When people think of food stamps, they don’t envision someone like me: someone plain-faced and white. Someone like the girl they’d known in high school who’d been quiet but nice. Someone like a neighbor. Someone like them. Maybe that made them too nervous about their own situation. Maybe they saw in me the chance of their own fragile circumstances, that, with one lost job, one divorce, they’d be in the same place as I was.
It seemed like certain members of society looked for opportunities to judge and scold poor people for what they felt we didn’t deserve. They’d see a person buying fancy meats with an EBT card and use that as evidence for their theory that everyone on food stamps did the same. Surely, someone was keeping tabs on me. Sometimes I felt that way in what was supposed to be the safety of my own home. If I wasn’t working or taking care of Mia, I had to be taking care of something. I felt like sitting down meant I wasn’t doing enough—like the sort of lazy welfare recipient I was assumed to be. Time lounging to read a book felt overly indulgent; almost as though such leisure was reserved for another class. I had to work constantly. I had to prove my worth for receiving government benefits.
Every once in a while, though, to escape, I went on dates. I’d call up an old boyfriend or meet someone online, or my cousin Jenn would introduce me to someone. For a few awkward hours, I could return to the person I was outside of motherhood, outside of being a maid. It felt like make-believe, maybe more for me than for my date. I knew none of it was real. I’d talk about books and movies in a way that sounded foreign to myself. Sometimes, that parallel, other life was what I needed to mentally remove myself from my own. But dating soon became less fun, less of a game, making my loneliness or sense of isolation more acute. A text gone unanswered or a call going straight to voice mail meant rejection, proof that I was unlovable. I hated that neediness, and I was sure that men could sense it, that it lingered like a pungent odor. Additionally, socializing opened me up to the painful reminder that most people had normal lives. They afforded concerts, takeout, trips, all without losing a night’s sleep. Despite Mia’s constant touch and pull and her sticky hand finding mine, I ached for affection, for touch, for love. I never saw a time I wouldn’t crave that. I wanted to be strong and not need it, but I always would.
I walked along a deep precipice of hopelessness. Each morning brought a constant, lip-chewing stress over making it to work and getting home without my car breaking down. My back ached constantly. I dampened my hunger pangs with coffee. It felt impossible to climb out of this hole. My only real hope was school: an education would be my token to freedom. It had to be, otherwise it was a waste to invest so much precious time. Like a prisoner, I calculated how long I had left until I’d completed enough credits to qualify for a degree. Three more years. The Pell Grant covered tuition but not textbooks, if my classes required any. Sometimes I could get by with purchasing a used, older edition off of Amazon. Three years of dark nights and weekends spent over books, writing reports, and taking tests. This life of working as a maid, of constant subservience, was temporary. I cried myself to sleep some nights, my only comfort knowing this was not how my story would end.
So I stopped trying to have a social life and filled my free weekends with work instead. I took on a new client, a four-hour clean forty-five minutes away on the Saturdays Mia was with Jamie in Port Townsend. This house, the Weekend House, had clients who were always there, but we never got to know one another. A young couple lived there with their weeks-old baby. The grandma had been staying with them to help, and her parting gift was a bimonthly housecleaning.
They didn’t want the housecleaner there when they weren’t home, which was fine, but that made it difficult to clean around them while they obliviously used a kitchen counter I’d just wiped to make toast or walked through a floor I’d just mopped. They chatted with friends who came over for baby play dates, serving them food like I wasn’t there.
On my second visit to clean, I drove out to find their front door locked. After knocking a few times on the door, I peered into the garage window, cupping my hands on the unusually clean glass, and saw it was empty. Even though it was a Saturday morning, I called Lonnie’s cell phone.
“They’re not here, Lonnie,” I said, nearly yelling, showing my anger at how frustrating that was, something I rarely did. “Did they ever say anything about leaving a key?”
“No,” she said. “The mother just told me they’d always be there. Let me call them and see what’s up. Maybe they’re just running errands and are on their way home.”
Because I wouldn’t get reimbursed, I tried not to add up how much that trip cost me in gas, but I knew without thinking too much that it would be around ten bucks, more than I made an hour before taxes and the cost of washing my own rags. When Lonnie called back to tell me they forgot, I pressed my lips together in frustration, trying not to cry.
“Do they want me to come tomorrow or something?” I asked. “I can do it if it’s early.”
“Nope,” Lonnie said. I heard her sigh. “They canceled.”
I was so quiet for a minute, Lonnie asked if I was still there. “Yeah,” I said. She asked if I was okay, and I said no. “Can you ask Pam if I can at least get some gas money for this? I’ve already spent an hour of my time and money coming out here. I don’t have a lot of that to spare, you know?” I wiped at tears that had escaped and trickled down my cheek and tried not to let my voice sound shaky. Lonnie said she’d see what she could do, but I could already hear Pam telling me how the recession had slowed business, and they had to be really careful with extra expenses. I started to regret asking.
Two weeks later, I returned to clean their house again. The husband approached me as I unloaded my supplies into the entryway. “I’m really sorry,” he said. I nodded, taking out a rag to shove in my back pocket. “We’re just not used to having someone come here to clean the house.”
“It’s okay,” I said, grabbing for a spray bottle.
“Here,” he said, reaching into his back pocket, and pulled out two tickets to a Seattle Mariners baseball game. “These are for tomorrow night.” He tried to hand them to me. “You should take them.” The tickets had graphics of the players throwing pitches or sliding into third. Fancy tickets. Tickets to good seats. I’d gone to games as a kid, and during the 1995 playoffs when Ken Griffey, Jr., Edgar Martinez, and Randy Johnson were on the team, but hadn’t been since.
We stood on the stone tile in the entryway that his mother had asked us to buff. Pam had shown me how to do it before loading the buffer into the back of my car. I’d had it in there for three weeks, taking up half of my Subaru wagon’s rear storage space. He apparently didn’t want me to do it that day, either, because of the men walking in and out to re-grout the tile in their shower. I knew he couldn’t possibly know how frustrating this was.
I looked down at the tickets again. There was no way I could afford the gas and parking that going to the game would require. I looked up at his tired but smiling face, and the blue receiving blanket over his shoulder, like he’d just burped his month-old son after a feeding. I saw the familiar exhaustion in his eyes. He might be living a completely different experience than mine with a newborn—the large house, nice cars, slew of swings and bouncing chairs, and relatives coming over to bring food and available arms—but his duties as a parent were universal. Even like mine.
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to believe that it was, trying to not be angry with him anymore. “You should use the tickets or give them to someone who can. I won’t be able to go.” I wanted to tell him I couldn’t afford the gas to go, but I worried that he’d offer me money, too.
“Well, you could sell them,” he said, pushing the tickets toward me again. “I’m sure they’ll go pretty quick on Craigslist. They’re front-row seats.”
I winced. “Really?” Front-row seats to a Mariners game. It was a chance to fulfill a dream I’d had since I’d been Mia’s age. I looked at him again. I wondered if he was the type of father who got up in th
e middle of the night to change a diaper. The type who bounced the baby in the kitchen while the bottle heated, then fell asleep on the couch with a tiny infant sleeping on his chest. I decided he was.
“Okay,” I said, looking down at the tickets. He reached out to hand me the tickets again. When I took them, he put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed, like he wanted to hug me.
He was right; it was easy to sell the tickets. The next afternoon I placed an ad online. My buyer met me at the Laundromat and happily handed over sixty bucks.
“They’re for my son’s birthday,” he said. “He’s turning four. His first baseball game!”
I smiled and told him to have fun.
18
THE SAD HOUSE
On Saturdays and Sundays, Mia and I got up at our usual time, even though we didn’t have anywhere to go. I made her pancakes, sprinkling in blueberries I’d picked and frozen the summer before. I sat across from her at the table, holding my coffee close to my face, watching her gobble down bite after bite. She smiled at me with full cheeks, the blueberries staining her lips. I smiled back, trying to hide the tears in my eyes, trying to mentally record that moment, to meditate on it when I needed to. Our lives went by too quickly in the often chaotic dance of work, dinner, and bedtime. I knew she’d grow out of her Ramona Quimby bob. She’d soon stop playing with the My Little Ponies that she’d lined up in a half circle, facing her bowl. Whenever I ached for her, either at work or when she was at Jamie’s, these were the moments I replayed in my head. The moments I wrote about.
I’d started a writing exercise whenever Mia took a bath or was otherwise preoccupied: ten minutes of constant typing of whatever was on my mind. Sometimes I wrote in the morning on weekends, and the paragraphs were full of good weather, plans to enjoy it, or a secret spot I felt excited to share with my daughter. Other times I wrote after Mia was asleep, after an exhausting day of her fighting me through every transition and turn. I’d try to pull out of my memory a sweet exchange, bring to the forefront a passing primal connection only a mother and a child could have, and write it down. It became more like a baby book for Mia than a journal. Most of all I knew, years later, I’d look back on this time as one with decisions and tasks too much for one person. I’d need to think on these times with a fondness, too, since she’d quickly be so grown up. Even though we lived in the place we did, and I worked at a horrible job, and we couldn’t afford much, I’d never get this time with her back. Writing about it was my way to appreciate and create a nice picture of our life, our adventures. I figured, if anything, maybe I could print them out into a book for Mia to read someday.
Our favorite beach spot was at Washington Park, on the western side of Anacortes. We sat on the rocks, waiting for low tide, then looked for creatures in the little pools left behind.
“Look at that crab, Mom!” Mia would say. I’d squat down, pulling the yellow shovel out of the red plastic bucket, and try to scoop it in for a closer look. “Don’t let it pinch you. It will pinch you, Mom!” Out in the distance, the ferries went by, and every so often we’d see a porpoise, sea lion, or eagle. I brought Mia’s little bicycle in the back of my car, unloading it so she could ride the two-mile paved loop, forgetting how long that was, and ended up carrying both Mia and her bike for at least the last half mile. On the way home, we would stop by an ice cream parlor that had been there since I was a kid. I called it “Ice Cream for Dinner.” Mia never got anything but chocolate, covering most of her face with its stickiness.
Other weekends, I’d go online in search of hidden waterfalls, creeks with swimming holes. I’d pack a leather-handled basket with a blanket, a change of clothes, a towel, and snacks for Mia, and in a few minutes we were out the door. The only cost was the gas to get us there and back.
These times were our happiest, perhaps because of the simplicity. I’d let her ride her bike downtown, with me trotting behind her, to get an apple from the store. On the off chance it rained, we’d stay in, do a puzzle, or build a fort. Sometimes we’d fold out the love seat and I’d let Mia watch as many DVDs as she wanted, like a weekend-long sleepover.
I didn’t know it then, but those weekends, that still life with Mia, was what I’d look back on with the most nostalgia. Even though some trips were utter failures, ending in temper tantrums and screaming matches that left us both crumbled and hollowed out, those hours with my three-year-old were precious. She’d wake me up by crawling into bed with me, wrapping her little arms around my neck, soft curls framing the sides of her face, whispering in my ear, asking if we could be pandas that day. Suddenly, my week of teeth-grinding grit would fade. And we would drift, in a bubble, just me and this amazing kid.
Those were the only times I could quiet my mind, when I didn’t worry whether I should be working instead or if I was doing enough. I didn’t wonder whether someone might see us as a “welfare family,” taking advantage of the system as we sat on a blanket at the park, sharing slices of cheese. I never cared about any of that on those days with her. For that afternoon, we were each other’s moon and sun in our own little world.
By midsummer, I had been working with Classic Clean for six months, and I had a solid twenty-five-hour-a-week schedule with them. Additionally, I juggled several of my own clients on the side, cleaning their houses or yards once or twice a month. Along with the Cigarette Lady’s occasional offerings, other clients started leaving me things on the kitchen counter. Henry always gave me something. He knew that after I left his house, I picked up Mia and drove her to her dad’s. One time he gave me a box of donuts, another time a large jug of a fancy brand of apple juice.
Henry’s health seemed to be failing him a little. The pills by his bathroom sink had multiplied, and, judging from the state of his toilet, they had upset his stomach quite a bit. His wife had been home a few times lately, too, but she spent most of the time on the phone, arguing with insurance companies or her mother, who, from what I could tell, had to be transferred from one old folks’ home to the next. I loved seeing the two of them together. Henry’s boisterous demeanor changed to a softness that I craved from a partner in my own life. He made her tea. They discussed what needed to be picked up from the store for dinner. Henry said he’d make “that one thing” she liked, and she gave him a fierce hug before rushing out the door. She always made sure to say goodbye to me, using my name and everything, with such sincerity sometimes that I almost expected a hug of my own.
I tried to carry these moments with me on the days when I cleaned the Porn House. That house had an air of anger to it, or disgruntlement. I didn’t like being there. A note on the counter read simply, “Change the sheets, please.” At least she said please.
Around Father’s Day, I’d gotten into a huge fight on the phone with Jamie, and I was cleaning the Porn House at the time. After that, being in that house reminded me of him, no matter how hard I tried to sever the association.
The fight had been about Mia’s last name. I wanted to change it to mine. She’d eventually start school, and every time I took her to the doctor, they asked me if I was her mother. It didn’t make sense for her to have his last name if she lived with me nearly all the time.
Jamie vehemently disagreed with this. He argued I hardly spent any time with her, that most of her days were spent in “that disgusting day care.” I regretted letting his mom pick Mia up one day I had to work late, as Jamie had used her judgmental opinion of the facility against me ever since. But I’d never do anything right either way. If I stayed home or worked less, he faulted me for not working, saying that his child support went toward me sitting on my ass. If I went to school, I was wasting my time. Now, apparently, working too much was also bad.
That day on the phone he said, “And you’ve never told me to have a happy Father’s Day.” I’d almost finished the kitchen, polishing away the grease splatters on the brick-red stovetop.
“What?” I said, not really asking. Jamie had never once wished me a happy Mother’s Day. He’d never told me that I was a goo
d mom. The closest thing he’d come to praise was to tell me that I was smart enough to push his buttons and manipulate him to get what I wanted. Even that summer we were dating, I don’t think he ever praised my appearance. He called me ugly several times after I got pregnant, and especially after Mia was born.
“You’ve never called me a good father,” he said.
“Jamie, that’s because you aren’t one,” I said. “You blame everyone around you for everything. You never take responsibility. Everything is always someone else’s fault. What’s that going to teach Mia? What are you going to teach her?” I reached up to dust the chandelier above the dining room table.
“I’ll teach Emilia lots of things!” he said, which made me wonder, again, if everyone in Port Townsend still called her Emilia. He refused to call her Mia because it was a nickname I’d given her. I tried to explain she’d given it to herself and that she got mad if I called her by her full name. He’d tried to talk her into a nickname that sounded like Mee-lah for a while, but it never stuck. Every time he said it, I wondered if she subconsciously changed identities when she was there.
“Jamie, you don’t even know how to swim,” I said. It was odd for me to speak this way to him. Working full-time, doing everything on my own, had empowered me. I no longer chose to allow him to make me feel bad about myself. “What about when she brings home math homework? Or has to write a report? How are you going to help her with that?”
I didn’t say these things to him as a jab. These were actual concerns. Jamie always talked about studying for his GED, or he promised that this summer would be the one when he’d learn how to swim, but he never did any of the things he said he would. Instead, he always had an excuse or a rambling story about how it was his mom’s fault because he had to help raise his younger brother. Now it was my fault for forcing him into fatherhood, into a life he never wanted.
Maid Page 16