CLEANING LADIES
Part Two of Four
by Marie Delgado Travis
Another of my cleaning ladies, this time in Puerto Rico, was so bad that I had a hard time remembering her name to write this ... cuyo nombre no quiero recordar. But it came back to me anyway. It was Ada ... Doña Ada. She had my key and came in once a week while I was working. She was extremely clumsy, but honest to a fault. Making coffee one morning, I noticed that the generally square glass pot in the coffee maker was unusually round. Slight problem. I only noticed this after I had started brewing and coffee was now spilling uncontrollably over counters, into cabinet drawers, onto my business suit and all over the floor. And I was already running late for work. But wasn’t Doña Ada a dear to replace the pot after breaking it?
A myriad of fragile items -- a handmade, original lamp, fine china, a precious vase, etc. -- disappeared on a regular basis, only to reappear again in a totally unrecognizable, bargain basement, mismatched form. Still, for reasons which I could only attribute to my sappily idealistic Catholic school upbringing, I recommended my housekeeper to my account executive, Jorge. Jorge and I worked together on the Nestlé account and I presented him with a Quik Bunny, one of my early premiums, as a memento.
A sweet gesture, except that Doña Ada smoked cigarettes as she cleaned. One day, as she picked up the stuffed toy to dust under it, the rabbit caught fire. Doña Ada began shaking it to put the fire out, which only spread the fire further ... to Jorge´s curtains, his bedding, his bedroom furniture. On second thought, maybe I should have kept Doña Ada to myself – my very own secret, high grade weapon of mass destruction.
What I really couldn’t understand was why the vodka and gin in my cabinet kept disappearing. I kept testing the caps to see if maybe the alcohol was evaporating. One day, Doña Ada called to say that unfortunately, she wouldn’t be able to work for me anymore. But before I could say, ¨Yay! ¨ she explained that she had been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, which deeply saddened me.
It took me a while to put the pieces together. But I recently read that alcoholics often prefer gin and vodka because they can refill the bottles with water and no one’s the wiser. Not only was Doña Ada clumsy, she wasn’t even that smart.
Maybe that’s why I liked her so much. I could always count on Doña Ada to make me look like a rocket scientist.
Read Part Three next month.
