Mud Woman Gets Busy, Part I

by Michael Shay

Christian Schweigert bowed his head to the blowing snow as he walked briskly across the Markbright Hotel and Motor Court parking lot in the gray light of a Salt Lake City dawn. It was a sprawling downtown complex and it seemed to Christian he spent half his time walking from his quarters in the high-rise hotel to the constellation of two-story brick buildings that made up the sprawling motor court. But this was his last week on housekeeping duty. On Monday he would join the staff at the registration desk and could leave behind his apprenticeship in toilet cleaning and bed making. And he could sleep in for a change, since he would be the night man in the hotel lobby. He had worked mostly night jobs in the seven years since leaving his village of Rohrlach, in what used to be East Germany, to travel to Frankfurt and life as a hotelier. Rohrlach now seemed as remote to Christian as his own childhood.

He burst through the door in the Snowbird Building and walked down the concrete steps to the housekeeping department in the basement. In the staff lounge, or The Hole as everyone called it, Christian shed his coat and joined the other housekeepers in powder-blue uniforms queuing up by the ancient coffee pot. The Hole was no larger than the average Markbright guest room. Two cafeteria tables sat end to end in the center of the room, flanked by beat-up beige lockers aligned along one wall and the sink and coffee pot on the other. The pot, an ancient machine the size of a fire hydrant, huffed and chugged and whined as it created the morning brew. It sounded like that old EFI truck that his father used to drive when making deliveries for the cement plant. That was when Christian was a kid, before Unification, before the plant outside Rohrlach was closed, scattering families to Berlin and Prague and beyond. Christian counted himself among the lucky ones, landing a job at the biggest hotel in Frankfurt. He was on his way up now, especially since being selected for a much sought-after U.S. apprenticeship by hotel manager Mr. Balaban, father of Farah, his beloved freundin.

The coffee pot issued the resigned sigh that signaled the brew was perked. "Coffee!" yelled Ellen Buckles, the black woman with the complicated braids coiled like ropes on her head who was Christian's mentor for his two-week stint in housekeeping. Ellen was built like an East German shotputter; she wore Markbright's largest uniform blouse yet her biceps continually threatened tho burst the seams of her sleeves. She was loud and funny and Christian followed her every move, eager to learn everything he could about hotels during his short three months in the U.S.

Christian fetched his coffee mug from the cupboard next to the window that looked out on the squat rows of clothes washers and the massive bulks of gleaming dryers, with their constant hum and the white shapes of towels and sheets tumbling by like flocks of ghosts. He cradled the plastic coffee mug and inspected the hotel's logo stamped on the side: a wedge of five geese flying over a beehive. Beneath that was "Markbright Hotel" in bold block letters. He turned it around and looked at the name stenciled on the white plastic: "XIAN" Ellen had handed it to him his first day in the department. Christian had read, "X-I-A-N" and looked up at Ellen and wondered if there wasn't a mistake. The name looked and sounded foreign, maybe Chinese or Mayan or Incan, a name that might belong to one of the many tiny, dark-skinned women he worked with.

"Abbreviation," Ellen had said, pointing at the cup. "Like X-mas for Christmas, you know?"

Christian had adopted a phrase to get him over the hump when he discovered yet another baffling aspect of America: "Just do it." It was the slogan of an athletic shoe company and its three little words seemed to reflect the dizzying pace of his new life. Snowboarding? Just do it. Sample Rocky Mountain Oysters? Just do it. Drive a pick-up truck? Just do it. He was learning the hospitality trade along with the value of impulsivity. So, when Ellen gave him a cup emblazoned with his altered name, he said to himself: "Just do it." . Then he did what the rest of the staff did, which was fill it with scalding coffee and shake some artificial creamer and sweetener into it and slurp it down so he could begin his shift by 7 a.m. "Just do it."

On this day, Christian finally got his coffee, walked over to one of the two cafeteria tables in the room and sat across from Ellen and her sometime-partner Gwen, who fled the civil wars in Guatemala and still sent money to her family there. Christian imagined this squat woman with a face like a pumpkin walking mountain passes to freedom, all her worldly belonging strapped to her back. This morning, Gwen calmly sipped orange juice. Like a handful of other staff members who were Mormon, she avoided caffeine. Ellen sipped her coffee, talked about one of her kids; her silver earrings danced as she bobbed her head and moved her hands to illustrate the story. "I told the principal that Mel is not sick, he does not have a belly ache, he does not have asthma," Ellen said, gulping her coffee. Her cup had "EL" in big block letters. "I told the man, 'My son is a faker. Do not call me unless his appendix is ready to burst, unless his eyeball is falling out, unless he is bleeding from a sucking chest wound.' "

"It's nothing," Ellen said with more vehemence that he expected.

Gwen seemed puzzled. "What?"

Gwen nodded. "There's a bunch of them. Rednecks, guns, big trucks...."

"Slobs," Ellen said, shaking her head.

Christian said: "But this man, he said...."

"It's time," Ellen slipped out of her seat and stood.

Christian told Gwen about the man in 327. He had knocked on the door and so had Ellen because there was no answer. Suddenly, the door jerked open and a huge man stared at them. His face was ringed by a thick, black beard. His dark eyes first took in Christian, then Ellen. He gave her the once-over. "Mud Woman!" he barked, then slammed the door in their faces. The concussion rattled the sanitary-wrapped glasses on the housekeeping supply cart.

"Mud woman?" Gwen asked.

"Mud woman," said Christian. "You know what it means?"

Gwen shrugged, sipped her coffee. "They call us names: wetbacks, spicks, other things. It doesn't help to complain." She paused, taking in The Hole with a gesture of her right hand. "Some worry about La Migra." Christian knew that was slang for the Immigration authorities who made occasional sweeps of downtown businesses.

He didn't want to cause any problems, but in Germany, at least in the pre-Unification East, racist incidents were rare, probably because there were non-white people in his village or within 100 miles. He had seen Chinese in Dresden; a group of Cubans once toured the cement factory. That was it. Life was different in Frankfurt. He had seen the skinheads, knew about the beatings and the killings of foreigners: Palestinians, Kurds, Ethiopians, you name it. He had once got into a fight at a party when a German referred to Christian's Turkish girlfriend Farah as a "sand nigger."

"She's Turkish, you idiot," Christian had yelled at the drunken skinhead.

"Turkish whore," the man had yelled. Then came the fight, which didn't go well for Christian.

"I know about rednecks," he said to Gwen.

"You don't know shit, Christian." It was Ellen, who had sneaked up behind him. "Does he Gwen?"

"Give him time." Her dark eyes were on Christian.

"C'mon," Ellen said. "Mud woman has work to do."

(Coming soon: Part II of  "Mud Woman Gets Busy")

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