Maids

lifting the arm of the record player
Ricky Nelson blaring on the stereo
pinching my fingertips with the wooden clothespins

***

Maids

Billy said earlier that morning his mother had burst in on his father having sex with the maid in the laundry room. It would be better, Billy said, if I didn't come over. At least not for a while. Not while his mother was still so upset with Beaks, anyway.

I argued to Billy that I wasn't a Beak.

And then Billy said that even though he knew I wasn't really a Beak, my parents and siblings were. He shrugged and looked at his hands. Technically, he guessed, that made me a Beak. Kind of. According to his mother, anyway.

Just then the screen door slapped open and Billy's mother stepped out onto the porch. Her hair was under a scarf that looked like pantyhose, and she had purple pouches splotching the skin under her eyes. When she lit a cigarette, I could see her hands shaking. Blowing out a mouthful of smoke, she told Billy to get his butt inside and get his room clean. Get it real spotless.

She turned to face me. Glaring straight at me, Billy's mother's face tightened into a hateful scowl, which made me feel that somehow I had something to do with the maid jumping into bed with Billy's father.

Billy said he had to go. But before he went indoors, he glanced back at me over his shoulder and said, I'll see you around, okay. I nodded and tried to smile.

His mother grumbled, and they both disappeared inside.

Heading back to my place, I wondered what I'd done to make Billy's mother hate me so much. Billy and I were almost best friends.

Actually, Billy was my best friend, but he had lots of friends, so I probably wasn't his best friend. Still, whenever the kids in the neighborhood did things, Billy always invited me along: pickup baseball games, shooting marbles, flying kites, exploring Lily Hill, climbing trees, making our Duncan butterfly yo-yos' do amazing things.

Most of the other kids, once they found out my parents weren't white, kept me at a distance. But not Billy. Not until today, anyway.

I tried to picture Billy's father and the maid in the small laundry room. I couldn't, though. The image just refused to come. What did come, however, was how Billy's dad used to see us kids outdoors, call us over, and toss these purple draw-string pouches over the rail. Billy said the velvety bags were what his father's Crown Royale came in. The bags were good for storing marbles, rocks, bullet heads, and that sort of thing.

When I got home, our maid, Baby, was standing in the kitchen with my mother. I overheard Baby tell my mother that Billy's maid got fired. She then went on to add that earlier this morning she'd talked on the phone with Billy's maid, who'd been crying. Billy's maid claimed that she'd been raped by Billy's father.

My mother said Baby needed to filing charges with the Military police. If she wasn't sure how to go about it, my mother would help. Just because someone was a Canu, my mother said, doesn't give them the right to force themselves on another person.

But Baby shook her head wildly and said that Billy's maid would never go to the authorities. Billy's maid told Baby that if she made trouble she might never get a permit to work on the base again. And that would be even more devastating than being raped, because Billy's maid had a lot of younger brothers and sisters who depended on her income to put rice on the table.

When my mother spotted me standing in the salas, she pointed a finger at me and warned me never to go to Billy's house again. It was sickening, just sickening, she said, the way some Canus think they're entitled to anything they want just because the are American. All of the sudden everything my mother was saying seemed addressed to me. She didn't like, she said, the fact that my Canu friends had fathers who strutted around as though they were superior to the people whose country they were guests in.

Still furious, my mother stormed out the kitchen and left me alone with Baby.

Although Baby didn't say anything to me, she stood there staring with her small hands cupping her hips. When I shrug that it wasn't my fault, she narrowed her eyes and peeled her upper lip back in an ugly, hateful sneer.