Fiction from The Literary Review
She was standing in the kitchen when he came home.
"Who are you?" he asked, not yet concerned. Sometimes his wife hired a village girl to help the new maid with extra cleaning.
"Well?" he demanded, placing his briefcase on the table. "What is your name?"
She merely looked at him with her frightened green eyes. They were huge in her pinched face. Her narrow shoulders slumped. She was so slight she might have been blown in through the doorway by a breeze. She had no hair to speak of, just a badly shaven mat, her scalp showing in some places.
"Don't you speak?" the man said. He was growing impatient. The maid's absence annoyed him. The vision of his return home had altered. He had wanted his Pepsi brought to him while he watched television, and he would put his feet on the ottoman and change the channels when he felt like it. He had installed a new satellite system that, as he liked to joke to his business friends, defeated all fronts in the war.
"Did my wife hire you?"
After a moment, the girl shook her head.
"Where do you come from?"
She looked bewildered. She had bruises on her arms and legs. Maybe she had been lost.
"You don't know where you come from?" he rephrased.
She shook her head.
"You don't speak?"
She did not respond.
The man had an idea. This would teach his wife for not adequately instructing the new maid. "Do you cook and clean?"
She nodded uncertainly.
"Are you available to work?"
She made no sign that she was not.
"Then I hire you. Bring me a Pepsi when I have settled in the television room. They are in the refrigerator."
He changed into loose pants and a T-shirt and went to the television room. First, however, he stepped onto the verandah and examined his satellite dish, which towered over his opulent house and could be seen from any part of the village. It did not exhibit any flaws. It was perfectly round and shiny as when it had been installed two weeks before. Satisfied, he went inside. He settled on his easy-chair and placed his feet on the ottoman. He clicked the television on with the remote control and sighed. He had a good life. Despite these past difficult years of civil war, he had achieved a contentedness that few could boast. He had three handsome boys, a big house, cars, more money than he knew how to handle.
The girl came in with a Pepsi balanced on a tray.
"Ah, you are accustomed to this," he remarked happily, not thinking that most girls are taught to use trays, while boys are taught nothing about delivering food and drink to guests. "My wife will be happy with you."
The girl stood there. Her cheap pants were torn and her short-sleeved blouse was grimy. She wore plastic sandals.
"My wife will give you clothing when she returns," he said, feeling beneficent and enjoying his intrusion into household affairs, about which he knew nothing and which now seemed a mildly challenging game. "And you can sleep in the shed outside. There is a pallet there. Let's see, what else?" he mused. "Ah, you may eat meals in the kitchen. What, I don't know. And I'm sure you will have a day off now and then, but otherwise you should be here at all times."
The girl remained where she was, hands behind her back and chin lowered. Her green eyes were fixed on the television screen.
"What else do you need?" he said, growing impatient. "Is it your pay? My wife will decide that. I cannot go that far!" he laughed.
Still she stood there.
"Go!" he barked, and she fled.
"What do you mean, you hired her?" his wife hissed. She was a slender woman who wore Armani outfits and heavy gold bracelets. She had been more beautiful when they married.
"I saw fit," he said.
"You have no knowledge of these things!"
"She is our new maid!" he insisted. "Don't argue with me!"
"We don't need one. And where is she from? What is her name?" his wife battered him with questions. "Why does she have those marks on her? Who shaved her head? Why won't she speak?"
The man stamped his foot. She glared at him with her red lips clenched. He glared back.
"She'll probably never leave," the wife said cautiously. "Then she'll get pregnant with one of the village boys. Do you want a scandal on your hands?" she asked, gaining new momentum. "What will people say about the little bald girl in our house, pregnant, unmarried? How will we get rid of her then? You want to cast out a pregnant girl?"
He stamped his foot and her mouth closed abruptly.
After a moment she said, "But I'll have to fire the other maid."
He glared at her so fiercely that she did not speak again, but left his television room, her high heels clacking on the marble floors.
The girl washed his feet with warm soapy water, softening the skin so she could pick out the corns that ached him so. She had been with them a week.
"I like you, No-name," he said. "You do your work, you don't complain, you listen. My heart is weighty today. My children are unhappy. They are in school in Paris. Do you know where Paris is?"
The girl did not respond. Of course she did not know, the man thought, and this made him feel piteous.
"They are behaving badly in their school and the school wants to expel them. Expel them, I said? I was on the telephone with the headmaster, you see. Expel them? Don't you know there is a war and they need to be away? How can you send them back into this danger?"
The girl patted one of his feet dry, then settled it on her lap and began picking at the corn with scissors. She frowned as she did this, as if concentrating very hard not to harm him, and he was moved. She looked better now, at least physically, and this was due to his thoughtfulness at taking her in.
"Look at you. You see? Had I not sent my children away they could very well have ended up where you are, depending on luck and the generosity of strangers. Few people are generous. You were fortunate when you walked into this house." He smiled at her, but she was occupied with his corn and did not interrupt her work to show she had heard.
He fell silent for a while, his thoughts drifting during the not unpleasant sensation of having his feet handled by her small fingers. The new notion of his children having escaped the fate of the girl became more and more interesting to him. "It is remarkable," he said at last, "how people can go from one place to another in their lives. The proverbial rich man suddenly loses all his fortunes and becomes a beggar on the street. Or the common whore gets lucky with a lottery ticket and becomes the toast of the town. Life," he said philosophically, "is unpredictable."
The girl put his foot into his slipper and placed it on the floor. She gathered the napkin with the corn clippings by closing it one corner at a time and then deftly rolling it into a tight little ball. She threw the towel over her shoulder, picked up the scissors and the tub of soapy water, and left.
The girl's hair was slightly longer and the bald patches were gone, and they had discovered that its color was a rich brown. Because her face was filling out and she now moved with more ease and grace, her appearance became important where it had gone unnoticed before.
"Are you Muslim or Christian?" the wife said. "Maybe you are Druze."
"She must be Christian," the man countered. "Look at those green eyes. No Muslim has such green eyes."
"If you had ever gone south, you would see that the Shi'a children have eyes like emeralds," his wife said triumphantly.
She had only been to the south once, as part of a day trip to visit the United Nations posts, but the man was too tired to point this out. He worked hard all day.
"It doesn't matter what she is," he said. "She's still a fine maid. Better than the Sri Lankans."
"If she's Muslim we could have problems."
"How will anyone find out? She doesn't even speak to us."
The wife admitted that the likelihood of the girl talking was slim, and so she gave up this concern. But she kept a secret eye on her. The girl had been so starved and shivering when she arrived that they had imagined her age to be younger than it was. She was prettier now, even though her expression hardly ever changed. Her bosom moved beneath her shirt when she walked, and her cheeks were plump.
The man looked for the maid because his siesta had been interrupted by the heat and he wanted the cool grenadine she made so well. She was not in the kitchen corner on her stool, nor could she be anywhere else in the house since those areas were forbidden to her except on cleaning day.
He stepped outside the kitchen onto the vine-shaded patio where they dined in the evening. Her shed stood behind this enclosure. He heard a sound and went to the shed and opened the door.
The girl was curled on her pallet with her knees to her chin, sobbing quietly. The man, disconcerted, leaned his head in to make sure he had seen correctly.
Her eyes met his and she leapt to her feet like a grasshopper. She wiped her nose.
"It's all right," he said nicely. "You can sit down."
She hesitated, her fear evident.
"What's the matter?" he said. "Sit down."
She sat with her legs together and her hands on her knees. He settled beside her and smelled the olive oil soap on her skin.
"Why were you crying? Is it to do with whatever happened to you?"
Mucus was running from her nose and she ever so slowly raised her hand to wipe it away, as if trying to conceal this movement. Her fear induced in him a wave of need to give, and so he handed her his striped handkerchief.
"Go on, take it," he said.
She took the handkerchief but did not use it.
"What happened to you that you came here and now you cry like this in your bed?" he asked. He wanted to know. The question had been bothering him since she arrived, but it was not until now that it surfaced so demandingly. Enough was enough. "Answer."
The girl stared straight ahead, and he saw that her shoulders trembled. He touched her shoulder and she made one jerking movement, much as a bird will dart inside one's hands before stilling itself, for every feather is in contact with the surface of its cage and it knows it cannot fly away.
"Why are you afraid of me?" the man asked irritably. "I am your helper. I have given you a house and food and easy work. You have gotten better under my care. Why won't you speak?"
The girl looked at him blankly. Her hands clenched each other in her lap, and the sight of this oddly reminded the man of the complex wires inside his satellite dish.
"Make me a grenadine," he said, getting up. He wanted her to appreciate that he had ceased his questioning, but she did not appear grateful, and this annoyed him.
She followed him from the shed, her feet padding soundlessly in the dirt.
The guests laughed and drank and the girl hurried back and forth between the kitchen and the patio, bringing and taking as was demanded of her.
"She is a good maid," the wife remarked. "She never fusses, and of course is never on the telephone like those chatty Sri Lankans."
"It's good to keep the economy inside the country," one of the guests said, a business man wearing relaxed tan slacks and Polo shirt. "Those Indians send all their earnings home."
"Where did she come from?" asked his wife, an Italian who had lived here for years. "Perhaps her family is looking for her."
"She won't speak."
"Won't speak!" the Italian exclaimed. "How unusual. Perhaps she is mute."
"She has a tongue," the business man remarked.
"Well, now, how do you know that?" his wife said.
"I saw her lick her lips earlier."
The two men laughed merrily and the Italian darted frowns at her husband. The evening was pleasantly warm and the scent of the grape vines above them permeated the air.
"No-name!" the man called. "Come here for a moment."
The girl came to the patio, her hands behind her back. Her hair, which was growing quickly, was proving to be curly and thick. She wore a white blouse and patterned skirt that had been handed down from an Ethiopian who worked for one of the wife's city friends.
"Our guests want to know why you won't speak!" the man said grandiosely. "Perhaps now, at last, you will?"
He felt badly then, because the girl's eyes widened with fear and she shifted her feet miserably. Even his wife, who disliked the girl, gave him a reproachful look.
"You have no imagination," she said to him. "You," she waved at the girl, "go back inside."
Afterwards they spoke of other things but periodically fell into uneasy silences, for the girl's mysterious story, clearly not a palatable one, had intruded on the dinner and poisoned their enjoyment.
The man came to the shed again and sat on the pallet with his legs crossed. He was wearing bright new tennis shoes and kept stroking the design on the side. The girl was sitting up smoking a cigarette rolled with paper. She smoked quickly and with great, deep breaths, filling the small area with pungent clouds.
"I keep thinking of your sadness," the man said. "I wanted to know what had happened to you, but since the other night when I accosted you before our guests I have changed my mind. There is something mystical about your silence."
He gazed at the girl to communicate the depth of his change of heart. She smoked, obscuring her face behind the clouds. Her green eyes showed less fear, as if she felt protected behind this screen.
"It makes me feel poetic. Here you are, so silent. I wonder what your voice sounds like? What your accent is? And yet I do not need to hear it. I feel I know you without words. My wife uses too many words," he chuckled, giving her a conspiratorial look. "You know this, I'm sure. She uses words like the soldiers use bullets."
The girl leaned over the side of the pallet, extending her long, slender arm to tamp out the cigarette in the dirt. The man kept his eyes on her movements until she was still again, her arms folded across her belly.
"May I touch you?" he asked politely, and he put his hand on her knee. It felt like a small, upside-down bowl. "You don't need to speak," he admitted. "I like your silence. It surrounds me like fresh water." He paused, impressed by his own fancy. He rarely felt such eloquent emotions.
The girl had begun to tremble and her lips disappeared into her mouth, whitening the skin around them.
"You must not be afraid," he soothed. "I am a good man. You are like a daughter to me."
He removed his hand, and the girl's face relaxed.
"You see?" he said, pleased.
But the man, later, could not take from his mind the feel of her knee inside his palm. He lay beside his wife at night, fretting. He pictured the girl in the dark shed, curled beneath the blanket. He pictured her arm reaching out and down to extinguish the cigarette. He pictured her in the kitchen, moisture on her forehead and above her lip as she worked at the stove. Finally he slept.