If I close my eyes a little and ignore the sound of the rushing faucet, the lights and the water move through the drinking glass de cristal like the skin of a live fish, this delicate glass that could easily slip and break in the sink is more expensive than anything I will ever own. That’s what La Señora told me.

She said that they traveled so far to land here in her kitchen and be organized by size, tall ones, fat ones, by color, their clarity, some like bowls balancing on top of a thin bird leg. All of them cristal, la Señora says, de alemania, where they make wonderful clocks, the best guns, and the most delicate things of wood, and here now in my trembling hand. Like so many things in this Texas house that are not mine and can break, they scare me. She would know if I let one slip.

Washing and polishing these vasos de vidrio was one of the first jobs la Señora gave me when I arrived to work for her almost a year ago. Her husband, the Major, was coming home that day after a long business trip. He had not met me yet. He walked in wearing his uniform jacket and tie, a dark thick green jacket, almost black-green, decorated with colorful badges and shapes on both sides of it, his chin and neck softened by age. He is older than her. Seems much older with a lot of white in his hair. But handsome. He headed straight to their bedroom after he saw me, and they only spoke English to each other behind a closed door.

I knew she spoke English, but I did not imagine she had made a whole life with someone who did not speak her language. When she spoke English to him, it was like she was someone else. I listened. He seemed angry that I was there, then she started raising her voice too. I could not tell what they were saying with their strange words seeping out from under their door.

I only came here with a few of the English words, and I thought I could be silent and invisible, but when he is here, I feel like a broom left in the middle of every single hallway.

She wanted the glasses clean so he arrived to their sparkle. He cares about things like that she said. I never heard if I did them well or not, and now I am doing them again. They are not even dirty. No one touches them behind the glass cabinet.

“Berta!” La Señora calls, the sharp way she rolls her r in my name cracks the air in half, and I jump, almost letting go of the fat slippery one in my hand. I set it down, making sure it is settled on the flat towel by the sink because I know what her next words will be. She is awake and nine is too early in the morning for her to be awake. She stays in bed while her sons are at school, all three of them, even el chiquillo who is only four years old. It is normally a time of cold darkness in this refrigerated house, with her sleeping until eleven or twelve sometimes, giving me moments to myself, though being alone is not always better than having her awake.

“Come!” I have learned when this word means she is excited to show me something that delights her. Other times it means that someone, maybe me, her dogs, or her children, have turned her world hijo de su chingada madre ―upside down.

As I rush across the living room to her bedroom, my feet sink into the carpet. I keep my shoes off in the house when she is asleep. My fingers still smell of Pine Sol from the mopping I did earlier and from the soap she says is only for her cristal that is worth more than a small nation, and needed to be cleaned today, now because someone is coming to visit later today, Cata, the girl who worked here before I did.

There is La Señora, a dark lump under the blankets with the dogs huddled next to her under the ceiling fan that is blowing hard. The room looks like it is still night. While la Senora’s husband is out of town, the dogs are allowed on her bed, which is so high that they are afraid to jump off. I have to help them when they want down. Carita, the leader, resents this and her body trembles with growling when I move her.

“Si, Seño?” I can already tell she is annoyed that today finally arrived. It is not just me who annoys Señora Thompson. Her sons do it. The Major does it. His travels. The dogs, especially Suzy. Sunlight. Todo la molesta.

“I hate today,” she says. Her makeup is smeared from yesterday. She is beautiful in her own way with brown eyes that come to a sharp point and eyelids shaped like fish fins. She hates her own nose, nariz chata, she calls it when she inspects herself in the mirror. No la merezco.

She is at war with everything. The neighbor’s cat in the yard was too close to my window the night before. Sounds like a woman being strangled. The detergent gives me a headache, why did you not rinse the clothes one more time? There is too much sun, the curtains flimsy pieces of shit, like the fruit in this country. Toda la fruta sabe a pinche cardboard.

I wish I could give her a glass of brandy so she can relax, the deep brown liquor which smells like very old trees and cinnamon. When I give her one at night, I smell it rise out of the glass as I serve it to her, forming a faint tattoo in the air, and I can see it wash away her memory, her angers before she heads into her long, deep sleep.

“Bring me my new magazines that came yesterday,” she commands. “And bring me un café before I have to get up and get ready. With sugar. Bring me the sugar bowl. You don’t know how to sweeten it.”

“Si, Seño,” I say. I walk out the door, retracing my steps to not ruin the vacuuming job I did yesterday. She will want me to do it again if the carpet gets too rustled up.

“Y traeme un Topo Chico preparado,” she calls when I am in the kitchen already, and I know later she will complain that siempre me da gas ese pinche mugrero. “I need to get ready for esa bruja,” she says to me, to the dogs, to the air. Cata is interrupting her life with this visit and making her angry before I have had a chance to make it right.

I’ve had my coffee this morning, and there is still some left in the pot, but it is a few hours old already, so I throw it all into my third cup, think about using the same filter with the grounds to make her a fresh pot, hoping she won’t notice if I just add new scoops of coffee grounds on top. Maybe this will make a deeper flavor, maybe make it taste decent this time, but I already know she will not like it, and she will taste something I cannot imagine in it, and call it rotten, or call me lazy, so I decide to begin again to not to irritate her more than she already is being awake this early and for a visitor she does not want to see. She told me Cata was not just coming for a nice visit like she said.

“I know she wants something,” she calls out. “Money, I bet.”

I am hurrying to get this coffee and agua preparada made to get in front of her insults that may start coming at me. I grab the coffee tin, toss the used filter into the trash without spilling any of the black grounds that still smell like caramel and butter, and grab a new filter so she cannot taste that the coffee was mixed old with new. I breathe it in and wonder why coffee does not taste as good as it smells. My nose lies to me sometimes about the way things really are.

While the coffee machine is bubbling and dripping into the pot, I take a minute to wash another piece of crystal and run my hand over its smooth sides and squint to look at the patterns of color it makes in the sink.

“What’s taking so long?”

When I finally pride myself on the coffee, its perfect, creamy color, the right amount of milk, and not a drop on the saucer, I walk it over to her. So many different types of floors under my feet in this house as I walk to her. Carpet, stone, and in different colors. I never knew people mixed types of floors in one house, as if they could not choose what they want to stand on. This thick carpet, like a fur of a clean animal spread on the floor, and the bare long planks of wood in the Major’s office, which I am not allowed to clean. He does not want me in there. Only la Señora can go in there and dust, she says, which she does not, which gets them in a fight about what am I good for if I do not clean. She told me that he could get into trouble at work if they found out about me, and that I needed to keep my head low.

“You will be perfect,” she had said to me that day, looking at me as if I were a bowl of fresh papaya. “You want to come across? I have the best house for you. You will blend in over there with your hair and ojos de color. What are they? Yellow? Like honey. Pretty. We will not have any problems crossing the border once we clean you up.” It was what I wanted more than anything. To come here. To work.

I keep the cup and saucer balanced in one hand. I bring her the sugar bowl and a cup of pineapple slices and crema, lite in a bowl on a platter in the other hand. The sugar bowl is in the shape of a turtle and painted with all kinds of colors. I recognize it is from the mercado en Mexico, which she says she loves. I touch the cup when I set it down to make sure it is the right temperature for her because she is already making that scowling face as she sits up and puts the pillows behind her back. “I want toast too. Did you make any? You know I like toast with my coffee.” I know she has never said this to me before in the year I have been here.

I begin to walk out again to make this toast but turn around since she is not done talking.

“Do you know what I cannot tolerate about today?” She stirs three spoons of sugar into the cup. The spoon clinks from side to side. She does it four, five, sometimes ten times and takes a sip. “Too hot.” She puts it down. “That girl. That girl is ruining my day again.”

I am Cata’s replacement, lucky to have been taken in by such a good family, she reminds me. It has been a long year. 

“You’ve seen it, the damage she did. With the baby so attached to her like he was, and then leaving like that. En dos por tres. You know what that can do to children?” She sips the coffee again and does not complain this time. I realize I have not breathed since she started talking. I am watching the cup and the sugar turtle sit on the platter at the edge of her night table. It barely fits. I let out a small exhale and pick the turtle up. She will blame me if it all falls over.  “I could kill her. I bet she wants money. I bet that is what this little visit is all about. That no good idiot she married. Barely a mechanic. He’s not even a real employee at that garage. I bet his uncle doesn’t even own it. Lies. She acted like my daughter when she was here. And I treated her like one. Has three wrenches to his name and calls himself a mechanic. Loser, and she left me. Like that. All this.” Her hand, holding a fork with a piece of pineapple, waves around to the room, her house, her pink and gold ruffled curtains which look like something I have seen in a telenovela.

“Idiot girl,” she adds, and I know she is not talking about me right now, which feels good and bad at the same time. “Now go. And honey on the toast— and un cachito de mantequilla, not too much I am getting too fat. I have never been this size in my life.” She is fat, but only around her middle, like a pear that slims out into a banana below.

I set out to make the toast for la Señora, and I can see we only have the kind of bread the Major likes. His bread is full of seeds and nuts, and she says she is not a bird and do not turn me into one with that bird bread. I scrape the seeds and nuts off, as much as I can after it toasts. I save the pieces of nuts on a napkin to eat later. I like birds.

La Señora butters her toast and keeps talking. Her voice is loud. It does not matter. No one else is here but us. “I know she must need something. Just wait and see. I know it. And I have to get dressed and get the house ready and feed her like she is some princess. Goddammit.”

“Is there something I can do,” I ask.

She tolerates the bread I have fixed for her, and eats half of it, leaving the rest on the plate next to her bed. If she complains, I will tell her what happened, that her son Sean made himself a peanut butter sandwich with her bread yesterday, finishing it, which he did, and when I went to the store yesterday, I forgot. It is my fault.

“Are you going to give Cata one hundred dollars?” she asks, “because that is the only reason she would visit me. Sinverguenza,” her voice sharp against me, a slap on my face reminding me I have no money. Not yet.

I freeze and tell myself she is trying to be funny. No, I do not have one hundred dollars. I do not have any dollars yet. She is saving my money for me, so she can pay me all at once before I go home. In a year. We had agreed I would work for two years for two thousand dollars. 

She is hoping I laugh at her comment now.  “Ay Señora,” I say, “You know I am a millonaria. I will give it to you so Cata can go away. She better not try to win you back and take my job,” and she laughs. And I laugh because it is funny. We both know I could never give anyone one hundred dollars, and she is laughing because this is the truth. If I keep her laughing, which I can do sometimes, the day will go by easier. 

“Thaw out the cake, the pastry we bought for el dia cuatro, the one with the red and blue swirls on it. On white icing. I need cake today. We will get a new one.”

Cake? Now she is giving her cake?

I am worried Cata does not know how much of a bother she is to la Señora, how much she is hated, and that when she finds this out, she will leave here either angry or crying, and my questions will never be answered. Did she ever pay you? How did you get out?

I know la Señora wants Cata to know everything is okay here since she left. And I need to show Cata that it is me here now. I have this house. She cannot have it back.

La Señora likes to win. All things in the house need to be polished, all things gleaming, and el chiquillo clean and fine, and who needs you, muchacha— the yard is green and trimmed, the irises fat-leaved and watered, everything como buena gente, buenas familias.

“Did the baby eat something decent for breakfast?”

“Si, un licuado, which he liked,” I say. “Bananas, milk,” and as I picture the way I made it, I keep talking, which is always a mistake. I say, “I added un huevito” before I can stop myself. I feel my body go cold, cold because I had not planned on telling her I had done this. She had never told me to put a raw huevito in his licuado. Now I have opened up a reason for her to come at me, to change her mood to a bad one this early in the day, but el chiquillo is so skinny, not a baby at all, too skinny, so pale, and an egg will do him good. All he eats is sweets, like her. Chocolate. Nada de comida. Dulces. Everything with sugar.

“Un huevito? Como? Cooked? What do you mean?” Her face is twisted. Confused. “A ver. Ven.” I walk closer to the bed, and I feel a heat building in her, the smoldering in her face just before she bursts into a powerful, wall-shaking scolding that shakes my heart inside of my ribs. I feel it, my heart pumping hard suddenly. “Revuelto?”

I explain about the egg, hoping I can tell her enough to wash this look off of her face, but I cannot undo what I said fast enough. “No, Seño. Raw. This is how they made them in Lagos, bananas, milk, orange juice, many other fruits and an egg cracked into the blender— the juice of the orange kills—and lime. It is good for you. They said―” But we do not have limes. 

My stomach suddenly has teeth in it and it is chewing on itself. I do not know why I thought I could do this without telling her first, asking.

I had seen how they did it at the market in Lagos. Don Pepe, the owner of the fruteria stand always put raw eggs in his drinks, loved to offer this to the tourists whose eyes grew big, but I watched how he did it for the locals, dropping one egg into the milk and banana and mango, whatever they asked. I tasted its creamy goodness only once. “It’s good for you,” he said with a knowing look, and his arms were strong, his skin bright and pinky brown, the egg whipped into the fruit.

I gather up some of what he said to me, to hide behind it. Maybe she does not know everything. “It’s good for children,” I say. “Lots of people have licuados this way in Lagos, everyone does. Seño. Every day. Even tourists.”

She is thinking again that I am tonta, from the worst families. “Did he drink it?” I wipe down the glass and the coaster it is sitting on. There is nothing funny I can say here.

My heart is burning and surprised she is asking, but it is still pounding loud against my ears. “Yes, he almost finished it.” I turn away and wipe the top of her dresser with my damp dishtowel, the fuzz has already begun to build on it since I cleaned it three days ago. Perhaps wiping this room down once a week is not often enough. Every three days is better. Or two. Two.

It is better not to face La Senora when she is on the verge like this. If I do not see the twitches and heat in her nose, in her darkening eyes, my stomach does not hear all of her words the same way and can stay calm through it, but I look at her because I hope what I said about Don Pepe in Lagos helps, that the egg is good, and yes, I added pineapple. El chiquillo likes pineapple. I want to say something about him, how skinny he is, but I cannot breathe it out with my throat so blocked up now.

“He better not get sick, Berta. You are not supposed to eat raw eggs and children especially. Eggs are filthy. They are full of shit. Diseases.”

 I control my voice so she cannot hear what I am hearing inside of my head, crushing hot sands blowing a storm of worry that I am here hurting the boy. He is so small. I did not mean to hurt him. I am sure of this.

“He seemed happy,” I tell her, my throat closing as I say it. “I walked him to the little school, and he did not stop talking the whole way.” I can see him holding his little car, hear him telling me about the bath he would give the dogs when he got home. What would he have sounded like if the egg was making him sick? What color would his face be? I try to remember if I touched him before I left him. Did he feel warm?

“Mensa. No. Do not give him anything I don’t know about, entiendes? Raw egg. Raw anything. I don’t care how many times you and your people ate it in Mexico. Your stomach is different. It is used to eating —well, anything. The Major told me you would get us sick if you lived with us. Don’t prove him right, niña. And take this coffee away. Dios Mio,” she says, shaking her head. “Why does everything in this house taste like mierda?”

“Should I go check on him?” I feel my voice break when I say this. I can’t help it. But if I show I am afraid of what I have done, she will come in harder for me. I have learned this.

“No. They will call me if he is sick. Just do not do it again, cabrona. For a girl who never went to school, traes unas ideas.” She rolls her eyes. “Turn on my curlers. I am going to shower and wash my hair. Then I want you to dry it, so I can curl it today for that other cabrona.”