THE SECOND MRS WHITAKER

CHAPTER 4

I'm still in Room 7. Downstairs. Still scrubbing.

That is the strange part. Life went back to exactly how it was before, so how can anything be different?

Master Jonathan, 28, has not called me since the night with the vial. That was 3 weeks ago. He told Mrs. Albright I was reassigned to deep cleaning of the lower storage and laundry rotation. So no one asks where I am. Mrs. Albright is the one who counts everything - 52 windows, 3 forks each, salt not sugar - and she said, "Girl, you are slow but thorough, stay downstairs where thorough matters."

So I stay downstairs.

Dr. Ellis came yesterday. Not for me. For Madam Evelyn's monthly check. He does that every month. He took blood samples from all the maids for routine malaria and iron check - that's what Mrs. Albright told us. "Old house, old pipes, triple pay means thorough testing."

He took mine too. I sat on the same white table in the infirmary, same paper crinkling. Same sheet over my knees. He didn't remember me. He just said "M. Quinn, arm please," and took blood.

I was shaking the whole time. Because for two weeks I have been feeling strange, and I thought blood would show it.

First, the tired. Not normal tired from scrubbing. This tired is in my bones. I sleep 10 hours in Room 7 - cold room, crack in the ceiling like a river - and I wake up and by the time I have opened the 20th window, my arms feel like someone filled them with sand. At breakfast, standing in the corner with napkins folded over my arm, eyes down, my eyes close for one second without me wanting them to. Mrs. Albright snaps, "Girl, are you sleeping or praying?" I'm sleeping. So much.

Second, the peeing. I never peed much before. Now I have to run to the staff toilet every hour. Mid-polishing the big table, mid-carrying sheets. Cook joked, "That internal clearance cleans you out, that's good." I thought that was it.

Third, my chest. My grey uniform has always been loose. I am skinny. Now it feels tight up top. Sore. Heavy when I go down stairs. I have to wear two vests underneath so nothing moves. Even brushing them when I wash hurts. I thought I was growing, even though I stopped growing at 16.

Fourth, smells. I loved porridge. Now when Cook opens the big tin of oats in the morning, my mouth fills with water in a bad way and my stomach turns. One morning scrubbing the porridge pot, the steam hit me and I ran to the sink and gagged, hard, on nothing. Just spit and bile. Cook laughed, "Staff flu. Don't breathe on the clean pots, Maeve." Toothpaste makes me gag. Soap makes me gag. Miss Evelyn's fancy perfume when I clean her bathroom makes me gag so hard I have to sit on the cold tile floor with my hand over my mouth until it passes.

Fifth, crying. I never cried before. The nuns said crying is for weak girls. Now I cry over nothing. Mrs. Albright shouted about salt and sugar and I went to the pantry and cried for 20 minutes, shoulders shaking, hand over my mouth so no one heard. Then I wiped my face and went back to napkins like nothing happened. This morning I cried because my old shoes - the ones I use black marker to paint so they look new - the paint peeled off.

And the weirdest part is low down. That warm, heavy ache from the medical - the one Dr. Ellis said was normal for viewing - never really left. It stayed, low and dull, like a fullness. And it got bigger. Not pain. Just... there. Like something sitting right behind my lower belly, heavy. And I am always hot now. Kicking the blanket off even though Room 7 is freezing.

I thought the blood test would show infection. I thought Dr. Ellis would call me back and say "Maeve Quinn, you have staff flu, take iron."

But this morning I was in the kitchen, scrubbing the oat pot, and I heard Dr. Ellis on the phone with Mrs. Albright right outside the kitchen door. He was laughing, tired laugh.

"All clean. All maids clean. No malaria, no iron issues, no infection. All cleared. No issues. See you next month for Evelyn's check."

My lab came back CLEAN.

He doesn't know.

His file says I'm not pregnant. He thinks no one is pregnant in this house. He thinks he threw that last vial away as a swab because it was non-viable. He wrote FAILED - SAMPLE NON-VIABLE in the blue file for Evelyn M. Quinn. He wrote EXCELLENT VIABILITY, CLEARED FOR DUTIES in my white file for Maeve Quinn, meaning viable for maid work.

Both are wrong. Both files are wrong.

He said next check is in a month. No other test against me. No one will test me again until next month. That means 30 more days of normal.

Upstairs, Madam Evelyn is back to normal. Or her normal.

She is 27, blonde, silk dresses even for breakfast, pink nails. She is beautiful in the way expensive things are beautiful. She wants what she wants. She wants Master to give her the Paris apartment for her 30th birthday, or give her an heir naturally for the Sterling trust. That's what Mrs. Albright says she heard from Cook who heard from the driver. She is calculative like that. If no heir through lab, she wants apartment. If heir, she gets trust. Either way she gets money.

Every night this week, around 9pm, I hear her when I go up to drop fresh laundry outside the master bedroom. Her voice from the master bedroom door, sweet at first, then bitchy when she doesn't get what she wants.

"Jonathan, come on. Every day. That's how we get an heir. You know the board wants it. Your mother wanted it."

And Master, 28, tired voice: "Evelyn, I said no. Not tonight. I told you I'm done with this."

She gets angry. She slams the door. The whole upstairs hallway shakes. Mrs. Albright told me Madam Evelyn never used to be like that before - always wanting it, every day. The other maids don't talk about it. They don't say she is like that. They are scared of losing triple pay. Only I hear it because I'm near the stairs with laundry.

When Master refuses, she goes to her walk-in closet. She has a drawer at the bottom. She locks it. I once saw a pink box there when I was arranging her clothes last month. She doesn't ask Master again after that. She stays in the closet for a long time.

She wants it every day. Master keeps refusing. She thinks that's why she's empty. She shouted yesterday, not at me, at the mirror in her bathroom while I was on my knees wiping tiles and she didn't see me:

"Do you know how hard I'm trying? And still nothing! Six collections, and your last sample was non-viable, Jonathan! Non-viable!"

She held her flat belly in the mirror that is as big as a door. She whispered, "Why didn't you stick?"

She doesn't know that downstairs, in Room 7, his last vial - the one everyone, even Dr. Ellis, thought was not viable and threw away - is 5 weeks inside me. Sticking. Growing perfectly because Dr. Ellis told me not to sit up for 15 minutes after the viewing and I obeyed. I lay flat. I let it settle.

No other test against me. Dr. Ellis said next check is in a month.

I am still scrubbing the floor with my old shoes. Black marker peeling. But now my waist beads feel tight. I have worn those beads since I was 13. They never felt tight before. Now low down, between my hip bones, there is a small, firm curve. Not fat. Fat is soft. This is hard underneath. Like a tiny plum under the skin, pushing out. I press it when no one is looking. It doesn't hurt. It feels tight, like skin stretched over something.

I am 19. I have never had a boyfriend. I have never kissed anyone. The nuns said you need a husband in a bed to make a baby. So I can't be pregnant. Everyone knows that.

So I tell myself it's Cook's potatoes. Or triple pay tired. Or staff flu.

But my grey uniform is tight up top and tight low down now. And my old shoes with black marker are still peeling. And Mrs. Albright is still counting windows. And Madam Evelyn is still slamming doors every night because Master says no.

And Dr. Ellis thinks my lab is clean.

Next check is in a month.