Mia Alvar - In the Country - Stories

We settled on an hourly rate of fifty dinars: only fair, we agreed, given my level of specialized study and experience. In truth, I had never been paid so well. Certainly I had never earned money for feeding a fantasy. Mrs. Mansour issued my first check right then, to cover any supplies needed in Aroush’s first week. Before leaving she noted the bookshelves in the foyer, crammed tight with Ed’s engineering manuals and textbooks I had kept since college. “A house of readers,” said Mrs. Mansour, with a nod of approval. “So are we. For me, to buy a car is desireful; to buy a book is needful.”

Until she used those words, it hadn’t occurred to me to see these books as trophies — but they were, no less than a car, or even a house, would be for other people. I could have sold or given them away back home, but used up precious cargo space to bring them here. It wasn’t as if Ed or I ever cracked them, these days. But our parents had cleaned floors to put us through college: these books stood for how far their sacrifice had sent us.

Aroush would come at eight o’clock every morning, like a regular child to regular school.

—

“I just can’t imagine Mrs. Mansour with three children,” I told my friend Minnie the next day. “She seems too young. Or, more than young: ageless. Her complexion is like bone china.” Absently I ran my fingertips along a shawl whose peacock-feather pattern changed from blue to green and back in the light.

We were browsing Abdullah’s Gift and Novelty Shop for toys I could use with my new student. It was Minnie’s day off. She’d been the Mansours’ maid for sixteen years, starting before Aroush’s eldest brother was born. “Oysters,” Minnie said. “That’s her secret. Madame eats one every night, to keep herself beautiful. And her skin cream, from Paris, has caviar in it.” Minnie followed me through the store with her hands clasped behind her back. She herself touched nothing, as if to do so would require a special kind of permission not likely to be granted.

I picked up a twin-bell alarm clock and set it to ring.

“What is that for?” Minnie pointed with her chin.

“Testing her response to sound,” I said.

“You think there’s a problem with her hearing?”

“No. But I’ll need to stimulate it if she’s ever going to”—I cleared my throat—“acquire language.”

“Aroush acquire language! Are we talking about the same child?”

I sighed. “I’m not sure Mrs. Mansour is.”

“Well, who are you to argue, at fifty dinars an hour — right?”

The first time we met, Minnie and I had also been shopping, at the Central Market in Manama. I went there in the middle of the day to avoid crowds. A vendor was weighing my bag of prawns when Minnie approached and told me that I looked familiar; hadn’t she met me before? “Who is your amo ?” she asked. (Who was my master, she meant, my employer; whose maid was I?) I explained with a laugh that I was not a maid but an oil wife and that the only house I cleaned was my own. We were both embarrassed — Minnie fearing, of course, that she had offended me. But I didn’t care about that. What mortified me was the change in Minnie’s aspect when she learned I was — as she saw it — a rich woman; she retreated so quickly from small talk to bows and helpless apologies. She was under five feet tall, and small-boned, like my mother. Servitude had become a habit and posture of her body, in a way that felt painfully familiar: it really could have been my own mother bowing and apologizing to me there, at a fish stall in Manama’s Central Market. In Bahrain I often missed my mother — craved her company and pitied her life, more than I ever had back home — and meeting Minnie felt like a reunion in some dream where my own mother thought she recognized me, then didn’t.

I told Minnie that anyone could have made the same mistake. Recently I had read, in the Manama Times, about the wife of a Philippine ambassador, who was ordered out of the swimming pool at a Dubai country club. “The lifeguard told her only guests — no domestic helpers — were allowed there,” I said. “A diplomat’s wife! So at least I’m in good company.” I would have gone on and on, just to put Minnie at ease.

Finally she did open up, coming back around to the idea of a friendship with me. This was during Ramadan, and Minnie was tired. “Their holy month is hell on me,” she said. “Every year I wonder if I’ll make it to Eid. Fasting makes them cranky in the daytime, and their breath stinks. Then they run you off your feet at sundown and before dawn.” And while they slept off their feast, Minnie would dust, mop, scrub, sweep, and wax the house to perfection as on any other morning.

“You should see it,” Minnie said, of the Mansour estate. “Forget house. Palace is more like it.”

Months later Minnie found out that I had a degree in special education. It turned out that the mistress of the house she cleaned was seeking a private teacher for her daughter. “What’s ‘special’ about her?” I asked.

Minnie shuddered at the question. “Let’s put it this way,” she said. “Money doesn’t buy everything.” Then she described Aroush, who had spent most of her five years in her bedroom, its windows opening onto a terrace where she was taken for fresh air. Only the family and servants like Minnie — who changed the sheets and dusted there daily, and performed a thorough cleaning once a week — were allowed to enter Aroush’s bedroom. Likewise, any teacher for Aroush would have to be foreign (that is, not an Arab), because the Mansours did not want word of their daughter’s condition to spread within their own community.

At Abdullah’s I paid for two bags’ worth of plush toys, rattles, blocks, pacifiers, teething rings, and cups with training spouts. I had forty dinars to spare. Minnie checked the tag on the blue-green shawl I had admired earlier. “Forty exactly,” she announced with glee. “It’s destiny.” When I hesitated, she said, “Oh, Sally. Madame won’t ask you for a receipt.”

I bought the shawl. Outside the store, I draped it around Minnie’s shoulders — which were narrow, like my mother’s. “It’s yours,” I said.

Of course, she tried to refuse.

“Consider it your Ramadan bonus,” I insisted, tucking the ends of the shawl into Minnie’s collar. “From me. And Mrs. Mansour.”

—

For her first day of school Aroush wore a pink dress embroidered with silver thread, hoop earrings, and a stack of filigreed bangles. Two tight braids along the sides of her head followed her ears’ shape and coiled at the ends like sea horses.

“Good morning, Teacher,” sang Mrs. Mansour, waving Aroush’s hand.

They had brought a servant with them this time, a Filipino dressed in black-and-white livery. He carried in Aroush’s car seat, a special recliner with support for her neck and head, and a gliding rocker and ottoman for me. I greeted him in Tagalog, but his brief, accented response suggested that we shared neither a hometown nor a dialect. And he seemed loath to socialize in Mrs. Mansour’s presence. For my part, I could barely look at the man without an urge to laugh at his ridiculous costume. Minnie had once described her own uniform as “French maid,” which at the time had almost made me laugh as well.

Mrs. Mansour spoke gently into Aroush’s ear — in English, seemingly for my benefit. “Aroush, listen to Mrs. Sally Riva and learn from her. Ummi will return for you in the afternoon.” She kissed Aroush and gently passed her to me.

Aroush let out an extended version of her low, atonal grunt, and I learned that this was how she cried. The servant held the front door open for Mrs. Mansour, who stopped and looked back. I saw that her arms, in the sleeves of her jilbab, longed to reach out. We both stood there awkwardly, the emptiness as new to her arms as Aroush’s weight was to mine. I began to rock and hush Aroush, for both our sakes. Mrs. Mansour smiled and was able, finally, to leave.