Facing My Fear

So, I think I have a problem. It’s not a crisis, but I’m having a minor adjustment issue. It’s a problem I’ve had in the past, but in Africa, it’s unavoidable.

It’s the maid. I’m afraid of the maid.

I’m not afraid she will hurt me or steal from me. Not at all. Sheila’s nice, or she seems nice in the brief contact I have had with her. See, when she’s downstairs, I’m upstairs. If she’s upstairs, I’m downstairs. If she’s in the kitchen, I don’t eat. If she’s in the living room, I don’t watch TV. When she seems to be everywhere, I take Moose to the park. Despite my best efforts, however, I am finding that contact is unavoidable – she’s here thirty-five hours a week! And with no current mode of transport, I am forced to share the house with her while she scrubs, sweeps, vacuums, mops, washes clothes and irons everything from underwear to sheets.

As I mentioned earlier, this problem is not entirely new. In Atlanta, I had a sweet lady clean my house every other Tuesday morning. She came early and left around noon. I would have preferred her to come while I was at work, but she was a little uncomfortable with Moose, so I hung around. Only I didn’t. I was there to let her in, but I would immediately throw Moose in the car and go to the park or run errands. So it’s not just Sheila, I was afraid of Evelia too.

So where does this fear come from? It’s not that I’m shy, or rude. I like Sheila, and I want her to like me, but for some reason I become mute in her presence. I don’t know what to say. My instincts tell me to flee, and I usually do, but it’s getting to be rather challenging.

With Evelia, her English wasn’t great, so I told myself that it was pointless to try to get to know her. I wouldn’t want to make her uncomfortable by speaking to her in an unknown language, right? Sheila’s English seems great, though, and yet I say nothing. Perhaps I’m afraid that if I talk to Sheila, if I get to know her, I will feel bad that she sweeps up mountains of my dog’s hair and cleans last night’s spaghetti sauce off the inside of the microwave and scrubs the toilet with a pubic hair still lingering on the bowl. Having someone I knew do all of that would be awkward, it would make me feel bad. At least Evelia was paid well for it. Sheila does it all, and laundry too, for around fifteen dollars a day.

Sheila’s not much older than me. She’s married and has two little kids. She works hard in this house from eight o'clock in the morning to three-thirty in the afternoon, five days a week. She's just a nice woman trying to make a living.

Perhaps I’m afraid of Sheila because I’m not sure why, in this random world, she is the maid and I’m the girl who has her sheets ironed. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. We’ve both worked hard in our young lives, but we’ve lived in different worlds. That’s just how it works, I guess.

I’ve got to get over myself. Avoiding Sheila isn’t helping her any, and it’s not like hiding is easing my conscious. While, at this point, Sheila’s probably glad that the weird American girl isn’t around too much, that is about to change. I will face my fear of the maid. I will get to know her if it kills me. And if I feel so damn bad about her salary, perhaps I should pay her a little more. (Let’s see how that goes over with my father-in-law!)