“Alright Valeria: you like to clean.”
“I do NOT like to clean!” You hate all housework, probably because you’re always out. And who does he think he is, saying you like to clean just because of your race? Bigot.
“You like to clean.”
“But I d-don’t like to-”
“You LOVE to clean.”
“I...I do like to clean,” you finally concede. You know it’s a stereotype for Latinas to be maids or whatever, but you always enjoyed it. You and your mom always cleaned up the house as a kid and it was never a drag. If you ever do settle down with a guy (you laugh because that’ll never happen) you would love to just be a housewife so you can do the cleaning without a care in the world.
“You’re cleaning right now.”
“I’m cleaning right now.” Of course you are doing that! As you remember how much spiffier the house looks because of you, your clothes change to be much more comfortable for cleaning (though still slutty), your hair is straightened (you didn’t have time to do it) and your trusty pink vacuum appears next to you.
“You speak with a heavy accent.”
“I don’t speak with a...heavy...” you say in a regular American accent, trailing off. Why would you speak with an accent? Sure, your parents had them, but you never picked it up from the-”
“You speak with a heavy, sexy accent.”
“I speak...” you begin, your American accent essentially replaced with a heavy Mexican one. “I speak with a heavy and sexy accent.” But of course you never haven’t. You lived in Mexico for a while so by the time you learned English, you had quite the accent, but it was sooooo sexy and you never hated it.
“Your English is not very good.”
“My English not very-I mean is very good!” You say, correcting yourself mid-sentence. What is he on about? Sure, your English isn’t perfect but it’s good ENOUGH. Especially since you hit your teens, you’ve been able to always hold your own even though it’s still a bit of a work in progress.
“Let me rephrase: your English is poor.”
“My...me English no good...” you say, a bit ashamed. You are well aware that your English is terrible for someone who spent a good 6 years in America. Speaking it is always a pain. You hate that it makes you sound dumb and uneducated but you were always able to get by in school with help from your many friends (often in exchange for sexual favors when it was your guy friends). You mostly stick to Spanish when you can but you can only do that so much. That’s why your body does most of the talking.
“Let’s finish up here. Valeria, you aren’t very smart.”
“Whuh? Me very smart!” You say desperately. You may sound dumb but you are not dumb! You’ve never been a terrible student. If you applied yourself you could be an honors kid, but that was for losers.
“You are dumb.”
“Me...me dumb?” You ask aloud. You try and think about this but, as usual, thinking is so hard. You weren’t super super dumb (you think) but you certainly weren’t the brightest. If you weren’t the school mattress kids would definitely mock your intelligence more, but you aren’t helpless. You’re just below average, but your mom always said that was OK. She told you to play with the cards you were dealt, and you happened to have a great (and horny) body but a not-so-great brain.
“Yes. You are quite dumb.”
“Me dumb. Me so dumb,” you say in a very high-pitched voice. He was right. You were so stupid and you dropped out of high school because you slept with teachers for grades. That’s why you started working as a stripper and a maid, because you weren’t going to college, and you weren’t having a career. When you were a kid your parents thought you might have had a disability, but they were wrong: you just were very dumb, and that was that. They wished you were smarter and could make something of yourself, but they still loved you even though you always make horrible decisions and can hardly put coherent thoughts together. You don’t mind being dumb because you never really liked thinking anyway. You just did what made you happy. And at least you were good at three things: sex, cleaning and speaking Spanish.
“OK then,” says the man, stopping the pendulum. “Valeria...are you OK?”
“Me feel good. And horny too! Me want to clean more!”
The man laughs at you. You must have said something funny.