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Over the next few years Helen came to my condo every other Thursday, and spent most of the day cleaning -- whenever she wasn't in the hospital. She had diabetes and bad legs, and sometimes she needed a blood transfusion. But it was important to Helen to keep working when she could. Her medical expenses were so great that she sometimes needed to borrow a little extra to pay for medicine. At the time, my work was going well -- I had become chair of the Firearms Policy Team for the United States Sentencing Commission -- and when I got a pay raise, I passed a bit along to Helen.

Over the years, Helen met my boyfriends. Once she got to my apartment especially early in the morning, and offered to make breakfast for me and Jeff. She figured out which things were Marcus' and which were mine, and put them all in the right drawers. Rusty came home early one afternoon, and Helen welcomed him to the house. And Helen would occasionally have a surprise of her own. One afternoon, I came home and found her on hands and knees wiping down my floors. That didn't surprise me -- but I got a kick out of the fact she was doing it wearing capri pants, a gold lamé top and a black beret.

Helen was hard-working and trustworthy, and I referred her to several of my friends. She never asked me to, but she didn't need to. It was nice to find a housekeeper who didn't mind that her employers were gay.

It was a while before we learned that she traveled clear across town, from notorious Southeast Washington, to clean our homes in Dupont Circle. Most of my friends, even those who aren't white, live in Northwest, just like the president. The only connection most of us have to Southeast is the local news, with its lurid reports of crime. When Washington was the murder capital of the country a few years ago, we knew the real culprit was Southeast, a part of the city plagued by drugs and gang violence. One night Helen stayed late cleaning my friend John's house, and missed her bus. He offered to give her a ride home, but she declined. "You don't understand. Someone like you where I live? You could get hurt." She waited for a later bus.

Last Monday I woke up and heard on the radio that a grandmother was shot in Southeast. The woman had been sitting in her backyard with a neighbor when a gunfight broke out among some boys down the street. Instead of running for cover, she rushed to gather neighborhood kids. She had just shoved the neighbor's 4-year-old daughter into the house when two bullets struck her: one in the back and one in a leg. She died in the doorway, soaking in a pool of her own blood. All the kids were safe. In the subway on the way to work, I read in the paper that the grandmother was Helen Foster-El, 55, who "had done domestic work, but had health problems, and wore a pacemaker."

It was Helen, our housekeeper.

Next page | Trying to get a cab to Helen's funeral