Gran always said that the truth is subjective, which is something I failed to comprehend until my own life experience proved her wisdom. Now I understand. My truth is not the same as yours because we don’t experience life in the same way.
We are all the same in different ways.
This more flexible notion of truth is something I can live with—more than that, it’s something that gives me great comfort these days.
I am learning to be less literal, less absolute about most things. The world is a better place seen through a prism of colors rather than merely in black and white. In this new world, there is room for versions and variations, for shades of gray.
The version of the truth I told on the stand on my day in court is exactly that—a version of my experiences and memories on the day that I found Mr. Black dead in his bed. My truth highlights and prioritizes my lens on the world; it focuses on what I see best and obscures what I fail to understand—or what I choose not to examine too closely.
Justice is like truth—it, too, is subjective. So many of those who deserve to be punished never receive their just deserts, and in the meantime, good people, decent people, are charged with the wrong crimes. It’s a flawed system—justice—a dirty, messy, imperfect system. But if the good people accept personal responsibility for exacting justice, would we not have a better chance of cleaning the entire world, of holding the liars, the cheaters, the users, and the abusers to account?
I do not share my views on this subject widely. Who would care? After all, I’m just a maid.
On my day in court, I told those gathered about the day I found Mr. Black dead in his bed. I told it how I saw it, how I lived it, only I cut the story short. Yes, I did check Mr. Black’s neck for a pulse only to find none. I did call down to Reception asking for help. I did turn to the bedroom door and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Only then did I realize I was not alone in the room. There was in fact a figure standing in the corner. A dark shadow fell across the person’s face, but I could see their hands clearly, and a pillow, clutched close to their heart. This figure reminded me so much of myself, and of Gran. It was as if I was seeing myself reflected twice in the mirror. That’s when I fainted.
The story continues after that. Much like an episode of Columbo: there’s always something more that wasn’t seen before.
It wasn’t a man, the figure in the corner.
When I awoke, I found myself on the floor beside the bed. Someone was fanning my face with hotel stationery. After a few deep breaths, my vision sharpened. It was a woman. She was middle-aged, with salt-and-pepper hair held back by the sunglasses propped on her head. Her hair was cut neatly into a bob, styled straight, much like my own. She was wearing a loose-fitting white blouse and dark pants. She was crouched over me, a worried look on her face. I didn’t recognize her face, not at first.
“Are you all right?” she asked as she stopped her fanning.
My first instinct was to reach for the phone again.
“Please,” she said. “You don’t need to do that.”
I brought myself to a seated position, pushing my back against the bedside table. She took two steps backward, giving me space, but she kept her eyes on me.
“I’m terribly sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize there was another guest in the room. But I must—”
“You must nothing. Please. Hear me out before you touch the phone.”
She did not sound angry or even tense. She was merely offering a suggestion.
I did as I was told.
“Would you like a glass of water?” she asked. “And maybe something sweet?”
I wasn’t ready to stand. I didn’t trust my legs. “Yes,” I said. “That would be most kind.”
She nodded once and left the room. I could hear her rummaging around in the sitting room. Then I heard the rush of water from the bathroom tap.
A moment later, she was back in the bedroom, crouching in front of me. She passed me a glass of water, which I took in my shaky hands and drank greedily.
“Here,” she said once I’d finished, “I found this in your cleaning cart.”
It was a chocolate, for turn-down services. Strictly speaking, it was not mine to eat, but this was an extraordinary circumstance and she’d already opened the wrapper.
“You’ll feel better,” she said.
She passed me the square of chocolate, put it right into the palm of my hand.
“Thank you,” I replied. I placed the whole square on my tongue. It dissolved instantly, the sugar working its magic.
She waited a moment, then asked, “Can I help you?” She reached out her hand.
I put my unsteady hand in hers and with her assistance, I was soon standing beside her. The room came into sharper focus. The ground was solid beneath my feet.
We stood there beside the bed, looking at each other for a moment, neither of us daring to look away.
“We don’t have much time,” she said. “Do you know who I am?”
I studied her more closely. She looked vaguely familiar, but she also looked like every other middle-aged female guest who frequented the hotel.
“My apologies, I’m afraid…”
And that’s when it hit me. From the newspapers. From our one brief encounter in the elevator. It was Mrs. Black. Not the second Mrs. Black, Giselle, but the first Mrs. Black, the original wife.
“Ah,” she said as she neatly tucked the chocolate wrapper into her pants pocket. “Recognition dawns.”
“Mrs. Black, I’m terribly sorry to intrude, but I do believe that your former husband…I believe Mr. Black is dead.”
She nodded slowly. “My ex-husband was a cheater and a thief and an abuser and a criminal.”
I started to put it together then, only then. “Mrs. Black,” I asked. “Did you…did you kill Mr. Black?”
“I suppose that depends on your point of view,” she said. “I believe he killed himself, slowly, over time, that he became infected by his own greed, that he robbed his children and me of a normal life, that he modeled corruption and evil in just about every way a man can. My two sons are his clones, and they’re now drug-addled slobs who flit from party to party, spending their father’s money. And my daughter, Victoria, all she wants is to clean up the family business, to run it with some decency, but her own father wants to disown her. He wouldn’t have stopped until Victoria and I were both destitute. And he did this even though she’s a forty-nine-percent shareholder. Well, she was a forty-nine-percent shareholder. She’ll be more than that now….”
She looked at Mr. Black, dead on the bed, then back at me.
“I came only to talk to him, to ask him to give Victoria a chance. But when he let me in, he was drunk, popping pills, slurring his words, muttering about Giselle being a gold-digging bitch, just like me, how we’re both good-for-nothing bimbo wives, the two biggest mistakes of his life. He was obnoxious and a bully. In other words, he was his usual self.”
She paused.
“He grabbed me by the wrists. I’ll have bruises.”
“Just like Giselle,” I said.
“Yes. Just like the new and improved Mrs. Black. I tried to warn her. Giselle. But she didn’t listen. Too young to know any better.”
“He beats her too,” I said.
“Not anymore,” she replied. “He would have done worse to me, but he started to heave and pant. He let go of my wrists. Then he stumbled to the bed, kicked off his shoes and lay down, just like that.”
Her eyes darted to the pillow on the floor, then away. “Tell me,” she said. “Do you ever feel like the world is backward? Like the villains prosper and the good suffer?”
It was as though she were reading my deepest thoughts. My mind flitted through a short list of those who had taken from me unjustly and had caused me to suffer—Cheryl, Wilbur…and a man I’d never met, my own father.
“Yes,” I said. “I feel that way all the time.”
“Me too,” she replied. “In my experience, there are times when a good person must do something that’s not quite right, but it’s still the right thing to do.”
Yes, she was right.
“What if it were different this time?” she asked. “What if we took matters into our own hands and balanced the scales? What if you didn’t see me? What if I just walked out of the hotel and never looked back?”
“You’d be recognized, would you not?”
“If people actually read the newspapers delivered to their doors, but I doubt they do. I’m largely invisible. Just another gray-haired, middle-aged woman in loose-fitting clothes and sunglasses walking out the back door of the Regency Grand. Just another nobody.”
Invisible in plain sight, just like me.
“What did you touch?” I asked her.
“Excuse me?”
“When you entered the suite, what did you touch?”
“Oh…I touched the doorknob and probably the door itself. I think I laid a hand on the bureau by the door. I didn’t sit down. I couldn’t. He was chasing me around the room, yelling and spitting in my face. He grabbed my wrists, so I don’t think I ever actually touched him. I took that pillow off the bed and…That’s it, I believe.”
We were both silent for a moment, staring at the pillow on the floor. I thought again of Gran. I didn’t understand her back then, not entirely, but during that moment with Mrs. Black, I suddenly saw it clearly—how mercy takes unexpected forms.
I looked up at her, this virtual stranger who was so much like me.
“They’re not coming,” she said. “Whoever you called earlier.”
“No, they won’t. They don’t listen well. Not to me. I’ll have to call again.”
“Now?”
“No, not yet.”
I didn’t know what else to say. My feet turned to stone as they do when I’m nervous. “You best be going,” I eventually said. “Please don’t let me delay you.” I offered a slight curtsy.
“And what will you do? When I’m gone?”
“I’ll do what I always do. I’ll clean everything up. I’ll take away my water glass. I’ll wipe down the front doorknob and the bureau. I’ll polish the faucet in the bathroom. I’ll put that pillow on the floor in my laundry hamper. It will be cleaned in the basement and returned to another room in a state of perfection. No one will ever know it was here.”
“Just like me?”
“Yes,” I said. “And after I’ve returned those few areas of the suite to a state of perfection, I’ll call Reception again and reiterate my urgent request for help.”
“You never saw me,” she said.
“And you never saw me,” I replied.
She left then. She simply walked out of the bedroom and out the front door of the suite. I didn’t move until I heard the front door click behind her.
That was the last time I saw Mrs. Black, the first Mrs. Black. Or didn’t see her. So much depends on your point of view.
Once she was gone, I cleaned things up as I said I would. I put the pillow she left behind into the laundry hamper in my trolley. I called down to Reception, for the second time, once I fully regained consciousness, just like I said in court. And at long last, a few minutes later, help arrived.
I sleep well at night now, perhaps better than I ever have before because I lie beside Juan Manuel, my dearest friend in all the world. He’s a heavy sleeper, just like Gran was—he falls asleep before his head hits the pillow. We sleep together under Gran’s lone-star quilt because some things are better kept the same, whereas other things are better when they change a little. On the walls around us I’ve taken down Gran’s landscape paintings, replacing them with framed photos of Juan Manuel and me.
I listen to his breathing, like rolling waves—in, out, in. And I count my blessings. There are so many of them it’s daunting. I know my conscience is clean because I make it through fewer and fewer blessings each night before I fall into pleasant dreams. I wake up refreshed and joyful, ready to seize the day.
If all of this has taught me anything, it is this: there’s a power in me I never knew was there. I always knew there was power in my hands—to clean, to wipe away dirt, to scour and disinfect, to set things right. But now I know there’s power elsewhere—in my mind. And in my heart too.
Gran was correct after all. About all of it. About everything.
The longer you live, the more you learn.
People are a mystery that can never be solved.
Life has a way of sorting itself out.
Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
