Emily

Emily was perching out the window, her left hand resting on the tail of her backbone. She had just washed the cherries and placed the neon blue gloves next to the artichokes. Gloves because Mama Hiam eats them raw and wears rubber gloves to keep her hands and nails in tact. Emily was standing next to the water cooler and tensed up when I went to fill my glass. She closed her fist gently. I wonder when was the last time she felt the sun on her body.

This afternoon, I was roasting in carotene enhanced tanning lotion at the Sporting Club, listening to Tatu on my Razr. I kept my phone tucked underneath my yellow visor so as to shield it from the sun. There was a werewolf playing tawla with his potbelly companion and some lanky British guys looking into books. The waves were crashing up against the concrete platform, and I was just close enough to the edge that I caught the best of the ocean spray. The sun was well beyond the zenith, its rays shooting in between my toes.

The mother took off her sun dress. She wore a bumble-bee bikini that perfectly framed her physique. Her belly sat like an olive faberge egg on her hips, and the curvature of her breasts echoed perfectly the arc of her stomach. Her husband was already in the pool, reaching for his sandy blond toddler in floaties.

I was lying on my stomach, and my knees were killing me. My joints were squished between the weight of my legs and the tortuously rigid plastic lounge chair. I flipped onto my back and saw that the Maid was left in the shade.

The indent of the top of her buttcrack was barely visible. Whenever she leaned over, her sleeveless red top would reach upwards towards her shoulders, exposing more of her lower back. She was watching the family: she giggled when the toddler realized that, just like his father, his mother too could hold him in the water. She nibbled on carrot sticks and handed Mommy a bottle of water after she dried off her belly.

Emily doesn't go to the beach. From the window above the fruit basket, she can see the kitchen windows of the White Hill Building (we are in the Green Hill Building). After lunch time, when everyone is napping, the White and Green maids hang out of windows like bees from neighboring honeycombs and chat. Some have to look four stories down; Emily's friend is Green, one story up. They stick their arms out and stretch their hands.

Due west from the balcony, you can see the sea. Emily uses the balcony to dry the laundry, and she drapes the hallway carpets over the balustrade every Monday. She straddles a couple of the white balcony chairs over it, gently paper-clipping the rugs so that they don't slip down and away.

Mama Hiam is putting the gloves on now. She's already draped a damask napkin over her chest and places a plate on her sternum. She turns the artichoke on its head and moves through it leaf by leaf. When she's done, she'll move onto the seeds which she pulls by the fistful from the plastic bag by her knees. The seed shells collect into a mogul on her sternum. Before she gets up to sleep, she'll pull the corners of the napkin one by one, wrapping the crunchy seeds into a little present for Emily to find tomorrow morning.