Upon entering Doctor Vu’s house, fresh from the fierce pouring rain outside, Maisie Watson is greeted by an unsettling wave of silence. The screen door slams shut behind her back with a hard finality, trapping a stray piece of wind inside. A breeze sweeps through in wide strides, flutters some papers as it dashes across the living room.

She inhales slowly, dragging her eyes over the dark, mystique oriental desk and vases, and pauses slightly at the folded pair of golden-rimmed glasses on top of Doctor Vu’s day’s Medical Life.

“Doctor Vu, I’m here.” Maisie Watson calls.

Doctor Vu’s familiar gruff voice ring out in reply, eleven seconds later than usual. “Afternoon, Mai.” He replies, his syllables weak compared to yesterday. There’s a bit stumbling and banging comes from his room, and seconds later she hears the Doctor shuffling to the foyer.

“Are you sick?” She says. Water streams down the folds of her coat, dripping all over the shiny tiled floor, forming a huge puddle. She would have to clean it up later. Maisie Watson shudders as she strugs off her raincoat. She opens the screen door and shakes the droplets onto the stone porch. Big, fat blots splatter across the gray area. Her rain boots squeak sharply when she bends down and wiggles her feet out. “I can cook you some beef porridge.”

“I like that.”

Maisie peels back her wet socks and hang them over the rim of her boots, near the heater. She hopes it would be dry soon.

The Doctor emerges from the hall, wearing a rumbled, discoloured short-sleeved white T-shirt and boxers. He crosses his arms, leaning against a column, coughing into his shoulder. “Look at that, winter wet winter, West Bass. Wonderful weather for a disease.”

She gasps aloud when she looks up. “My God, what happened to you?”

Throughout eighteen years of working as his housekeeper, she had rarely seen him anything but polished, combed and controlled. She had come to think of him as a Superman who can battle against any sickness and time. But as he stands in front of her right now, in disheveled hair all tangled in a nest, red, puffy cheeks and hollowed-in eye holes, with crinkle lines etch deep on his forehead and corners of mouth, she starts to wonder if he’s acting.

She comes closer and angles her chin to have a better look at him. “You don’t look like you’ve a normal cold.”

“I’m old.” Doctor Vu shifts back, glancing away from her. “Weaker.”

“Your forty-fourth birthday isn’t even here yet,” Maisie snorts.

He flexes his right hand. She reaches out and cups it. It’s heavier than she remembers, the bones structure jutted out at hard angles as if the skeleton is eating through the sinew and muscle layers. Blue veins web throughout, disfigure his elegant hand. She smooths her thumb pad over it, and frowns when she feels something moving underneath. No, not moving. Slithering. Maisie Watson quickly slides her palm to the direction of the movement, up Doctor Vu’s elbow, when he twitches and jerks out of her hold, almost pushing Maisie Watson onto her butt.

His irises flare alert. But Maisie Watson doesn’t meet his gaze. She is focusing on the centipede-shaped that disappears underneath his shirt sleeve, melting into the bulk of his forearm. She swears it was real, the wiggling of the insect still phantom on her fingertips, yet at the same time she thinks she’s going mad.

Doctor Vu stares at her, wide-eye, as if he is about to upbraid her for overstepping the boundary. However, in the end, he resolves in a calm, dismissive look. “Don’t stand too close, Mai. I don’t want you to catch my cold.” He says. “What have you got there?” He changes the topic, slips past her and wanders over to pick up the bouquet.

“Today is the eighteenth year I’ve been working for you,” Maisie Watson says, feels compelled to explain, flitting her thumbs against her worn-out hand-knitted sweater. She pushes away the awkwardness, trying to push away the centipede and Doctor Vu’s skin. “I thought I should do something special, aside from cooking our house tradition.”

Doctor Vu smiles, and somewhere in her chest trembles a little at his gentleness. “Did you hand-picked these?”

“Yes. From my Mother’s garden.”

He tilts the flowers to his nose, the black wrap paper cackles around his delicate, thin fingers, and Maisie Watson, for once, thankful for her black skin that can veil her blush. “Do you know the meaning of these?”

Maisie Watson shakes her head.

“Ask your Mother about it.” He said, smells the bouquet for the last time, and then passes it to her. Their fingertips didn’t brush each other. “Ask for the negative meaning, though.” Doctor Vu smiles again, but this time it’s a cruel one. The one that she had seen many times before, particularly when he was leading her on to a segment of his life. “Okay. Now go cook me some porridge. I’m hungry.”

With that, he goes back to his room.

Maisie Watson swallows and waits for a long time after Doctor Vu’s office door has closed. She flutters her eyes shut and sighs slowly through her teeth. He has purposefully slowed down so she can see the challenge sneer flashes across his thin lips.

Shaking her head, she cleans her rain puddle and starts on the ingredients. Two cups of rice and one-point-five centimetre of water. While waiting for the porridge to boil and thicken, she looks through Doctor Vu’s Chinese ceramic oriental vases collection that he claimed he only started to satisfied Maisie Watson’s guilty pleasure of flowering.

As she fills the half of the vase with water and starts clipping and arranging the flowers, she listens to the harsh, subtle echo of Doctor Vu’s breathing. She strokes each fragile stem with her fingertips. She whispers the flower’s name under her breath, Anemone, Heather Lavender, Hydrangea and Larkspur, wondering what might they mean, wondering what is their story.

Maisie Watson, since small, was awkward and perhaps quite slow compared to those her ages. In class, she would be the tiny kid with big glasses at the very back, hiding behind noisy, smelly-feet jocks. She fluttered whenever the teacher calls on her, but her excitement triggered her speech impediments, which in turn triggers a roar of laughter from her classmates, which triggers the teacher shushing the class and gives the answer and carries on the lesson. And thus, little Maisie would stand for a second too long, tears pricking the corner of her eyes, and finally sit down, bow her head to avoid the giggling and side-eyes.

She had never good at getting attention. There aren’t anything special about her. She is too quiet, too average, too flawed. Maisie Watson graduated from high school, thrusted into the cruel, cruel world, knowing having a job would be in her greatest fantasy. Her childhood, extended into her adult ages, were hole-poked and full of failed suicide attempts, stained with shame and anguish. When Seyana refused to pursue a medication career like Kai, her father had yelled, “I don’t want to take care of another failure”, pointing at twenty-four-year-old Maisie. Maisie burst into tears as her father raged on and on.

She’ve read books about amazing people hardened by their suffer, and she tried her best to firmly believe in God’s works. Tried to seek for the light at the end of the tunnel. But as nineteen ticked to twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, then twenty-three, and so on, Maisie Watson had not changed at all from the defeated, tearful high school girl, her faith in Him becomes nothing but a meaningless idea she holds on, much like her existence.

On Christmas of her twenty-three, she finally get accepted into a Housekeeping Services. It’s a brutal business. The first house she was assigned to was of a Russian couple with no children. Madame Lasier is an iceberg, with a sharp, shocking white blonde bob, dark eyeliners, and tongue speaks the language of passive-aggressive so fluent like a weapon. Her house is tiled and lavish, polished, every inch reflects her royal blood. The white paints, fur rug, leather couch, diamond chandelier and expensive miniatures blends together, sparkle in the decorative light. Maisie Watson remembered the first day she came. Standing in the middle of their museum-like hallway with her boots leave brown prints on the doorstep, under Monsieur and Madame’s icy gaze, she cannot help but folding into herself. Her black skin stood against the white wall like a nasty, dirty spot that need to be scrub clean. She cleaned their house twice. After the New Year, Madame filed a complaint and she was relocated to an Indian household.

Doctor Vu’s house was supposed to be Maisie Watson’s last chance. Many customers complained that Maisie Watson is slow and distracted when working and can’t remember simple instructions.

The day she met Doctor Vu, she was trembling, knuckles white as she slowly trudged up the red-leaf, newly painted driveway, she had a panicky deja vu sense. The Doctor was waiting by the windows, the dark glass panel obscure his face. He made her waited for a solid twenty seconds after she knocked, pushing the waiting time until she started to back away, tears and autumn humidity stung her cheeks. When the door finally swung open, the man who she would soon work for forever, graced her with a curt nod and a cursory glance.

“You Maisie?” He asked.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Come in. Wipe your shoes on the rug and put them on the rack.”

“Okay.”

She did just that. The man hovered behind her.

It was like standing in front of Madame Lasier again, but this time, she felt it wasn’t just a pair of eye watching her, but many, many more. Judging. Peering and criticising whether she would be valuable.

She straightened, he eyed her for another moment, before showing her around, going through his expectations and her responsibilities. He spoke very, very slowly and deliberate, enunciate each syllable, as if he was speaking to a child. He let her peeked at his shiny countertops and little harden dough rolls sitting on the oven, and he instructed her how he wanted his books to be shelve, his time for meal and his favourite dishes. And strange enough, long after she left the house, she already memorized every single of his words.

Maisie Watson sighs, and lifts the flower vase, carrying it to the altar. She carefully places it on the dark smooth silk, next to the fruit dish, so that the bouquet wouldn’t hide the tablet, then steps back and prays for Doctor Vu’s ancestor to oversee his health.

Then she goes and fetches the boiling porridge.