Humdrum Lady

            Christine was an ordinary housewife; up at seven in the morning to cook a scrumptious breakfast for her brute of a husband, a work out session wearing her favorite tangerine neoprene leotard in front of her beloved Richard Simmons at eight, cleaning up the muck, caused by her husband’s belligerent tendency of spilling his food at dinner and then playing soccer with it when the food was not up to his standard of deep-fried crispiness, around the house between nine and two in the afternoon, and spending the remainder of the afternoon gossiping with the local housewives till her husband returned home for another spell of tender beatings. She had attended a Cosmetology School as a young woman, with the aspiration of becoming a world-renowned make-up artist for celebrities. In the end, her knowledge was only used on herself, in an attempt to withhold the truth of her blissful marriage from her suburban acquaintances. Though deep inside, she knew the regular poundings were potentially hazardous to her health, she disregarded them as a quotidian occurrence that was ordinary and natural; the man is supposed to govern the woman whatever the means. No, this was far from her primary concern. In fact, having become a predictable part of her existence, it was the last of her anxieties.

            Six months before, the pool cleaning company sent a new set of hands, a handsome Guatemalan with bronze skin adorning his bulging muscles. On a weekly basis, he arrived at the house while Christine was just about finishing her household chores, around one thirty, to sweep his titanic net across the pool’s surface, gathering fallen leaves and pinecones, ants that had lost their way back to the colony and the occasional rat. Though limited at first – the polite ‘How do you do’ and glass of water – Christine and the Guatemalan began having conversations about the mundane like the weather and the local murder that happened a few weeks prior. As small-talk topics began to dry up, Christine began learning about his past; where he was from, how he arrived in Southern California, what he has done to survive… She never talked about herself, in fear of repulsing him with her humdrum past. He represented an aperture from her monotonous life, an opening to the audacious world outside her gated community. It was a gateway that she refused to close.