Page 33 of Maid in America

Barrett cleared his throat and chuckled. “I think I must have gotten my dates mixed up. I came over to clean. I feel like I’m interrupting something.”

“Not at all!” crooned the woman beside him. She patted him on the thigh with a delicate age-spotted hand.

Another held up a gold-plated book. “We just finished up Bible study, and we were gabbing about our family troubles. We’d talk all day and night if you’d let us.” She started to reach for her purse when Barrett spoke, addressing the group.

“You know,” he tapped his pen nervously, thinking about their gathering as an opportunity, “You ladies seem like youknow a thing or two. Maybe while I’ve got you all here, I could ask you all a couple of questions.”

“Well… sure! Ask away,” Susan said, volunteering their help.

Barrett looked around at the women. “Well, you see, I just got this new gig cleaning houses, and I thought I’d be really good at it. Like it’d beinstinctualto know how to clean and all. But,” he laughed, “turns out I don’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. I never really learned how to do this stuff. My parents died when I was nine. My grandmother, Stella, she took me in—”

“Oh, Stella! IadoreStella,” another woman said.

“She’s a doll-baby,” Susan chirped loudly.

“I’m sure she’d be glad to hear that.” Barrett smiled. “See, when she took my brother and me on, she really had her hands full. I guess we were too busy makin’ messes to ever learn how to clean ’em up.”

The ladies giggled.

“Stella’s a good woman,” Maggie said. “I imagine most boys don’t get taught those things, especially if there’s a woman around to cook and cleanforthem. My mother had me making dinners for the whole family by the age of twelve.”

“I can’t even imagine,” Barrett said reverently. “I’d just really appreciate any tips or tricks you fine ladies could give me. I really would like to keep this job. I’m already on thin ice. I nearly got fired on my first day for exploding a lady’s rug in her fancy dryer and melting a hole through some towels that were about the same price as the down payment on my Jeep out there.”

The woman on his other side piped up. “I’d be happy to teach you what I know. I owned a dry-cleaning business with my husband, God rest his soul, for twenty-some-odd years.” She patted his thigh, and her expression changed as she cackled. “Oh my, feels like you’re made ofmarble!”

The woman blushed and laughed as she removed her hand. Barrett could see traces of Pepto-pink lipstick on her dentures. “Are you single, Barrett?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded.

“Maggie, this is the one I was tryin’ to get you to introduce to Chastity,” Susan said. “They would make such a lovely pair, don’t you agree? She should be so lucky to end up with a strapping young buck like Stella’s boy.”

Maggie scoffed. “They just met. She waltzed out in atowela moment ago. No couth, that one.”

“She’s a wild one,” Susan cackled.

Maggie added, “Barrett seems like far too nice a person to do something like that to. Handsome boy like him could have any woman he wants.”

It wrenched Barrett’s soul to hear Aphrodite’s mother talking about her like that. He was a bargain-bin Chippendale’s dancer with a bleach bucket in Nowhere, Wyoming.

He didn’t deserve a woman likeher.

Then, her name settled in his mind.Chastity, Maggie had called her. He wanted to laugh at the irony.

“I just love that she had the guts to do that rainbow thing to her hair,” one woman said.

“Ombre.”

“Is that what it’s called? Ombre?”

“That’s what my beautician said.”

The women all started chatting quietly, Chastity’s vibrant rainbow curls at the center of every topical conversation at that moment.

Barrett cleared his throat, and the ladies all seemed to quiet down at once.

“I couldn’t pull off a rainbow ombre,” the woman next to Barrett said, cutting through the silence. “I’m stuck with this boring ol’ gray.”

“Proverbs chapter sixteen, verse thirty-one: ‘Gray hair is a crown of glory,’” a new woman’s voice said from the entrance to the kitchen.

---