The Will and Testament

She started to get to know all the women in the house as she worked. She found that the two mothers were a bit overbearing with their daughters and absolutely poisonous when they saw one another, but were generally quite nice. She also began to notice that the two teenagers were very sweet with no sign of the traditional teenage rebellion that movies had taught Lalana were part of what it meant to be a young girl in America.

Felicity was Lalana's favorite in the house. When Felicity got home from school in the afternoon she would go and find Lalana, wherever she was in the house. She had to take the bus home from school because Andrea was on the varsity cheer squad and it seemed that Felicity got a little bit lonely in the afternoons when her mother was teaching yoga at a nearby gym and her cousin was still at school. But she had no desire to be a cheerleader; she was a little bit too shy for that. But not shy with Lalana.

"Can I help?" was her normal question when she got home from school and Lalana would explain that she didn't feel comfortable allowing her to help but she could hang out and talk to her while she worked. Lalana found Felicity to be naïve, sweet, and innocent and didn't mind that the girl slowed her down. She even let Felicity sit in her private quarters on those days when she was scheduled to clean her own room. They were almost like friends, even if Lalana was a woman and Felicity was but a girl.

"So what was it like in Thailand?" Felicity asked one afternoon while Lalana was making Felicity's bed and cleaning her room.

"It was much different than here," Lalana explained, smoothing out the sheets.

"Do you ever miss your family?"

"I haven't seen my family in many, many years. I didn't really like them and I don't ever miss them," Lalana explained. She felt odd sometimes, talking to this young girl. She felt like when she was blunt and honest it might somehow hurt the girl, even if it didn't have anything to do with her. But Felicity never seemed to mind. Felicity would just go and ask another question. It was like she didn't even listen to Lalana's answers, but Lalana knew that wasn't the case. Sometime in the future, Felicity would ask her why she didn't like her family or something else about Thailand and she would always remember everything that Lalana had said before.

"Are all Thai women as pretty as you?" Felicity asked. Lalana looked up with a wry smile and then realized that it wasn't a joking question, Felicity was really telling her she was beautiful and it made her blush.

"Thank you," she said. She didn't know how to actually answer the question. Felicity smiled at her, her beautiful smile. Her dark red hair was hanging in her eyes and Lalana was shocked by how beautiful the girl looked, "But you are far more beautiful than I am." Now it was Felicity's turn to blush. Lalana looked a little more deeply at the girl. She had such a beautiful face and an amazing body! Lalana also noticed that Felicity and all the other women in the house tended dress very revealingly while they were at home. As they spoke, Felicity was wearing a skin tight t-shirt with no bra that exposed her midriff. Her little nipples were poking through the shirt in the cold air. She was also wearing a pair of tight, light blue work out shorts that hugged her buttocks and accentuated her small, feminine curves. Lalana had to admit to herself that she was aroused by Felicity. In fact, she was attracted to all the women in the house. She'd only rarely had female clients as a prostitute, but she'd always enjoyed the experience. She wondered if maybe without the pressures of money if she'd prefer women.

"Do you really think I am pretty?" Felicity asked, looking at Lalana and biting her lip. She looked so cute.

"You're gorgeous," Lalana said, honestly. Felicity giggled and jumped on her bed, messing up all of Lalana's work. Sometimes Felicity did this, undid the work that Lalana had just finished. She wasn't malicious, she just didn't think about what she was doing. She didn't even realize she did it.

"Did you have any boyfriends when you were in Thailand?" the girl asked and Lalana almost burst out laughing. She had had more boyfriends than just about anyone else on earth.

"A few," she said, trying not to feel dirty as she lied through her teeth. It wasn't that she was ashamed, she wasn't. She just didn't want to say more than was polite.

"Did you ever have sex?" Felicity asked, laying on her stomach on her bed with her legs crooked at the knees, her ankles crossed and her head resting on the palm of her hand. Now Lalana was in an awkward position. She looked at the girl squarely in the eye and shrugged her shoulders.

"I don't think your mother would want us talking about this kind of stuff," Lalana said.

"I want a boyfriend," Felicity said wistfully.

"You're smart and sweet and pretty," Lalana said, "if you want a boyfriend you can get one." This was how their conversations generally went. Little segments of ideas and a sort of jerky flow while Lalana was working.

"So did you have sex?" Felicity said. It was obvious that this was something that was really bothering her. Lalana felt like she was some sort of older sister figure to this girl all of the sudden and decided to just throw her a bone.

"A couple of times," she said. Felicity looked both excited and a bit wistful.

"But not until I was a bit older than you," Lalana said. It was exactly what the younger girl seemed to want to hear. She wanted to hear that it was okay to have sex but that she wasn't weird for still never having had a boyfriend. Still Lalana was a bit uncomfortable with the conversation and decided to change things up.

"So..."she said, being careful not to antagonize, "Do your mother and your aunt not get along?" Felicity rolled her eyes and nodded her head.

"I guess I hoped you wouldn't notice but I guess it's impossible. They are ridiculous," she explained.

"What is it about...if you don't mind me asking?" Lalana said while spraying Windex on Felicity's beautiful bay windows.

"No I don't care. It's about grandpa. He hasn't shown my mom or Aunt Tessa his will but he told them that he is going to give only one of them the money when he dies. So they both came here to try to get on his good side and they fight all the time," she explained. It made sense to her now, they were being greedy. That she could understand.

"Why do they act like that when he isn't even around?" she asked.

"Grandpa has cameras all over the house. He stays up in his room and watches us all the time so he can decide who he is going to give the money to. I don't get it. If he died we could just split it and live in the house here. I mean he is really rich and the house is really big. I said that to my mom. But you know how it is," Felicity explained. Suddenly, Lalana felt very odd. She was a bit uncomfortable knowing she had lived the last few weeks in the house and been watched at least part of the time. She felt so naked. She hoped there weren't any in her room.

"So how many boys have you slept with?" Felicity asked. This girl certainly had a one track mind all of the sudden.

"We are done talking, I am sorry. I get paid to work," Lalana said smiling at the girl and walked out of the room. After all, she had a lot of work to do.

If Felicity was Lalana's favorite person in the house then surely the person she saw most often was Tessa. Unlike the girls she didn't go to school and unlike Cindy (who had a part-time job as a yoga instructor) she didn't leave the house on any sort of regular occasion. Sometimes it made Lalana wonder why they had hired her in the first place. It didn't seem that it would be that difficult for Tessa to clean up a bit when she was home. But in all fairness Tessa did do a lot of cleaning and appeared to take a special delight in maintaining the yard.

Unlike Felicity, Tessa wouldn't talk to Lalana while she was working. Instead she would wait until Lalana was finished and then ask the maid if she would like to sit in the solarium and have a cup of coffee. While Tessa seemed a bit cold when she was around her sister, her beautiful smile was refreshingly sincere when it was just the two of them. Lalana got the feeling that Tessa was a bit lonely and really enjoyed have someone around during the day, even if they didn't talk much of the time. But their conversations were light and comfortable on those afternoons in the sunlight.

"So are you making yourself comfortable here?" Tessa asked her maid one day a few weeks into the course of employment.

"Oh absolutely," Lalana said, "I mean this place is wonderful. I am really enjoying everything about this place," she explained, taking a sip of coffee. Tessa made the best coffee in the world.

"That's good. We want you to know that you should feel at home here. Not just in your suite. You can go anywhere in the house when you aren't working. You should feel like a member of the family," she said and it truly touched Lalana because she could tell that it was sincere.

Tessa's favorite activity was gossip. It was tough on Lalana at first because Tessa would talk about women in the neighborhood or other mothers from Andrea's school and Lalana wouldn't know who they were. Eventually she began to know these women by the reputation that Tessa described although she could only imagine what they looked like. The best part about listening to Tessa's gossip was that when it was particularly juicy, Tessa would get very animated. She would stand up from her chair with her big, bright smile and pace around the room. She would talk with her hands and her arms. She would laugh lightly and toss her golden hair around in her face. She looked so young and vibrant it was hard to believe she was 40 and had a daughter who was a senior in high school. Lalana fed on her energy and began to feel like they were friends, despite the age difference. It was like Tessa treated her as another adult even though she was a few years older than Andrea.

"So did I tell you about Rebecca Miller?" Tessa asked.

"No," Lalana said. She had heard of Rebecca Miller before. According to Tessa she was a bit of a slut around town and there were rumors that she was sleeping with the junior high school gym teacher. Of course, Tessa believed every single bit of the gossip she heard.

"Well I heard this morning at the grocery store, from Mary Stewart that she is finally going to leave her husband. They say that she is running off with some college boy she met on a cruise last summer. I didn't believe it at first, by I drove home past her house and her car was gone and I could see her husband, home from work, talking to their kids in the living room! I think she just pulled up stakes and left!"

"That is terrible," Lalana said, but she really didn't care one way or the other. She had done just fine without a mother or a father and wasn't likely to feel bad for those who were missing one. But part of Tessa's gossip procedure was to be titillated by bad action and then pretend like she felt bad about it.

"Oh I know," she said with a horrified look on her face, but a twinkle in her eye that said it was exciting to her. But the conversation raised an issue with Lalana that she had been wondering since she had arrived at the house. Where were the Andrea and Felicity's fathers? They had never spoken about them but she didn't feel comfortable asking.

"It is just like the opposite of what happened to Cindy," Tessa said, leaning forward conspiratorially. It was as if she had been reading her maid's mind or something. Lalana leaned forward to, to find out what had happened to the other woman in the house.

"How is that?" she asked.

"Oh you don't know," she said, her eyes flashing. Of course she knew that Lalana didn't know. But it was all part of the dance of the gossip, "Well, about eight years ago when Felicity was still in elementary school Cindy and her husband had a big fight about middle school. Cindy wanted the girl to go to a private school and her husband said that they couldn't afford it. The fight was huge because it wasn't really about that; you know it was just what started it. They were really fighting because they were both cheating on one another. So they got in this big fight and Cindy broke a glass over her husband's head. The next day she got home from yoga and he was gone. All of his stuff was packed up and he was out of there. She got a postcard two months later from him; there was a picture of him and some hot little thing he had picked up in the Caribbean. He hasn't been back to see his ex-wife or his daughter since," she explained. Lelana was a bit shocked. She couldn't believe Tessa had been able to wait this long to tell her. But it was just one more piece of gossip and before Lelana knew it they were talking, drinking coffee, and laughing again about the women in the neighborhood.

Lalana's relationship with Cindy was much different. Despite the fact that they were slightly closer in age than Lalana and Tessa, they didn't act like friends when they were together. Instead Cindy thought of Lalana as another young girl in the house who needed her advice and attention. Her favorite thing to do was call up Lalana on her day off to teach her about yoga. It was good natured even if Lalana found it a bit annoying. She just thought it was such an important thing that everyone should learn about it. She considered it a favor to do it for free.

"Did you bring your mat?" she asked Lalana one day when she had called Lalana up for a lesson.

"Yes," Lalana said. She tried to sound excited. She found that the attitude that Cindy brought to the table made her want to please her. She had never had an older woman who demanded anything out of her except for sex. She wanted Cindy to be proud of her and it was a very strange and exciting feeling for her.

"Okay, we are just going to do our normal stretches today, I am a bit tired," she said. They were both wearing tight fitting t-shirts and short shorts. They were barefoot. Cindy had her hair tied back in a little ponytail and Lalana did the same when they were working out. They had already worked out a little yoga regimen together and Lalana was starting to understand how it worked. She sort of wished she had known this stuff back when she was a hooker because she could tell that she was becoming more flexible all the time. It seemed that Cindy considered that element of yoga as well.

"I bet there aren't a lot of women out there who can stretch like I can," she said matter-of-factly as she looked at herself in the mirror during a particularly difficult stretch.

"Probably not," Lalana said, looking at Cindy's round, tight butt stretching through her shorts.

"That's sweet of you dear," Lalana said, before giving her the signal to change positions, "It is important to stay in shape as you get older. Lots of women just sort of let themselves go. Believe me if you want men to keep asking you out as you get older then you just have to stay thin and limber."

"Do lots of men ask you out," Lalana asked, then immediately felt embarrassed. She hoped that the older woman wasn't going to be upset with her for saying that, she hadn't meant it in the way that it sounded.

"You would not believe how many of my students come up to me after class," she said, not missing a beat. Cindy seemed a bit insecure about her obvious beauty and sometimes it came on a bit strong. Not that Lalana cared, she thought Cindy deserved to be proud of her looks, "How about you, I bet the boys are all over you when you go into town on your day off." Lalana blushed a deep crimson.

"Oh I haven't been in town yet," she explained, but enjoyed the compliment.

"Oh honey, you need to go and let your hair down! It is important to get out and have fun sometimes. I mean unless you want to end up like my sister," she said with a laugh. Lalana gave her a puzzled look, "You don't know?"

"No, what do you mean?" Lalana asked, she was always desperate for information about the family and the nature of family dynamics in America. She just wanted to fit in.

"Well, I don't know if I should be telling you something like that. It is sort of an adult subject," she explained raising her eyebrows. Lalana knew more about adult subject than about twelve adults put together.

"Oh I am an adult Ms. Walker," she said. Tessa let her call her Tessa, but Cindy required Ms. Walker.

"Well...Okay," she said, opening her wide, pretty eyes and whispering, "A few years ago Tessa got into a sort of funk. She stopped going out and spent all of her time at home working in her garden. She used to be a real party animal and I think that is why her ex-husband loved her. He started going out without her and after a while they grew so far apart that she just put an end to it. Wouldn't talk to him anymore or deal with him until he ran away. It is important to have fun sometimes; she turned into this sort of sour person who no one can stand besides her daughter." Lalana didn't feel that that was an accurate description of Tessa, she liked Tessa. But she also didn't think that Tessa was right that Cindy was mean spirited and slutty. It just seemed as though the two sisters saw each other on a weird level that Lalana couldn't see.

"Sometime you should go into town with people your own age and just have a little bit of fun. And it is always easier to have some fun when there are boys buying you drinks and drooling over you. You are a pretty girl and this yoga won't hurt," she explained. She always had such good advice and Lalana got back to her stretches.

The person that Lalana knew the least was probably Andrea, although when they were together they tended to get along. The only time they ever spent any considerable time together was when Andrea was grounded for some reason and Lalana was pressed into service driving Andrea and her friends around town.

The best part about this sort of service was that for a few hours at a time Lalana wasn't a maid and she certainly wasn't a t-girl hooker. She was just a college age girl driving around in a car with a bunch of girls roughly her age having a good time. For just a small period of time she wouldn't be treated in any way like a servant by anyone, not even Andrea, she was just another one of the girls. Not just any girls either, popular cheerleader girls. She sort of considered Andrea and her friends as her friends. They would go to restaurants together, they'd go into stores, and they'd talk about boys. She sensed that the girls liked her too, in fact Andrea broached that subject one time when they had dropped all the other girls off after a trip to the mall and they were on their way back home.

"I am really glad that grandpa hired you," Andrea said. Lalana looked over at her in the passenger seat, her blonde hair cascading over her shoulders and her large breasts. She was looking beautiful that day wearing a tight cheerleader camp t-shirt and tight jeans. It felt good that the all-American girl wanted her around, despite the fact that she looked and felt so different.

"Why?" she asked.

"I don't know. It's sort of like you are another adult in the house because you can drive and you have a job and everything. But at the same time you aren't always fighting with someone like my mom and my aunt. And you can come and hang out with my friends and I and it is fun," she said.

"Do your friends mind when I am around?" Lalana asked. She didn't think that they did, but it would be nice to hear it.

"Not at all!" Andrea said, giving Lalana a playful bat on the arm with the back of her hand, "They think you are so cool. Plus you are a total dude magnet."

"What!?" Lalana said, shocked.

"You haven't noticed?"

"Noticed what?"

"Oh my God! You like totally have to be blind. Any time we are out there are all these guys staring at you and stuff. I mean they look at all of us, but now we have the guys who like cheerleaders starring at us and all the guys who are into Asian chicks," she explained.