Brilliant

by Denise Roig

  Ronni was a newcomer compared to the rest of us. She still had that my-what-an-interesting-place naïveté. She was a soft person, a nice person, the first to offer help. Naturally we talked about her when she wasn’t there. Worse, we laughed at her. Did you see that hippie get-up she wore at Brice’s birthday party? Did you hear what she said about Sarah Palin? (We agreed: closet Dem.) Did you know they’re paying their Filipina 3,000 dirhams a month?

  This last we saw as a major infraction. A thousand dollars versus 250? We laughed but we were pissed. Ronni said it was only fair, that Steve made enough money and that Jenny made her life possible. “I have a me again,” she said. With three kids who even she admitted were a handful (Brice, the youngest, had behaviour issues) and a husband who didn’t do much around the house, Ronni called Jenny The Gift. The Gift got more days off per week (two) than any of our maids, a higher salary and an excess of verbal appreciation that made Cherry and Maureen shriek. “Stop saying ‘thank you’ so much!” Cherry said once after Ronni hosted a coffee morning. “It’s her job, for chrissake!” Leave it to Cherry to say what we all thought.

  But now it had all changed again. Everything changed: one year radically different than the one before; one month full of people and parties, the next so empty you could see clear to the bottom. One day everything bright and right, the next everything so wrong you could hardly lift your head from the sweaty pillow. Steve got on the bad side of management at the newspaper by trumpeting his journalistic principles. And then there was the incident in the roundabout: “Who would be crazy enough to give anyone the finger here?” he told anyone who’d listen. But no one did and Steve spent that week out in Al Ain and now they were looking to leave.

  Steve and I had a thing once. Not a huge thing compared to some of our friends. Maureen had a mini-breakdown when their golf pro went back to his wife in New Zealand and Annie ate her way to a size 16 while her husband went ape shit over his Lebanese secretary a few years back. Yet here we are — calmer, wiser, menopausal — still friends downing lattes every Sunday morning.

  Steve and I do talk sometimes, so I knew he and Ronni were thinking of going home. He’d called a few days before from the golf course as I was cruising Al Wahda Mall, no specific purchase in mind.

  “You always were a good listener,” he said after we’d chatted a bit. I was standing outside Victoria’s Secret. Inside I could see a local woman and two younger women, daughters probably. A trio of abayas. The mother held up something lacy and skimpy and the younger girl, shayla slipping, doubled over laughing.

  Steve told me about Ronni’s crying jags, Brice’s mood jumps. Everything that wasn’t quite right before his incarceration got amped up after, he said. “Hey, what’d you think of Obama’s latest caper? Universal health care, what a crock. We’re going to end up like Canada. That’s one thing I dread about going back. Those guys are in the White House now.”

  “But, hey, no more Brits,” I offered.

  “Brilliant,” he said and we laughed.

  > <

  The ladies, they go home now, taking needles and puzzles. They try so hard, smile so big. Sometimes I want to say, Relax! We fine.

  They come: Sondra and Beth and Ronni — funny name for girl! — every Tuesday in morning time. The embassy give us hot room upstairs from bedrooms and we see ladies turn pink and sweat. Poor them. “How do you stand it?” Ronni ask me today. She tie her hair up in elastic. I hate to say, but she look better with it regular. She has pretty hair, pretty eyes. But mostly her heart.

  “Okay, Loissa, what shall we do today?” She always say that, her teeth white shiny. I think she is maybe forty, no grey. Sometime I will ask her. I like her, she like me. I think other girls little jealous, but she is nice to every single Filipina (maybe in the world?) so no one fuss.

  She teach me crochet. I already know, but I want Ronni be proud, so I act like I know not even one thing, how hook goes, how you hold little baseball of yarn. “Like this!” she say, and she show and I do. “Quick study!” she say and looks like maybe cry. I joke, I laugh. I tell her, we okay really and we thank you so much. Maybe Ronni already sad and we make her more sadder.

  Lunch they go. While crochet, my stomach hurt from empty. Fish and rice, all time fish and rice. We like pork, tofu, plantains, melon, too, but only fish and rice. We have fish sometimes on tip of bad. Smelly. “No money!” Embassy men say and shrug, fat Filipinos with passports. They can come and go, go and come. In shelter we are 300 Filipinas. All run from bad employer. But now no place to run. Now no passport, no visa, no money, no home.

  I go back to bed after lunch. Only place that is mine. I be here so long, I graduate to bottom bunk! Honour, says Carmela. But she giggle. Sure, honour live in room with eight bunkbed. New girls sleep on roof on blanket. Head to head, toe to toe. Too many blanket. Too many crying Filipina. Embassy say nothing. Our country need this country. No fuss, just quiet, quiet. Embassy keep us Filipina. We are safe, but we are lost.

  I nap, dream of my house. Fish in dream too, pretty funny. No escape the fish! Me and little Manny, and Rodriguez and Mom, everyone at table. I try cook fish, but nothing happen. Big fish, gold colour, but stay raw. Then Rodriguez laugh and laugh and take me into bed and love me like he use to.

  “You cry.” Paulina shake me.

  “Rodriguez,” I say. Bed on top blocks ceiling, can see nothing.

  “Sex good?” say Paulina and laugh big.

  I hurt for that man, that boy. And then Carmela come and Emeline and new quiet one, Daisy. They smile and smile and come close so we all under top bed like tent.

  “I make coffee,” say Carmela and slap my cheek.

  > <

  Eiman likes the ones with rubies on the heel. They go all the way down, a dozen on each four-inch spike. “I want those,” she says, pointing. I say, no, too much bling, and she gives me her sour Victoria Beckham face. We’re not looking at the same magazine. I have Seventeen; she has Vogue. Because she is five years older, she gets the serious fashion magazine. Now that she’s getting married to our cousin, Salman, she is the only female in the household anyone cares about. My nanny listens to her more than me.

  “It’s going to her head,” I say to Mother. “She’s acting like a sheikha.” What I mean is bitch, but Mother won’t tolerate that language from us, though she uses the word plenty with the maids.

  Mother has come down earlier than usual to the breakfast room. Now that she’s decided to get her degree (“Art history, what is art history?” my father said. “Why do you need to know this?”), her hours are more like ours, school hours. Her abaya is open over the size zero jeans she bought in London, her hair up in a sequin clip, face already perfectly made up. No one believes she is almost forty.

  She claps her hands. “Fatima, why are you standing around looking like an idiot?” Fatima, tiny in her pink headscarf and blue uniform, slippers quickly out of the room. Mother turns back to the table, sizing us up. I slump lower over my magazine. “Sit up straight!” she thumps Eiman on the back.

  “Hey!” growls Eiman. “I’m the good daughter, remember? I’m the one you love.” And she gives me a get-even look.

  “I love all my children, you know that,” says Mother.

  “Even Rashid?” I ask.

  “Even Rashid.” She sighs, thinking maybe how our little brother still wets his bed though he is ten, how he’s made four nannies quit. She snaps her fingers and Sami, one of the drivers, comes into the breakfast room.

  “Madame?” he says.

  Mother looks at her watch. “Al Zaabi Bakery at 10:00 a.m. Pick up the maamoul. Tell them we pay next week.” She waves him away. “I wish these people spoke better Arabic. You’d think after twenty years, thirty years, they would learn.”

  She’s been saying this for as long as I can remember, even about Sami, who speaks fine Arabic. And it’s only gotten worse, with all of us — me, Eiman, Rashid,
Hassan and Sultan — speaking English not just to our nannies, but to each other. “Our language is dying!” Mother likes to say, looking tragic.

  But the preservation of Arabic is not at the top of her agenda this morning. Ellen, her professor at the university, is coming over for a tutoring session.

  “I didn’t know professors made house calls,” says Eiman, flipping through pages of Vogue ads. She’s preparing her exams for a degree in business at Al Ain University. She can’t wait to move out. Of course, marriage will take care of that too.

  “Your father talked to the president of the university,” Mother says, picking up a small corner of unbuttered toast and frowning at it.

  “So you don’t even have to show up for class?” I ask. I’ve already caused a few disturbances among my friends. “A degree is useless if we don’t earn it,” I keep telling them. “For sure it’s useless out there.” But most of them don’t care. They’ll get the degree, marry and never, ever work here or out there.

  Fatima’s back with a pot of coffee, a platter of sliced halloumi and cut-up cucumbers and tomatoes.

  “Where’s the bread?” I ask.

  But Mother shoos her off and Fatima goes back to her station near the kitchen door, where she will wait if we need her. Her face is usually a smooth blank, but this morning her eyebrows are tensed, like something hurts.

  “You need to eat a lot less bread, Asma. I mean it.” And Mother fixes me with the look that used to intimidate me. I look away, out the window where the gardening staff is trimming a date palm. Our head gardener stands below one of the ladders, waving his arms and shaking his head. Eiman gets up, her magazine sliding to the floor. She doesn’t pick it up. “I told Salman I’d call him between classes. You know how he gets if I don’t call,” and she rolls her eyes at Mother.

  I will go to university. I will work. I will eat what I want.

  > <

  After coffee with the girls at La Brioche, I take a cab to Marina Mall, drift into a couple of shops, buy another purse, a birthday card for Russ (fifty-six next week), then wait outside in the usual line-up for a cab. The sun feels dangerous. A small plane with a long streamer makes obscenely loud loops over the Corniche, plunging and climbing. Just watching makes me queasy.

  Two local women and their Indonesian maid, her arms full of shopping bags, nab the next cab, my cab. “Well, that was rude!” I say and they glare at me. The Indian couple behind eye me uneasily and gesture elaborately when the next cab pulls up. “Yours! Please!” I can still hear the plane as we pull away. Practice for an air show probably. Either that or we’re being attacked by the Iranians. “Crystal Tower,” I tell the driver. “Now.” He keeps a nervous eye on me in the rear-view mirror.

  But home, I can’t settle. Russ is in Oman on business until Thursday. It’s too late in the morning for golf, too hot even for me who’s learned to play a reasonable game in 100-degree heat. I think about Skyping Chris in New York, but even my workaholic-hedge-fund-analyst son won’t be up at this hour. And I can’t call Annie or Cherry and say, “Hey, let’s meet at Dome for lunch.” We’ve just had coffee.

  I download shots of our last trip — Russ surprised me for our thirtieth with a long weekend in Casablanca. I go online to see what my darling Tea Party’s up to this week, then log twenty minutes on the treadmill. Dora’s left her signature rice and chicken dish on the counter as she always does on Sundays. But all I want is bread and cheese, a nectarine. I eat standing up. And then, nothing. There is nothing to do. No one is waiting for me anywhere.

  > <

  This no place for free-loaders. When I hear that word, I laugh. English has good words. People free of loads sound like my employers. Not royals like family of Carmela, thank you, my God. But people with so much money they could pay all Philippines’ debt. Whole country, serious! But not enough to pay me.

  My old boss, she never nice one minute. Agency think good match because we same age, thirty-one. She very beautiful, very rich, very bad. Hard to believe someone be like this.

  One morning I am up at five like every day, washing cars. Mercedes, two. Land Rover, two. Plus Sir’s Maserati. Hot already, sun beating headache into me. Employer, she come out, inspect. She find tiny wrapper, maybe from driver, on back seat of Land Rover. March over, stick paper in my face, then slap two sides. When I cry, she call me name. She call me hundred name in two years, but worse is Stupid. I am many things, not all good. But not stupid. One piece paper! This happens!

  Carmela much more worse. She happy now. Okay, more happy. None of us happy. (I lie little bit to Ronni.) Carmela work in Crown Prince palace. He not bad man, well, she never, ever meet Prince. But Carmela is nanny to nephew of Prince. Little boy who is monster. He kick her, he poke her. One time he set her clothes on fire while she sleep. Devil boy. But nobody believe her, even when see burn uniform. Blame her. Then much worse, no pay for five month. Her family in Philippines get no food, no rent. Middle of night she catch bakery truck at palace. Please, she beg driver. Otherwise boy kill me. He very scared, but good Muslim. He drive here.

  Carmela, my friend. Strong lady. Make good coffee too.

  > <

  Ellen is small and pretty in a plain sort of way. You could never imagine her naked. She wears a beige Ann Taylor suit, nothing haute, and arrives carrying two bags, a dark leather laptop case and a gift bag from Patchi, the good guest, someone who thinks she’s clued into our ways: Always bring chocolates if an Emirati invites you to their home.

  Fatima shows her in, but doesn’t have enough English, and Mother must be upstairs changing again, so I introduce myself.

  “Oh, yes,” she says. “You must be so excited about university. And your upcoming wedding too.”

  “I’m Asma, the other daughter,” I say. “Sit down please.”

  “I’m so sorry,” says Ellen, and I can tell Mother never mentioned she had two daughters. “What are you studying?” She looks around for the appropriate couch to sit on.

  “English, geography, history, business studies, French, maths, physical education, information technology, UAE social studies, Koran…” I’m growing breathless, but she did ask.

  “Of course,” she says, sinking finally into a couch. She looks even smaller now and her face is tight with trying to say the next correct thing. “High school. I remember those subjects. Not UAE social studies, of course. Though it sounds more interesting than learning about the Pilgrims.”

  “Pilgrims?” I say. “I didn’t know you had pilgrims.”

  “Our original settlers in America. Back in the 1500s. Or maybe it was the 1600s. I kind of forget…” and she trails off. “They were like our Bedouin.” Now she looks really doubtful. “Well, maybe not. History really isn’t my field of expertise.”

  “I thought you taught history.” I know exactly how this sounds.

  “Art history,” says Ellen. “Ancient art history. Greek. Roman.” I watch her try to regain her authority. “Is your mother here?”

  “Upstairs. She’s late. Get used to it.” I know I’ve now crossed into obvious rudeness. Ellen opens her case and sets up her laptop on the coffee table. She avoids my eyes, but keeps stealing looks at her watch, a hot-pink Swatch that says: I may be in a business suit, but I’m fun. Fatima pads in with trays of sweets — we keep them in cold storage perfectly arranged in pyramids for guests. “Oh, my goodness!” Ellen says. Her eyes are jumping out of her face. Fatima smiles slightly. Mother has told her not to smile too much because that draws attention. Ellen takes a bite of maamoul, swallows, then tucks the rest, when she thinks I’m not looking, into her napkin. She doesn’t like our pastries. They’re really big maamoul, Baba’s favourite.

  Mother sweeps in, hands stretched out to her teacher. One holds her new iPhone. Her abaya is open. Underneath she’s wearing skinny black jeans with zippers halfway up her shins and a clingy white cashmere sweater. In her ears, dangles of freshwater pearl
s. On her feet, the same heels Eiman pointed to in the magazine. Where did she get those?

  “Sit! Sit!” she says, waving because Ellen has stood. “I’m a bit late, aren’t I? Please forgive a naughty student. But I am here now, ready to work!”

  Ellen glances at me, but when I don’t move, she angles the laptop toward Mother. “I thought we’d start with a lesson on aesthetics. It’s a good place to begin.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” says Mother, switching off her mobile, but not before giving a quick check for messages.

  Fatima glides in. Her hands shake slightly as she holds a platter of savoury pastries in front of Ellen. “Oh, my goodness!” Ellen says again, but seems unable to choose. Fatima hovers.

  “Try this.” Mother points to a mountain of meat pies. “Sfiha. Very good meat. The best.”

  “I actually don’t eat meat,” says Ellen. “But I will have some coffee. I love Arabic coffee. Oh, I almost forgot,” and she reaches down to the Patchi bag. “I brought a little something.”

  “Habibti! How kind! You Americans are so generous.” Mother hands the box of chocolates — large, Ellen’s spent a lot — to Fatima, who now has to place the pastry tray on the coffee table. Mother cocks her head slightly toward the kitchen. These will be added to the offerings in cold storage. Chocolates make the rounds from family to family, guest to guest. A giant circuit, a grand tour of recycled sweets, especially during iftars and Eid. But Ellen will never know this. She thinks we’ll share them tonight as a family, have them for dessert with our coffee, comment on her excellent choice: “She has a real sense of Arabian hospitality, that one!”

  > <

  “Stars & Stripes Forever” plays from my purse. A bit of home, Russ said, when he programmed it as my ring tone. I’ve been waiting for something to happen all day, all week. And here’s Cherry, incoherent.