There are only a few maids left under our employment who have seen me naked. Only two left, actually. One of them is Maria, almost fifty, deaf, and dreadfully small, like a wrinkled up prune. She is the one who used to dress me in the mornings before school when I was eleven. Afterwards, I grew self-conscious enough to learn to dress myself. She held no other important roles in my life after that.
The other is Ding. Ding – who had been given a boy’s name by her parents in the hope of their first born being male – is much younger. But she’s the one who’s been with us the longest, beating Maria by seven years. Ding is the only one among them lucky enough to have witnessed every moment of my life since I was an infant, tiny and oblivious to everything and everyone. Before Maria, Ding used to dress me, bathe me, feed me. She used to watch cartoons with me before school.
Now, at fifteen, I can hardly picture life without her. She is like an ignored sister, a disowned child trapped in the background of every family portrait. When I look at her I see a Cinderella without a fairy godmother, though she is unlike Cinderella in so many ways: she is short and stocky; her skin is not white, but brown and burned by hours in the sun, sweeping the fallen leaves and pruning the overgrown bushes of our immense garden; her hair is black, greasy, and unkempt; she often smells like sweat and cooking oil.
It is on the day that I learn she is resigning that I discover how much I love her. The reason she’s leaving is that she’s getting married. She is engaged to a man she has known for little less than a year. Who knows if she loves him? I curse the common maid’s foolishness: they can’t distinguish love from infatuation. There is nothing I can do. The fact is she thinks she loves this man, and she’s leaving the family – including me.
***
The night before she leaves is the night my parents are gone, off to Japan or to Thailand – somewhere in Asia. My parents don’t like leaving me in the house alone, which is why Ding is sleeping in my room, on my bed. I am tucked safely under the cool silk sheets of the king-sized mattress in our master bedroom. No one else is in the house except Ding, an entire stretch of hallway away. I think of her, lying exactly as I am, on a smaller, creakier, crinklier bed. I think of her loneliness as I feel myself grow lonely. Tonight she is taken away from her friends – the other maids – and made to sleep alone in a small corner of our large, cavernous house.
Before I realize it, I am getting up, throwing the heavy silk comforter off my body violently. It slithers to the floor like a slimy reptile. My footsteps echo on the thin wooden floor. I pass the family room, the place where Ding and I used to watch television – mostly the shows were either dramas or comedies.
I reach the hallway, long and dark. It stretches for at least seven meters. I can smell the rich scents that emanate from my father’s collection of wooden boxes – puzzle boxes and music boxes, boxes carved into faces and boxes carved into pigs. I remember once using one puzzle box as a hiding place for my allowance savings. I had thought it would be the most inconspicuous of places to hide money, and I was right: weeks later, I had no idea where I’d put the colorful wad of bills. Ding helped me look, and I was near tears when we finally found it, tucked into a corner of one of the larger boxes.
I pass my sister’s room, white and bare. She moved out years ago, leaving only her dusty shelves and her old, sturdy canopy bed, rid of its canopy (the delicate pink cloth had been lost when we moved to this place a decade ago). I look up at the shelves, once stacked with books. Shelves so jam-packed you could hide anything on them and never find it again. Once, when I was angry with my sister, I hid her school ID card on the top shelf, among the old pink boxes filled with puzzles and board games with missing playing pieces. My mother sent all the maids to look for her ID card. Ding was there to see me reach up and take the ID down, holding it by its rough blue string. One look at me told her I had hidden it there. She promised not to tell, but as soon as my mother entered the room, Ding told her what I had done. I hated her then, called her names behind her back, mocked her for being poor. But soon enough my outrage at her betrayal faded, and before I knew it, I loved her again.
Finally, I reach my door, peppered with stickers and cheap plastic warning signs that read “PRIVATE” and “RESTRICTED AREA.” I knock, though it’s my room, and only maids are required to knock before entering.
“Come in.” Ding’s voice is faint and awkward behind the thick wood. This is probably the first time she is saying these words. She is sitting at my desk (covered in correction fluid graffiti) and is reading a thin, paperback book. It’s one of those poorly written, cheap romance novels that maids like her love to read.
I close the door behind me and lean against it.
She looks at me and smiles. “What are you doing here?”
I smile back and say, “Hey, ugly.”
“Hey, ugly,” she responds.
We laugh like we used to laugh. I had started this mock name-calling when I was younger. The first time Ding heard it, she’d told me, “Every time you call someone ugly, you get one more pimple on your face.” It was a while before she understood I was joking.
I look at her. “You’re leaving tomorrow.”
Her smile falters, then gains strength in one smooth, fluid motion. I can see how she’s straining to keep the edges of her mouth pointing upward. She says nothing, only smiles.
I sink onto my bed and it makes that familiar crinkling sound, as if it were stuffed with crumpled bits of paper. “What’s his name?”
“Whose?”
“Your fiancé's,” I answer quickly. The word fiancé feels strange on my tongue. I had never thought Ding would be the type of woman to have a fiancé.
“Roy.” She smiles and her eyes are filled with what looks like love – or deep infatuation. “Roy Amparo.”
“So you’re gonna be Ding Amparo.”
She sighs happily, like those old-fashioned women in old-fashioned movies. It is unexpected, coming from her – it’s too girly, too feminine. “Yes.”
A jet of envy shoots through me, but I don’t know the reason for it. I take out my mobile phone from my pocket instead, staring hard at its screen and trying to hide the fire of emotion I know is burning behind my eyes. “I guess I should change your name here, then,” I tell her. I sound out Ding’s new name as I encode it onto my phone: “Diiing… Ampaaaro…. There.” I show her the new name displayed on the screen. “That’s gonna be your name from now on.”
She grins and sits next to me on the bed. The romance novel is left on the desk, lying open in surrender, its weak spine cracked down the middle. Her smile disappears when she leans close. “Why are you crying?”
She takes a handkerchief out of her pocket and mops up my face. Her hands smell like garlic, and the stench suffocates me. I hold my breath until she stops wiping. I hadn’t realized I had started to cry. I was surprised when Ding told me; for the longest time, I had been able to convince myself that I would never cry if anyone close were to leave me. It’s not like they’re dead, I would reason.
I can hardly breathe, and I have no strength in my lungs for words. Ding puts her handkerchief in my hand and pulls me into an embrace.
“You should sleep,” she whispers. Her mouth is right next to my ear and I can feel the heat of her breath on my neck. “I’ll wake you up tomorrow before I leave. I promise.”
I can’t speak. I can only nod quietly. I stand up and turn toward the door, ready to go.
I hear Ding laugh behind me. “You look miserable.” I can hear the smile in her words.
Before I shut the door behind me, I turn back. “Good night, ugly.” I try to smile.
“Good night,” she replies.
***
The next morning, I am sprawled on top of the silk sheets of my parents’ bedroom, sweating, drooling, and uncomfortable. I wipe the sticky wetness off my face and turn over to stare at the ceiling. Groggily, I rub my eyes. The sunlight streaming through the balcony doors is blinding as it stabs my pupils.
In a sudden burst, I am upright, sitting in bed, suddenly wide awake. My heart is racing, and a panicked thought runs through my mind: Ding is leaving today.
I race to my room, past the living room where the television sits dark and lonely, along the hallway with its numerous scents and puzzle boxes, past my sister’s room where I can still recall the bitterness of being tattled on.
I push the door to my room open. It looks empty and abandoned. I see the dust motes traveling along the rays of sunlight as the light gathers in a pool on the floor. I think, She’s gone. She didn’t wake me up like she promised. I grip the metal knob in my hand tightly, squeezing it. I feel the bruises begin to form on my palm.
A hand is on my shoulder. I spin in place and there she is, leaning on the doorjamb, smiling, but sadly. My hug is almost a tackle, and Ding rocks back on her heels. We nearly tumble to the floor.
“I promised you I’d wake you up, ugly,” she tells me.
I begin to cry again. She pats my back comfortingly, but it doesn’t help. She is still leaving. She is still marrying Roy Amparo. She may still be gone forever, and I still may never see her again.
“I’ll miss you.” I tell her. “I love you, you know. I do.”
Ding nods, her head resting beside mine on my shoulder. “I love you, too,” she whispers.
The embrace seems to last for hours, but I don’t let go. I don’t want to lose her yet, to see her broad back disappear as she walks away from our house, away from the place that had been her home with us for fifteen years. At last, we pull apart. She kisses me on the cheek, quick and hard and rough, as if it embarrasses her to show such affection. I try to kiss her long and lightly on the cheek, but my mouth lands awkwardly next to hers. I feel her chapped lips at the corner of my mouth. I don’t pull away. My kiss stays there, on the corner of her lip, warm and wet and sweet.
I break the kiss. My hands travel up to frame her face, to cup it in my palms as I gaze at her. Her face – shining with her natural oils in the humid weather – is wide and round, studded with craters in her skin. The beginnings of a few wrinkles are at the corners of her eyes and around her lips. I think, Now she is beautiful.
My head tilts to one side. Ding’s heart thumps madly in her chest, so strong I feel I can almost hear it. Her eyes are on mine, confused and questioning: What are you doing?
I blink slowly and shake my head: Don’t think about it.
“Don’t think about it,” I say aloud. “Just—” I pause on the last few words, scared and thrilled at the same time. “Just kiss me.”
Our lips meet quickly, but we move slowly. We close the door and lock it—lock it so no one can see us, so no one can see what we are about to do. Ding is pressed against the door, and my mouth is pressed against hers. Our lips part slowly, hesitantly. We are breathing each other’s exhaled breaths and the temperature in the room rises.
Ding is suddenly hungry, her tongue is probing my tongue, my palate, my teeth. I can taste her, and she tastes wonderful. She presses herself against me and we tumble onto my bed. I am pinned beneath her and she is heavy, but I welcome the struggle to breathe.
Our clothes are off, but we remain in our bras and panties. Our sweat mingles as our heated bodies are in constant motion. I feel Ding’s hands – rough, just like the rest of her – on the clasps of my bra. My thumbs are hooked on her underwear, tugging.
Soon, we are naked, our under garments stripped and lying on the floor, abandoned. I am naked when her eyes pass over me, like when she used to bathe me and dress me. Unlike with Maria, I don’t feel self-conscious with Ding. Perhaps it is because I can see her now, too, naked and towering over me.
We kiss again, and we remain imprisoned in this desperate attempt to keep her here, to stop her from leaving, for hours. We make other movements, movements forbidden between two girls – a thirty-eight year old cook and a fifteen-year-old daughter. The things we do leave us gasping, but by the end we are smiling – sadly, but still smiling. My bed crinkles noisily underneath us.
***
“Okay, I’m going now,” Ding whispers beside me. She dresses herself quickly, as if she were hurrying. “The ship leaves in a few hours.”
I stare at her. I feel a mixture of longing and sadness roiling in my gut. She is still leaving. After all this, after what we have just done. Ding looks at me long and hard.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I know we shouldn’t have.”
“But we did.” The taste in my mouth – her taste – is now bitter and unpleasant. “Don’t you know what this means? Are you sure you still want to get married?”
Ding nods slowly.
“You don’t know what you want.”
“I do,” her voice is pleading. “I do know. I know that I want to marry Roy.”
I can feel the hot tears on my face. “Then why did you—?” A sob cuts me off—a sob I can’t keep inside. I take a slow, deep breath. “Do you love him?”
Ding nods. “Yes.”
The corners of my mouth are pulling down. I feel as if a weight has been placed to keep me from smiling, to keep my face etched in a perfect picture of misery. I hug Ding tightly – tighter than I had ever hugged her before. “Then go.” I whisper, and release her.
“I’ll always love you,” she tell me softly, but it is a poor consolation for her leaving.
She unlocks the door and steps out, giving me one last sad glance before closing it, leaving me standing alone in my room, undressed, my clothes scattered across the floor.
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