Pretention doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Some people have to work at it. Real, real hard. They have to get up early, put on their
bright yellow pumps and their mauve dress and strut up and down their house
practicing their condescending gestures and their every puffed out sigh and
borderline racist comment on an employee’s work. These people, unfortunate as they may be, are
people all the same, and they deserve every bit of compassion and respect that
a person of your remarkable capacity for pretention deserves.
That’s the mentality behind your founding the unique and
wondrous School for Housewives with Uppity Mexican Maids, a place where women
who are concerned with their maids getting too big for their britches can go to
learn how to make the lives of the women they barely pay to keep house for them
a living hell, akin to life in a public high school or a women’s prison. Your first class will consist entirely of
bleach blonde women in sequined gowns with no taste, too much money and a fistful
of insecurity. They’ll be seated on high
chairs watching Rosa, a Mexican woman you hired at Home Depot expressly for
this purpose, do dishes.
“Alright,” you’ll tell all these women as they sit and stare
at Rosa with a mix of puzzlement and fascination, “what’s Rosa doing wrong?”
The women will sit there wordlessly. One of them will shrug. Another will open her mouth and then close it
just as quickly. A third will black out
briefly. This will be your first test as
an instructor.
“How is she different from you?” you’ll ask them. This will throw the various housewives into a
brief titter which will rise into cacophony as high pitched southern California
accents rip through your eardrums. You’ll
bite your lip and endure as best you can before you blow a foghorn, which will
make all of these women think about being touched by their stepfather at a
monster truck rally, effectively shutting them up.
“She really isn’t.”
This will make Rosa smile.
“Except she’s not white.”
Rosa will immediately frown.
The women will nod in assent.
“That means you’re better than her.”
The women will make a series of “aha” sounds. One, out of habit, will fake an orgasm. You won’t comment. You’ll just let them sit and consider how
they can turn their whiteness to their advantage.
“Try to help her improve,” you’ll tell them, your voice
curling into an edge that could cut glass.
The women’s eyes will narrow, their brains will begin to move with such
fury that you’ll swear you can hear them humming.
Over the next fifteen minutes a cavalcade of bitchy,
ignorant and unhelpful comments will emerge.
Some of the housewives, clearly drunk, will accuse Rosa of trying to
sleep with their husband. They’ll inform
her in no uncertain terms that, if she does so, she’ll have to pay for her own
abortion. Others will find more biting,
incisive insults, some of them in broken Spanish, all of them grounds for
execution in most aforementioned women’s prisons.
Rosa will end the session weeping and the housewives will
end it smugly grinning at their own meanness.
It’ll be a tremendous success.
Congratulations Housewife Trainer!
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