Faulty Loyalty

If I have one good quality it is that I am loyal. To a fault.

I’ve gone to the same hairdresser for over thirty years, I eat at the same little lunch place every week and order the same thing (the Chinese chicken salad), and I’ve had the same housekepper and gardener for close to twenty years.

In this fast-paced age of chasing the latest and greatest, this gives me a sense of stability and more than that; these people are like family to me.

Which makes what I’m about to say well, uncomfortable.

Our housekeeper is legally blind and our gardener is perpetually MIA—which has caused me to question my faulty loyalty.

Since our home is modest and it’s just my husband and me, both Maria and Pedro come once a week and that’s plenty. Through the years we have established the practice of paying them when we leave town and when they’re sick or have an emergency and can’t make it.

Because that’s what family does.

But in the past year, my husband and I have spent many a weekend trimming trees, raking leaves, and cutting back rose bushes instead of waiting for Pedro to get around to it—and pre-cleaning the house before Maria comes on Saturdays.

Maria is barely five feet tall, pathologically private, and seems to be about my age (late fifties) although it’s really hard to tell. She could be thirty-five—or seventy. She has never learned to speak English but that’s okay. Between my broken high-school Spanish and the translator app on my phone—we communicate with each other beautifully. She has endeared herself to me by saying “yes” to everything I ask her to do even though I know she has no idea what I’ve said—because it never gets done. She is as honest and trustworthy as the day is long, which is imperative—but truth be told she’s not the best house cleaner on the planet and she breaks something I love once a month.

But just when I hear about somebody better, I come home to find she has cut fresh flowers from my garden and put them into an old, silver mint-julep cup on my bathroom sink. Or “broomed” a rat to death who had the misfortune to be lurking next to the bar-b-que.

So, after eighteen years, just when she was hitting her stride, Maria had a botched cataract surgery on her right eye. One Saturday morning in May she showed up wearing thick, black glasses and a pirate patch. All drugged up and bumping into walls, we told her to forget about cleaning, paid her for the day, and made sure she got home safely. A few weeks later, for reasons known only to Maria, the timing seemed perfect to have the same surgery on her remaining one good eye.

Unfortunately, that surgery didn’t go well either which left her unable to drive, cook, or see anything in focus. After taking a couple of weeks off, a friend dropped her off at our house unannounced one Saturday morning. When she walked in the door we were stunned. Both eyes were covered with a gooey ointment that was seeping out from the edges of gauze patches, and she could barely make out our faces. It was then that she informed us that she was legally blind but when pressed, she wouldn’t go into any details. Dismissed with a huff, she silenced us by grabbing the vacuum, turning it on, and using the hose like a white cane, banging her way down the hall.

My moldings have never been the same. They wince when they see her coming.

Then there is Pedro. Pedro is a dream. He is the kind of gardener who treats your garden as if it were his own. He trims, weeds and mulches without being asked and over the years we’ve formed an alliance against the squirrels that dig up most of my potted flowers and wreak havoc with the wires for the landscape lighting. He is hardworking and reliable. At least he was until last summer when he stopped showing up. Instead, he sent “The B Team”, who I have to say are terrible. They are of the cursed “mow-n-blow” variety I have been so lucky avoid. When I asked them to trim back the bougainvillea, they Edward Scissorhanded off all of the hot pink summer foliage, leaving just the bare, woody stems.

One Tuesday in late October I came home to find Pedro in the backyard shaking his head in disgust at the hack job I’d done on the rose bushes. Overcome with joy I ran over and hugged him awkwardly while simultaneously knocking the wind out of him with my purse. While he recovered, I peppered him with questions like, “Where have you been?” and “Why haven’t you returned my texts?”

The whole scene felt eerily similar to a bad break-up or five I’d had back in the day.

In a whisper that was barely audible, he told me that his fifteen-year-old son had died of cancer. In the same spooky whisper, I tried to console him by confiding to him that I talk to dead people and that I had it on good authority that love never dies. Now on top of being consumed by grief, the man was scared witless. Rattled, he made a hasty retreat. I’ve never seen someone who wasn’t being chased by a wild animal run so fast. That was the last time I saw Pedro and since it is no longer the beneficiary of his magical green thumb the garden has suffered dramatically.

I’ve been forced to start to asking around for someone else, all the while feeling as if I’m cheating on him.

My friends have noticed my paint-less moldings and hacked up hedges. They chide me about my misguided loyalty, reminding me that I pay good money and that “enough is enough.” But family is family and like most, we are dysfunctional as hell. But one thing is certain; while my loyalty to Maria and Pedro may be in question—my affection for them will never be.

Carry on,
xox