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Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive

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Stephanie Land

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“Uno se acostumbra a estar perdido. Es algo así como vagar por el espacio y flotar en medio de la nada. Al principio aturde, buscas desesperadamente tocar tierra firme, encontrarte, pero supongo que en algún momento dejas de sentir vértigo y piensas que en realidad no se está tan mal viviendo en un inmenso y oscuro vacío, porque puedes cerrar los ojos, puedes olvidar cómo era la sensación de estar anclado a algo, a alguien o al mundo. Puedes, sencillamente, dejar de ser.”

“His gaze dropped to the studio bed: still half-unmade. On the undisturbed half, nearest the wall, there stretched out a long, colorful scatter of magazines, science-fiction paperbacks, a few hardcover detective novels still in their wrappers, a few bright napkins taken home from restaurants, and a half-dozen of those shiny little golden Guides and Knowledge Through Color books—his recreational reading as opposed to his working materials and references arranged on the coffee table beside the bed. They'd been his chief—almost his sole—companions during the three years he'd laid sodden there stupidly goggling at the TV across the room; but always fingering them and stupefiedly studying their bright, easy pages from time to time. Only a month ago it had suddenly occurred to him that their gay casual scatter added up to a slender, carefree woman lying beside him on top of the covers—that was why he never put them on the floor; why he contented himself with half the bed; why he unconsciously arranged them in a female form with long, long legs. They were a "scholar's mistress," he decided, on the analogy of "Dutch wife," that long, slender bolster sleepers clutch to soak up sweat in tropical countries—a very secret playmate, a dashing but studious call girl, a slim, incestuous sister, eternal comrade of his writing work.”

“It's like we're all going up a flight of stairs together and at a certain point I say 'this is as far as I go'. And on that step, higher up, they're all happy and I watch them from below. Had he always been like that? It wasn't shyness or reserve or adolescence, as other people thought. He wasn't going to get over it. He could dance when he was alone, he could get emotional in his room with a book, but when the party started he disconnected, the others turned into a movie that he could watch but not participate in. So he acted like he was invisible, which wasn't hard when everyone was drunk. And he withdrew into his room, where he felt the purest kind of relief.”