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The apartment was small--maybe four-hundred square feet. It had polished wooden floors and faced slightly north so that the setting sun slanted in from the left, casting a warm, golden glow over the small kitchenette and living space. For six dollars a night, Molly got a fully furnished apartment with handmade rugs by local artists, a painting over the couch of three giraffes communing beneath a baobab tree, and a low bed in a tiny alcove covered with a multi-colored quilt and two white pillows. It was austere, but perfectly inviting to a weary traveler just looking for her own quiet space.
Molly went to bed that night thinking of every French word she knew, the way a sleepless person might count sheep while trying to fall asleep:Merci, salut, bonsoir, bonjour. Je suis désolé. Comment allez-vous? Pouvez-vous m’aider? Quelle heure est-il?
From her soft mattress in the dark she listened to the night sounds of the street below, her windows open to let in the air as she breathed deeply. The howl of street cats had replaced the sound of cars with loud exhaust systems and people shouting, and now all Molly could hear was the laughter of someone talking quietly on their own balcony beneath hers, the occasional jingle of a bell on a bike as someone rode down the street, and her own measured breathing.
Chat. Chien. Fille. Garçon. Bonne nuit, she thought, smiling to herself as she finally drifted off to sleep.
* * *
Morning in Antsirana: the sun was bright and the smells of coffee and cooking food came from neighboring apartments. Molly ventured out and found a cafe that served a strong cup of black coffee and a baguette with butter and jam. The French influence in Madagascar was still strong given the fact that the country had only severed its ties with France in the decade prior.
After breakfast and browsing the newspaper at a small bistro table outside the cafe (the newspaper, printed in French, took some effort to decipher, but Molly felt confident about the accompanying photos and headlines--at least enough so that she got the gist of what was happening in the world), she wandered through the center of town, stopping to talk with vendors selling cocoa, coffee, cloves, sugar, and pepper. Some spoke French fluently, some none at all, and one man had enough English in his repertoire that Molly was able to carry on a conversation with him for a full ten minutes.
From this man who was selling bags of sugar, she was able to glean that her best chance at employment was to make her way to the Mantasaly Resort, which was on the water. By noon, Molly was standing in front of a collection of grass-roofed huts on the beach, scanning the area for signs of an office or main building.
A woman with dark skin and braids bleached lighter by the sun stopped and stared at Molly. She asked her something in a language that was neither French nor English, and was met only with Molly's uncomprehending stare. It sounded as if she were speaking in Malagasy, and Molly hadn't had the chance yet to learn even a few basic words that might help her to get by.
Perhaps sensing Molly's frustration at being lost, the woman began to use hand motions and to mime her question, finally pointing at a long building near a swimming pool.
"Is this the office?" Molly asked, though she knew the question would be as incomprehensible to the woman as the Malagasy words were to her. Instead of saying more, Molly simply smiled and bowed her head slightly in gratitude. "Merci," she tried, hoping that perhaps the woman had some basic French words at her disposal.
The long building turned out to be both the front desk and a bar, and as Molly walked in, the cool tile floors and dark overhead beams greeted her. A man in a crisply ironed shirt stood behind a desk in one corner, facing the bar, which had a giant canoe hanging upside down over it. From the inside of the canoe hung several covered lights, which, though turned off during the day, certainly would have cast a glow over the dark wood of the bars and shelves and stools when evening came.
Again Molly blundered her way through an introduction in French, making it clear to the man behind the counter that she was there seeking work. In the same way that she'd ordered breakfast at the cafe and spoken to the woman outside, she mimed things like sweeping, pointed at the bar, and tried out various words in French, likelaundry, andhotel, andchampagne. In the end, she simply clasped her hands and smiled, hoping that he didn't think she was a guest requesting maid service and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.
The process was exhausting, but it seemed to work, as Molly was soon standing in an offie the size of a broom closet, speaking her broken French to a very large Black woman with a sheen of sweat on her unlined face. The woman grinned at her, assessing Molly's sinewy arms and even reaching out to pinch her narrow waist.
"Maigre," the woman said, wagging a finger at Molly. "Tu as besoin de plus de steak."
All Molly got from that was the word "steak," but given the look on the woman's face and the way she eyed Molly's narrow ribcage, she gathered that she was being instructed to eat a slab of meat and put on a few pounds.
"Je suisFaniry," the woman said, pressing both hands to her own soft, ample bosom.
Molly smiled, feeling herself relax. "Je suisMolly," she replied, holding out a hand for Faniry to shake.
Without further ado, Faniry loaded her up with a pile of items and then physically turned Molly around, pushing her towards a small water closet and motioning for her to change her clothes.
"Oh, now?" Molly asked, eyebrows raised. "You want me to work today?"
Evidently she did, as Molly emerged in a brown smock over a well-worn and washed calico dress with puffed shoulders. The only shoes she had were the sandals on her feet and Faniry shook her head disapprovingly, pointing at her own feet and then back at Molly's.
"Yes, tomorrow I'll wear tennis shoes," she promised. "Or whenever I'm supposed to work again."
By seven o'clock, Molly had sweated through her dress and smock. She spent the afternoon and early evening on her hands and knees scrubbing bathrooms and polishing floors. She stripped guest beds, remade them, and learned how to use the industrial washer and dryer in the sweltering laundry room. When Faniry finally took the dirty rags from her hands and smiled her wide, gleeful smile, Molly was exhausted. There was a level of fatigue that she hadn't felt from this kind of physical labor in a long time.
Faniry reached into the pocket of her own smock and extracted a wad of ariary, which was the currency of Madagascar. Instead of counting it--not that she would have known its equivalency to a dollar anyway--Molly nodded in gratitude, put it into her own pocket, and started walking towards the closet where she'd left her clothing and her purse shoved into an empty box on a shelf.
Her apartment felt like a pair of open arms as Molly unlocked the door and let herself in that night. It was already dark by six o'clock on a June evening; below the equator things were different than what Molly was accustomed to.
She opened the window again and let in some fresh air, then stripped out of her work clothes and filled the sink with soap and water. There was no way she could wear these clothes again the next day without a thorough washing, but in order to dry them in time she'd need to wash and wring them dry immediately, so she set to work there in her kitchen, standing before the sink in just her underwear and bra, summoning the energy to put some elbow grease into the task when all she really wanted to do was eat and go to sleep.
When the thin, brown dress and smock had been scrubbed and hung before the window to dry overnight, Molly finally sat at her small table for two and counted out the cash that Faniry had handed to her: if she was calculating correctly based on how much she was spending on items at the grocery store and their comparative value, she'd earned about twelve dollars, which didn't feel like much for seven hours of labor. She stood and took her cash over to the bed, throwing back the blankets and searching the mattress with her hands. On the underside was a small tear in the fabric, and Molly slid her folded up bills into the slot, letting the mattress fall into place again.
There, her very own bank.
She quickly filled the small bathtub in her quarter-sized bathroom, sank into the hot water, and scrubbed her body the same way she'd scrubbed her new work uniform.
Dinner was a piece of bread torn off a baguette from the corner market, and a huge helping of rice with stew poured over the top. Molly had picked up both from the couple who ran the shop on her street, but was convinced that buying her own staples and cooking herself would be a cheaper alternative in the long run, and she knew she'd have to do the shopping soon and stock her apartment with rice, coffee, bread, butter, and fruit.
