildflowers of all colors and the gravel walks were disrupted by thick green grass. I grew strong and hardy and didn’t mind that my face erupted in welts and the skin of my fingers dried and cracked open, or that with so much work I grew thin and gaunt and smelled like a horse. My mother complained. But I felt that my body was an insignificant sacrifice.

Sometimes I imagined that I was Mr. Martin’s daughter, at other times his wife, at other times even his dog. I forgot that I was nothing more than a housemaid.

My mother never once laid eyes on him, and that made my relationship with him all the more mysterious. During the day she stayed below in the steamy kitchen, preparing his meals and chewing her gums nervously. Only in the evening did she step outside the door and stand hugging herself near the overblown lilac bush, looking up at the clouds. Sometimes I wondered how she could go on working for a man she had never seen, but that was her way. I brought her an envelope of money each month and she took it and hid it with the rest of her money. She never asked me what he was like and I never volunteered anything. I think she didn’t ask who he was because she hadn’t yet even figured out who I was. Perhaps she thought she was cooking for her husband and family like other women, and that I was her younger sister. Sometimes she spoke of going down the mountain, though we don’t live on a mountain, or of digging up the potatoes, though there are no potatoes in our garden. This upset me and I would try to bring her out of it by yelling suddenly or baring my teeth in her face. But nothing made any impression, and I would have to wait until at last she called me by name quite naturally. Since she showed no curiosity about Mr. Martin I was left in peace to take care of him just as I wished, to hover about him as he went out of the house on one of his infrequent walks, to linger behind the swinging door of the dining room and watch him through the crack, to brush his smoking jacket and wipe the dust from the soles of his slippers.

But this happiness didn’t last forever. I woke up particularly early one Sunday morning in midsummer to see bright sunlight streaming down the hall where I slept. For a long time I lay in bed listening to the wrens that sit and sing in the bushes outside, and watching the swallows that fly in and out of the broken window at the far end of the hallway. I got up and with great care, as always, I cleaned my face and teeth. It was hot. I slipped a freshly washed summer dress over my head and put my feet into my patent leather pumps. For the last time in my life I drowned my own smell in rosewater. Church bells began wildly to chime ten o’clock. When I went upstairs to put his breakfast on the table, Mr. Martin was not there. I waited by his chair for what felt like hours. I began to search the house. Timidly at first, then in a frantic hurry, as though he were slipping out of each room just as I came to it, I looked everywhere for him. Only after seeing that his wardrobe was stripped of his clothes and his bookcase was empty could I admit that he had gone. Even then, and for days afterwards, I thought he might come back.

A week later an old woman came with three or four shabby trunks and began to line the mantelpiece with her cheap knickknacks. Then I saw that without a word of explanation, without regard for my feelings, without even a present of money, Mr. Martin had packed up and gone for good.

This is only a rented house. My mother and I are included in the rent. People come and go, and every few years there is a new tenant. I should have expected that one day Mr. Martin too would leave. But I didn’t expect it. I was ill for a long time after that day and my mother, who became more and more loathsome to me, wore herself out bringing me the broth and cold cucumbers that I craved. After my illness I looked like a corpse. My breath stank. My mother would turn away from me in disgust. The tenants shuddered when I came into the room in my clumsy way, tripping over the doorsill even though my glasses again sat like a butterfly on the narrow bridge of my nose.

I was never a good housemaid, but now, though I try hard, I am so careless that some tenants believe I do not clean the rooms at all and others think I am purposely trying to embarrass them in front of their guests. But when they scold me I don’t answer. I just look at them indifferently and go on with my work. They have never known such disappointment as I have.