Donña Angela will hear about this. The cost of these will be deducted from your pay...If she doesn’t fire you right off, that is.”
I marched away before she could defend herself. Jorge had walked up at some point during the confrontation and was leaning in the doorway, watching the whole thing with a devilish green.
“You owe me five-hundred pesos,” I murmured to him as I walked by.
“I’ll be damned,” he puzzled with his arms crossed. “I didn’t think she’d actually fall for it! The stupidity of these people amazes me sometimes.”
“They don’t show up at that auction for no reason,” I quipped as I started up the stairs back into kitchen quarters. But the moment I lifted my head, I caught Lucia standing there. She was frozen with her wide eyes glued to me and one hand extended out to a jar in the pantry. It was obvious by her face that she had heard everything that had just happened.
“Can I help you?” I sneered.
“No,” she answered with a tight smile, but her tone was dripping with resentment.
“No...what? How do you address me?”
She straightened her spine and lifted her chin, greeting me with the most spiteful but determined expression. “No...sir!” she all but shouted, mock saluting me followed by a sarcastic curtsy.
I laughed a little under my breath in surprised anger. She had some nerve. I couldn’t remember the last time a worker, a woman no less, had addressed me with such audacity. Any amusement I found in it quickly faded as I lunged forward and tightly gripped her arm in mine.
“If you knew what was good for you, you’d treat me with the same respect you would Donña Angela or Don German...if not more so. I am the man of this house after all, with my grandfather so incapacitated. Don’t forget it,” I hissed, just inches from her face, with seething rage.
“What’s going on up there?” Jorge called up to us, probably more out of jealousy than actual concern.
I was too angry to break my hold on Lucia, especially since she didn’t soften the tiniest bit under my threat. I heard him bounding up the stairs behind me.
“If you want to be treated like a man of the house, then maybe you should act like one,” she growled back at me, just quiet enough for Jorge not to hear. “Playing boyish pranks on those poor women out of boredom isn’t very manly.”
The moment Jorge reached us, her face twisted into one of fear and anguish. She began whimpering and squirming to get loose from my grip into her arm, which had turned tighter and began to twist, leaving a red mark on her skin.
“Enough!” Jorge pleaded, pulling me off of her.
“Thank you, Senor,” she sniffled innocently before running off to get back to work.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Leo!?”
I was speechless as I stood there watching her return to the kitchen. She had played it so well. For all Jorge heard, she did nothing but show me the utmost respect and I attached her for no reason.
“You said so yourself that good caregivers were hard to find,” he continued. “Can we not scare this one off on her first day!?”
I flashed him a breezy smile and stepped past. I had enough excitement for one afternoon. But as I walked around the courtyard, I couldn’t stop thinking about how gutsy this Lucia had been. It was maddening. Who the hell did she think she was? First, to go nosing around in my business. Second, to stand up to me with such bold and blatant disrespect. All while deceiving Jorge and making me seem like the crazy one, and not missing her chance to criticize my ways of handling the help.
At first, I thought I needed to come up with some way to put her in her place. If I let her think that kind of behavior would be tolerated, she’d be walking all over us in no time. Then again, if she kept it up, she’d get herself fired without me having to lift a finger. That might be much more entertaining to watch.
My tactic of letting her dig her own grave proved to be wise. In the following days, as Lucia struggled to adjust to her demanding new schedule, I watched Donña Angela give her hell relentlessly. She didn’t like her any more than I did, and little by little with each day I could see the defiant spark in her dying down. It was almost a