Then came more of those ideas that self-flagellated her flaccid mental skin throughout the week: if something bad were to happen to him she might not know about it or have the vocabulary to ask about it; if she were aware of it that she might not be able to explain it; and if she could explain it she might prevaricate or become twisted in mendacities since she would not know how to explain her connection to this Sangfroid family.
Still, no matter if these nightly ruminations made her placid or just got her stuck in rehashing the same worries, she was glad to have them. They resuscitated a self-concept that languished each day in being cognizant of her own babbling in this north-of-the-border language.
She heard Nathaniel's footsteps in the hall. She wanted to open her door and call to him and yet she knew it wasn't so much for him as for herself. For she was feeling the travail of loneliness and it was not imagined suffering but a physical assault on the body of the mind.
She did not want him to think that she was spying on him or that she, a servant, would have the effrontery or impertinence to tell him what he could and couldn't do in his own home; but still, she told herself, she needed to monitor him. She once again diffidently walked into the hall and sought the traces of the boy. He was downstairs in the kitchen as evident by the light. Listening closely from the stairs, she could hear the refrigerator door open and a pitcher of milk being drained.
Had she not felt like a florid group of cells shot out like random shells into the void that made up the cosmos, she would have been satisfied by this and she would have gone to bed and slept soundly. Instead, she went down the steps and into the kitchen.
"Knock, knock, Nathaniel."
"Oh, hi there, Hispanic Betty."
"You no can sleep none?"
"Haven't tried."
"I can to fix you food. Maybe you are hungry."