The landlady woke up in a bad mood. All morning she was
having a go at the maid who only replied with sighs and silences. Today she was
complaining that the girl had got up too late. Despite the disorder and
uncleanliness that had struck me immediately when I moved in, Dona Gloria
considers herself to be a good housewife. Sometimes Lúcia’s mother would say
too, “I’m a good housewife and the man who marries my daughter won’t do badly
either. Lúcia knows how to do everything. It’s very important for a woman. Men
like to have a tidy house, clean clothes, regular meals. I was always a slave
to my housework.”
What would my own mother have been like, I ask myself?
She died when I was
three and my father would cry when he spoke about her. I had an enormous desire
to know how she would have been, this mother who I did not know and about whom
I was unable to ask. Sometimes I would stare for hours at the picture of her on
my father’s dressing table. I would look at her so much that it appeared that
her eyes were moving and her mouth seemed to be smiling at me. No, she wasn’t
like them. She couldn’t possibly be. She cooked the food, saw to the washing
(she didn’t have a maid) but she wasn’t a good housewife.
I detest good housewives. If they are poor they wear
themselves out working. If they are middle class or rich they get one or more
other people to wear themselves out in their stead. Whatever, they are slaves
of the overseers of others who give them their orders. Outside life goes on.
Husband and children are getting on with life, submerged in it, while the
housewives are scrubbing, cleaning, polishing. Or watching others do it. Look
at the dust! It’s not very clean! Look at that tap! It ought to be shining! It
can’t go on like this, it has to stop, yes, it must! Life has gone by without
them seeing anything of it. Without even noticing it! They are left alone and
they are hardly aware of it. The husband dies without ever having been there,
and the sons flee so they can marry other housewives who are hidden inside
pretty happy loving girls. And life goes on. No, it cannot continue like this.
Yes, it has to carry on. Yes it must! And the sons of the sons think of fleeing
and dream of other loving girls……
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