my mother interrupted: “You! Stupid child! What do you know? You know nothing.”
I had never heard my mother speak in such a way. It was as if another woman were in her place, savage and inconsolable.
We were slowing now in front of another, even grander house, at 38 Highgate—a Victorian mansion behind a six-foot wrought iron fence with a warning sign at the gate—PRIVATE. DELIVERIES TO THE REAR.
“And this house—I’ve been in this house, too. And your father has not.”
Not sure what this meant I said nothing.
“D’you know who lives here?”
Yes, I did. I thought that I did. But I played dumb, I said no. I did not want to incur any more of my mother’s wrath.
“Your father never knew. I never told him. That I was a house maid on Highgate Avenue. That my parents forced me to work. Forced me to quit school. And one of the houses I cleaned was ‘Tommy’ Kerrigan’s—this house. Maybe ‘Tommy’ doesn’t live here any longer—maybe he’s retired and living in Florida. Maybe he’s dead—the bastard! When he was mayor of South Niagara, and married to a woman named Eileen—his second wife, or his third. She was the one who hired me and paid me but ‘Tommy’ was on the scene sometimes in the morning when I came to work. Just getting out of the bathroom, getting dressed—filthy pig. Once, he dared to ask me if I would clip his toenails! Saw the look in my face and laughed. ‘It’s all right, Lula, my feet are clean. Come look.’ Mrs. Kerrigan never knew how her husband behaved with the help—the female help. If she knew, she pretended she didn’t. All of those rich men’s wives learn how to pretend. Or they’re out on their asses like the female help. She paid me below the minimum wage. She paid me in dollar bills. I had to polish the God-damned silver—the Kerrigans were always having dinner parties. Had to breathe in stinking pink silver polish that made me sick to my stomach. Terrible bleach I had to use, that almost made me faint. And ‘Tommy’s’ side of the bed—shit stains. I’d hoped to God he had not done it on purpose. But I was grateful for work, I was just too young to know better. The black maids would work for less money than we could so after a while, there weren’t any white girls working on Highgate. I doubt there’s any ‘white help’ in South Niagara today. Your father never knew any of this. He lived in his own cloud of—whatever it was—wanting to believe what he wanted to believe. Most men are like that. Jerome doesn’t know to this day that I ever set eyes on Tommy Kerrigan up close. He doesn’t know that I was on my knees in this God-damned house, or in any of these houses. He’d seemed to think that I had no life before I met him—he never asked about it. He’d never have wanted to touch me—if he knew …”
We were out of the neighborhood now. My mother was driving less erratically. Her fury was abating, her voice quavered with something like shame. I could think of nothing to say, my brain had gone blank and it would be difficult for me to remember afterward what my mother had said, and why she had said it; what humiliating truths she’d uttered as I sat stiff beside her in the passenger’s seat of the car not daring to look at her.
It was the most intense time between my mother and me. Yet, I would remember imperfectly.
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