Queen Marina

If Marina were given a crown, she’d polish it and put it on someone else’s head.

I wash my hands slowly in the Rehabilitation Center’s restroom, then dab my lips with pale pink gloss. I blot them with a paper towel and will myself to stop dilly-dallying, only to wrap a curl around my finger, trying harder than necessary to get it to behave. My procrastination has nothing to do with not wanting to see Marina and everything to do with being afraid.

It’s been over ten years and I’m worried she won’t recognize me. Or worse, that I won’t recognize her. There’s a big difference between 79 and 89, and while she’s told me she’s “gone skinny,” and has white hair, I worry about how she’ll look under the thin blanket of a small bed. I feel guilty. I could have come sooner.

Marina’s daughter had texted, saying she’d fallen on the ice and injured her ankle. She’d been hospitalized, then moved to a rehab.

I hate rehab centers even more than hospitals and come up with reasons not to go - it’s 10 degrees and windy, for one. It’ll necessitate a PATH to Hoboken and a cab to Union City. If I wait a week, maybe she’ll be home and my husband and I can go to her apartment. And then, I think about the Fridays - every Friday for 20 years - when Marina made the same trip I’m vacillating about. But instead of a cab, she took a bus. In rain and snow, when it was bitterly cold and beastly hot. And never complained.

I walk slowly toward Room 421, trying to ignore the competing smells of chicken and Pine-Sol. I see her before she sees me. She looks up. Gasps. And smiles. Relief melts over me. She’s still beautiful.

“Hola, Caliente.”

When she worked for us, I called her Señorita Caliente because she was always hot, even in winter.

“Debra! You come to see me!” she answers, laughing as I lean in for a hug. Without hesitation, she slides over and pats the bed. I sit. Just as she did, years ago, when I used to beckon her with the same pat.

As a 40-year-old who was pregnant with twins, I was put on bedrest during my last trimester. This was before working remotely was a thing and I’d dreaded not going to the office. Then found that I loved it. Especially on Fridays.

Marina cleaned for us. I’d never had a cleaning person and felt a little uncomfortable about it. But her joy, and mainly, her dignity, wiped my guilt away like a smudge on a counter. She whisked in, her coat unbuttoned and hung within seconds. With her olive skin, high cheekbones, salt and pepper hair in a low bun, gold earrings and a scarf thrown around her neck, she looked rich. I told her so once and she laughed,

“Yes. A very rich woman!”

“I mean it, Caliente. You look like one of the ladies that lives in this neighborhood - like someone on her way to a fancy lunch.”

“That’s me. On my way to fancy lunch,” she said, with a little self-important wag of her head.

“Actually, do you want lunch?” I said. “I have to order something for me, I’ll get you something too.”

Toward the end of my pregnancy, it dawned on me that once the babies were born, the eating-for-three party would be over.

“I’m getting a tuna melt, french fries and a milkshake,” I said, salivating over my third-trimester-trifecta. “How about you? Want a hamburger or something? This coffee shop is good.”

Marina said no, but I ordered her a sandwich just in case. By the time the bell rang, she was humming in the kitchen and I was at the dining table writing copy for, appropriately enough, a Huggies ad.

Marina took the bag from the delivery guy and I pushed my laptop away.

“Go to your room!” she said, “I’ll bring the lunch.” I protested and she pointed to the bedroom. “First you eat, then you rest.”

I tucked myself into the duvet, my head falling heavily onto a pillow, just a couple of slow-blinks from deep sleep. I heard the rustle of Marina’s pants. When I didn’t stir, she turned to leave.

“Stay,” I said. “I was just resting.” I opened my eyes to see her standing before me, the tuna melt plated, the shake poured into a glass, a cloth napkin, on a tray. She had a towel draped over her arm. She put it on my lap and placed the tray on top of it.

I patted the spot next to me on the bed. “Sit with me,” I said.

“I have to do the dusting,” she answered.

“Don’t dust today,” I said. “Sit with me instead. Have some fries.” She protested that dust was no good for babies and I patted the bed again. I got her to agree to five minutes.

I bit into a fry and took a sip of the milkshake, closing my eyes in sweet-salty joy.

“Ooh, I’m getting a kick. Feel,” I said.

Marina put her warm hand on my belly until there was another kick.

“Precioso,” she whispered.

“Or maybe preciosa,” I said.

Not finding out the genders of our babies was either charmingly wide-eyed or just plain idiotic.

Marina shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll just love them.”

I started to say something but smiled instead.

“What is it?” Her hand was still on my belly.

“It’s just that, I wish I could stay pregnant for longer. I like it. And I know how to do it,” I put my hand next to hers - there was room for both. “I’ve never even changed a diaper or been alone with a baby. I’m scared that…what if I’m not good at it?” I whispered.

She met my eyes. “You’re the best mother of the world,” she said with so much conviction, I almost believed her.

I laughed. “Do I get a crown?”

She said she’d make me one. And then said all the encouraging things my mother said, but with a Chilean accent.

She made sure I had lunch in bed every Friday. And helped me line the drawers of the new dresser with Martha Stewart contact paper - white, with pale green bunnies. We stacked tiny onesies and socks on one side of the top drawer and newborn diapers (Huggies - a perk) on the other.

On June 15th, 2000, bedrest - and actually, all forms of rest - ended. Ava and Ben were beautiful and wondrous but I was not. We hired a baby nurse who wore a uniform and scared the hell out of us. Her name was Hyla. Philip and I called her Hyla Hitler behind her back. She was stern and from what I could tell, had no sense of humor. But, as we reasoned, we didn’t hire her to be our friend. We hired her to teach us how to care for the terrifying creatures who kept crying and pooping and making us fall in love with them whenever their eyes met ours.

“Isn’t it so cute when they yawn?” I said, smiling at Hyla.

She shrugged.

She was nothing, if not efficient.

“I just saw her scrubbing a stain out of a onesie with a toothbrush,” Philip whispered.

“Ew - whose?” My hand flew to my mouth.

“Nobody’s. It’s a special little toothbrush she brought here just for that.”

“You asked?” I was impressed with his bravery. I basically tip-toed around, trying to avoid eye contact with her.

Marina cooed at the babies and told them how beautiful they were in Spanish, then in English, then in a combination.

“Look at she….” Marina said, gazing at Ava. “And look at he.” She shook her head in wonder and turned to Hyla.

“The girl was fussy earlier,” Hyla answered.

Marina smiled, then followed me out of the bedroom.

“We have to get rid of her,” Marina whispered. “The babies need love.”

I countered that Hyla, unlike Philip and me, knew how to get them on a schedule. I praised her diaper-changing skills. And there was the special toothbrush to consider.

Marina stood her ground. “I’ll take care of the babies with you.”

We whispered feverishly every time Hyla left the room, finally deciding it was a Philip job. He stepped into the living room with her and an hour later, she was gone.

Marina and I jumped up and down, hugging, like seventh-grade girls. Philip’s paternity leave - the whole one week of it - had ended the day before, so he left. Marina and I diapered. I breastfed. Which was proving to be trying. We supplemented with formula. Walked the babies around the apartment. Cleaned spit up (sans special toothbrush.) Then did it again. And again. By 5:00, when Philip got home, we were exhausted.

I asked Marina if she wanted dinner before she left. She looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

“I haven’t cleaned yet.” I argued that she’d worked all day. She argued that babies need a clean house. She stayed. And cleaned. And held babies. And cleaned some more. And refused to take an extra penny.

“I do that for the babies,” she said. “And for you.” She smiled. “We’re friends.”

Marina.

Now she sits in a hospital gown and pats the spot next to her on the bed.

When she closes her eyes, I notice a fine line at the base of her lashes - as if a makeup artist had painted white eyeliner on her lids. It’s exquisite. Her teeth, always white and even, have remained so. Her smile is lovely, as is the beauty mark above her lip.

I find a vase for the flowers I picked up, and I can tell she wants to arrange them so I won’t have to. Marina has always treated me like a princess and I’ve let her sweet spoiling wash over me.

She asks about Thelma, who was our nanny. Thelma’s heart, like Marina’s, was butter-soft, and Fridays, when they cooed over Ava and Ben together, was by far, my favorite day of the week.

I called Thelma “Mrs. Beautiful,” and she called me the same. She decided Marina was a Mrs. Beautiful too and about that, she was right.

I was always rushing off to work and more often than I wished, that meant not being sure what to wear.

“Is this ok?” I stood in the kitchen with my hands on my hips, trying to make a GirlBoss-face. Marina stopped cleaning the stovetop and Thelma looked over as she spooned oatmeal into Ava’s and Ben’s mouths.

“That dress is pretty. But why you look mad?” Marina said.

“Oh no - I’m trying to look serious,” I said and explained I had a big meeting.

“I need to look… important.” I ducked into the closet, then back to the kitchen in a sleeveless silk top with a pencil skirt.

“Maybe this is better?”

“Oh. You look like a business lady!” Thelma said.

“A big one!” Marina added.

“Wait. Big, like fat?”

Marina laughed. “You come crazy when you have meetings.”

“It’s you go crazy,” I said.

I helped Marina with English and she helped me with Spanish. She had the harder job for sure.

I ran from room to room, gathering my handbag, lipstick, glasses, Blackberry. I kissed Ava and Ben, kissed them again, then kissed the two Mrs. Beautiful’s. Then lingered at the hallway mirror putting lipstick on.

“Sorry I left all that ribbon on the table,” I said. “I got it on sale and there’s so much. You guys should take some - keep it.” The ribbon was a gorgeous shade of turquoise and I still have a few random strands of it. They nodded and shooed me out the door.

When I got home, the table was set and next to each plate was a napkin tied with turquoise ribbon. And the basket in the bathroom no longer looked like a crime scene. The towels I could never seem to tame were rolled and tied with ribbons.

Marina. Her way of accepting a gift was to give it back.

“I got you some cookies.” I open the box and hold it toward her. She takes a bite of one. I break a piece off too. We chew and smile at each other for a while.

“Show me the children,” she says, so I pull out my phone.

“Ok, here they are together. We were in Florida,”

She holds the phone and kisses each of their faces. I thumb through to find more.

“Mister Philip is so handsome…so nice,” she ways.

Philip - Mister Philip - is indeed handsome. And he’s nice too - but he’s also exacting and cynical. But never with Marina. Marina melts him the way my mother used to.

“Hey. Remember how you used to make the strawberries have mouths?” I say. When Ava and Ben were little, she’d cut a slit into each of the strawberries on a plate, then pinch them between her thumb and forefinger to mimic them talking.

“You want some sugar?” she’d say.

The strawberries answered that indeed they did, and she dropped a few grains into their open mouths before handing them to Ava and Ben.

A couple of strawberries yacking it up.

Her hospital gown slides around her shoulders and she pulls it to her neck, only for it to slip down again. Her hair, salt and pepper when I saw her last, is indeed all salt now. She gathers it, smoothing it behind her ears.

“You don’t have a line on your face,” I say.

She waves me off, but it’s true. She doesn’t look 89. Nor does she seem to know she’s 89. When I called her, around Christmas time, she told me how much she liked going to her local senior center.

“The people are nice. And I help take care of the old ladies.”

When I come back a week later, I’m happy to see her up, in a chair. Her daughter Karla has flown in and brought her some clothing so she wears flowered pants and a black cardigan with an applique near her heart.

She pats the bed. I sit. We eat cookies and look at pictures. She hopes to go home in a few weeks. I tell her I think of her whenever I put my socks away. I used to fold the cuff of one sock over the other, then make a ball. Marina folds one cuff over another, but smooths the two into a flat envelope.

“They look so nice layered in my drawer,” I say. “I always thank you in my head when I look at them. Philip too.” (Annoying side-note - Philip claims an old girlfriend taught this method to him and he that he showed Marina, but I refuse to believe it.)

Socks a la Marina (Beat it, Philip’s ex-girlfriend!)

Marina laughs and squeezes my hand. We talk a bit, but she lapses into Spanish more than she used to. Without cleaning the houses of Americans, she has less contact with English-speaking people. Union City is mainly Hispanic.

I ask if people are worried about ICE.

“Oh, it’s terrible,” she whispers. “People don’t want to go outside.” My voice too, has become a whisper. I tell her I’m glad she’s a citizen and feel a wave of pure hatred at the thought of a masked man daring to touch Marina.

I have to leave, and promise to come back soon.

When I get back to Manhattan, I stop at a bistro for a very late lunch. I shouldn’t. I have things to do. But I’m immersed in Marina- vibes. So I order my favorite thing - a salad nicoise, fries and a cosmo - the 2026 version of my pregnancy lunch.

I take a sip. And offer a silent toast.

To joy and grace.

To patting the bed and sliding over.

To a woman who raised a child alone, cleaned other people’s floors and made it look easy.

A woman who made strawberries talk.

A woman who makes America great.

A lady. A queen.

Marina.

The one and only.