Caraqueñas

Part 1

Dominga: Monday Morning Commute

The sky is black as the barrios on the margins of Caracas begin to stir. It is 3:58 a.m. in Barrio Bolívar. From her bed, Dominga hears gunshots fired by malandros coming home after partying and stealing. Instinctively, she looks to the left corner of the room and sees her two children, sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Hanging above their heads the images of San Jose, la Virgen Del Carmen and San Ismael, the patron saint of delinquents that must perform good deeds to get into heaven, protect them. All of them live in a single room mid-way up the cerro. The rented space has two mattresses, a full bathroom, a small kitchen and an old coffee table with matching chairs which Mrs. Espino, Dominga's jefa, threw out.

Manuel stirs and settles face up, his gaping mouth exposing shiny, toothless gums. He's older, but he is good to her children and good to her. They split most expenses down the middle, except her children's education. She marvels that her youngest, at fourteen, knows more than she will learn in her lifetime. Although Manuel is not her husband, he is her partner and the four of them are a family. Well, five, counting the one on the way. Dominga can no longer hide the breasts or expanding waistline which pulls at the buttons of her pale blue uniform. Today she will tell Mrs. Espino that she is six months pregnant. Hopefully, she can keep her job.

Arising from the bed, she walks to the bathroom and turns on the light bulb that hangs by a thin red wire. A black woman with delicate features and brown eyes that rise at the corners looks back at her and smiles. Even with wiry hair going in every direction, Dominga is beautiful, her racial pureness characteristic of the black population from Barlovento, a region in the center of the Miranda where cacao is cultivated and is the origin of the purest Venezuelan black people. After taking a quick, cold shower, she throws on her pink stretch pants, flower print shirt, pink socks and hand-me-down white sneakers quietly. She puts her wallet, cellular phone and keys in the plastic leather purse and locks the door behind her. At 4:30, Dominga makes her descent to the bus stop through narrow passage ways littered with food wrappers and dog poop. She counts 332 steps in the darkness, to keep from thinking of malandros lurking in the shadows, waiting to take her bus money or cellular phone. She murmurs under her breath, "San Ismael protégeme," and does the sign of the cross. The Espino family lives in la Castellana, a neighborhood on the east side of the capital. It takes her one hour and a half to get to work on Mondays.

At the bus terminal, rats scurry near her feet to the metal containers overflowing with trash. Dump trucks haven't come for weeks; everything smells like trash juice. After waiting only twenty minutes, Dominga takes an empty window seat and tucks her belongings underneath, hoping that, if a robbery occurs, the thief will miss her purse. Seated, Dominga can no longer escape the reality: she is poor and she is pregnant with her third child. Even if she is not fired, having the baby will affect her current schedule. How will she work and take care of a newborn? How will she feed her other children without work? When the bus exits the highway, Dominga's empty stomach is a knot of anxiety that tightens more as she exits the bus and walks two blocks to her final destination.

Waiting at the gate, Mrs. Espino sees the perspiration along Dominga's hairline and suspects that she will come clean today.

"Buenos días Dominga," she says gently, folding the white robe over her pajamas and tying the waist band tightly as she holds the gate from the street open.

"Buenos días, Señora. May I have a moment of your time?"

"Yes, let's sit down at the kitchen table." They cross through the garage, climb the narrow stairway and enter the house by the back door. The whiff of fresh Colombian coffee and boiled milk calms Dominga. Sitting across from her boss, not yet changed into her maid's uniform, she gets a momentary taste of what it might feel like to be Mrs. Espino's equal, to be a close friend who stops by her house to sit in the white kitchen, have a cup of coffee and talk about the hairdresser. It is a good feeling, a good life and a moment she savors.