It started with a whisper. Eyes shut, I saw her now, nestled by the windowsill, the thin rays of a christening dawn lighting the floating dust disturbed by her soft breath; a swirling of a sweet wish.
“Josefina,” she said. “Josefina, Josefina, I want to go out.”
She could not. On the first day any of the help came buzzing at the mansion gates, white papers near-crumpled in our brown hands, Mr Randolph exchanged those for an order: keep Eleanor in the house. Who? Eleanor, the youngest. Where? Here, not a step beyond the gate. Why? The job pays well. Don’t you want it?
I had wanted it. The Randolphs were the closest thing I’d have to a steady stream of money wired across states, continents, and oceans with no interruption. Slinking in the shadows of white mansions in Ivoryville, Nebraska, full of the same white legacies, there was no prodding of missing visas and duplicated recommendations.
I could stay. Stay and work. Stay and work and save too little and send it all to my children waiting thousands of miles away for signs of my affection.
But “Josefina,” she’d said. “Josefina, it’s my birthday.”
In the years I’ve worked here, it was always on Eleanor’s birthday that she’d asked. The same scene by the same windowsill; the same sweet wish whispered like an enticing secret to be sworn into; a lonely call for loyalty.
I arrived a few months before her sixteenth. She wasn’t Eleanor yet, and I wasn’t Josefina. No. Sorry, miss. Sorry, can’t. Then a year. I was Josefina with a drawn-out joe-see that I never corrected, entranced each time her lips stretched and curled. At seventeen, she was still Miss to me.
“Josefina?”
Eleanor was a child. Eighteen and grown and sworn to be forever hidden, I returned her pleading whisper.
I don’t want to lose job.
You won’t. I won’t. We’ll be quiet.
Maybe wait? Now, she’s grown. Maybe Sir…?
Birthday’s done and nothing. Come on. I know you hear her. Crying. You all see her. A ghost in the sun.
But, my kids.
I have kids. I love my kids. And Miss? What, not a kid?
Okay. Okay.
Okay.
It was a few months into our sneaking Eleanor out when the murders started. Before the police started calling it that, we did.
Sending mail. My Miss. Opened the door and blood everywhere. Hard to wash. Buying groceries. Doctor said was from birth. A tear they didn’t catch. What about baby now? Wiring money, wondering with every count if I could call, if I could call and crave to hear my children cry and call and crave for me this time. He liar. Gun police came. Says shh shh so we won’t panic. Peace in their white town.
I wasn’t surprised that a policeman rang the gates soon after. Mr Randoph was out. Sir Junior, too. Ms Randolph, the eldest, stood tall as no pregnant woman could be, twins swelling her heavily. She didn’t sit. Fingers interlaced over the bump was all she needed to make the policeman’s position clear. This was no interrogation.
Ma’am, this isn’t something we can ignore. Officer Jackson, was it? You look tired. Take a seat. Tunde, get the lemon water. Look, the Randolphs have been ‘round a long time. Long enough for all that talk not to be just that. Generations. Quite long for our good American name to link with all the others here. Jackson’s a good name, hm? Josefina, some snacks. What are you implying, Ms Randolph? Careful of that gun now, officer. Ivoryville needs no more blood on a good American Jackson, does it?
He left, as they all did in the end. Defeated. Another one who failed to snap cuffs on the Randolphs once and for all. Speculation. A word the father spat, the son stuck to, and the eldest entrenched into the roots of their white name as a defense.
I knew about that. All of us did; information passed through the chain, links containing pieces of our forbidden judgment. This Sir cuts pay when breakfast is late. That Mister hits Their Miss who uses you as a battered, barely fixed shield, band-aids covering black-eyes and bruises between legs. And the Randolphs tortured. And the Randolphs killed. They experimented. They trafficked. And the Randolphs always got away with it.
I didn’t care. I was paid well, and Eleanor returned with the sunset brimming through her.
But the third, fourth, and sixth dead white mothers demanded attention.
“Speculation,” Eleanor said, near sobbing. “Josefina, it’s all speculation. Just because I’m white and a woman…? No, no, Josefina, tell them. Speculation. It’s not a psycho out there who’ll kill me, you understand? Speculation. Josefina, Josefina, you promised.”
A few hours every other day in a week. A rota of responsibility where Eleanor trades my hand for another, her fingers winding ‘round the links guiding her through the shadows of Ivoryville. She was happy. I could see it with the blood finally stirring in her hands eagerly grasping me when I’d come in the morning to fetch her; like a child who came alive because I chose it and it chose me and choosing was something someone like me craved like a dream.
God, Eleanor was happy.
But she was a white girl being led around by the brown help, who had exchanged their papers for a job and an oath we were breaking. Even if the Randolphs were the ones on a murder spree, I knew what color hands would be cuffed.
“Josefina,” Eleanor said again, again, again. “Don’t let me die, Josefina.”
She never did what I heard other children here did; who had the choice of not eating, not sleeping, not drinking the water easily winding through Western pipes whining from abundance. But she tugged at my sleeve again. But she whimpered and whined and made tears fall; her, mine, hers, mine, mine, hers, hers, hers.
I won’t, I said then. I won’t, Eleanor.
I know what you’re doing.
You don’t.
I saw you. With Miss. With our new ones who don’t know better. I know, I know.
Quiet! You know? What you know? Nothing.
I need job. All us need job. Our kids on the line. It’s us, then them. Us, us!
I have kids. Miss is Sir’s kid. He’s doing it wrong. I’m being good. I know this is good.
Stupid. You know what I know? White girl make you brown bad.
Someone made the choice.
Mr Randolph stood before his desk, holding my papers. He went through it, reading every page right in front of me.
Her birthday. Eighteen. What’s so special about that? Grown. Big now. I never knew that living for some years could justify dragging good people like you into trouble. She’s my daughter. You? Just a little time. I have her come back fine. I see. You think this was all harmless and good because you think her family keeping her close is bad. Sir. No use denying it. I can already see that child in your eyes. How unfortunate, Josefina. Sir?
He didn’t fire me. I kept my job, and my papers remained in his office. No beatings I had to endure; I was a person, still. And so I was disciplined as one: curfew, cut pay, my children forbidden to contact and coddle and craze myself over wondering if they still remember their mother.
And I could no longer attend to Eleanor.
What a cruel, fool-stupid man, thinking these would redirect me back to the ‘right’; back to just my job, back to just colored loyalty, back to just working in the shadows. Maria Josefina Anabel Duarte. Simple, single-minded, simpering for any sliver of security in pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters like all the other Josefinas, coming in an unending stream to white mansion gates.
For them, I’d simply gotten blindly attached to the nearest child to ease the gnawing guilt of leaving all of ours back home.
“Josefina,” she said, twirling in my uniform. “How cute. I’ll look just like you. Josefina, isn’t my bed good? Don’t worry. I always come back, don’t I?”
The cold metal of the spare key burned in my palm, searing into my blood; a brand stirring. Then, it was gone. Eleanor’s fingers, Eleanor’s smile, Eleanor’s eyes and heart and voice were the cooling balm to the emptiness we gouged into ourselves night through life through generations. I cannot be faulted for seeking her, for siding with her, for thinking, foolishly, of my Miss as salvation.
Josefina! What you doing? Weren’t you listening? This is—
Give it. Give it now.
No. No, I don’t like your look. Now, I know you know what’s this. Now, I go. Mister, Sir, even big Miss; they need to know. They need to—
Stop.
What you doing? What you doing?
What… I need… to do.
God. God, Josefina. God help you, what’d you do?
You got kids, too. You’re here, they’re there. But Miss? Miss…
Not yours. God help you, Josefina, she never yours.
No. But now I’m hers.
Fool. And now you’re not yours. And now we don’t call you ours.
With all the luxuries she’s afforded, Eleanor wasn’t much of a prisoner. But it was a child in prison. Even with how different things were here, I couldn’t be the only one who thought it wrong; thought it unjust; thought it the slithering sin God would praise me to forgo everything to make rightrightrightright.
I believed in God when I burned the embroidered hair ribbon the policeman was now looking for. A tip-off. An Armando or an Antonio or an Alonzo he’d enlisted to search where his people couldn’t. Gone now, I was sure. I saw him off after all.
I understand you were close? We’re all close here. Small town. Yes. Seems like it’s getting smaller, too. Quieter. Many dead people do that. Who knows if speaking gets death on you. Thing is, we don’t know. We don’t know if all those good mothers wanted to say anything, even if they suspected something. But Andre— Orly. —said he knew. Said he just needed to confirm it, so why is it, Ms Joe-seefina, that he’s gone? Right after coming here in the dead of night? Sir. Well? Gonna say you don’t know? I know. But sir, after, please don’t blame me.
He didn’t. Denial, defeat, and damning disgust trailed after him out the door; another defeated from this house. God had no reason to strike me then. I didn’t lie. It was about why Orly left. If the policeman hadn’t paled; hadn’t pieced it together; hadn’t finally paused, thinking how Orly knew how to get into girls’ closed rooms, then he might’ve asked and then and then and then—
In this house that never allows its intruders beyond the drawing room, I wondered if even God would be defeated, too.
She came back early, right through the front gate, and sent me away.
“Silly, Josefina,” she said all soothing. “Not like that.”
Not like the others. Not like all of us, them, me, all of them who took up Mr Randolph’s offer; another passing of papers tearing into wings never to take us too far or high. The next job wasn’t a guarantee—poor pay, hard fists, less love boxed and sent—but anything was better than dead or imprisoned. A uniting mantra spoken from family to friend to the next batch to generations of us seeing gold salvation far from home.
In the quiet streets of Ivoryville, the shadows were empty. No brown arm linked with mine; just an empty grocery bag Eleanor sent me off with. Nothing but her gentle mouth giving me leave, giving me that lone sunset to witness as she’d had the past months of freedom I gave would give give give and give.
What did that say about me, making that my new mantra?
Brown bad.
What did it say when I burned all the embroidered ribbons, soothing her with newly sewn things, thread drawing blood?
Loose lost mother.
What did they all try to say to sway me away from what I thought a sweet child, love so near, so simply offered to me, free of binding strings?
Eleanor’s mother. The dead Madame. A twisted taste for mothers.
What would it have said if I called the knowing, instinct; me, a mother; me, a mother used to sensing what’d make my children happy; me, a Josefina with a close-a cooing-a clinging child who chose me not to ask why?
Caught. You’re caught.
“Josefina.”
Miss.
“Ah, no, Josefina. That’s not me.”
…Eleanor.
“Me. Me, Josefina! All of them—was me, me, mine, my mothers.”
Eleanor.
“Ah, sorry, Josefina. The town was running out, then she was here and—ah, you know I tried not to, right? Right, right?”
…Sir? And Mister?
“They were home. Josefina, you should’ve seen—! Happy for these two little things. Happy… I was happy, Josefina. I’m so, so happy, you see?”
Yes. Yes, I see, Eleanor.
“I want to keep being happy, Josefina.”
Yes. You will. I promise. Forever. I swear everything and everyone. On blood, Eleanor. By blood, I want you happy. Happy always.
“Josefina, Josefina.”
Yes.
“Thank you, as ever, for your service.”
Follow and Connect with BEE
About
Trice Flores (she/they), writing under the pseudonym BEE, is an unapologetically political writer currently based in London, UK. Their background in political science and activist movements in their home country led them to pursue a Bachelor’s Creative Writing in London. BEE doesn’t believe in mincing words; rather, she declares that if her work doesn’t make readers uncomfortable, it hasn’t done its job. Her writing centres around anti-colonial and postcolonial concerns that the West has blindly shoved to the past. As a saying goes in their country: “Never forget. Never again.”
Social Media
Substack: https://beethewrtr.substack.com/
Bluesky: Bluesky
Leave a comment