Flora opened the door to the anteroom and let Nadi ran inside. Then, Flora gently closed the door behind her daughter and remained outside as she continued her conversation with Eva. “Emil did not seem to be lying when he told me that.”
Eva looked at Flora in disbelief. “I can’t believe you’re sticking with that story of yours, Flora! Emil already told me the truth. How can it be possible that his wife and daughter are here on this island?”
Flora paused for a while and said, “I don’t know, Eva.”
“Exactly! Have you seen any little children running around or even heard them these last few days that we’ve been here?”
“No,” replied Flora.
“Me neither. As far as I know, Nadi is the only child living here on this island. As for the wife, why would even Emil bother kissing me when he knows that he could easily get caught cheating on his wife!” Eva blurted
After a while, Pablo knocked on the door again. Flora looked at Pablo’s face that had started to look strained. When there was still no reply nor any sound of movement coming from inside the guest’s room, Pablo turned to Flora.“Go back to the dining room and wait for me there.” Pablo’s voice was hushed, but it was stern and commanding and Flora knew that she needed to go at once.Flora immediately turned back and went down the corridors and the staircase without looking back at Pablo. As she walked, she could not help but think what could have happened. Is Mr. Renan sick or had he overslept? It did not take long however before her dim surroundings and the pale faces of the portraits hanging on the walls made Flora uneasy and all that she could think about was getting back to the dining room as fast as she could. Soon, she was able to breathe a sigh of relief when she opened the door to the dining room. Not knowing what else to do, she jus
Pablo waited for Flora to be done removing her apron and her hair net before withdrawing from the kitchen and waited for her just outside the door. Flora tried to keep her face serious as she went out the door to meet the manservant.“You will be collecting the blankets and sheets today from the rooms that will be assigned to you by Maya. The other servants have already assembled at the entrance hall and are being given instructions. You, however, will have to work by yourself until Rosa releases Eva from her kitchen,” said Pablo.Pablo then went to a side table where there was a tray containing spoons, forks, and knives. He had already picked up a spoon and was about to polish it with a clean rag when he noticed that Flora had not yet left the dining room.“What are you standing there for?” asked Pablo as he glared at Flora. “I said the other servants are already at the entrance hall. Go there now and talk to Maya,” said Pablo, his annoyance evident in his voice. He then started polis
The whole south wing looked forbidding to Flora. She had not gone to all the areas of the house and had seen only the rooms where she had worked including the laundry area, the kitchen and the dining room, but there was something about the silence and the atmosphere of the south wing that made her a bit more nervous than usual. For one thing, it was darker than the other places she had been to, lending much to its ominous atmosphere. There were only a few lightbulbs on the ceiling that shed just small circles of focused light on the carpet. The plants and decorations casted eerie shadows and patterns on the walls and it was not quite easy to imagine peering eyes and dark faces looking and sneering at her.Flora had not felt the same feeling since high school when she and Perlita were forced to stay later than their classmates to clean the classroom as punishment for coming in late from recess. They had become so engrossed with sharing stories and recalling the movie they had just seen
Flora was distressed at the thought of having to return to her house to tell the bad news to her mother that she would have to stay in high school for one more year. She knew that it would greatly disappoint her mother who had worked all day and most of the nights just to get her to high school. Flora knew that it was a real threat that she would not be able to land a good job at minimum pay if she could not at least finish her high school. She would have also liked to get a college degree but knew that it would be more realistic to go to a vocational school and study cooking or domestic service.Perlita tried to console Flora although she was also distraught at the thought of not finishing high school. Like Flora, her family was living below the poverty line. Her father was a fisherman who could not make a lot of money from the small catch that dwindled every year. She also had brothers and sisters who had to stay at home and help her parents with their work because the family only ha
“Are you sure you don’t want to wash at the lavatories?” Perlita asked Flora, seeing her friend’s arms had smudges of dirt from cleaning the windowpanes.“D-do you want to go?” asked Flora, her voice wavering.“I think I need to go to the bathroom,” replied Perlita. “Maybe we can just go there for a quick wash and pee before we go home.”Flora also felt that her bladder was full and that she would not be able to hold her urine for long. She relented and nodded at Perlita. “I think I need to go too. Let’s just hurry up.”The two girls finished sweeping the floor and collected the dust and dirt in their dust pans. Afterwards, they placed the dust in the trash cans at the back of the room. They also hung the brooms they used at the hook behind the door while the rags went to drawer where they normally kept the soiled rags.“Let’s just wash those tomorrow. We can come here early,” suggested Perlita.“Yes,” agreed Flora. “We really need to get going. I just hope the landlady’s not waiting a
Flora took a deep breath as she recalled that frightening night at her public high school in Cardena. It was curious that she felt the same feeling standing there in the corridor of a luxurious mansion on an island in the middle of the ocean when her public school’s dilapidated facilities and peeling wall paint were a far cry from her present location. It felt surreal that she stood once again in a dark corridor and needed to conquer her own fears once more, but this time, without her best friend Perlita to accompany her and support her.Still, her experience that night in high school taught her valuable lessons that she would often get back to whenever she felt helpless and afraid of what could be lurking in the shadows. She started to see her life as full of unexpected surprises that were sometimes heartbreaking, but in some other times full of happiness. Nadi was one of those experiences when Flora was full of foreboding at what the future would bring. She knew that taking care of
As Flora rolled the cleaning cart in front of her, she got near one of the portraits that were hung on the walls. She made another gasp when she found an old portrait of a man wearing the traditional formal clothes worn in Cardena about a century ago. The man had thick black hair combed neatly over his head and the black and white suit he had on was expertly painted that the brush strokes easily converted into the folds of his clothes. It was not his clothes, however, that made Flora gasp, but the intense look from his eyes that seemed to look directly at her even as she walked in front of it. Flora noticed that the other paintings were also portraits of old men and women who might have been real persons, possibly relatives of the master. If they were portraits of real people, Flora wondered if the south wing really was reserved for the master and his guests and she wondered if the guests that Pablo mentioned were staying in the house were in fact relatives of the master. She would lik
Flora looked around the room and noticed that the wooden floor was highly polished. She remembered Maya earlier showing her the vacuum cleaner, but she also noticed the floor polisher standing in the corner next to the mops. The electrical appliances were quite useful and would make her work easier thought, Flora. However, Maya did mention that they were supposed to use the vacuum cleaner only in specific days to keep the noise down to the minimum. Flora assumed that it also applied to the floor polisher. Still, Flora observed from the smoothness of the wooden floor of the room as well as the carpets in the corridor outside that the south wing was still being properly maintained. Flora remembered how as a maid working in Malen, many of her employers just had her do everything manually. She thought how these employers probably thought that it was cheaper to get a maid who could do multiple things rather than many appliances that still consumed electricity and still needed to be operated