Part 1 (2/2)

In our apartment, Madame fit herself; her husband, Baba; and Lema, Abudi, and Dounia, who were the children. Lema was fourteen. Abudi was nine. Dounia was four. In the last year, Madame had had two maids who didn't work out, and then Nisrine came from Indonesia, and she also gained me, the American.

For US$150 a month, I got half a bed and fresh food, and the chance to learn a language and literature that I had fallen in love with. If I went out, I got a family who worried until I came home. For half a bed and extra bathwater and extra worry, Madame got rent in American money, which she used to pay Nisrine.

Madame said when you got a maid from Indonesia, she came with a black bag and a white veil. That was what Nisrine was wearing when Madame got her, and everyone expected it. They drove up to a crumbling part of town. It was Madame and Baba and the children. The agency man had Nisrine's pa.s.sport. He handed it to Baba and said to hide it where she couldn't get to it, and she knew no calls home, and if there were any problems, call him. His number was in the pa.s.sport.

In this country, the money exchange only went one way. You could change US dollars into local money, but you couldn't change local money into dollars. It was illegal to change local money, and in this city, only the local money could be spent, but you couldn't travel with it outside the country, that was also illegal, so dollars were the way most international business got done, and people, who were paid only in local money, were always short on dollars, and always scrambling to get some, even when their international business was only an Indonesian maid, like Nisrine.

Nisrine got US$125 a month, plus a fee to the agency, and so Madame was always in need of dollars, and she was always running out. That was why Madame got me, to take care of her problems with the currency.

Nisrine also had to pay her agency. To come here, she'd borrowed her wages for one year, up front, and she was saving up to build a house when she returned home, so she, too, always needed money. She got small gifts from guests of the family.

”Here's for your girl,” said Madame's aunt, and handed her a bill in a thin scarf.

”Buy yourself something special,” said Baba's cousin, and handed her two silver coins.

The guests didn't bring gifts for Madame, but there was always something for Nisrine, and it made Madame happy. ”See how good they are to her?” she said. ”They think of her even before they think of me!”

Because I was foreign, Madame was always worrying about me, like she did about Nisrine, though in different ways. With Nisrine, Madame worried about communication. She worried Nisrine would invite strange men to the house, or whether she'd mistaken the iodine for bleach, or if she'd used enough detergent on the pans. ”Watch her, Bea,” Madame said to me, and I sat in the kitchen, watching to make sure Nisrine took the white part off the oranges we ate.

”How many brothers and sisters do you have, Nisrine?”

”Nineteen.”

”Nineteen?”

Nisrine had hands like birds. They picked at the white part. In Nisrine's country, there was a story about a heroine who turned into a bird. She loved the rainbow, so she flew away to the sky, and never returned home. At Madame's, we were often telling stories.

”How many brothers and sisters do you have?” Nisrine asked me.

”None.”

”None?” And I knew from the way she said it that here, ”none” was as strange as ”nineteen.”

Nisrine finished two oranges, and Lema came to take them to the living room. When she was done, Nisrine got out her photos to show me. They were all of her with her husband and child, and she wasn't wearing a veil. She had left when her child was one. Now, he was almost two. We tried to guess which words he would be speaking.

”Book,” I said.

Nisrine looked at me. ”Bea, you like books?”

”Animal,” I guessed.

”I like animals.”

”Love,” I guessed.

Nisrine guessed, ”World.”

I had a picture, too, to show Nisrine. It was of my parents before they were married, and my mother looked like me. This was to remind me that it was still possible to get a boyfriend, even with birds'-nest hair.

Nisrine took the picture from me. ”Your mother looks very nice,” she said. Then she asked, ”You want to know what my mother looks like?” and puffed out her cheeks.

”You mean, fat?” I was unsure.

She laughed. ”In my family, we're all fat. We like too much to eat.”

I looked at Nisrine. She had a slender waist and legs that rose perfectly beneath her pajamas, like young trees. When she laughed, it shook her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, not her belly.

Later, I would come to see this joke as Nisrine's own special kind of joke, her special luxury. Madame's apartment was small, and we were many; each of us learned to take our luxuries. Madame's husband, Baba, slept at any time, anywhere, through anything. This was his luxury. Guests came over at four in the afternoon, and Madame served tea around him, watched television around him, balanced the tray on his stomach, and he didn't wake from his place on the sofa, snoring.

Mine was my books, and my love of romance. I learned to bury myself in an Arabic book at Madame's, and to daydream so deeply, it didn't matter what was around me; in this way, I took time for myself.

Nisrine told jokes. She made faces at the children, ”I'm a monster!” which made them laugh, because they knew she wasn't.

I told her, ”You're not fat.”

”Because I'm not old and rich. Someday, I'll be rich and have a restaurant and a big house, and then my child and I will sit and do nothing but eat.”

MADAME WORRIED ABOUT ME, like she did about Nisrine. She worried I'd touch diseased animals because my mother was a veterinarian, and about my femininity and my unpierced ears, and because after we gave him apples, I began to notice the blond policeman. He was always guarding on the roof of the station, a slender gold line, like an Arabic alif, against the blue sky.

If he still had our apples, he could throw one, and I could reach over our balcony rail and catch it, we were close enough.

In the kitchen, Madame grabbed my ear to distract me. ”Why don't you pierce your ears, Bea? See Nisrine? Nisrine has pierced ears.”

Dounia ran in to steal a potato chip. Madame stopped her. She ran back out.

”See Dounia? Dounia has pierced ears. Dounia's my baby, she was a C-section. When I had her, it burned so much I couldn't see. I kept saying, Where's my baby? I felt like I didn't have a baby.”

When I first arrived, Madame sent Nisrine into the bathroom to count out two squares of toilet paper, which was how much I should use when I peed. Madame and Nisrine didn't need any. There was an orange hose beside the toilet that they used to wash when they needed it.

Nisrine helped me lug my bag into the bedroom. There were two pillows on the bed, one for Madame's daughter Lema, and one for me. Nisrine slept on a mat on the floor.

Madame had emptied out two dresser drawers for me. In one, Nisrine helped me put my books. In the other, I tried to stuff all my clothes, but it wouldn't shut all the way, so she intervened.

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