both cry. She loved me. Momma loved me. It wasn’t that she loved Him more, it was just that He had all the power. But did He or did she give it to Him?
She poked around until she found something, a table in the barn, old pine thing long ago discarded but beautiful, she was so happy. “Ronalda, look!” Something she could give me. Now it holds the computer. I wish I could keep it. Nothing mine in this house, not even the desk I used for years. They’d probably let me keep it, they wouldn’t want it, but I’d have to ask them, be a beggar at their door. Couldn’t.
Funny, you can know that money isn’t the thing, that love is what matters, know that you were loved by your mother at least and that they weren’t anyway it seems they weren’t, Elizabeth and Mary. But it doesn’t help, nothing helps. I hate them, hate hate hate them. And I can’t bear to think that maybe I love them, want to love them, I love my hate, I want to keep it. Why I wonder. Did their father love Momma? Could He love? Did He see how beautiful she was inside? Surely wasn’t her clothes attracted Him or her shape. Simple face, no makeup. But maybe that’s what drew Him after all His society women, secretaries, call girls, all decked out in designer suits and necklaces, dyed, painted, high-heeled, mannered. She might have been a relief, someone He could despise openly, treat like a servant and she accepted it.
This house. His. Grand spaces, light pouring over the shining floors, wonderful old carpets, the elegant tables, paintings …
Momma had to wax those floors, vacuum the rugs, dust the tables, the picture frames, clean the chandeliers, ammonia and water with newspapers, Ronalda, that is the best cleaner for glass. Remember. Remember that so that when you grow up and become a servant like me, you will have skills I had to learn. That’s what she meant even if she never said it: my future a given. Our color. An unchanging unchangeable prison we carry with us wherever we go. Servants even in the country her parents came from, Mexico. No way to go home to a different kind of place.
The gardens used to be so beautiful, catch your breath in April, the forsythia and the hyacinths and daffodils, then tulips and lilac, then the wisteria, and then May oh god everything burst out, the rhododendrons and azaleas like flame, lavender orange pink cerise and the roses the old-fashioned ones with a scent like poetry, and then the peonies and the clematis. I thought I wanted to be a gardener, gardener in paradise. Asked Momma to ask Him. I was twelve, after all. Tony used to bring his son to help him with the lawn, little Tony, he wasn’t much older than me. Lots of women gardened, I used to see them in front of their houses when Momma and I drove into town to do the marketing, wearing lovely straw hats, kneeling on mats, gloves on their hands. I hid behind the door when she went in to ask Him. A GIRL gardener! He exploded, laughing. What next! Tell her to study dusting and she has a deal!
Is that all He wanted for me.
Well, suppose He’d said yes. Work for Him the rest of my life like Momma, servant in His house. Live the rest of my life in this room or maybe Aldo’s apartment over the garage. Take care of the car and supervise the gardening. Summoned for praise or reproach, head bowed, yes sir. Like Momma.
Wish I could keep that desk.
I was never able to say anything to her. Not then, not later, not even the times she came to see me in Boston after I left. Couldn’t. She loved Him, the only one in her life besides me. For her the most important thing was to love, not to be loved. Besides, she never knew. If she had …? Maybe He was kind to her when they were alone. Never really looked at her that I saw, but He must have, must have.
She never had anything but us, Him and me. No, long ago she had her parents, her sisters and brothers, they loved each other, she had happy memories. Happy memories!!! A childhood in workers’ camps among
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