PART 1: DISMISSAL AFTER EIGHTEEN YEARS
Julian Whitaker looked at me as if I were nothing more than an old chair his father had forgotten to throw away. After eighteen years of Mr. Whitaker’s care, Julian fired me for four hundred dollars and ordered me out of the house before sundown. Three days later, his father’s lawyer called, and what he revealed nearly made me collapse. That morning, sunlight shone through the tall windows of the Whitaker estate as I arranged fresh lilies on the hallway table.
Mr. Whitaker always wanted flowers in the house, and without him, the mansion seemed painfully empty. I had started working for him nearly two decades earlier, when he was already a widower. Somewhere along the way, we had become an unusual family of two. When my daughter died, he sat quietly next to me on the kitchen counter. He didn’t offer me advice or empty comfort. He simply stayed there because he understood that sometimes grief needed companionship, not words. Every Monday, he would ask about my grandson.
“How’s Danny, Martha? Is he still drawing those spaceships?”
“It is, sir. Now it’s adding aliens.”
“Fine. Tell him I want to see one.”
A week before Mr. Whitaker died, Danny had drawn him a rocket surrounded by green aliens. Mr. Whitaker had taped it to the refrigerator himself. I remembered that moment when the front door slammed and Julian came into the foyer. I had met Mr. Whitaker’s son only a few times in eighteen years. His father sat by the phone every Sunday night, waiting for calls that almost never came. Julian looked at me without recognizing him.
“It’s Mary, isn’t it? Or Mara?”
“Martha, sir.”
“Okay. I’m looking into my father’s cases. Meet me at the office in ten minutes.”
He left before I could answer. Mr. Whitaker had once promised that I would always be looked after, but I assumed he was just comforting an elderly housekeeper. I straightened my apron and walked into the office, where Julian stood behind his father’s desk, patting a white folder in his palm.
“I’ll be brief. We no longer require your services.”
“I don’t understand. Your father said I would always have a place here.”
“My father is dead.”
His words touched me more deeply than I expected. He pushed the envelope onto the desk.
“There’s four hundred dollars in there. A week’s compensation. More than most housekeepers would get.”
“My position?”
“You’re an employee, Marta, not a member of my family. I want you to leave before sunset.”
Eighteen years of meals, medicine, solitary vacations, and late-night conversations had been reduced to four hundred dollars. I asked if I could have the little radio I kept in the closet. Julian said I could have anything that really belonged to me. Near the window hung a framed photograph of the mansion at sunset. Mr. Whitaker had given it to me years before.
“He told me I could have this photo.”
Julian just looked at it.
“This cheap thing? Take it and go.”
I pressed the frame to my chest, not knowing that it contained the only thing that would protect me. Upstairs, I folded my apron, put the radio inside, and wrapped the photo in a tea towel. Miguel, the gardener, saw me leave through the side door.
“Where are you going;”
“At my daughter’s house. Julian kicked me out.”
“He can’t do that. Mr. Whitaker promised—”
Miguel stopped abruptly, as if he had almost revealed something. I told him that Julian could do whatever he wanted now and got on the bus. Forty minutes later, I arrived at my daughter’s apartment. Danny was finishing his homework at the kitchen table.
“Abuela, why are you home on Tuesday?”
“I’m tired, kiddo. Finish your math.”
“Are you okay?”
“I will be.”
I placed the photo on the windowsill and started thinking about finding another job.
