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hair. So many colors . And we regretted that we could not be more like them.
    LATE AT NIGHT , in our narrow, windowless rooms in the backs of their large, stately houses, we imitated them. “Now you be the master and I’ll be the missus,” we said to our husbands. “No, you be the master and I’ll be the missus,” they sometimes replied. We tried to imagine how they did it. What they said. Who was on top. Who was on the bottom. Did he cry out? Did she? Did they wake up in the morning with their limbs intertwined? Other times we lay quietly in the darkness and told each other about our days. I beat the rugs. I boiled the sheets. I dug up the devil grass with my farmer’s knife from the south side of the lawn . And when we were finished we pulled up the covers and closed our eyes and dreamed of better times to come. A pretty white house of our own on a long, shady street with a garden that was always in bloom. A bathtub that filled up with hot water in mere minutes. A servant who brought us breakfast every morning on a round silver tray and swept all the rooms by hand. A chambermaid. A laundress. A Chinese butler in a long white coat who appeared the moment we rang a bell and called out, “Charlie, please bring me my tea!”
    THEY GAVE US new names. They called us Helen and Lily. They called us Margaret. They called us Pearl. They marveled at our tiny figures and our long, shiny black hair. They praised us for our hardworking ways. That girl never stops until she gets the job done . They bragged about us to their neighbors. They bragged about us to their friends. They claimed to like us much more than they did any of the others. No better class of help can be found . When they were unhappy and had no one to talk to they told us their deep, darkest secrets. Everything I told him was a lie . When their husbands went away on business they asked us to sleep with them in their bedrooms in case they got lonely. When they called out for us in the middle of the night we went to them and lay with them until morning. “Hush, hush,” we said to them. And, “Please don’t cry.” When they fell in love with a man who was not their husband we kept an eye on their children while they went out to meet that man in the middle of the day. “Do I look all right?” they asked us. And, “Is my skirt too tight?” We brushed off invisible specks of lint from their blouses, retied scarves, adjusted stray locks of hair so they hung just so. We plucked out their grays without comment. “You look beautiful,” we said to them, and then we sent them on their way. And when their husbands came home in the evening at the usual hour we pretended not to know a thing.
    ONE OF THEM lived alone in a run-down mansion on top of San Francisco’s Nob Hill and had not been outside in twelve years. One of them was a countess from Dresden who had never lifted up anything heavier than a fork. One of them had fled from the Bolsheviks in Russia and every night she dreamed she was back in her father’s house in Odessa. We lost it all . One of them had used only Negroes before us. One of them had had bad luck with the Chinese. You have to keep an eye on them all the time . One of them made us get down on our hands and knees every time we scrubbed her floor instead of using a mop. One of them grabbed a rag and tried to help us but only ended up getting in our way. One of them served us elaborate lunches on fine china plates and insisted that we sit down with her at the table, even though we were anxious to get on with our work. One of them never changed out of her nightgown until noon. Several of them suffered from headaches. Many of them were sad. Most drank. One of them took us downtown to the City of Paris department store every Friday afternoon and told us to pick out a new item of clothing. Whatever you like . One of them gave us a dictionary and a pair of white silk gloves and enrolled us in our first class in English. My driver will be waiting for you