Luke 6:49
Monday 12th November: Maria Gonzalez worked three days a week for the Hanlins and two days a week for the Merills. She was an illegal, like one in five of the Mexican population of Springfield. She had been smuggled across the border with her mother when she was just six years old. Now she was twenty-six. She'd spent the past ten years working with various families as a housemaid. She'd been with the Merills for eight of those ten years.
Maria worked for Angie about the house. Normally she didn't see Baxter who would be at work down at Merill Manufacturing at the times at which she was conducting her duties.
Maria was caught in a generation warp, neither quite American like her peers nor quite Mexican like her mother. The insecurity this fostered made her shy - a feature that enhanced her currency amongst the Chicano boys after church. And she had a sultry, full-lipped beauty that complimented the kind of full but the right side of plump figure that most men admired and most women were embarrassed by. She had been out with a series of men but been steady with none for any length of time. But one swarthy boy who spelt his name Michael but pronounced it Mikhail had been chasing her more avidly than most for much of the past two years.
He had asked her to marry him twice.
She liked him. She had decided she would accept him if he asked her again. It wasn't so much that she loved Mikhail but he was nice. And at twenty-six she was still a virgin, which was unusual even in the Latino community. And she so wanted to have children and a place of her own. She loved children. The biological clock might not be such an issue for women with access to elite health care. But Maria belonged on the wrong side of the tracks. Plus most of her peers were married and on their second brood. Maiden Aunt status grated, though she hid it well.
And now, she was working at the Merill house. She felt uncomfortable there with Mrs Merill gone and Baxter about so much. He was there now. He'd been drinking. He was leaning against the frame of the kitchen door as he sipped at a cup of black coffee, watching her load the dishwasher.
Baxter was watching as she bent down to place soiled cutlery in the knife-rack of the dishwasher. He was thinking that her well rounded ass was delightful. And as he watched her he became aroused. This was of itself commonplace. Baxter was drunk. This too was commonplace. They were alone together. This had become commonplace. The juxtaposition of the three factors made the ensuing events almost inevitable. He put his coffee cup down, walked over, and placed a hand firmly on each side of Maria's buttocks. He didn't say a word. And neither did Maria. Not a word as he put one hand round her waist and the other up her skirt and shifted her, bending her over the kitchen table. She trembled. Her whole body trembled, which excited him immeasurably. He didn't see her face. He had not attempted to turn her round. Instead he leant across her, using his left hand to hitch up her skirt, whilst his right reached round her, across her shoulder and down across her breasts. He prepared to push himself between her thighs.
Maria's emotions, meanwhile, had run the full gamut; starting with shock; then arousal, despite herself. And then fear as she realised that this chain of events would lead to her losing the virginity she had so carefully guarded - and to a middle-aged drunk.
So she screamed. And Baxter froze. But Maria was still screaming and Baxter found the noise intolerable. He knocked her to the floor.
"You Chicano bitch." He grunted as he fell upon her. She screamed again but it didn't seem to stop him. She tried to curl into a ball bringing her knees up but even that failed to stop Baxter.
She stopped screaming then. She felt the weight of him, relentless. His passion continued to arouse an echo in herself and she was repelled and disgusted by her own reaction. She had to stop this. She gasped words without thought. She didn't know what she was saying. She was almost incoherent. Then she pulled the remnants of her tattered self-respect together and mouthed the words, "I will tell them."
Which did not stop Baxter. "You asked for it," he said. His voice came to her through a haze as he tried to force her knees apart - and then succeeded.
"I will tell them about before," she said between sobs, writhing away from him as she spoke.
And Baxter paused. "Before what?"
"Before with the lady. Six months ago. When Mrs Merill was away."
"What?" Baxter was genuinely puzzled.
"I came into the living room. I know. I heard what she said to you."
And at last Baxter climbed off her. Not because he was afraid of what she might say. He didn't really care. But rather because he had lost his appetite for her. Part of her wanted him. He knew that. And he wouldn't have stopped short of forcing himself on the woman if that was what it took. But not without more of a response. She was annoying him now.
"Do what you like bitch. But get out of here," spat Baxter. "And don't come back."
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