A Matter of Domestic Help

It was Sunday morning and the two women were sniping at each other again. Marie and Christine stood in the kitchen. The smell of coffee and yeast filled the air with a balm like that which had brought them together less than an hour before. If there was one thing they could agree on it was this: all Catholic churches smelled the same— and they all smelled good.

“I think your church may be in trouble.”

“Yes,” said Marie. “The abused are speaking up, aren’t they?” Her heels clicked like a Sargent, pacing the floor. “My James, he came forward before it was safe, you know.”

“James? My God Marie.”

Christine slammed the cupboard, nearly dropping a bowl of sugar.

The two women shared a gap in age, maybe a generation apart. Both were immigrants. Marie fled Croix-des-bouquets, on the outskirts of the Haitian capital, Port-Au-Prince: an area of rampant poverty. She held no green card.

Christine, a German National, originally from Munich, was the daughter of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. She made her way to America by way of her marriage to Frank. They had two boys: Ben and Max. Ben was thirteen and Max ten. The two brothers remained on the front porch after their walk from The Immaculate Heart of Mary church that morning, just as they did every Sunday, waiting for their father to take them for breakfast. It’s as if they thought they could quietly move from one world to another without friction. Christine and Frank were explicit about visitation. Their agreement had been notarized and would be an exhibit in the disposition of their pending divorce.

Marie had lost her two baby boys to violence. Joseph, age five, and Peter, four years old. They perished in a resistance conflict at St. Marc province, early spring, 1957, walking from church. Her husband James tried to save them. He had delivered Marie to safety first, then failed. Peter and Joseph wouldn't let go of their father as he was pulled to his death. Marie often wondered how a poet might describe the details of such a loss. Though she had tried to convince herself the details didn’t matter, she knew the beauty in the obscure voices of poets. They made her life bearable.

“I may stop giving Max that dollar every Sunday until I know what they do with all that money,” said Christine.

“What do you mean? It’s his offering to God.”

“What does God do with all that cash Marie?”

Marie preached, and Christine didn’t like it. “God has seen to you and those boys and blessed you with prosperity.” Christine poured coffee from an old tin percolator. “Where do you get such faith Marie? I wonder, is it a gift or a delusion? “

With that came a silence so thick, one could hear the steam floating from Marie’s cup, rising like the smoke from a thurable of myrrh at a funeral. Marie’s eyes widened. Her voice started low then climbed an octave.

“Now you listen to me,” she said. “If anyone will judge my sanity, it will not be you, or Father Timothy or the employers. It will be the Lord himself!”

Her words echoed long against the high ceiling like the final chord of a hymn on Easter. Her clear black face turned from a fluid expression to a chiseled stone. Christine said nothing, then removed the purple scarf draped from her shoulders. She lowered herself into a red chair that resembled a throne. The faint voices of her boys seeped through the front door, down the hallway and into the kitchen as she settled into a reflective silence. The flame of a red votive candle flickered in the morning air.

Eventually, she looked up at the tall slender woman—the devoted Christian—and sighed.

“I made bread, Marie.”

Marie took a chair across from her. Her hands cradled a pewter tumbler. She sipped her coffee almost musically, breaking the tension.

“Thank you, I’ll take some home,” she said. “I’ll have it with my soup in the morning.”

“Of course, Marie. I'll pack some sliced chicken too. Do you need sugar?”

Silence.

Marie finally spoke. “Have the boys eaten? They’ve been out there for a while. They best not disturb my clean porch.”

“Frank’s coming for them. He takes them to Denny’s. You know that.”

Christine stood and turned toward the kitchen sink. Above it streamed sunlight through a polished paneled window. She collected the warm loaf from a cooling rack. Her back faced Marie and she prepared breakfast. Her slender fingers separated white shells, gently spilling eggs into a copper skillet lined with bacon fat. She flipped them softly without breaking a yolk. Marie required perfect golden velvet to dip her bread. When it was ready, Christine turned, facing Marie and moved slowly through the glow of the candle on the center of the table. A white linen runner dressed the wooden grain.

She placed the bread between them. It rest on a wicker tray with a plate of unsalted butter, a jar of strawberry jam and a time-worn plastic bear filled with cinnamon and sugar. A silver butter knife from her grandmother glowed like a chalice against the linen.

“What is it about Sunday and bread, Marie? What is it about routine? I do this for them.

“I know.” Marie cradled the plastic bear, polishing it with her napkin.

“Listen to them out there, waiting for Frank,” said Christine. “You know he'll be late again. Like that flawed church of yours, they count on this every week.”

“Flawed?” Marie asked. “You mean corrupt? Say why you mean, Christine. Nothing’s perfect darlin’, especially love.”

“Oh, that’s rich Marie.” Christine poured again.

“Love is perfectly imperfect Christine. It doesn’t require perfection.”

“He wouldn’t take them to Mass if I were gone, you know. All he thinks about is her.” She unfolded her napkin and placed it in her lap.

“Have you ever seen a grown man skip before Marie? Watch, he’ll skip up the porch, poke his head in. ‘Mimi, we’re leaving,’ he’ll say. I always see them off, standing at the door. It's what I do every Sunday. It's what I do for them.”

Christine took the bread in her hands and broke it.

“Let us pray,” said Marie.

“Haven’t we prayed enough?”

Marie didn’t answer.

“Here Marie, take this and eat it.”

In a calm moment, they shared a simple meal. Marie dipped her bread in the bright yellow yolk, then spoke quietly while mopping her plate.

“Mimi. May I call you Mimi?”

“My mother called me that.”

“I know.” Marie said. Her face was lined, yet still beautiful. She paused, then spoke again.

“It doesn’t matter that you know where the money is going. Teaching them about giving— it’s the only way, Mimi. That's what you do.” Mimi just listened.

“They're children of God. He’s left you and their father to care for them.”

Mimi was still, as if in a trance. The muffled voices from the porch were a comfort, yet part of a cruel rejection. Who was this man she had chosen to share her life with?

Mimi looked at her, directly. “What about your boys, Marie?” She asked. “And what about James; what about your James Marie?”

Marie’s eyes welled. There was a long pause. Her face took on the softness of an angel. Then she spoke in a clear muted voice, just above a whisper.

“Mimi, we sit together each Sunday, you and me. You question my faith, yet you depend on it more than my service.”

Mimi’s chin rested on her palms, low. She could not look up. With the faintest breath she extinguished the flame, and the wax of every birthday filled her nostrils.

She wept.

The sound of the front door, with its familiar rattle broke through and Frank’s voice, thin and contrite intruded again.

“Mimi, we’re leaving.”

Mimi reached the front porch just as the car was pulling away. She waved to the three of them. She turned and stood for a moment and looked at the cock eyed storm door: the flawed entrance to her home. The door had never been repaired. Its hydraulic cylinder was damaged long ago. Frank had been excited and impatient, slamming through it with the essentials. The ones packed in bags by the good nurses of labor and delivery at Johns Hopkins. Mimi had never allowed him to fix it.

Before she returned to the kitchen she stopped to freshen up and fix her face. The meal was over. Christine touched Marie’s hand then turned toward the sink carrying the empty cups. Marie watched her as she stood beneath the last beams of morning Sun. With water and a white linen napkin, Mimi wiped each cup clean and placed them and the remaining bread in a simple white bread box. She dried her hands, folding the linen neatly, covering each corner of the box. Through the quarter panel window, the morning light cast a shadow on it, forming a flickering cross. Marie bowed her head. In the distance the sound of church bells ushered in a glorious Sunday afternoon.