Chapter 2 #10
Ximena nods. “I had been working there for a week and the old lady I was paying to watch the baby didn’t show up one morning.
I couldn’t risk losing my job, so I took Milagros with me, and left her on the bed when I went to restock my cart.
Except I didn’t know the hotel very well yet, and I forgot what room she was in.
I almost lost her because I was young and stupid.
” She sighs. “Us mothers do the best with what we have.”
I look down at my drink, tears thickening my throat. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“That maid who got me my job at the Ritz? Her kid was in the same kindergarten as Mercedes. She heard me speaking Spanish to a school secretary because I didn’t know much English then, and she stepped in to translate.
Then she helped me get a place to live and steady work.
I always said I’d pay it forward, if I could,” Ximena says.
“There’s always someone struggling more than you are. ”
“I need a job,” I admit.
A sly smile spreads over her face. “What a coincidence,” Ximena says. “The Shadyside Motel needs a maid.”
On my second day of training, I decide being a housekeeping attendant at a motel is one of the most thankless and backbreaking jobs that exists.
Although I still don’t have any identification, Ximena has vouched for me to Cletus. He doesn’t seem to care if I have ID. I write down a fake social security number on the application.
Then I follow Ximena into a room. “Okay,” she says, rubbing her hands together. “Since this is a checkout, it’s a top--to--bottom clean. First, open the curtains,” she instructs. As I do, the drug dealer in the hoodie passes by. Our eyes catch before he moves away.
“Open the window,” Ximena says, muttering. “No smoking, my ass.” She empties the wastebaskets in the bedroom and bathroom. She dumps a plastic cup full of cigarette ash into the large trash bag on the housekeeping cart.
“They could have burned the place down,” I point out. “That comforter would go up like an inferno.”
“We should be so lucky,” Ximena says. “Now. Bedroom first, and then move on to the bathroom. And you clean from top to bottom. I’ll dust while you strip the bed.”
I ball up the sheets, gagging only a little when I think about what might be streaked on them.
What I left streaked on them, last time I was here.
Ximena watches me gingerly stuff them into the dirty laundry sack on the cart.
“Once we had a mattress so soaked with pee that we had to replace it. Puke on the floor, jizz on the bedspreads. Which don’t get washed more than once a year, for the rec-ord.
The blood, though, that’s the worst. Handprints all over the place.
Soaked into the towels. Even on the walls, like a lawn sprinkler.
” She reaches for the clean linens. “That guest, she also broke the mirror, so there was glass everywhere.” She looks at me pointedly.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“If the guest isn’t checked out,” Ximena says, “you don’t move any personal belongings.
Not clothes on the floor, not toothbrushes, nothing.
You clean underneath it and set it back down the way it was.
Otherwise, guests accuse you of stealing.
The job is to clean the surfaces, not fix their messes. ”
“Thank you,” I say. “For making an exception for me.”
She pushes the cart to the next room, and hands me the passkey. “I’m not fixing your mess, Georgia,” she corrects. “I’m giving you the tools to clean up after yourself.”
Ximena drives me to and from work. She introduces me to her friends, who are also immigrants from Spanish--speaking countries. She takes me shopping for clothes at a secondhand store. She bemoans the desert that is her love life, because who wants to date a single mother with two kids.
A week passes, and I have not heard from the man who came to my hotel room.
At night Ximena turns on the national news while she cooks dinner, and we hear the name Osama bin Laden for the first time. We learn that President Bush will send U.S. troops to invade Afghanistan. Ximena lights a prayer candle for the soldiers.
Sometimes I think I could tell her the truth. But then I remember how she came to an unfamiliar country just to keep her children safe, and I wonder what she would think of a woman who abandoned her own baby.
A lie is a sinkhole. The more you try to dig yourself out of it, the deeper you’re stuck.
On my fourth day working at Shadyside, I find a folded newspaper in the trash, and as I’m dumping the wastebasket, the headline jumps out at me: wood chipper murderer denied insanity defense.
I look at Vera’s mugshot. I think about how she would give me her mashed potatoes at dinner once she figured out that was all I was eating.
How she knew every nurse by name, and even the names of their children and grandchildren.
It makes me wonder if there is a monster in all of us, just waiting to surface.
That afternoon Ximena has to go to a dental clinic. “You can watch the girls for me,” she says, and I am a little startled by her blind trust.
Milagros is at the kitchen table, swinging her feet and drawing. “That’s a really good peacock,” I tell her.
“Thanks. Her name is Lucinda.”
I decide against telling Milagros that it’s male peacocks that have colorful feathers.
Milagros pushes the bin of crayons toward me. “In case you want to draw,” she says.
I hesitate. Eloise was an artist, but is Georgia? I start sketching a horse, the strength of its withers and the leashed power in its hindquarters. When I get to the mane, I use multiple colors. “How was school today?”
“Justine Abernathy threw up and everyone said it’s because Mikey DeGrasso tried to kiss her, but really it’s because she hates broccoli and that was the vegetable at lunch.” Milagros peers over at my paper with delight. “A unicorn!”
I look at the rainbow mane. “Sure,” I say, adding a twisted horn. “Where’s Mercedes?”
“Where do you think?” Milagros replies, rolling her eyes.
Mercedes is always in her room, unless Ximena forces her out of it.
“Don’t tell my mother,” Milagros says, “but this is going to be her birthday card.”
I smile. It is so easy, when I look at her, to imagine what my life could have been if my own brain hadn’t gone to war with me.
I’ve thought about calling home, but two things are stopping me.
First, the possibility of learning that Adam died that morning.
Second, learning that Adam is alive, but is unable to forgive me.
The last phone conversation he’d had with me was after Evie told him I’d tried to suffocate Molly.
Now I’ve abandoned her and not bothered to contact them for almost a month.
When I think like this, my mind gets into a tight coil. I’m a pitiful excuse for a human being.
Five things, I think. The red ribbon in my braid. The pink smiley face on Milagros’s shirt. The sound of the refrigerator humming. The thump of the bass from music Mercedes is blasting. The waxy crayon against my fingertips.
Taking a step away from the edge of this cliff, I say, “I didn’t know your mom’s birthday was coming up.”
“Saturday,” Milagros says. “She’s going to be forty, but she’s telling everyone she’s thirty--eight.”
I realize how little I know about Ximena, and how little she knows about me.
“Whoa . . .” Milagros is staring down at my paper. Without really thinking about it I’ve finished the unicorn and added a rider atop it. The facial features, the twin braids, the gap between the teeth—-it’s a perfect capture of Milagros. “You’re really good,” she sighs.
I put down my crayon. “Years of practice,” I tell her. “I guess I should check on Mercedes.”
“Good luck with that,” Milagros says.
The music in Mercedes’s room is so loud that it takes three tries for her to hear my knock. She yanks open the door like she has a grudge against it. “What?” she snarls.
“Your mom is at the dentist,” I tell her. “Do you need anything? A snack? Homework help?”
“Actually,” Mercedes says, “I wanted to ask you something.”
She admits me into the inner sanctum. I regard her, wary. I wonder what it will be: how to get birth control, if I can buy her liquor?
But Mercedes completely surprises me. “My mom said your baby died.”
Right for the jugular, then. I force myself to nod.
“And you’re from Boston.”
“Yes.”
She shifts. “Well, we have computers at school, with Yahoo! on them. It lets you look up basically anything you want. The thing is, Georgia Gilligan,” Mercedes says, “you don’t exist.”
I keep my face expressionless. “Well, it’s not like I have a criminal record.”
“You’d be surprised what’s on the internet.” Mercedes shrugs. “Like, junior high school photos, and property records, and things like that.”
“I was homeschooled and I rented.”
“That’s convenient.” She folds her arms. “My mother, she’s a bleeding heart. How am I supposed to believe you’re not here to take advantage of her?”
The thought of me being able to take advantage of someone when I can barely take care of myself is so ludicrous that I nearly laugh. So is the fact that I made it this far and I’m being foiled by a fourteen--year--old. “Okay,” I say. “You’re right. Georgia Gilligan is not my real name.”
“So what is?”
I hesitate. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“I bet,” she scoffs.
“Not for the reason you think, Mercedes.” I rub my damp palms on my pants. “I ran away from someone. You of all people should understand that sometimes home isn’t safe, and that you might have to . . . disappear. But I promise you—-I’m not here to hurt anyone. Least of all your mother.”
I hear Ximena’s voice from downstairs, calling for Mercedes.
“No one knows this about me,” I tell her. “Not even your mom. So maybe . . . it can be our secret.”
We stare at each other for a long moment. “Okay,” Mercedes agrees.
“Okay,” I repeat, a gust of relief.