Chopped
"Only paupers walk barefoot," to which I should have replied, "Only paupers are nannies for the nouveau riche."
Instead, I seethed in the kitchen, washing his precious wooden salad
bowl without soap as I had been instructed after "nearly ruining it,"
and thought about how much money it would take for me to get out of this
awful situation.
"When you're done, please be sure to shine the drain like I showed
you," Connie said cheerfully, but with a slicing edge to her smile that
made me feel like I was in the presence of the wicked step-mother. Not
that either one was my parent, but at 19, I wasn't as old as I pretended
to be, and they lived like the adult I imagined I'd become, albeit, I'd
be nice.
Connie had also shown me how to vacuum her entry way rug so that the
pile looked like a backgammon board, neat long triangles head to end,
across the expensive oriental piece. I felt rich in the entry way,
knowing as I did that there were three real fur coats in the closet to
my left and leather jackets behind the expanse of louvered wooden doors
in front of me.
To the right one walked through the kitchen, breakfast nook and
towards the informal living room and parents' wing of the
ranch-cum-Japanese house in the hills. That side of the sprawling house
also held the custom wine "cellar" remodeled out of a former maid's
closet. And, of course, the bathroom closest to the laundry room and
kitchen. That was where Connie forced me to assist her in holding down
her precious Himalayan kittens to wash and then blow dry.
Their bedroom was as big as 1/2 the double wide I had been living in
previously and had two separate "his" and "hers" dressing rooms that
were joined by a long bathroom containing two sinks, two toilets (well,
one was a bidet) and a huge sunken tub that no one ever used.
But this was not my wing of the house. I lived on the other side,
past the untouched formal dining room and living room, on the same
branch as the guest bedroom with its endless supply of left over hotel
shampoos, slippers, shower caps and first class airplane shaving kits,
and, of course, the child's room. Pink and white, delightful and
spacious. The exact opposite of the child herself, who could not have
been less warm.
Because I was transient, I took all my belongings with me from job
to job. This probably surprised my employers, who expected maybe a girl
with one suitcase and a few coats. But I wasn't simply looking for
work, I was looking for a home. I did not realize how disturbing my
bigness would be to any one of the families for which I worked. I didn't
understand that I was not to have come from a life with things. I was
not to be complicated or needy. Nor was I to argue or sigh. The fact
that I washed the wooden bowl with dish detergent, walked barefoot and
parked my behemoth of a beaten up Cutlass Supreme in their sloped
driveway made it all wrong from the moment they returned from Vail,
where they had been when I moved in over Christmas.
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