The Maid

Maids...they flutter by and no one wants to see them, the perfect mix between ghost and garbage.

                  She was another dark-skinned maid, an object to be broken and molded, to be taught how to properly dust the picture frames and bleach the kids' uniforms without affecting the navy blue school logo. She could be thrown away and replaced like an air freshener.

                  On her second day of work, the woman of the house (a shrill anorexic thing who, despite years of dieting, could not get down to her pre-pregnancy weight of nothing) gasped at the new maid's chapped hands. She could not understand the effects of heat and dish soap and chlorine. So she gave the maid two pumps of her hand lotion, the kind you get at large department stores.

                  The maid watched her skin glisten and sparkle, turned her hands over and noticed white specks catching the light. There must be ground pearls in this lotion, she thought, and so she stared at her hands until the woman of the house began screaming about her daughter's mismatched pajamas.

                  And so the maid started to take two pumps of lotion once a week. She would clean the kitchen first, where she would take a sliver of aluminum foil and slide it neatly into her pocket, and then the master bathroom and bedroom. She'd give two pumps of the lotion into the foil, fold it up and gently twist the edges so nothing would leak.

                  After six months, the lady of the house caught the maid and fired her. The children had started crying for the dark-skinned maid and not for her, and this was just the excuse she needed. The children begged between sobs for "other mommy" and the maid left with her pearly hands. She drifted out the door like a dream, like an upside down umbrella, like a flower plucked and then thrown away.

Author's Note

Was going for short but strong...hope I didn't fail.