Blazoned Days

My mother takes me downstairs to visit the neighbors. I am bewildered because we are on cordial terms with them but not particularly friendly and we’ve never been inside their home before.   An extended family lives there, including a newly married couple.   As we enter the house, we are ushered into the young wife’s bedroom, where she lies in bed surrounded by family members and guests.   Beside her bed is what looks like a chamber pot half full of blood with a fleshy blob floating in it.   After a while, the mother-in-law hands me the pot and asks me to show it around to everyone in the room, as though I am serving a platter of cookies.   Each woman peers in, shakes her head and murmurs something sympathetic.   I feel like I am being helpful, but I dislike the task. Memories are odd things.   We can’t be sure that they are accurate.   I have a hard time making sense of this bizarre memory, but it recurs, triggered by nothing in particular.   Why was I there? Why was I asked to show

I have been thinking about the invisible among us.   Bessie was the maid at the boarding house, owned by Mrs. Harris, where I spent vacations from boarding school in England.   At that time, I never considered her or thought much about what her life might be like, but a few months ago I was reading Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, a novel about a char woman who saves her money to go to the House of Dior to buy a beautiful gown.   I thought of Bessie. Bessie would have never dreamt of such an adventure. She was old and walked in a stiff-ankled stomp.   She was skinny with grizzled hair that escaped her cap, part of the uniform she wore, a black dress under a white apron—an unkempt imitation of the maids in the estates of England at the turn of the 20 th century. She lived in the underbelly of the house and served as cook and housekeeper. I never bothered to find out exactly where Bessie “lived”, where she slept or passed her off time, if she had any, but she may have had a room in the base