her mind. She rushed across the tiny room and grabbed the pillow, began beating it relentlessly against the sagging mattress of the bed. She beat it until the pillowcase tore and the pillow went flying across the room to land with a smack against the wall.
Standing there holding the case bunched in her hands, she glared into the darkness and saw fed, the red of blood, the red of murder, the red of betrayal and lies and dying young.
Had a man, any man, stepped into her room at that moment, Kay Mandel would have turned on him and clawed open his throat with her nail-bitten and savaged fingers. Nothing in the world would have been able to stop her. It was men who left their women to raise children alone the way her father had left her mother. Men who took mistresses and thought it their divine right to do so. Men who took up guns and . . .
Men who were the enemy.
Six
Kay arrived at the Severenson Maid Service offices promptly at nine when her appointment with the manager was arranged. There was a brief interview, but the job was really hers already, due to Dr Shawn's earlier phone calls to the company. Kay filled out the W-2 forms, papers for health insurance, and was told her pay was seven dollars an hour, time and a half for overtime.
She was put into another room—a small cubicle with one chair and a television with a video recorder sitting alongside it. There, for the next hour, she watched dully as the duties of a Severenson maid were detailed. An actress in a maid's uniform went through the motions. Kay thought she wasn't having much fun. Greeting the client at the door, making sure the uniform—traditional black with a white skirt and white cap—was in order, no gum in the apron pocket, no cigarettes, hair put up off the neck, shoes clean and shined. If there was a list left by the client, the maid was supposed to do those chores first—what Severenson called “special chores, always done in good humor and with an obedient smile.” That did not negate the fact that she was responsible for cleaning toilets, tubs, doing one load of laundry, vacuuming, dusting, bed-making, and general tidying up. The video hurried the actress through these chores, showing just the beginning of them, and then the results. A perfectly clean and orderly household. Sparkling like new. A glory to behold.
Kay yawned, but watched the tape through. Back in the outer office she was given two uniforms, two caps, two aprons. Size seven. She was to begin tomorrow. She was paid every Friday. She was not to be late to a client's home, and she was not to fraternize with either the woman or the man of the house. Her job had sharp parameters, these to be met precisely by Severenson rule and regulation.
Kay hated it before she left the personnel office. She knew how to endure, however, and that was part of the plan. She realized she was too old for dancing again, her competition being eighteen- and twenty-year-old women with unsullied bodies, with bellies tight as the skin of basketballs, and breasts as big as softballs. Yet, if there was a minuscule chance of dancing on stage again, she would prefer it to being a maid. At least dancing was something she knew, it was familiar. And in some way she instinctively understood, dancing in a G-string demeaned the voyeuristic men more than it did the dancer. Cleaning the beautiful residences of Houston's rich made her feel like a slave. There was no advantage in it, no power over men.
At the first house she was sent to, Kay was greeted at the door not by a grown person, but a child. A little boy hardly tall enough to have opened the door. He stood there in navy blue short pants and a crisp white shirt, staring at her with big liquid-brown eyes. “Hi,” he said. “My mother's in the bathroom.”
Kay froze. He was the first child she had seen since her own children had died. There had been no children in the section of Marion she was kept in. No children on the bus to Houston. No
Standing there holding the case bunched in her hands, she glared into the darkness and saw fed, the red of blood, the red of murder, the red of betrayal and lies and dying young.
Had a man, any man, stepped into her room at that moment, Kay Mandel would have turned on him and clawed open his throat with her nail-bitten and savaged fingers. Nothing in the world would have been able to stop her. It was men who left their women to raise children alone the way her father had left her mother. Men who took mistresses and thought it their divine right to do so. Men who took up guns and . . .
Men who were the enemy.
Six
Kay arrived at the Severenson Maid Service offices promptly at nine when her appointment with the manager was arranged. There was a brief interview, but the job was really hers already, due to Dr Shawn's earlier phone calls to the company. Kay filled out the W-2 forms, papers for health insurance, and was told her pay was seven dollars an hour, time and a half for overtime.
She was put into another room—a small cubicle with one chair and a television with a video recorder sitting alongside it. There, for the next hour, she watched dully as the duties of a Severenson maid were detailed. An actress in a maid's uniform went through the motions. Kay thought she wasn't having much fun. Greeting the client at the door, making sure the uniform—traditional black with a white skirt and white cap—was in order, no gum in the apron pocket, no cigarettes, hair put up off the neck, shoes clean and shined. If there was a list left by the client, the maid was supposed to do those chores first—what Severenson called “special chores, always done in good humor and with an obedient smile.” That did not negate the fact that she was responsible for cleaning toilets, tubs, doing one load of laundry, vacuuming, dusting, bed-making, and general tidying up. The video hurried the actress through these chores, showing just the beginning of them, and then the results. A perfectly clean and orderly household. Sparkling like new. A glory to behold.
Kay yawned, but watched the tape through. Back in the outer office she was given two uniforms, two caps, two aprons. Size seven. She was to begin tomorrow. She was paid every Friday. She was not to be late to a client's home, and she was not to fraternize with either the woman or the man of the house. Her job had sharp parameters, these to be met precisely by Severenson rule and regulation.
Kay hated it before she left the personnel office. She knew how to endure, however, and that was part of the plan. She realized she was too old for dancing again, her competition being eighteen- and twenty-year-old women with unsullied bodies, with bellies tight as the skin of basketballs, and breasts as big as softballs. Yet, if there was a minuscule chance of dancing on stage again, she would prefer it to being a maid. At least dancing was something she knew, it was familiar. And in some way she instinctively understood, dancing in a G-string demeaned the voyeuristic men more than it did the dancer. Cleaning the beautiful residences of Houston's rich made her feel like a slave. There was no advantage in it, no power over men.
At the first house she was sent to, Kay was greeted at the door not by a grown person, but a child. A little boy hardly tall enough to have opened the door. He stood there in navy blue short pants and a crisp white shirt, staring at her with big liquid-brown eyes. “Hi,” he said. “My mother's in the bathroom.”
Kay froze. He was the first child she had seen since her own children had died. There had been no children in the section of Marion she was kept in. No children on the bus to Houston. No