Habit-forming weeks

In my house here, my family has a maid in who lives with us: a young, petite Indonesian woman, can’t be much older than me, whose name I still haven’t figured out but rhymes with Teanie. Apparently she speaks Arabic, because the family talks with her, but that’s news to me. I’m still working on learning the family’s tumbling colloquial, haven’t really started to decipher slang Arabic from Indonesia. Our program director told me in the beginning to “avoid developing a relationship with the housekeeper, families here treat them differently than in the states.” I wasn’t sure what to make of her esoteric advice—so it’s probably not ok to ask the maid out to cocktails, but am I allowed to introduce myself? Or do I just start leaving dirty underwear and socks in the clothes hamper, and leave the housekeeper to figure out whose odd American garments these are, and where they go. Can I smile, can I say thank you?

But I quickly figured out what my director meant; imagine our family as a big vacuum cleaner—me and my brothers and the parents are the machine itself. But Teanie is the little plastic tube that stretches out and cleans hard to reach places, like the gunk in between sofa cushions, the debris under dressers. Very useful, yes, but not an integral, intimate part of the family. If that sounds cruel, I don’t mean to demean her or question her worth. It’s just here, she’s treated like what she is: a foreigner hired to tidy the house, to mop the floors, to follow the instructions of the house without question.
But she and I do communicate, usually through a complex system of points, head nods, ‘ehh?s’ and the colloquial for “want”, “tea” and “egg”. By this point, I’m beyond tired of eggs and tea; I just think it’s funny when I come in every morning for breakfast and there they are, waiting. Two dumb dogs just sitting there, happy you’re up.

Teanie makes every meal here. And every meal is homemade—no cereal for breakfast, no frozen lasagnas for dinner. It’s just good ol’ Arab homecooking—from the Indonesian housekeeper. I mean the recipes come are the family’s, like the soured creamy mensaf, the even creamier, olive oil-doused zatiri, and the reigning olive oil chug champion, botatos (French fries if you will). Yea, olive oil for breakfast, lunch, dinner, mouthwash, shampoo, etc etc. But Teanie’s interpretations of oil + other things are always zakee. My mom seeks me out after each meal to find out how it went over—and you have to say zakee at least three times to get across that, yes, it was in fact delicious. She’ll report to Teanie—‘the boy liked the food’ (they call me ‘the boy’ in Arabic here). Teanie just giggles, because as I learned one night a few weeks ago, she thinks I eat “like a cat” compared with the family. I mean I thought I could eat, but let’s just say for my family, Sesame Street is always brought to you by the letters E-A-T.

I’m starting to grow into the full time mess-minder deal. Not that I go out of my way to indulge in slobbishness, but I finally stopped trying to make my bed each morning after I would come back from the bathroom and find my bed re-made (admittedly in a less boyish way). That’s Teanie saying, nice try, kid. I don’t mind, although sometimes I make the mistake of leaving my Dr. Scholl’s shoe spray out, and find it nestled next to the Crisco in the kitchen.

Teanie sleeps on small cot in the kitchen. The other night I forgot that, and stumbled in at three am for some water. If she hadn’t seen a guy in just his green undies before, she has now. The next morning I walked back into my room from breakfast, and she was folding my socks. I looked at her, she looked at me, and I think she smiled. Just a little.