Martha’s Maid 8/03/06
By James JAJAC
He stared after her anxiously and called out “Martha, please…”
She broke her stride and halted and bowing her head, she looked over her shoulder at him. Her eyes were obscured by the night but her feelings were as transparent as the moon above and he could feel the death in her heart because it was the same pain he felt it in his own.
She joined him again on the path, the dirt road that led to her family’s estate, and they continued their walk.
“Why do you have to go? She asked again “You said you would always be here for me, I believed in you”.
It was as though she could read his every thought- he remembered saying those exact words only a few shorts months ago, lying together by the stream on a night just like this one, their naked bodies touching on the cold grass, still wet from their swim, he sat over her, his wet hair curling into her eyes, he said he loved her and he said he would never leave her, she pressed her lips to his, they were so cold, and she giggled and hid her face, he pulled her hands away to reveal her happy smile, her cheeks flushed red and he held her. That moment froze in his mind; he remembered her eyes and the surprise and excitement of their forbidden joy, the carefree distraction: watching the stars, talking over the sound of rushing water, the howl of a distant wolf, and the gentle push as the wind pressed the leaves above them. It was so silent then, so perfect and he turned to her again on that path, so far from where they were, and her eyes- they were racked with torment and resentment, so far from what they were- he touched her hand.
She drew to a stop and they turned to each other. He brought his face close to hers and their heads pressed together, he could hear her shallow breathing and he knew that she wanted to speak.
It came in a whisper, “Why do you have to go?” The last word was caught by emotion. He replied raising his hand to her cheek “I don’t wish to go, it is not my doing, but I work for my uncle and he is sending me over seas, my relationship to the business is of the utmost importance Martha- it is the link to my freedom, to my livelihood”
“Your livelihood, your freedom?! You knew this would happen, you never intended to stay with me, you told me lies; you could stay if you wanted to -- you choose to go!”
She pulled away from him, this time staying on the path and rushing toward her home.
“Martha wait!” he extended a hand at her and tried to catch her, “Please wait!”
He grasped her shoulder and she spun around slapping him hard across the face.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME NOW, have you not had enough of this? WHAT DO YOU WANT??”
Her words stung, and he felt weakened in his stance, “Please, don’t talk to me this way, I never wanted to…I never meant for it to…”
She turned away leaving him grasping for words.
“I’m sorry Martha, I’m sorry…” he said to aloud no one.
“… I just want you to hold me”.
The night was heavy and damp, there were fireflies coasting across the high grass and trees that reached and jutted out along the landscape; the moon hung like cut paper over a pale grey sky. He saw her dark figure moving away in the distance; at a loss for how to respond, he watched her disappear like a stranger, but his heart ached, and in his mind the walls were closing, it was never meant to end this way.
“I was afraid” he said to himself in a whisper.
Martha reached the clearing and rushed up the stair case, when she put her hand on the door she saw some one was standing there behind the screen door and jumped back. “It’s only me your lady” she spoke, and stepping aside Martha ran past her and up the stairs. She could hear her reach the top of the landing and the door slam shut followed by the sound of springs squealing as she jumped onto her bed; A moment later Helga could make out distinctly her sobbing from the open window above.
Helga pieced it all together; she remembered the very first time the boy had come, over a year ago now. He was so shy and sheepish, and fat, he was over 300 lbs then and even heavier now, he was the fattest boy in the whole town, than she had ever seen, and as for Martha well she wasn’t much better, weighing 400lbs since she was 6 years old- she had collapsed her bed over fifteen times one year, it had to be reinforced with steel.
The first time she saw him he hadn’t even spoken to her just hid in the shrubs and watched her from afar as she dozed in her chair. Helga spotted him from the window and threw a pot at him, he was knocked unconscious and an ambulance was called, it took 12 men to lift him into the vehicle, and Martha? She slept through it all; she didn’t even bat an eye.
The next time he came was more than a month later. He knocked on the door and asked to speak to the lady of the house- He had brought a doll for her, it was wrapped in newspaper and he handed it to her with some flowers and a note. When she greeted him she curtsied and then he kissed her on the hand. He asked her if he might call again tomorrow and she agreed. She was so giddy that night, she just laughed and laughed and ate and ate, she was so excited! She took three baths and tried on every piece of clothing she had in her closet! She danced around the ball room like a frog and then fell on the piano breaking off two of the legs, and even then on the floor lying upon splintered wood with a grand piano on top of her, she had never seen her so full of joy.
He came that next day, she had sat by the window for so long and despairingly, finally she went away full of gloom fearing that he would never come but as she ascended the stairs there was a knock at the door.
Helga peaked out of the kitchen and Martha waved her hand at her and gestured for her to open the door- Martha ran and hid.
She opened the door and there he was in all of his glory. He had combed his hair but he was absolutely drenched in sweat so it hung down into his eyes, he stammered when she opened the door and dropped his pocket watch shattering its glass.
“Is Mary home” he asked?
“You mean Martha?”
“Oh god yeah I mean Martha, of course, is she home? I could some back if she’s not here, could I leave a note, oh my god I’m so late, tell her that –“
“She’s upstairs, I’ll call her”
“OH!! Good, ok I’ll wait, right—here”.
“Martha dear, you have a visitor”
“Oh? And who is it Helga? I have so many callers it is difficult for me to keep track”
Helga angrily poked her head out of the door “What’s your name?”
“My name my dear lady is Leopold Franklin Escobal”
Helga yelled up the stairs
“It’s Leo-bowl!”
Martha delayed her answer just a second and then chimed cheerfully-
“Ah yes Leopold I had been expecting him” and she began to descend the stairs with such forced grace she almost fell three times.
They stepped out onto the porch that day and they sat together talking and drinking lemonade, it wasn’t until dark that she bid him adieu, and gave him a sweet peck on the cheek. Leopold placed his hand upon his heart and said “My lady you have just blessed me with the kiss of the highest magnitude of beauty, I shall swear upon this moment”.
When he walked away that day Helga could see the effect he had on her personality. She was full of roses then, always peering out the windows longingly, always wearing her best dresses, trying to play the piano and singing aloud to her self.
After that he came every day.
They became inseparable; his name was always on her tongue, until one night 3 months ago. They had gone out and when it grew dark, rather than parting ways at night fall Helga watched them take hands and together they walked down the path gazing into each others eyes.
Leopold tripped on a tree root and toppling onto Martha they both toppled down the hill rolling through high grass and weeds finally coming to a stop near the stream.
Helga washed the dishes that night just howling with laughter, she simply could not get the image of Leopold out of her mind, tripping over a tree root in his royal blue suit and dropping onto Martha in her pastel pink dress, every time she thought of it she simply howled and howled, there were tears streaming down her face, she laughed until she coughed and she coughed until she laughed.
Martha came home very late that night and it would take a damn fool not to put the pieces together- after that day nothing was ever the same between them.
Martha was staring at her thumbs. The shade was pulled down and the lights were off and a thin beam of light broke through it onto her hands. She stared at her thumbs and projected her thoughts upon them. She was lying on her bed and had been sobbing until she could cry no more; the tears had dried on her cheeks like long abandoned roads. The stillness of the room crept up on her and her mind came back into focus and she thought of everything, her life from a little baby to this very day raced through her mind until she was running up the stairs and back to exactly where she was. Her thumbs, there was nothing left in the world but two thumbs; she imagined one of them as Leopold and the other as herself. She acted out some of their adventures, and all the times they had spent together, all the words that had been spoken and all of the feelings shared and all of their dreams. With her thumbs pressed together she imagined the silent moments too when there were no words being spoken, just gazing into each others eyes, like staring into endless ocean, meadows of flowing windswept grass, distant clouds rolling across the country sky, a swarm of birds all flying together or simply the calm and loving eyes of Leopold, beautiful handsome lovely Leopold her magic man, her coconut castle, her stuffed chocolate bean, her—
Her thoughts were interrupted momentarily by the sound of Helga’s laughter. She could hear it from all the way downstairs and it echoed through the room like one long tiny endless explosion.
Leopold was in his uncles den and he was being scolded.
“Young man you are frivolous! You are full of nonsense! Just like your father and just like your father’s father- My father! They were frivolous men Leopold; they cared for nothing and spent their lives lost in distractions! Do you think your father made a penny? Or my father? Do you see all of this around you young man? Do you know where it came from? Well do you?”
Leopold rolled his eyes across the room and thought to him self and then shrugged.
“Of course you don’t, of course you don’t! You are a thought less and gay young man but your gayness will not put a roof above your head! How much I have done for you, how much I have fought to keep you on my staff! You are an oaf Leopold, you have broken more furniture than you have sold for sure, but I keep you on staff, I keep you employed because you are my family and I am putting my faith in you! You are the future of my company and I am depending on you to carry my legacy on, to take my enterprises over seas! An opportunity like this does not just jump out at you everyday; do you not understand what I am offering to you? Open your mouth boy! Speak to me- show me there are more than just feathers in that head!”
Leopold frowned and tried to find something intelligible to say—
“Uncle I’m scared”
His uncle pointed his finger at him and was going to laugh at him until he caught something off of his eyes, and his chest filled up with a river of disappointment.
“What is her name?” he beckoned.
“Her name?” Leopold choked.
“You are the same as your father- you are of this family after all! Are you proud? To throw away our lively hood for a roll in the grass? Is that all this is? So that is from where your hesitance stems! Hahaha. “
Leopold watched his uncles eyes turn black.
“You are of such an ordinary temperament! You are weak! I thought I could take you out of this, I thought I could depend on you to carry on for me, for all I’ve done for you! I dragged you out of the GARBAGE! I thought you were better, but you’re the same junk as everyone else in this town, no discipline no ambition no dreams! You can’t see past your own bloody windows! Don’t you see what I am offering you? Leopold you could have it all! You’re young you could have money, riches, beautiful homes and cars, and women you could have millions of beautiful women at your beck and call every day, this is all in your future, don’t you see? Can’t you see how spectacular it will be?”
His uncle’s arms were spread out wide in a gesture meant to convey the vastness of what lay before him in the life he had prepared for him for as long as he could remember.
He stared at his uncle’s body- wiry thin and gaunt, a suit that clung to him like it was his skin, his grey thin hair combed back across his evil skull and his dark coal black eyes that conveyed not a world of emptiness but an entire universe. Traveling down his face his cheeks suddenly lifted and the skin parted to show a mouthful of grey thin straight teeth, they looked just like him. The grim reaper had an invitation and he was surprised that his nephew was less than excited.
“Come here my boy, have a drink. I won’t press the issue, not today at least. You have some time before the final decision is made.”
He poured him a glass of wine and placed it upon the table and then with his back turned, he left the room closing the door behind him.
Leopold glared at it and thought of shattering it against those doors but instead he left it there refusing to even to touch the glass.
He stepped outside into the main hall and approached the entrance.
A voice called out to him from the top of the stairs as if he were waiting for him-
“It’s locked, in case you were wondering. You won’t be leaving this house, not tonight you won’t. I see where I made my mistake with you; I gave you too much freedom, well from here on you better get used to discipline. Those doors will be locked until I open them- is that clear?”
Leopold nodded his head obediently.
His uncle smiled and shook the keys and walking down the hall a door opened and then closed.
He tried the door any way, it was locked. He checked the windows they were all locked, it was like a fortress, there was no way out, and all of the chocolate was gone.
His conflicts all came to meet each other in his mind, each one of them a separate point came together as one. No longer separate they were now one and the same, he reeled and sat down. He tried again to repeat some of his uncles words in his mind to see if his hollow phrases could ever ring true, then staring out the windows feeling like there wasn’t a decision in the world that belonged to him he put his head in his hands and tried to cry, but when nothing came he just closed his eyes.
THE END
By James JAJAC
He stared after her anxiously and called out “Martha, please…”
She broke her stride and halted and bowing her head, she looked over her shoulder at him. Her eyes were obscured by the night but her feelings were as transparent as the moon above and he could feel the death in her heart because it was the same pain he felt it in his own.
She joined him again on the path, the dirt road that led to her family’s estate, and they continued their walk.
“Why do you have to go? She asked again “You said you would always be here for me, I believed in you”.
It was as though she could read his every thought- he remembered saying those exact words only a few shorts months ago, lying together by the stream on a night just like this one, their naked bodies touching on the cold grass, still wet from their swim, he sat over her, his wet hair curling into her eyes, he said he loved her and he said he would never leave her, she pressed her lips to his, they were so cold, and she giggled and hid her face, he pulled her hands away to reveal her happy smile, her cheeks flushed red and he held her. That moment froze in his mind; he remembered her eyes and the surprise and excitement of their forbidden joy, the carefree distraction: watching the stars, talking over the sound of rushing water, the howl of a distant wolf, and the gentle push as the wind pressed the leaves above them. It was so silent then, so perfect and he turned to her again on that path, so far from where they were, and her eyes- they were racked with torment and resentment, so far from what they were- he touched her hand.
She drew to a stop and they turned to each other. He brought his face close to hers and their heads pressed together, he could hear her shallow breathing and he knew that she wanted to speak.
It came in a whisper, “Why do you have to go?” The last word was caught by emotion. He replied raising his hand to her cheek “I don’t wish to go, it is not my doing, but I work for my uncle and he is sending me over seas, my relationship to the business is of the utmost importance Martha- it is the link to my freedom, to my livelihood”
“Your livelihood, your freedom?! You knew this would happen, you never intended to stay with me, you told me lies; you could stay if you wanted to -- you choose to go!”
She pulled away from him, this time staying on the path and rushing toward her home.
“Martha wait!” he extended a hand at her and tried to catch her, “Please wait!”
He grasped her shoulder and she spun around slapping him hard across the face.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME NOW, have you not had enough of this? WHAT DO YOU WANT??”
Her words stung, and he felt weakened in his stance, “Please, don’t talk to me this way, I never wanted to…I never meant for it to…”
She turned away leaving him grasping for words.
“I’m sorry Martha, I’m sorry…” he said to aloud no one.
“… I just want you to hold me”.
The night was heavy and damp, there were fireflies coasting across the high grass and trees that reached and jutted out along the landscape; the moon hung like cut paper over a pale grey sky. He saw her dark figure moving away in the distance; at a loss for how to respond, he watched her disappear like a stranger, but his heart ached, and in his mind the walls were closing, it was never meant to end this way.
“I was afraid” he said to himself in a whisper.
Martha reached the clearing and rushed up the stair case, when she put her hand on the door she saw some one was standing there behind the screen door and jumped back. “It’s only me your lady” she spoke, and stepping aside Martha ran past her and up the stairs. She could hear her reach the top of the landing and the door slam shut followed by the sound of springs squealing as she jumped onto her bed; A moment later Helga could make out distinctly her sobbing from the open window above.
Helga pieced it all together; she remembered the very first time the boy had come, over a year ago now. He was so shy and sheepish, and fat, he was over 300 lbs then and even heavier now, he was the fattest boy in the whole town, than she had ever seen, and as for Martha well she wasn’t much better, weighing 400lbs since she was 6 years old- she had collapsed her bed over fifteen times one year, it had to be reinforced with steel.
The first time she saw him he hadn’t even spoken to her just hid in the shrubs and watched her from afar as she dozed in her chair. Helga spotted him from the window and threw a pot at him, he was knocked unconscious and an ambulance was called, it took 12 men to lift him into the vehicle, and Martha? She slept through it all; she didn’t even bat an eye.
The next time he came was more than a month later. He knocked on the door and asked to speak to the lady of the house- He had brought a doll for her, it was wrapped in newspaper and he handed it to her with some flowers and a note. When she greeted him she curtsied and then he kissed her on the hand. He asked her if he might call again tomorrow and she agreed. She was so giddy that night, she just laughed and laughed and ate and ate, she was so excited! She took three baths and tried on every piece of clothing she had in her closet! She danced around the ball room like a frog and then fell on the piano breaking off two of the legs, and even then on the floor lying upon splintered wood with a grand piano on top of her, she had never seen her so full of joy.
He came that next day, she had sat by the window for so long and despairingly, finally she went away full of gloom fearing that he would never come but as she ascended the stairs there was a knock at the door.
Helga peaked out of the kitchen and Martha waved her hand at her and gestured for her to open the door- Martha ran and hid.
She opened the door and there he was in all of his glory. He had combed his hair but he was absolutely drenched in sweat so it hung down into his eyes, he stammered when she opened the door and dropped his pocket watch shattering its glass.
“Is Mary home” he asked?
“You mean Martha?”
“Oh god yeah I mean Martha, of course, is she home? I could some back if she’s not here, could I leave a note, oh my god I’m so late, tell her that –“
“She’s upstairs, I’ll call her”
“OH!! Good, ok I’ll wait, right—here”.
“Martha dear, you have a visitor”
“Oh? And who is it Helga? I have so many callers it is difficult for me to keep track”
Helga angrily poked her head out of the door “What’s your name?”
“My name my dear lady is Leopold Franklin Escobal”
Helga yelled up the stairs
“It’s Leo-bowl!”
Martha delayed her answer just a second and then chimed cheerfully-
“Ah yes Leopold I had been expecting him” and she began to descend the stairs with such forced grace she almost fell three times.
They stepped out onto the porch that day and they sat together talking and drinking lemonade, it wasn’t until dark that she bid him adieu, and gave him a sweet peck on the cheek. Leopold placed his hand upon his heart and said “My lady you have just blessed me with the kiss of the highest magnitude of beauty, I shall swear upon this moment”.
When he walked away that day Helga could see the effect he had on her personality. She was full of roses then, always peering out the windows longingly, always wearing her best dresses, trying to play the piano and singing aloud to her self.
After that he came every day.
They became inseparable; his name was always on her tongue, until one night 3 months ago. They had gone out and when it grew dark, rather than parting ways at night fall Helga watched them take hands and together they walked down the path gazing into each others eyes.
Leopold tripped on a tree root and toppling onto Martha they both toppled down the hill rolling through high grass and weeds finally coming to a stop near the stream.
Helga washed the dishes that night just howling with laughter, she simply could not get the image of Leopold out of her mind, tripping over a tree root in his royal blue suit and dropping onto Martha in her pastel pink dress, every time she thought of it she simply howled and howled, there were tears streaming down her face, she laughed until she coughed and she coughed until she laughed.
Martha came home very late that night and it would take a damn fool not to put the pieces together- after that day nothing was ever the same between them.
Martha was staring at her thumbs. The shade was pulled down and the lights were off and a thin beam of light broke through it onto her hands. She stared at her thumbs and projected her thoughts upon them. She was lying on her bed and had been sobbing until she could cry no more; the tears had dried on her cheeks like long abandoned roads. The stillness of the room crept up on her and her mind came back into focus and she thought of everything, her life from a little baby to this very day raced through her mind until she was running up the stairs and back to exactly where she was. Her thumbs, there was nothing left in the world but two thumbs; she imagined one of them as Leopold and the other as herself. She acted out some of their adventures, and all the times they had spent together, all the words that had been spoken and all of the feelings shared and all of their dreams. With her thumbs pressed together she imagined the silent moments too when there were no words being spoken, just gazing into each others eyes, like staring into endless ocean, meadows of flowing windswept grass, distant clouds rolling across the country sky, a swarm of birds all flying together or simply the calm and loving eyes of Leopold, beautiful handsome lovely Leopold her magic man, her coconut castle, her stuffed chocolate bean, her—
Her thoughts were interrupted momentarily by the sound of Helga’s laughter. She could hear it from all the way downstairs and it echoed through the room like one long tiny endless explosion.
Leopold was in his uncles den and he was being scolded.
“Young man you are frivolous! You are full of nonsense! Just like your father and just like your father’s father- My father! They were frivolous men Leopold; they cared for nothing and spent their lives lost in distractions! Do you think your father made a penny? Or my father? Do you see all of this around you young man? Do you know where it came from? Well do you?”
Leopold rolled his eyes across the room and thought to him self and then shrugged.
“Of course you don’t, of course you don’t! You are a thought less and gay young man but your gayness will not put a roof above your head! How much I have done for you, how much I have fought to keep you on my staff! You are an oaf Leopold, you have broken more furniture than you have sold for sure, but I keep you on staff, I keep you employed because you are my family and I am putting my faith in you! You are the future of my company and I am depending on you to carry my legacy on, to take my enterprises over seas! An opportunity like this does not just jump out at you everyday; do you not understand what I am offering to you? Open your mouth boy! Speak to me- show me there are more than just feathers in that head!”
Leopold frowned and tried to find something intelligible to say—
“Uncle I’m scared”
His uncle pointed his finger at him and was going to laugh at him until he caught something off of his eyes, and his chest filled up with a river of disappointment.
“What is her name?” he beckoned.
“Her name?” Leopold choked.
“You are the same as your father- you are of this family after all! Are you proud? To throw away our lively hood for a roll in the grass? Is that all this is? So that is from where your hesitance stems! Hahaha. “
Leopold watched his uncles eyes turn black.
“You are of such an ordinary temperament! You are weak! I thought I could take you out of this, I thought I could depend on you to carry on for me, for all I’ve done for you! I dragged you out of the GARBAGE! I thought you were better, but you’re the same junk as everyone else in this town, no discipline no ambition no dreams! You can’t see past your own bloody windows! Don’t you see what I am offering you? Leopold you could have it all! You’re young you could have money, riches, beautiful homes and cars, and women you could have millions of beautiful women at your beck and call every day, this is all in your future, don’t you see? Can’t you see how spectacular it will be?”
His uncle’s arms were spread out wide in a gesture meant to convey the vastness of what lay before him in the life he had prepared for him for as long as he could remember.
He stared at his uncle’s body- wiry thin and gaunt, a suit that clung to him like it was his skin, his grey thin hair combed back across his evil skull and his dark coal black eyes that conveyed not a world of emptiness but an entire universe. Traveling down his face his cheeks suddenly lifted and the skin parted to show a mouthful of grey thin straight teeth, they looked just like him. The grim reaper had an invitation and he was surprised that his nephew was less than excited.
“Come here my boy, have a drink. I won’t press the issue, not today at least. You have some time before the final decision is made.”
He poured him a glass of wine and placed it upon the table and then with his back turned, he left the room closing the door behind him.
Leopold glared at it and thought of shattering it against those doors but instead he left it there refusing to even to touch the glass.
He stepped outside into the main hall and approached the entrance.
A voice called out to him from the top of the stairs as if he were waiting for him-
“It’s locked, in case you were wondering. You won’t be leaving this house, not tonight you won’t. I see where I made my mistake with you; I gave you too much freedom, well from here on you better get used to discipline. Those doors will be locked until I open them- is that clear?”
Leopold nodded his head obediently.
His uncle smiled and shook the keys and walking down the hall a door opened and then closed.
He tried the door any way, it was locked. He checked the windows they were all locked, it was like a fortress, there was no way out, and all of the chocolate was gone.
His conflicts all came to meet each other in his mind, each one of them a separate point came together as one. No longer separate they were now one and the same, he reeled and sat down. He tried again to repeat some of his uncles words in his mind to see if his hollow phrases could ever ring true, then staring out the windows feeling like there wasn’t a decision in the world that belonged to him he put his head in his hands and tried to cry, but when nothing came he just closed his eyes.
THE END
posted by James Jajac at 11:25 AM
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