Coca watched, biting her lip. “Ou byen? You okay?”
“No loss. I couldn’t work there another day.”
“Wait.” Coca walked into the next room. Marie heard her on the phone, wondered briefly if she was turning her in, betrayal now a commonplace, but then Coca came back with a big smile on her face. “There’s this lady I worked for. She called, asking if I wanted to come back. Problem is that you have to live there, and I have family, my boyfriend, to look after. It’s far on the other side of town. But for you…”
“Can’t be far enough now.”
“Just cleaning her house. She lives alone so there’s not much mess, only dust. But don’t do anything crazy, like with the dog, oke?”
Marie was shaking now, relief unlocking her bones. Already sure that she’d run out of last chances. “I can clean.”
“Course you can,” Coca said.
“Mesi, thank you. You save my life.”
Marie started to cry, but Coca brushed her away. “One does what one can. Look, I tell the lady you’re my cousin from Trinidad.”
“I’m Haitian. She’ll never believe me.”
Coca looked at her, eyes disbelieving. “Don’t you know, girl, we’re all the same to them?”
* * *
Marie borrowed money from Coca for the bus and walked to the station. It didn’t matter if she waited hours or days because this was the only slip of life she had left to try. She spent her last dollars on a sandwich and a Coke and even bought a candy bar in a spike of reckless hope.
Two hours later the bus dropped her off in a fancy suburb outside Miami. A warm night, the terminal was open to the air, brick and lacquered-wood benches scattered under a roof of grapevines. Marie slumped down on a bench and slept until the janitor poked her awake at dawn and told her to leave. That was what she was learning of this new country — no matter how lovely the place, one could never stay long, but had to keep moving.
She clutched the piece of paper with the address as if it were a lottery ticket. She wandered the streets reading the signs. Finally a garbage truck stopped to load cans, and the men were from Cité Soleil. They smiled, and they greeted her like long-lost kin—Bonjou! Komon ou ye? N’ap boule! — the taste of familiar words in her mouth gave her strength. They read the address and pointed the way, offering a ride, but Maman’s girl couldn’t arrive for her new life with the garbage, so regretfully said no. Other than the trash truck, nothing moved in the silent, empty streets. The houses were set behind high walls, barricaded behind prickling, thorny hedges of bougainvillea.
* * *
At seven in the morning, Marie was staring at a white building that looked as if it were a set of child’s blocks stacked one against another, filled with silvered glass on all sides. She checked over and over to make sure this unlikely place was the address on the paper. Unsure, she walked up the bleached-rock driveway that shushed under her feet like a rocky beach and dropped the fish-shaped knocker against a copper door, heard it echo through a large, empty space.
No one answered. She stopped and studied the street, then turned back again to the knocker, which she lifted and let fall, and heard a gunlike bang ricochet on the other side. The door gave way under her knuckles, and she dipped forward as a thin, tall woman wearing a white robe squinted down. Her face was tanned and sculpted, the skin shiny tight over the bones. When she smiled, it was quick and painful, her eyes remaining fixed and cold.
“You’re Coca’s cousin?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Come in. Get out of the street, for Christ’s sake.” She waved with a skeletal, clawish hand. Her nails were short and lacquered a dark gray. A band of diamonds glittered on her finger like a tiny collar. Marie walked into a room unlike any she had ever dreamed of before. The walls, couches, table, carpets — everything white. The ceiling was of glass, and the walls, too, everything leached of color and substance. Sunlight blazed all around them as if they were trapped together inside a bottle. It was the most terrifying and peaceful room Marie could ever have imagined.
“Let’s do introductions later. I’m going back to bed.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Enough ma’am. You make me feel like someone’s grandmother. Me llamo Linda.”
Marie nodded.
The woman did not ask her name, only looked at her face briefly and looked away. Her eyes were such a light blue they seemed to have no color at all, like the room itself, and like the sun they were hard to look into for long. Her hair was the palest blond, also drained of color, and it swept along her chin like a delicate cloth.
“I’ll show you your room so you can get settled. Since you’ll be living here, I require you to take at least one shower each day and wear a uniform. Nothing silly — just a polo shirt and white jeans, white sneakers or loafers. Give me your sizes, and I’ll take care of it. Is that okay?”
“I always wear others’ clothes. Don’t know my own size.”
“More information than I really wanted.” Linda sighed. “I’ll guess. You’re about the same as the last girl.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The woman frowned. “Maybe we both need sleep.”
* * *
The maid’s room was not like the other parts of the house — the ceiling was low, the beams exposed, the walls painted a gloomy mustard yellow with figures and words scrawled across them that told Marie that the girl who had drawn them (she did not think it was Coca) had been from the islands also. She pried the window open, struggling with the warped wooden frame. The only sounds outside were of a lawn mower and the ocean in the distance. She sat and let the silence wash over her. The window looked out at a thick, coarse lawn, the blades so fat and sharp they looked as if they would hurt bare feet, and at a corner of the swimming pool, blue like a chip of island sky. Marie lay back on her single bed, the mattress covered by a balding chenille blanket. A closet, a scarred desk, a sagging chair, nothing else in the room. The most beautiful place she had ever been.
* * *
She fell asleep and did not wake until she heard an impatient rapping on the door.
It flung open before she could get up, and the woman stood in a white pantsuit, her only bit of color a pink scarf trailing down her neck. Now her eyes were rimmed in kohl, her lips a silvery pink, and Marie thought her perfect like the pictures in magazines. The woman was like her house — untouched, with no sign of time passing and leaving its imprint. “Do you normally sleep all day?” she said, lips in a frown while she raked through her small purse.
“I’m sorry.…”
“I hate people apologizing. Just don’t do it, okay? Let’s move to the living room, please.”
Marie jumped up and tried to smooth her clothes as best she could, jogging in her hurry to follow the woman’s long strides.
“Cleaning supplies are in the pantry off the kitchen. I’m sure you’ll figure things out for yourself. Coca said you have experience, right?”
“I know cleaning.”
“The number one thing to remember is that I prefer not to be bothered with details, okay? Unless it’s absolutely essential. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Mrs. Linda.”
“This isn’t a Southern plantation. Linda.”
“Linda.”
The woman pulled out a dark pair of sunglasses from her purse and put them on. The room was so bright Marie wished for her own pair.
“I’m late for lunch so we’ll continue with this later.”
“Yes.”
The woman opened the front door, then turned back. “My God, I forgot to ask — what’s your name?”
Marie hesitated, her mind empty of possibilities. “Maleva?”