Dog War (12 page)

To prove it to him, she led him through the house, pointing out spickness and spanness. He nodded and sniffed and looked pleased and rubbed his hands together like he was nervous, and Precious got the impression he was dying to tell her something.

They ended up in the drawing room where Mannish poured her a glass of wine and sank down to his elbows in a plush couch.

“Precious,” he began somberly, “now we must earn our salary. And there is something about the mistress that I must tell you.”

His manner was so glum that Precious braced herself for news about syphilis, goiter, hunchback, or hideous deformity.

“You must understand, Precious,” he said crisply, “that Americans are not like we immigrants. It happens that they have everything while our own countries have nothing.”

“I beg your pardon,” Precious interrupted stiffly, her patriotism aroused. “Maybe where you come from you have nothing but holy cow, but Jamaica—”

Mannish cut her off impatiently. “Your Jamaica does not have everything. My India does not have everything. Here, in this house, in this country, the people are used to having everything. This is what makes them eccentric.”

Precious felt her argumentative dander rising at this forward Coolie presuming to lecture her about her own country. But Mannish raised his hand like a bishop and squashed her with an upheld palm. “I will show you what I mean,” he said decisively. “Please follow me without questioning.”

He trotted down the warren of corridors until he came to the one room whose door had remained closed ever since Precious had been in the mansion.

Pausing until she was right at his side, he unlocked the door and turned on the light to reveal a spacious bedroom with an enormous king-size bed, a room that first seemed to Precious, whose eyes were now hardened to mansion splendors, no better than others of its brethren on either side of the corridor, when her darting gaze was drawn irresistibly to a bizarre assemblage of paintings and pictures hanging on the wall.

The bottom half of one wall was thick with pictures of fire hydrants, tree trunks, street signs, country stumps, and construction posts. Most peculiarly, all the pictures and paintings were hung at nearly ground level, no higher than three feet from the floor, while the upper stretches of the walls were conspicuously bare.

Precious’s chin had dropped down to her neck bone. Her mouth gaped and her stupefied tongue briefly and visibly wallowed. Mannish observed her reaction and looked pleased. “This,” he announced with triumph, “is Riccardo’s bedroom. These are his favorite pictures. Please. Just observe while I finish my point.”

He opened the bathroom door to reveal, to a gasp of astonishment from Precious, that the shower stall had been converted to a sandbox in which was planted, with ominous perpendicularity that spoke volumes about spendthrift carpentry and misguided plumbing, a fire hydrant.

“And this,” Mannish said smoothly, “is Riccardo’s bathroom. This is his indoor hydrant.”

“A dog live in dis room?” Precious whispered, stepping slowly through the room as if she was treading atop a fresh grave.

“Yes,” Mannish replied. He whipped off the bedspread to reveal a custom-fitted sheet gaily imprinted with endless patterns of bones. “And he prefers his cotton sheets to be changed every day.”

“Changed every day?” Precious echoed dimly, moving across the room to gape at the bone pictures. “Den, pray tell me, who is de dog maid in charge of changing bone sheet every day?”

Mannish peered hard at her, his sanded cheek darting with a noiseless, guilty twitch.

Revelation burst on Precious’s senses like a thunderclap.

“You brute,” she gasped accusingly, “is not pum-pum you hire me for! Is dog maid!”

Chapter 13

The mistress came home late that night, threw a harried glance at Precious who was wedged in a corner timidly awaiting her, and groaned that she couldn’t cope.

“A new maid, Mannish!” she shrieked piteously. “I can’t cope with this tonight. I just can’t cope!”

Riccardo trotted in behind the mistress and, glancing at Precious, bared his teeth and gave a menacing growl that she understood to be Dog for he couldn’t cope, either.

“Mannish,” the mistress commanded before flouncing into her room, “Riccardo sleeps in his own room tonight. That dog kicks too much in his sleep. Last night he nearly kicked me out of my own bed.”

Then she was gone, leaving Mannish burbling after her a soothing, “Very good, ma’am.”

The Indian led Riccardo down the hall, opened the bedroom door, and escorted him inside while Precious stared with astonishment from her post in the corner. At the door the dog turned and shot a smutty glance at Precious from two feet off the ground where dog eye beaded and rolled in egg-white sockets of dog head, and the only other human being she could remember ever giving her such a nasty look was a slack parson on her wedding day.

Mannish padded back out of the room, closing the door quietly after him.

“That is all for tonight, Precious,” he said suavely, coming over to where she stood gaping like she was painted on a mummy shell. “See? Was that so bad?”

“The dog kicks?” Precious asked, following the Indian down the hallway into the living room, which seemed to her to have suddenly and inexplicably shrunk with the arrival of the mistress.

“This is America, Precious,” Mannish assured her smoothly, patting her on the arm. “Sometimes dogs kick in America.”

“In Jamaica only donkey and mule kick,” Precious mumbled, feeling stupid.

“Indeed so. That is another difference between the two cultures. It is as I explained last night.”

Last night.

Last night there had been trauma, scene, and serious domestic brouhaha. When she had found out that she had been hired as dog maid, Precious had carried on and made something of an unladylike stink, especially since she had convinced herself that the sneaky Indian had hired her for pum-pum. Mannish did not know what pum-pum was and Precious had had to clumsily enlighten him, using gestures and euphemisms and biblical phrases such as when a man “knew a woman” like Solomon and David and other patriarchs had known thousands of earthly concubines before going off to heaven to have knowledge of the female angel legions. Mannish still did not get what Precious thought she had been hired for, forcing her to grope for metaphor and simile until he finally saw the light. Of course, he assured her quickly when he grasped her meaning, that was also definitely on his mind when he had selected her, and upon hearing this snide confession, Precious slapped his pudgy cheek with a sharp box for making her wait a whole unrequited month to be awakened by a naked Coolie wriggling atop her slumbering belly.

He took the blow, winced, and bowed. “Of course,” he said humbly, “I deserve that slap. It was definitely your body I was after. I am so sorry.”

“You liar!” Precious screamed. “Is dog maid you wanted! Well, if you think for a minute that this woman is going to be maid to some mangy dog-.-.-.”

“I assure you, Precious,” Mannish said gravely, “the dog has no mange.”

Precious was not pacified.

“Giving dog a room with bone picture hanging off de wall and fire hydrant in de bathroom!” she shrieked. “What kind of sick mind would do such a thing?”

“Not an Indian mind, Precious. It is an American mind. Indians do not worship dog. It is here in America that they think that the dog is god. Indeed, ‘Dog’ spelled backward in American is ‘God.’”

Precious had never considered this point before, and although her rage was still bubbling, she was momentarily floored by this profound observation.

Mannish had taken advantage of the lull to lead her back-into the living room and ply her with another glass of wine-while he explained that he had not meant to mislead her,-that from the start he had been drawn to her obvious voluptuousness-.-.-.

“You want another box?” Precious asked belligerently.

Certainly not. That was the last thing he wanted on this earth. What he most desperately wanted was for Precious to stay on the job and not walk out as she had seemed poised to do a moment ago. The mistress owned five houses in three countries. She stayed here with Riccardo only a few months out of the year. Sometimes she was gone for three, four months, during which there would be nothing for them to do but enjoy the luxury, to live in the house as if it were their own, and all Precious would be required to do for the short time the mistress was in residence was to take care of Riccardo, who was at heart a good dog, seldom bad-tempered or surly.

Precious stared stonily at him while he babbled explanations and begged her to stay. Of course, he did not know that she had to stay, that she simply couldn’t return to Shirley’s house. He could not know, moreover, that mansion living was beginning to sweet Precious down to the bone; that already she had grown to love the way eyes peered enviously at her as she stepped with a flourish through mansion gate, walking with the proprietary tread of a woman who regularly skimmed fashion magazine on mansion toilet; that Shirley’s praise of her accomplishments had gone to her head; that she was prepared to fight to keep her foot in mansion door. But she still pretended that her mind was set in cement and that she was leaving.

In the face of her apparent obstinacy, Mannish got agitated and performed a jerky orbit around the spacious drawing room. He stopped after his third revolution, peered down at Precious, and begged her to stay and save him from arrest for cannibalizing the dog.

Precious nearly jumped out of her skin with terror. “Say what?”

He was on his knees, begging, his black eyes rolling in a bed of angst and fury.

“Precious,” he gasped, “if you leave, I will kill that dog and-curry him. I know that I will do this horrible thing because I almost did it once. I hate that dog so very much that I want desperately to cook and eat him.”

“Merciful heavens!” Precious yelped. “Stop you damn foolishness. Why you talking such rubbish?”

“It is not rubbish. That dog humiliates me and makes me-feel wretched. If you do not stay, I swear I will curry the bugger. Then I will go to jail and not fulfill my destiny with Beulah.”

“What? What you talking about, eh?”

Mannish sighed, took a slow turn around the room, and confessed in a solemn voice. “Some years ago, I cheated a man of some camels. It is my karma to repay the debt by suffering under American Beulah. She is out there waiting for me. And when she comes, I will have no choice but to be her husband.”

“I didn’t understand a word of that!” Precious squawked, pointing an accusing finger at the wretch’s befuddling mouth. “You thief a camel from a man so now you must marry some American woman name Beulah? What kind of madhouse is dis? What does dis have to do with eating de dog?”

“It is my destiny to suffer at the hands of American Beulah or my soul will not grow. I am destined to breed Beulah of two-children. She will use superior argumentation to make me get a vasectomy. At her hands, I will suffer a lifetime of washing dishes, and mowing grasses, and cleaning toilets. And in the end, she will still not appreciate my virtues.”

“Be a man and kick her in her bottom,” Precious advised before adding, with a squeal of exasperation, “What does dis mad story have to do with eating de dog?”

He put his finger to his lips and begged her in sign language not to shout. Drawing near, he whispered conspiratorially into her earhole, tickling her lobe with his moustache, “I am only working here until I meet Beulah, then I will leave and marry her and begin my reparations. But if I lose control and eat the dog, they will put me in an American prison and I will have to waste another lifetime before I can repay the debt in regards to-the camel. That is why you must stay and help me, Precious. You will not feel a similar temptation to eat the dog.”

“I should say not!”

“It is just that I have suffered so much humiliation from that dog that I cannot lose the idea that one day I might forget myself and eat him. Americans do not like it when Indians migrate to their shores and eat their dogs. Will you stay, please? Once the mistress leaves, we will have the house altogether to ourselves again. We can go on Sunday outings in the Rolls.”

Precious thought for a moment before hitting on a practical suggestion. “Why don’t you just go to de man you thief de camel from and pay him what you owe him and be done with it? Then you wouldn’t have to worry about American Beulah.”

“I can’t. It happened seven hundred years ago.”

“Heavenly Kingdom!”

“Precious, you must believe me!”

Mannish was down on his knees again, trying anew to clamber up her leg.

Precious blew a deep cleansing breath. Already she had $1,000 of American money in her bank account—every penny of her salary for a month. There was absolutely no danger that she would forget her upbringing and eat this or any other dog. She was beginning to grasp that the Indian was not only sneaky but also very possibly out of his head.

She looked at the beseeching chauffeur down on his knees before her and was certain that his thick greasy hair was daubing pomade all over the hem of her frock.

“I will stay,” she finally conceded, ungluing his head from her frock front. “I will take care of de dog. Only promise me one thing,” she warned, pointing her finger between his eyes. “Promise me I won’t wake up one night to find you naked on me belly.”

“Precious, I would never do such a thing without your permission.”

“Good! Now, beg you two aspirin. I have a beast of a headache.”

“Certainly!”

Mannish jumped to his feet and raced to the back bathroom and returned with a tumbler of water and some pills.

She swallowed the aspirin and drank the water.

“And if I’m in charge of dat dog,” she warned, handing the empty tumbler back to Mannish, “he better not forget himself with me, either. Where I come from, a dog is a dog is a dog, and dat is de end of it.”

Mannish smiled impulsively and tried to give her a kiss. She dodged his swooping lips and pushed him gently away. Then she icily said goodnight and headed for her room, her wounded pride at least temporarily assuaged by the rebuff.