“The job is just too stressful,” I said after marching into my boss’s office. “I have to quit.”
“Well,” she said sarcastically from her desk, which sat next to cages for male breeder rodents, “I better let you get out of here before you get too stressed out!”
It took weeks to get my final paycheck in the mail. I had never walked out on a job since, but the master bathroom of the Trailer nearly broke me.
On the second day, I came back to the Trailer alone. I parked in the driveway, stopped to lock my car doors, then locked myself inside the house. I avoided peering out the windows, afraid that I might see the Barefoot Bandit walking by. That morning, I’d left Mia at day care after dosing her with Tylenol for a slight fever. The day before had proved there was absolutely no cell phone reception at the Trailer. If Mia became sicker, I wouldn’t be able to be reached, period. My uneasiness in being left alone, locked in the Trailer, without a phone, crawled over me, and I couldn’t shake it off. It was compounded with the stress of disappearing into some kind of void for the duration of the workday. As a parent, I always wanted to be, at the very least, on call in case something happened.
We’d finished most of the house the previous day, but I had to go over Sheila’s work. The drawers from the fridge were still soaking in the sink. The linoleum floor in the kitchen—a well-worn brown path that connected the sink, stove, and fridge in a triangle—still needed to be scrubbed. But most of my day would be spent in the master bathroom.
The day before, Pam told me to pace myself between spraying and scrubbing. She suggested doing small doses of the bathroom and then moving to another part of the house, then returning to do another section of the bathroom. My left-to-right, top-to-bottom method didn’t feel like a good enough strategy for the mess in front of me. Black mold covered a lot of the ceiling and the upper walls of the stand-up shower. I went through two bottles of mold-remover spray, soaking it and then scrubbing it off, wearing goggles and a facemask to avoid breathing it in.
Inside the shower, the corners and crevices were pink with mildew. The cleaner dripped in streams at my feet, brown and black rivers of dirt and mold. I’d make clean spots and then regret it, as it meant I would have to scrub as hard over every inch of the tiny shower. I kept my nose covered with the collar of my shirt instead of wearing the mask and I stepped out several times into the dark master bedroom to breathe in the clear air.
When I kneeled at the toilet and saw up close the condition it was in, I abruptly got up and went outside. I had had enough. I sat out on that porch, in the drizzling rain, for at least fifteen minutes. I almost wished I had a cigarette, or even a proper lunch to eat, or something to drink other than water. The coffee and peanut butter sandwich that I’d brought that morning were long gone.
On the porch, I went through a slew of emotions. There was anger, of course, over getting paid near minimum wage to hand-scrub shit off toilets. Triple the pay still wouldn’t be enough to do what I did. Inside the master bathroom of the Trailer were pools of crystalized piss around the base of the toilet. The underside of the seat, the rim, and the top ridge of the bowl had speckled brown spots, which I assumed were shit, and yellow and orange flecks that looked like puke. I wore a pair of yellow dish gloves, and I was armed with Comet. But the man who’d occupied this bathroom had purchased those blue disks, perhaps seeking the façade of a clean toilet bowl, and they had left dark blue tracks at the water line and from under the inner rim where fresh water filled the bowl. I would have to reach in and scrub those dark lines with a pumice stone, again and again, until they disappeared.
“They don’t pay me enough for this,” I mumbled. Then I yelled it into the trees. I sat alone on the porch, with the rain dripping off the roof, and the rage in my voice surprised even me. I’d grown stoic by then, after enduring attacks from Jamie that came without warning, finding myself lock-kneed, my lungs seized, my chest tight like a large person had me restrained in their thick arms. The floor had dropped out from under me too many times already, and I still walked carefully on it, knowing one upset could bring me tumbling back to where we began, in a homeless shelter. I had to keep it together. Above all else, despite uncertainties in things I couldn’t control, I should remain calm. Dependable. I’d go to work and do the job that needed to be done. “You must not let yourself fall apart!” I repeated to myself. It became my mantra that I repeated in my mind, sometimes even saying it out loud.
My maroon Subaru gleamed in the rain. The clouds suddenly broke over it, letting the sun shine on the body of my car. I’d never wanted to walk out on a job so badly. I felt disrespected by that toilet, by the man who’d left it in that condition, by the company that paid me minimum wage. I stared at the Subaru, imagining my escape.
I had no choice. Travis and I barely spoke now. He was angry with me on the weekends when Mia went to her dad’s, when I slept in instead of getting up at seven a.m. to help him on the farm. I no longer cared, and he knew that. We coexisted in that anger for months. I had absolutely no means to afford a place to live. So I’d go back to that toilet. Walking out on that job would mean desperate months ahead without an income. The child support I received barely covered the cost of gas. The entire $275 a month went to the trips back and forth so Mia could see her dad. Losing my job would mean being indebted to Travis. It would mean losing respect for myself.
I balled up my fists. I stood up. I walked back into the house, clenching my jaw. This was not my fate. This was not my ending. I was determined to prove myself right.
The Trailer gave me nightmares. In my dreams, I’d be driving home, and my phone would start buzzing with voice mail notifications. Or someone would call from a number I didn’t recognize. When I answered, the woman on the other end of the line spoke so frantically I couldn’t understand her until she said “hospital.” An image of Mia, lying on a bed with part of her bobbed, curly brown hair caked with blood, flashed in my mind before the woman started demanding to know where I’d been and why there wasn’t an emergency contact listed. It’s only me! I repeated in the dream. It’s only me.
But the Trailer had its own way of coming back. After I spent twelve hours cleaning it, Lonnie called a couple of days later. Her voice lacked its usual robustness. The client wasn’t happy with the clean, she said. Something about dust on lightbulbs, or blinds, or spots on mirrors, or all of it. “I need you to go back and fix it,” she said softly. “And as written in your employee contract”—she paused and took a breath—“we don’t pay for that.”
My heart started racing, beating against the walls of my chest in huge thuds. “There’s no way I can do that,” I said, choking on the words. The drive was forty minutes one way, which meant gas money that would not be reimbursed. Saying no to Lonnie meant risking my job, but I risked quitting entirely if I went back. “I don’t think I can go back there. That toilet made me want to quit.”
Lonnie sighed. She knew how desperate I was to work, how I truly couldn’t afford to waste gas. “I’ll figure something out,” she said and hung up the phone. I never found out whether or not she had someone return in my place. Maybe they called Sheila to go back, but Pam was probably the one who had to finish the job. If she did, she never mentioned it to me.
10
HENRY’S HOUSE
Lonnie and I stood on the concrete porch for her to introduce me to my new client’s house. We had knocked on the red wooden door and then stood for at least a minute, listening to a chorus of barking and someone shuffling around inside trying to calm the dogs. The man who swung open the front door wore a bathrobe, white shirt, navy blue sweatpants, and slippers.
“You’re here!” he said, his voice booming. The dogs, two exuberant Australian shepherds, wagged their stumpy tails and jumped in excitement.
“Henry,” Lonnie said. “I’d like you to meet our very best cleaner, Stephanie.”
“Well, come in,” he said, and then motioned to help carry my supplies. Lonnie smiled and thanked him, and Henry cl
osed the door behind us. He set down the bag of white rags folded into quarters and said, “Let me show you how things should be done.”
Henry had asked for a new cleaner. Lonnie talked me up quite a bit and convinced him I’d do a better job than his previous one. I’d been instructed to clean the house only to his specifications. In the order he wanted. To never be late. To never go overtime. To always, always do my best. The clean would take four hours every other Friday. “Be prepared to sweat,” Lonnie told me.
Henry already intimidated me. When I finally saw him after Lonnie had told me how picky he was, I shrank back involuntarily. He stood almost a foot taller than me. He was straight-backed and confident, and his large belly stuck out in front of him.
We started in the front sitting room, which Henry and his wife used as an office. They both had large, shiny mahogany desks. Henry’s desk sat by the front window, where most people would put a fancy couch. Shelves on the wall were filled with western novels, travel books, and computer programing manuals. He had two computer monitors on his L-shaped desk. They’d moved here after he’d retired from some sort of tech job in Hawaii. The surface of his desk was hidden under piles of bills, cameras, and manuals. In contrast, his wife’s desk was smaller and neater—a scanner, a laminator, piles of clipped magazine articles on recipes and scrapbooking tips, and photos of their dogs and cats.
Henry would be home while I cleaned, and he needed me to clean the house in a certain order to coincide with his routine. I’d clean the office and formal dining room while he finished his breakfast and watched the news. By the time The Price Is Right came on, I would move to the other end of the house, pausing on my way to the guest bathroom to clean the laundry room, and then on to the master bath.
In the guest bathroom, I’d first pile the four rugs outside the door to be cleaned later. I would clean the toilet first, which sat across from a large, double-headed standing shower lined with river rock. Henry said he’d clean that himself. After refolding the towels, I’d wipe down the corner Jacuzzi tub, which, as far as I could tell, they never used. They used the hot tub on the porch, Henry explained, gesturing to the swimsuits hanging on the door. After the tub, I would clean their mirror, big enough that I had to kneel on the counter to reach the top, and dust the lights, double sinks, and cluttered counter. The wife’s side had several clear plastic drawers and stands with various shaped holes to hold brushes and other beauty tools I didn’t recognize. Henry’s side of the sink had multiple medication holders—the compartmental kind with the first letter of the day of the week on top. He had several toothbrushes, and there was splattered toothpaste everywhere.
Before vacuuming the rugs, I had to spot-clean the walls and mop the floors. When I placed the rugs back into the bathroom, I was careful not to disturb the vacuum lines. I’d then dust the many shelves of their walk-in closet before cleaning their bedroom, vacuuming my way out.
On that first day at Henry’s, we paused in the hallway to admire a glass showcase. Henry’s hobby was woodcarving, and he interrupted the tour to say most of the pieces were done by artists with far greater talent than his. Half of his garage was a wood shop, he said a little sheepishly, but he rarely made furniture anymore.
I remained silent through the walk-through, trying to take in the many instructions, wondering if Henry would get angry if I didn’t follow them correctly. In the family room sat a television bigger than my car. The cupboard below it had several different electronic boxes to play DVDs, or for cable, power, and volume to the many speakers placed around the room. I’d only seen setups like this in stores. In the other wall was a fireplace, complete with a brick mantel and bench. I’d have to move the two heavy leather chairs on sliders, and the table in between them, careful not to disturb the five remote controls on top of it. When I began to run a vacuum over the red carpet, I realized it was more of a brick color without the thin veil of dog hair. After the family room, I cleaned the breakfast nook, the stainless-steel refrigerator, marble countertops, and floors in the kitchen, and finally, the half bath in the entryway.
The first few times that I cleaned, Henry’s voice made me cower. I worked constantly, pausing only to fiddle with my iPod Shuffle or to glance at my watch to make sure I was on schedule. I went overtime the first couple of Fridays, which worried Lonnie so much she called Pam to discuss her concerns, prompting Pam to call me and ask if everything was going okay. But after a while, I knew where the hair collected, which spots needed a quick wipe, scrubbed, or wouldn’t come off. Everything melded into mindless movements, and I spent the time worrying about other things happening in my life.
When I got to Henry’s house in the mornings, we always chatted a little bit. Then he’d putter around in the kitchen, making his breakfast, usually two thick slices of bread with tomato and avocado. Later, I would clean the wooden table he ate breakfast at, wiping away the crumbs he’d left, moving the lazy Susan, filled with different salts and hot sauces, to wipe under it. By the time I cleaned my way down the hall, he’d be working at his desk, remaining there until I left.
One Friday he asked if I could do an extra day the following week.
“I can’t, unfortunately,” I said. “I have a house I clean on Fridays opposite of yours.” The Farm House was also new and, I realized, strikingly similar to Henry’s in that the client had gone through almost every cleaner in the company before me. Both houses were sweaty, fast-paced four-hour cleans with horrible carpets and many animals. I held in an involuntary shudder thinking about vacuuming the navy-blue carpet that covered the stairs.
“Oh,” Henry said, looking down.
“I could come this weekend, though,” I said. “If that works, I mean. My daughter goes to her dad’s every other weekend, and I drop her off after I leave here.”
Henry stood up straighter and looked pleased. “Great, because I’m having a dinner party!” he said. He motioned for me to follow him. We walked out the sliding glass door to the covered patio behind his house. “And I want this grill to shine.”
I nodded at its filth and noticed the hot tub with an empty bottle of champagne sitting in the corner. My body ached, yearned for even a chance, just one opportunity, to drink champagne in a hot tub.
Inside, I returned to vacuuming the formal dining room. Henry had an old video poker game setup in there and a half-empty bottle of fancy gin sitting by the little sink at the bar. I caught myself wondering what my retirement would look like, if I would even know one. I’d never own a house too big for me to clean on my own, that was for sure. What a waste of space it seemed to hire someone to run a vacuum over the same visible lines they’d left two weeks ago. I tried to follow the same pattern, deep in thought, music blaring in my ears, when Henry tapped my shoulder. Flustered, I fumbled to turn off the vacuum and yank out my earbuds.
“Do you like lobster?” he asked.
I blinked.
“I usually do a surf-and-turf kind of dinner on Fridays,” he said. “I get a couple of lobsters from the market.”
I nodded, wondering why he had stopped me from vacuuming, trying to think if I’d ever seen someone purchase a lobster out of one of those tanks.
“How many people are you cooking for tonight?” he said.
“Two,” I said.
“Well, I’ll pick you up a couple,” he said. “I appreciate you doing the extra work for our party.”
I stammered out a thank-you. I had never encountered a client being so kind to me, treating me like a human being. I didn’t know how to receive it. Besides, I’d eaten whole lobster only once or twice in my life and had no idea how to cook one. I already felt guilty that I would most likely screw up this generous gift with my less-than-savvy cooking skills.
Henry left a few minutes later, bringing the dogs with him. It was the first time he’d left me at the house alone. I beamed in his trust for me. I was so used to feeling distrusted. I thought about the woman at the Farm House, who had been home the first time I cleaned, puttering around, circlin
g back to where I was. It felt like she was trying to bait me by leaving jewelry sitting out instead of inside the drawers.
When I stuck my hand into my pocket to get my phone, I looked around, even though the house was empty and no one would be watching me. I dialed Travis’s number, and when he answered, I excitedly told him about the lobsters. I asked him to pull a couple of the steaks I’d found on clearance out of the freezer. There was something about sharing good news with him, this good fortune, that made me feel hope for us again.
But he did not acknowledge the lobster or the steaks. Instead, he said in a flat voice, “Did you check your car’s transmission fluid?”
“Yes, it’s low,” I said, feeling deflated. I stopped looking at the painting, one of those metallic-looking ones of a lighthouse, in Henry’s hallway and glanced down at my stocking feet, smudging one sock into the shiny wood floor.
Perhaps Travis’s way of expressing his love for me was to ask about my car, but I couldn’t hear it. Communication with my family was sporadic, and I needed him. “I love you,” I said, just as we were ending the call, but he didn’t say it back.
After we hung up, I started on Henry’s bathroom, disappointment from the conversation with Travis lingering. Henry came home just as I reached to stick a rag in the toilet to scrub it out.
“Do you know how to handle these things?” he said, his voice echoed off the walls, making me jump. When I turned around, he motioned for me to follow him to the laundry room. There, on top of the washer I’d just cleaned, were two of the biggest lobsters I’d ever seen. They were brownish red. They were alive. And they were mine.
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