The Time Our Housekeeper Walked In on a Fifty Shades of Grey Scene
I adore our housekeeper. She has been with our family for almost four years and the day she came into my life it changed for the better. Gone were the days of spending all weekend ironing and sorting clothes for five people and soiled towels cleaning up after five animals. She puts up with a lot with our high maintenance cats and lunatic dogs. She did leave for a few months when we got our puppy, but I don’t blame her. I would have left too had it been an option.
My housekeeper speaks no English, only Italian. Our communication is limited to three things:
1. Me pointing and speaking French with an Italian accent (FYI, it doesn’t work, apparently Italian is not French with a “ciao,” at the end).
2. Hugging her with gratitude.
3. Me gesturing wildly and pointing.
It is clear she doesn’t always understand me as my kids clothes frequently land in my drawers, and sometimes she irons and puts away the clothes I have given to her for her grandchildren. But these are not things I am going to complain about. The fact that she stays with us with our five animals and three kids is a miracle, and I’m putting frequent miscommunications aside.
She typically starts her Mondays running through the bedrooms and collecting all the sheets. I am not home when she starts, and for four years every Monday I walk in at 10am and she is well on her way to changing and washing our bedding. She is a saint, and I am blessed.
As this is how our Mondays have gone for four years, I was flummoxed last Monday when I walked in and her daughter was here to translate. She reserves her daughter coming to translate for emergencies, like broken appliances, or spilled bleach, or lost animals. When I saw her daughter I knew something was amiss. She looked at me and said “My mom thought you might want to go to your room to clean up before she does the bed.”
Crap. Literally. I assumed an animal had crapped on the bed because I could think of no other reason she would not have just gotten to it.
As I walked upstairs and saw the scene unfold in front of me I recalled that the night before; two of my kids had slept in my bed. It was the end of summer, I was still jet-lagged, falling asleep before eight each night. The scene was straight out of a porn flick and I looked at the jaw dropping sight, feeling like a sexual CSI.
I looked at the sheets, they were strewn about and covered with long streaks of blood. Those were easy enough to identify, my daughter had clearly picked at her mosquito scabs as we fell asleep. Then I noticed a gigantic adult-sized molar in the middle of my mattress. While scratching my head, my phone dinged with a text. It was the mother of the girl whose birthday party my son had attended the night before, “Just wanted to make sure Sam arrived home with the tooth he lost last night.” That explained the tooth. Now keep in mind, this wasn’t the cute front tooth of a six year old. This was one of those adolescent molars that fall out and look like gorilla teeth, making you glad your twelve year old no longer believes in the tooth fairy because these are so ugly that handling them to put under a pillow and retrieve is a no go. That was another mystery solved.
But what I could not for the life of me figure out, was why there was a set of handcuffs and key dangling from the bed post. Was my husband getting bored and leaving hints? It seems he would choose a night when two kids weren’t in bed with us to do such a thing.
All I knew was what my housekeeper saw upon entering my room: sheets thrown all over the bed wrapped in knots as only young kids can accomplish in their sleep, covered in streaks of blood with a large molar in the middle of this mess, and handcuffs dangling off the side of the bed.
I was mortified. My housekeeper’s daughter left and I didn’t know if trying to explain to my housekeeper in French-Italian, that the bloody, sex scene was the result of kids would make the situation worse or better? My French isn’t that great, and there was no guarantee that I wouldn’t start telling her that I was having kinky, bloody, tooth-pulling sex, rather than denying it. Or even worse, I might implicate my kids in the sordid scene and that would certainly send her for the hills once and for all. Should I let it go? And what the what was going on with the handcuffs!
As I sat with my head in my hands, I got another text from my oldest son, “can’t find the handcuffs I won at the party, did you see take them or did my sister steal them. I think it was my sister I am going to yell at her.” I was so happy that my oldest had passed out with us adding a man tooth and handcuffs to the scene of the crime.
Should I call my friend who spent a semester in Italy and ask her to translate the story for our housekeeper? Of course my friend might not believe the truth, which was stranger than fiction, and then I would be informing more people about what seemed like some really Fifty Shades of kinky stuff.
I let it go. I threw out the tooth and put the handcuffs in my son’s room; hidden so the housekeeper wouldn’t think we were even crazier than she already did. I decided against the French-Italian telling of the mosquito bite, adolescent tooth loss and birthday party gag gifts.
Every time she comes now, I hold my head down a little because I know she must think I am competition for Linda Lovelace. To her I am single-handedly bringing sexy back. Which, when you know the truth behind the scene of the crime, is just so boring it’s sad.
Helen is a stay at home mom to three kids, three cats and two dogs. When she isn’t chasing one of said creatures through the woods she enjoys blogging at Bubble Gum Chic. She sees humor in the chaos of a life well lived. She also sees the therapeutic value of shoe shopping. You can also find her on Twitter.
