SERVANT GIRL
by Estrella D. Alfon
A pin she had failed to remove from a
dress sank its point deep into her finger. She cried to herself in surprise
and squeezed the finger until the blood came out. She watched the bright red
drop fall into the suds of soap and looked in delight at its gradual mingling
into the whiteness. Her mistress came upon her thus and, shouting at her,
startled her into busily rubbing while she tried not to listen to the scolding
words.
When her mistress left her, she fell to
doing her work slowly again, and sometimes she paused to listen to the talk in
the bathhouse behind her. A little later her mistress’ shrill voice told her to
go to the bathhouse for drinking water. Eagerly wiping her hands on her wet
wrap, she took the can from the kitchen table and went out quickly.
She was sweating at the defective town
pump when strong hands closed over hers and started to help her. The hands
pressing down on hers made her wince and she withdrew her hands hastily. The
movement was greeted by a shout of laughter from the women washing and Rosa looked at them in surprise. The women said to each
other “Rosa does not like to be touched by
Sancho” and then slapped their thighs in laughter. Rosa
frowned and picked up her can. Sancho made a move to help her but she thrust
him away, and the women roared again, saying “Because we are here, Sancho, she
is ashamed.”
Her mistress’ voice came to her, calling
impatiently, and she tried to hurry. When she arrived, the woman asked her what
had kept her so long, and without waiting for an answer she ranted on, saying
she had heard the women joking in the bathhouse, and she knew what had kept the
girl so long. Her anger mounting with every angry word she said, she finally
swung out an arm, and before she quite knew what she was doing, she slapped Rosa ’s face.
She was sorry as soon as she realized what
she had done. She turned away, muttering still, while Rosa ’s
eyes filled with sudden tears. The girl poured the water from the can into the
earthen jar, a bitter lump in her throat, and thought of what she would do to
people like her mistress when she herself, God willing, would be “rich.” Soon
however, she thought of Sancho, and the jokes the women had shouted at her. She
thought of their laughter and Sancho following her with his coaxing tones, and
she smiled slowly.
Getting back to her washing, she gathered
the clothes she had to bleach, and piled them into a basin she balanced on her
head. Passing her mistress in the kitchen, she said something about going to
bleach the clothes and under her breath added an epithet. She had to cross the
street to get to the stones gathered about in a whitened circle in a neighbor’s
yard where she was wont to lay out the clothes. She passed some women hanging
clothes on a barbed-wire fence to dry. They called to her and she smiled at
them.
Some dogs chasing each other on the
street, she did not notice because the women were praising her for the
whiteness of the linen in the basin on her head. She was answering them that
she hadn’t even bleached them yet, when one of the dogs passed swiftly very
close to her. Looking down, she saw in wide alarm another dog close on the
heels of the first. An instinctive fear of animals made her want to dodge the
heedlessly running dog, and she stepped gingerly this way and that. The dog,
intent on the other it was pursuing, gave her no heed and ran right between her
legs as Rosa held on to the basin in frantic fear lest it fall and the clothes
get soiled. Her patadiong was tight in their wetness about her legs, and
she fell down, in the middle of the street. She heard the other women’s
exclamations of alarm and her first thought was for the clothes. Without
getting up, she looked at the basin and gave obscene thanks when she saw the
clothes still piled secure and undirtied. She tried to get up, hurrying lest
her mistress come out and see her thus and slap her again. Already the women
were setting up a great to do about what had happened. Some were coming to her,
loudly abusing the dogs, solicitousness on their faces. Rosa
cried, “Nothing’s the matter with me.” Still struggling to get up, she noticed
that her wrap had been loosened and had bared her breasts. She looked around
wildly, sudden shame coloring her cheeks, and raised the wrap and tied it
securely around herself again.
She could stand but she found she could
not walk. The women had gone back to their drying, seeing she was up and
apparently nothing the worse for the accident. Rosa
looked down at her right foot which twinged with pain. She stooped to pick up
the basin and put it on her head again. She tried stepping on the toes of her
right foot but it made her wince. She tried the heel but that also made her
bite her lip. Already her foot above the ankle was swelling. She thought of the
slap her mistress had given her for staying in the bathhouse too long and the
slap she was most certain to get now for delaying like this. But she couldn’t
walk, that was settled.
Then there came down the street a tartanilla
without any occupant except the cochero who rang his bell, but she
couldn’t move away from the middle of the street. She looked up at the driver
and started angrily to tell him that there was plenty of room at the sides of
the street, and that she couldn’t move anyway, even if there weren’t. The man
jumped down from his seat and bent down and looked at her foot. The basin was
still on Rosa ’s head and he took it from her,
and put it in his vehicle. Then he squatted down and bidding Rosa
put a hand on his shoulders to steady herself, he began to touch with gentle
fingers the swelling ankle, pulling at it and massaging it. They were still in
the middle of the street. Rosa looked around
to see if the women were still there to look at them but they had gone away.
There was no one but a small boy licking a candy stick, and he wasn’t paying
any attention to them. The cochero looked up at her, the sweat on his
face, saw her looking around with pain and embarrassment mingled on her face.
Then, so swiftly she found no time to protest, he closed his arms about her
knees and lifted her like a child. He carried her to his tartanilla,
plumped her down on one of the seats. Then he left her, coming back after a
short while with some coconut oil in the hollow of his palm. He rubbed the oil
on her foot, and massaged it. He was seated on the seat opposite Rosa ’s and had raised the injured foot to his thigh,
letting it rest there, despite Rosa ’s protest,
on his blue faded trousers. The basin of wet clothes was beside Rosa on the seat and she fingered the clothing with
fluttering hands. The cochero asked her where she lived and she told
him, pointing out the house. He asked what had happened, and she recited the
whole thing to him, stopping with embarrassment when she remembered the
loosening of her patadiongand the nakedness of her bosom. How glad she
was he had not seen her thus. The cochero had finished with her foot,
and she slid from the seat, her basin on a hip. But he took it from her, asking
her to tell him where the bleaching stones were. He went then, and himself laid
out the white linen on the stones, knowing like a woman, which part to turn to
the sun.
He came back after a while, just as Rosa heard with frightened ears the call of her mistress.
She snatched the basin from the cochero’s hand and despite the pain
caused her, limped away.
She told her mistress about the accident.
The woman did not do anything save to scold her lightly for being careless.
Then she looked at the swollen foot and asked who had put oil on it. Rosa was suddenly shy of having to let anyone know about
her cochero, so she said she had asked for a little oil at the store and
put it on her foot herself. Her mistress was unusually tolerant, and Rosa forgot about the slapping and said to herself this
was a day full of luck!
It was with very sharp regret that she
thought of her having forgotten to ask the cochero his name. Now, in the
days that followed, she thought of him, the way he had wound an arm around her
knees and carried her like a little girl. She dreamed about the gentleness of
his fingers. She smiled remembering the way he had laid out the clothes on
stones to bleach. She knew that meant he must do his own washing. And she ached
in tenderness over him and his need for a woman like her to do such things for
him—things like mending the straight tear she had noticed at the knee of his
trousers when her foot had rested on them; like measuring his tartanilla
seat cushions for him, and making them, and stringing them on his vehicle. She
thought of the names for men she knew and called him by it in thinking of him,
ever afterwards. In her thoughts she spoke to him and he always answered.
She found time to come out on the street
for a while, every day. Sometimes she would sweep the yard or trim the scraggly
hedge of viola bushes; or she would loiter on an errand for tomatoes or
vinegar. She said to herself, He dreams of me too, and he thinks of me. He
passes here every day wishing to see me. She never saw him pass, but she said
to herself, He passes just when I am in the house, that’s why I never see him.
Some tartanilla would pass, and if
she could, as soon as she heard the sound of the wheels, she looked out of a
window, hoping it would be Angel’s. Sometimes she would sing very loudly, if
she felt her mistress was in a good humor and not likely to object. She told
herself that if he could not see her, he would at least wish to hear her voice.
She longed no more to be part of the group
about the water tank in the bathhouse. She thought of the women there and their
jokes and she smiled, in pity, because they did not have what she had, some one
by the name of Angel, who knew how to massage injured feet back to being good
for walking and who knew how to lay out clothes for bleaching.
When they teased her about Sancho, who
insisted on pumping her can full every time she went for drinking water, she
smiled at the women and at the man, full of her hidden knowledge about someone
picking her up and being gentle with her. She was too full of this secret joy
to mind their teasing. Where before she had been openly angry and secretly
pleased, now she was indifferent. She looked at Sancho and thought him very
rude beside… beside Angel. He always put his hands over hers when she made a
move to pump water. He always spoke to her about not being angry with the
women’s teasing. She thought he was merely trying to show off. And when one day
Sancho said, “Do not mind their teasing; they would tease you more if they knew
I really feel like they say I do,” she glared at him and thought him unbearably
ill-mannered. She spat out of the corner of her mouth, letting him see the
grimace of distaste she made when she did so, and seeing Sancho’s disturbed face,
she thought, If Angel knew, he’d strike you a big blow. But she was silent and
proud and unsmiling. Sancho looked after her with the heavy can of water held
by one hand, the other hand flung out to balance herself against the weight. He
waited for her to turn and smile at him as she sometimes did, but she simply
went her way. He flung his head up and then laughed snortingly.
One night she sent the maid to a store for
wine. Rosa came back with a broken bottle
empty of all its contents. Sudden anger at the waste and the loss made her
strike out with closed fists, not caring where her blows landed until the girl
was in tears. It often touched her when she saw Rosa
crying and cowering, but now the woman was too angry to pity.
It never occurred to Rosa
that she could herself strike out and return every blow. Her mistress was
thirtyish, with peaked face and thin frame, and Rosa ’s
strong arms, used to pounding clothes and carrying water, could easily have
done her hurt. But Rosa merely cried and
cried, saying now and then Aruy! Aruy!, until the woman, exhausted by
her own anger left off striking the girl to sit down in a chair, curse loudly
about the loss of such good wine, and ask where she was going to get the money
to buy another bottle.
It would have been useless to tell her
mistress how the bottle had been broken, and the wine spilled. She had been
walking alone in the street hurrying to the wine store, and Sancho had met her.
They had talked; he begging her to let him walk with her and she saying her
mistress would be angry if she saw. Sancho had insisted and they had gone to
the store and bought the wine, and then going home, her foot had struck a sharp
stone. She had bent to hold a foot up, looking at the sole to see if the stone
had made it bleed. Her dress had a wide, deep neck, and it must have hung away
from her body when she bent. Anyway, she had looked up to find Sancho looking
into the neck of her dress. His eyes were turned hastily away as soon as she
straightened up, and she thought she could do nothing but hold her peace. But
after a short distance in their resumed walk home, he had stopped to pick up a
long twig lying on the ground. With deft strokes he had drawn twin sharp peaks
on the ground. They looked merely like the zigzags one does draw playfully with
any stick, but Rosa , having seen him looking
into her dress while she bent over, now became so angry that she swung out and
with all her force struck him on the check with her open palm. He reeled from
the unexpected blow, and quickly steadied himself while Rosa
shot name after name at him. Anger rose in his face. It was nearly dark, and
there was no one else on the street. He laughed, short angry laughter, and
called her back name for name. Rosa approached
him and made to slap him again, but Sancho was too quick for her. He had
slipped out of her way and himself slapped her instead. The surprise of it
angered her into sudden tears. She swung up the bottle of wine she had held
tightly in one hand, and ran after the man to strike him with it. Sancho
slapped her arm so hard that she dropped the bottle. The man had run away
laughing, calling back a final undeserved name at her, leaving her to look with
tears at the wine seeping into the ground. Some people had come toward her
then, asking what had happened. She had stooped, picked up the biggest piece of
glass, and hurried back to her mistress, wondering whether she would be
believed and forgiven.
She rubbed her arm in memory of the
numbing blow the man had dealt it, and touched her face with furious shame for
the slap he had dared to give her. Her fists closed more tightly about the
stone and she looked about her as if she expected Sancho to appear.
She thought of her mistress. She had been
almost a year in the woman’s employ. Usually she stayed in a place, at the
most, for four months. Sometimes it was the master’s smirking ways and evil
eyes, sometimes it was the children’s bullying demands. She had stayed with
this last mistress because in spite of her spells of bad humor, there were
periods afterward when she would be generous with money for a dress, or for a
cine with other maids. And they had been alone, the two of them. Sometimes the
mistress would get so drunk that she would slobber into her drink and mumble of
persons that must have died. When she was helpless she might perhaps have
starved if Rosa had not forcibly fed her. Now,
however, thought of the fierce beating the woman had given her made Rosa cry a little and repeat her vow that she would never
step into the house again.
Then she thought of Angel, the cochero
who had been gentle, and she lost her tears in thinking how he would never have
done what Sancho did. If he knew what had happened to her, he would come
running now and take her to his own home, and she would not have to worry about
a place to sleep this night. She wandered about, not stopping at those places
where she knew she would be accepted if she tried, her mind full of the
injustices she had received and of comparisons between Sancho and Angel. She
paused every time a tartanilla came her way, peering intently into the
face of the cochero, hoping it would be he, ready to break her face into
smiles if it were indeed. She carried her bundle on her arm all this while, now
clenching a fist about the stone she still had not dropped and gnashing her
teeth.
She had been walking about for quite a
while, feeling not very tired, having no urgent need to hurry about finding
herself a place, so sharp her hopes were of somehow seeing her cochero
on the streets. That was all she cared about, that she must walk into whatever
street she came to, because only in that way would he see her and learn what
they had done to her.
Then, turning into a street full of stores
set side by side, she felt the swish of a horse almost brushing against her.
She looked up angrily at the cochero’s laughing remark about his whip
missing her beautiful bust. An offense like that, so soon after all her grief
at what Sancho had done, inflamed her into passionate anger, and mouthing a
quick curse, she flung the stone in her hand at the cochero on his seat.
It was rather dark and she did not quite see his face. But apparently she hit
something, for he suddenly yelled a stop at the horse, clambered down, and ran
back to her, demanding the reason for her throwing the stone. She exclaimed
hotly at his offense with the whip, and then looking up into his face, she
gasped. She gasped and said, “Angel!”
For it was he. He was wearing a striped
shirt, like so many other people were wearing, and he had on the very same
trousers of dark blue he had worn when he massaged her foot. But he gazed at
her in nothing but anger, asking whether her body was so precious that she
would kill his horse. Also, why did she keep saying Angel; that was not his
name!
Rosa kept looking up at him not hearing a
word of his threats about taking her to the municipio, saying only
Angel, Angel, in spite of his protests that that was not his name. At last she
understood that the cochero did not even remember her and she realized
how empty her thoughts of him now were. Even his name was not Angel. She turned
suddenly to walk away from him, saying, “You do not even remember me.”
The cochero peered at her face and
exclaimed after a while, “Oh yes! the girl with the swollen foot!” Rosa forgot
all the emptiness, forgot the sudden sinking of her heart when she had realized
that even he would flick his whip at a girl alone on the road, and lifted her
smiling face at him, stopping suddenly to tell him her foot had healed very
quickly. The cochero asked her after a while where she was going, and
she said breathlessly, without knowing just why she answered so, “I am going
home!” He asked no questions about where she had been, why she was so late. He
bade her ride in his vehicle, grandly saying he would not make her pay, and
then, with many a loud exclamation to his horse, he drove her to her mistress’
house.
The cochero shouted, without
stopping his horse, “Pedro” and continued to drive away.
End
Reference:
"Servant girl" by Alfon, Estrella. Sushidog.com. Web. 16 March 2013. <http://sushidog.com/bpss/stories/servant.htm>
Reference:
"Servant girl" by Alfon, Estrella. Sushidog.com. Web. 16 March 2013. <http://sushidog.com/bpss/stories/servant.htm>