I would know.
I’m familiar with what it’s like seeing someone you love in the arms of someone who betrayed you in the worst way.
“Aviana,” Mrs. DuVernay’s unanticipated intrusion steals this moment from us without warning. I turn to her. She stands in the open doorway, hands splayed against the framing. I hadn’t heard her come home. “What is it, darling? What’s the matter?”
She rushes in, hand over the empty cavity where her heart should be, and perches on the opposite side of the bed, face still covered in the day’s makeup. She’s been friendless for several months now. What she does and where she goes this late at night, I’ve yet to figure out, but it seems to be happening more and more these days.
“We’re good, Zsofia.” The warmth in her tone a moment ago is now gone. “You may show yourself out.”
I rise, hands folded in front of me. Head tucked. Submissive and docile. The way she likes me.
“Would you like me to draw you a bath?” I ask.
She turns to her daughter, and I imagine she’s contemplating how much time her teenage crisis is going to take. With an exaggerated sigh, she cups a palm over her daughter’s still hand. I swear Aviana flinches.
“I’ll draw my own tonight,” she says. “Why don’t you head up to your apartment. We’ll see you first thing tomorrow.”
“Yes, Mrs. DuVernay.” I leave the room, but I linger out of sight around the corner. Aviana won’t open up to anyone but me. We have a bond. One that means more to me than she’ll ever know.
I love her in ways Mrs. DuVernay doesn’t quite know how to love someone.
Without conditions, without expectations.
I love her as she is. Perfectly imperfect. The best parts of her father—thank God.
I was five years old when my mother, Mrs. DuVernay’s first personal assistant, walked out one sticky Saturday afternoon and never came back. The DuVernays kept me safe, sheltered and fed me, all the while believing she would one day return.
But she never did.
And as the years passed, I suppose the DuVernays—Mrs. DuVernay in particular—grew burdened by my presence. At first, I was a pet project of hers, a little girl she could dress in gowns the color of cake frosting with bows to match. But the years yawned on, ushering the dawn of my pre-teen era. The saccharin sweet, surrogate daughter she had created had turned on her, becoming moody and opinionated and, worse yet, willful.
In the blink of an eye, I was relocated from the ballerina-pink suite, where Aviana now sleeps, to the garage apartment, given daily lists of never-ending chores, and a new set of rules so I’d know exactly where I stood in the hierarchy of the DuVernay household—at the very bottom.
I’ll never forget the day I tried to run away at age fourteen, bags packed and tears streaming down my face as I called Mrs. DuVernay every name in the book, silently hoping she would see the error of her ways, understand what she’d done to me, how badly I was hurting.
I just wanted her to love me, like she did before.
But Mrs. DuVernay simply laughed, an evil cackle of a thing, equal parts comical and heartless, and she told me I had nothing, I was nothing … without her.
And she wasn’t wrong.
I had never attended school. I didn’t have a penny to my name. No identification of any kind nor any knowledge as to how to get anything. My mother had immigrated to the States illegally when I was a baby. Mrs. DuVernay assured me that should I leave, it would only be a matter of time until I was arrested by ICE and deported to Russia, where I wouldn’t know a soul, wouldn’t be able to speak a single word of their language.
My entire life—at least that which I can remember—has been spent inside the unapologetic sprawl of the DuVernay estate.
Sometimes the devil you know is the better option than the devil you don’t.
“Are you sure, darling?” Mrs. DuVernay asks Aviana. While her tone is genuine, I know better. She’s only kind when she wants something, only gives a part of herself so she can collect a part of you later. Always keeping score, that one. “You know I’m here if you ever need to talk.”
“I know,” Aviana says with the appeasing obligation of a fifteen-year-old.
“But you were crying,” Mrs. DuVernay says. “And you were about to tell Zsofia something … I don’t understand why you can’t talk to me about this.”
It’s quiet for a beat, the tension so ripe it wafts toward the hallway, like hands wrapping my neck. I hold my breath. Just like that, the conversation went from heartfelt to accusatory. Mrs. DuVernay has the art of flicking perfectly fine conversations into arguments down to a science.
“It’s different with her,” Aviana says. Her voice is muffled, and I imagine her chin resting against her polka dot pajama top as she speaks into her lap. Making eye contact with Mrs. DuVernay can be akin to looking into the eyes of Satan himself when she’s in one of her moods.
I exhale, shuddering.
Mrs. DuVernay releases a breathy moan. “I’m your mother. Not her. You are not to discuss personal matters with the help. Any of the help. You know that.”
Once upon a time, she treated me like her own flesh and blood.
Now I’m the help.
“It’s just boy drama,” Aviana says.
“Regardless, Aviana, she’s not your mother and she’s not your friend.” Impatient exhaustion colors her inflection, each word cut into short little snips. She’s ending the conversation, seeing to it she has the last word. It’s what she does.
I don’t stick around to hear the rest of the lecture. I can only imagine the conniption fit she’ll throw if she were to catch me eavesdropping … a little something I’ve honed over the years. An outsider would be amazed to learn the secrets that reside in the DuVernay household.
They’re everywhere, always. Hiding in plain sight.
You just have to know where to look.
5
Cate
“I got asked out yesterday,” I tell Sean as he stands next to my bed and slips a white t-shirt over his chiseled, sun-speckled shoulders on Wednesday night.
“Wait, what?” he squints, examining my face, his expression wild and prepared for a laugh.
“Not like that …” I smirk. “This customer came in Monday. This woman.” I wrap the thin gray sheets around my body, leaving only my arms and shoulders exposed. “And then she came in again Tuesday. Super sweet. We were walking out at the same time and she asked me out to lunch.”
Sean’s angled jaw is loose. “And you went?”
“Of course not.”
“Right.” He tugs his jeans up before working the fly, his belt buckle clanging when he fastens it. “Why’d she ask you to lunch? She trying to sell you something?”
I roll my eyes. “This crazy lady came in today, wanting a refund on a non-returnable locket. Threw a fit. Threatened legal action. Snapped her fingers in my face and everything. The other woman came to my defense.”
He chuffs. “Like you need anyone to come to your defense.”
“I know. But anyway. She did. She put the crazy lady in her place. After that I let her try on this gown she had no intention of buying, and then I showed her a bunch of earrings that aren’t on the floor yet.”