Chapter 23
Just Let the Maid Pay for the Pot
I walked through the front door feeling great. As with most of my runs with Shadow, the sprint had successfully burned through a large portion of my anxious energy. Shadow made Flora a little uneasy, so I immediately placed him in his crate until she was ready to leave for the day. That departure usually happened within thirty seconds after I got home.
I was just about to go find her when she tentatively entered the living room.
“Miss… I broke your coffee pot. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I will pay for it. Please… don’t fire me.”
She wasn’t actually saying these exact English words. Instead, she was speaking rapid-fire, panicked Spanish, but I understood the meaning in my gut anyway. She stood there trembling, holding the broken pieces of the coffee pot out like a confession.
My words to her were completely misunderstood. They were words she had likely never heard from an employer in her entire life.
“Flora, that coffee pot is not important,” I said gently. “You are.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I will pay for it.” I was assuming that is what her desperate cadence meant.
Suddenly, a massive tropical cockroach went skittering across the tile between us. It drew my eyes, and she noticed my look. Without skipping a beat, Flora slipped off her shoe, stepped clean out of it, and squashed the bug flat against the floor—completely barefooted.
My face instantly twisted into that icky, “ew” scrunch. Flora pointed at my obvious discomfort and burst out laughing at me.
I shuddered.
This wasn’t just a language barrier anymore. How could I possibly make her understand that this was more than a matter of translation? It was a massive cultural breach. We lived in two entirely different worlds—a place where dirty feet were less of a problem than dirty shoes, and where Flora seemed to believe a broken coffee pot mattered more than she did.
“You matter; this pot does not,” I tried again.
I couldn’t honestly say she didn’t respond to that sentence, but she certainly appeared more confused than before. I had to figure out a physical way for her to understand my heart.
I took her by the hand and led her over to the kitchen sink. I picked up a glass juice cup and deliberately smashed it down into the aluminum sink.
I pointed to the shards and said, “Not important.” I knew those two words were close enough to their Spanish counterparts.
She looked at me like I had completely lost my mind and instantly started reaching down to pick up the pieces of broken glass.
“No, Flora! Stop.” I motioned firmly for her to stand back, got a paper towel, and got the mess up myself.
A thousand things ran through my mind in that quiet kitchen, and they all ended in misunderstanding. We had run into this exact problem before when I instructed her that my children’s room was strictly off-limits for her to clean because they were required to pick up after themselves. I had to stop her several times and physically put the kids to work before she finally accepted the rule.
“Rhonda!” I said aloud.
Flora’s head lifted instantly. “Si, Rhonda!” Those were the first words she had said that I understood with absolute certainty.
Rhonda was the woman who had originally introduced us to Flora. Flora had been employed by a colonel who left the base about the same time we arrived, and Rhonda took it upon herself to talk us into hiring her. It had been a much harder sell than Rhonda expected because I wasn’t raised with other people cleaning up my messes. That was my job. But Rhonda spoke both Spanish and English fluently.
I picked up the telephone and quickly dialed my husband’s office. Rhonda was his secretary and always answered the line.
“Mrs. Jackson, one moment and I will get your husband,” she said professionally.
“No, Rhonda, it’s you I need to talk to.”
Flora started motioning frantically for the phone, pulling at the cord. I handed the receiver over to her. A string of fast syllables and emotional words poured out of her—words I had no hope of understanding completely—but I knew she was explaining the coffee pot. She wanted to get her story out first. She wanted Rhonda to know she wanted to keep her job, and that she would gladly pay for the pot to keep it.
Flora finally stopped talking and handed the phone back to me.
“Rhonda,” I said.
Rhonda began explaining and rationalizing the situation over and over.
“Rhonda, no. Rhonda, listen,” I interrupted. “Will you please tell Flora that she’s not paying for the pot? She’s not fired. She is more important than a piece of glass. I won’t take her money.”
“She isn’t going to understand,” Rhonda sighed over the line. “Just let the maid pay for the pot.”
“Rhonda, you can make her understand. She didn’t understand that she wasn’t allowed to clean the kids’ room either, but she knows that now. Make her understand that we appreciate her.”
“I’m not sure I even know the right Spanish word for appreciate,” Rhonda admitted. “But I’ll try.”
There was another long moment of explanation through the receiver. Mistrusting eyes met mine across the counter. Flora handed me the phone again.
“Is it okay now, Rhonda?”
“She still wants to pay for it.”
“I know. Wait, I have a question. Could you please tell her that peanut butter and bologna don’t belong on a sandwich at the same time. She’s been making them for the kids’ lunches and Patrick is homicidal.”
Flora listened. Then she spoke a few more urgent sentences to Rhonda, then handed the phone back to me a final time.
“She wants to know why you broke the glass?” Rhonda asked, her tone softening.
“Oh. I didn’t know how else to explain to her that objects don’t matter to me. She does.”
“I think I can help her understand that now,” Rhonda murmured.
She talked to Flora for another minute, and when Flora handed me the phone again, there was a little more genuine trust shining in her eyes. I could hear Rhonda sniffling on the other end of the line as she asked, “Lee Ann, why didn’t you just tell her yes? You knew she was offering to pay for it. It would have been a lot easier.”
“I wanted to treat her the way I always hoped that the people I love would treat me.”
Rhonda took a ragged breath. “Put her back on the phone.”
After a few final words, they hung up. Flora stood in my kitchen, quietly wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron. Bridging cultures cannot be done by merely learning another’s language.