Maid

by Stephanie Land

  After that morning of the broken DVD player, whenever I cleaned Lori’s tub, I did it over a shadow in the shape of myself from that morning, rocking and whispering, waiting for breath to come easier. I stood there sometimes, looking down on that ghost, that former version of myself, with compassion, like an older, wiser self, offering a caring gesture of comfort. I learned to look to that wiser self in moments of panic, too. The one, ten years from now, who would have made it through hell. I just had to keep the faith that she existed.

  One Tuesday I called Pam to ask if I could split Lori’s House into two days or maybe get by with a three-hour clean just this once. Mia had been sick for several days with a sinus infection and had developed pinkeye on top of that. I couldn’t take her to day care, and I couldn’t afford to miss any more work. I called Jamie that morning to ask him to take her for a few days. I planned to take her to Urgent Care first thing and then drive to our meeting point at the ferry dock, only to turn back around to Lori’s House, where I could work late to finish the job.

  Mia and I shared my twin bed a lot, which wasn’t ideal even when she was well. She thrashed in her sleep, kicking me, flailing her arms, throwing her fist into my eye. For the past several days, her plugged nose, fever, and general discomfort meant that she woke up throughout the night crying and wanting comfort. I hadn’t slept well in days.

  Since becoming a single parent I’d referred to the phases of our progress as “a whole new level of exhaustion.” Most of my days seemed to drift, like a boat with a broken motor, through a thick fog. At times, the thickness would lift a little; I could see, I could think, I could joke and smile and laugh and feel like myself for an afternoon. There hadn’t been many moments like that since we’d been on our own. Since we’d been homeless. Since I fought daily not to have to return to a shelter. Yet I mentally prepared myself for another level—the addition of schoolwork on top of the schedule I’d fought to fill with work. I rarely questioned the how of things. I just knew what needed to be done. And I did it.

  I called my boss and Jamie to update them on my progress from the parking lot outside the pharmacy. I told my boss I should be at Lori’s in a few hours—it took just over an hour one way to meet Jamie to hand Mia off. His voice came through at high levels of irritation on the phone, but I ignored it. He didn’t like giving her medicine, didn’t trust doctors, and blamed day care for making her so sick all the time. I didn’t have time to engage with him that morning, which upset him more. I cut him off, told him I’d drop her off with her medications and all the instructions, and to follow everything they said.

  “Those antibiotics are only making her sicker,” he said in a snide tone. He said it every time she had to take them for a sinus or ear infection. I didn’t like giving her antibiotics, either, knowing they masked the real problem—that our lifestyle, our living space, was making her sick. But another choice didn’t seem to be available.

  “Just do it, Jamie,” I said. I hung up and rolled my eyes. Then I turned to look at Mia in her car seat behind me. She wore a red t-shirt with a cartoon horse in a cowboy hat on the front and a pair of black stretch pants with a hole in the knee. In her lap was a new bath toy I’d gotten for five bucks at Walmart—a Little Mermaid doll whose tail changed from blue to purple in the warm water of the bath. She looked at me, dazed from her stuffed sinuses, eyes bright pink and collecting goop in the corners. I patted her knee, rubbed her leg a little, then faced front, took a deep breath, and started the car.

  We headed west on Highway 20 to the coast. I’d traveled this highway between Mount Vernon and Anacortes since I was born. One stretch in particular reminded me of a night when I must have been close to Mia’s age, looking at the stars on our way home from visiting my great-grandparents. It was Christmas Eve, and I strained my eyes, searching for the red light of Rudolph’s nose. Mia was the seventh generation of our family to be born in the area. I’d hoped those deep roots would ground us, too, but they hadn’t. They were too far gone, too buried. My family’s history remained elusive to us. I’d grown tired of asking family members if they wanted to see Mia, and I craved grandparents, aunts, and uncles who were like some of my clients—their houses covered in photos, their children’s numbers first on auto-dial, a basket full of toys in a corner they kept on hand for the grandchildren. Instead I had brief moments of familiarity on a highway, memories ingrained in me so deeply they could almost pass as a belonging.

  In the times when I’d scrape at the bottom of my despair for too long, I thought about these things. Though I was thankful that Jamie could take Mia for the week, I knew it would come at some cost. He would hold it against me, bring it up when he felt like shaming me for working too much, cite it as a reason Mia should live with him.

  “Mommy,” Mia said from the back seat. “Mommy.”

  “Yes, Mia,” I said, my elbow pressed into the window and the top of the door panel, my hand cradling my forehead as I drove.

  “Can I have my window down?” she asked, her sick voice squeaking a little. “I want Ariel’s hair to blow like in the movie.” I did it, not caring how ridiculous that seemed. I just needed to get to work. I needed to finish work. I needed to sleep.

  We drove up and over the canal that separates the mainland from Whidbey Island. I glanced to my right as an older brown Ford Bronco passed us. I locked eyes with the other driver, and he gave me a smile, then pointed to Mia’s window, just as I saw a flash of red hair in the back window behind Mia’s seat.

  “My Ariel!” she screamed, kicking her legs against the seat in front of her. She’d let Ariel out the window too far and lost her grip.

  I set my jaw and faced forward. Mia wailed like I’d run over a newborn puppy. Over the next bend was a stoplight where I could do a U-turn. I have time, I thought. I could turn around, stop on the eastbound side of the highway, jump out, grab her doll, and then take the next exit, go under the bridge, turn back around, and we’d be on our way. Sound logic while driving sixty miles per hour through exhaustion’s deep fog, amid the cries of a toddler in the back seat.

  “I’ll go back and get it,” I yelled, to get her to stop making those horrible sounds. My head hurt from the lack of sleep and the two huge cups of coffee I had that morning to counteract it. It had been several days of caring for a sick child, and I desperately needed a break. I just wanted the screaming to stop.

  After turning around, I stayed in the left lane, speeding up only to slow down again, merging toward the left shoulder. It was an unseasonably warm day in September. As I stepped from my car out onto the asphalt, the wind from cars speeding by felt hot, blowing through my favorite green t-shirt that had thinned over the years. I scoured the grass that divided the east- and westbound traffic, my ponytail smacking toward my face, so much so I used one hand to hold it against my head. I must have looked odd, searching for a doll amid the candy wrappers and soda bottles full of piss that had been dumped in the median.

  Finally, I saw the wisp of red hair. I got closer; it was Ariel. But only her head. “Shit,” I said under my breath and then glanced back at the car, wincing, feeling a sudden weight in my stomach. This had been a bad idea. Mia would cry the entire way to Port Townsend over a doll that was now broken instead of lost. Maybe her dad could fix it; he could somehow tape it together. Then I saw the shape of the tail, fanned into two sections, but no sign of her shell-bikini-clad upper body. “Shit,” I said again. I bent down to pick it up, and heard it.

  The sound of metal crunching and glass exploding at once. It was a sound I knew from accidents I’d been in as a teenager, but I had never heard it like this.

  A car. Hitting another car. My car. My car with Mia sitting in the back seat.

  That sound was the window next to my baby girl’s head exploding, popping like a glass balloon.

  I dropped Ariel’s head, screamed, and ran. This isn’t real, I thought, running. This isn’t real. By the time I reached the car, my scream had turned into a repeated No. No. No-no-no.

 
When I opened the car door behind the driver’s side, Mia’s car seat faced me, dislodged from its place. The rear window was missing. Her wide eyes locked on mine, her mouth frozen open in a silent scream. I breathed, and she reached her arms out for me. I moved the car seat. Beneath her, the floor of the car was bent, smashed inward and upward, almost to her feet. She held up her feet, which were protected only by light-up sandals.

  I unbuckled her and immediately felt her arms around my neck, felt her legs push against the seat with enough force to back us both away from the car. Her legs wrapped around me, and I hugged her tight and sobbed, turning her away from the wreckage of the car.

  The cars in both directions slowed down as they passed, the drivers’ heads craning out the windows to see the damage. I stood in the grassy median, about ten feet away from the car we depended on, clinging to my three-year-old, feeling as if everything around us had begun to spin like a cyclone.

  The other driver, a lanky teenage boy with spiked hair, walked up to us from where his car had stopped a hundred feet away. He had a gash above his left eye. His short-sleeved, white button-up shirt flapped in the breeze, revealing a ribbed tank top underneath.

  “Are you okay?” he said. Then, his eyes fixed on Mia. “Oh, my God, was she in the car?”

  “Of course she was in the car, you fucking idiot!” I yelled in a new voice, nothing like I had ever heard before. It didn’t sound like my own. “How could you hit my fucking car?” He didn’t respond. “How could you hit my fucking car?” I repeated. I said it again and again, not really saying it to anyone, burying the words in Mia’s shoulder. How could this happen to us? How were we standing in the middle of a highway, alone, with a smashed-up car that I still owed money on, that I needed for work, that we needed to survive? That was our car, as important as an arm or a leg to keep us moving.

  The boy backed away, and I pressed my forehead to Mia’s and asked her again if she was okay.

  “I’m okay, Mama,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically even and calm. “We’re okay.”

  “We’re okay?” I said, gulping for air. “We’re okay?”

  “We’re okay,” she said again. “We’re okay.” I held her tight, feeling my body starting to go from panic to grief.

  A cool hand touched my shoulder, and I whirled around, ready to beat the piss out of that boy, before I saw that the hand belonged to a tiny blond woman. Her timid voice made it so I couldn’t hear her or understand what she said, but her face showed concern.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. I didn’t respond. I stared at the woman for a second, so translucent she looked angelic. What kind of question was that? Was I okay? I had no idea. I almost lost my kid. This kid in my arms. This kid who’d placed her palm on my cheek that morning and whispered, “I love you.” This kid who shared my bed and loved pancakes. This kid could have died.

  “My daughter,” I said out loud. It was all I could think to say, and I buried my face again in Mia’s hair.

  Another car had stopped, too, idling behind her black Suburban. The driver was on the phone. I could do nothing but clutch Mia. I couldn’t stop crying. My car. My car was dead on the side of the road. My irreplaceable car. The car I couldn’t afford to lose. The car I was required to have in working condition, to keep my job, to survive.

  The police arrived first to direct traffic and assess the scene. They asked me what happened, listening patiently between my huge gasps for air. A few policemen started examining the skid marks my car’s tires made when it was bumped at least a foot to the left. The rear right tire jutted out to the side, the metal behind it twisted and smashed. Everything inside my car had shifted in the crash. The tape cassette in the player hung out of it, ready to fall at any second. But I couldn’t stop staring at the back seat where Mia had been, at her car seat so incredibly close to the shattered window, to the floor that had been pushed up to meet her toes. In the impact, her car seat had moved to the side, away from the window, and somehow, she wasn’t injured.

  One of the policemen pulled out a small tape measure.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, a new wave of panic crashing against my chest.

  “We need to try to determine fault, ma’am,” he said. “Please step aside.”

  Fault. My fault. Of course it was my fault. I was the one who had pulled over on a fucking highway, who had gotten out to look for a freaking doll and left my child in the car, in harm’s way.

  Two paramedics jumped out of an ambulance, one rushing over to the other driver and the other toward us. Another ambulance arrived, then a fire truck. Traffic crept by on the road, and I tried to ignore the gawking, the rubbernecking, the feeling like we were in a fucking fish bowl.

  When I sat Mia on the bench in the back of the ambulance, she let her arms loosen from my neck for the first time since I’d unbuckled her. The paramedic asked her questions, asked to look at her bare chest. He handed her a teddy bear dressed in a nightgown and sleeping cap, its eyes closed and hands together in what looked like prayer.

  “See how she does tonight,” he said, his brown hair, eyes, and olive skin reminding me, for some reason, of my brother. “If you notice any bruising, or if she seems in pain for any reason, take her in immediately.” He looked over at Mia again. “Or you could take her to the emergency room now if you want her to have X-rays.” I looked at Mia, trying to register what he’d said, now seeing the entire scene had it been worse, had she been bruised, broken, bleeding, rushed to the hospital in that ambulance instead. I shook my head. The logistics were too confusing. I didn’t know if Medicaid covered an ambulance ride, and I pictured a bill I couldn’t afford for thousands of dollars. And I couldn’t leave my car—that was almost family to us; it had the cleaning supplies in the back that provided our entire income. I’d have to pay to replace them if something happened to them, and I couldn’t afford to. I couldn’t leave without knowing what was going to happen next.

  Mia hugged her bear, staring at the equipment in the ambulance. My mind flashed again with images of her eyes staring wildly at me while she breathed behind an oxygen mask, her hair caked with blood, her neck in a brace. She raised her arms for me to hold her again. I carried her back to our car, got the camera from my purse, and took several pictures while I waited for the police to decide our fate.

  One of the cops approached me: the shortest one, bald, with a belly hanging over his belt. He asked me the same questions I’d already answered: why I’d stopped, how I’d stopped, how far I’d pulled over, and if I’d immediately put my emergency flashers on.

  “Ma’am, we’ll continue our investigation and report it to your insurance company,” he said. “It’s unknown if the male who hit you has insurance.”

  My knees momentarily felt like they were going to give out. Did I have uninsured-motorist coverage? I must have. I still had a loan out on my car. I think that meant I had full coverage instead of just liability. Right? I’d asked for that, right? I couldn’t remember.

  He pulled out another pad of paper and tore off a ticket, handing it over to me with my license, registration, and insurance card.

  “Sir,” I said, seeing the $70 amount on the ticket but not accepting it, trying to make sense of how I deserved this. I stared into his tiny blue eyes. “What will this mean for me financially?”

  He looked at me, and then at Mia, who’d also turned her head to stare at him. “I don’t know, ma’am,” he said, annoyed, and then extended the ticket toward me, adding, “You can fight it in court.” But I knew that meant I’d have to fight him. A police officer. This heartless man, placing a ticket in the hand of a sobbing mother who’d almost lost her child, who couldn’t afford to replace the car, let alone pay the ticket.

  I stared at the ticket for being illegally parked and looked up to see the tow truck approaching.

  “Ma’am! Do you have anyone to pick you up?” the police officer asked. Judging from his tone, he must have asked more than once.

  “I don’t know,” I said. Ev
eryone I could think of calling was at work and miles away. The cop suggested I get a ride with the tow truck, but I again asked if that would cost money and he again said he didn’t know. “Why doesn’t anyone know how much things cost?” I said, crying again. He shrugged and walked away. The fireman had taken my cleaning supplies out of the back of my car, along with the car seat and Mia’s bag with Hello Kitty on the front for weekends at her dad’s.

  We stood on the side of the road, watching our car get pulled up the ramp of the tow truck, the back tire sideways and dragging like a broken limb. At my feet in the grass was my tray of cleaning supplies, a bag of rags, and two broken mop handles. Mia still hung her arms around my neck. The scene started to clear. We were about to be left.

  20

  “I DON’T KNOW HOW YOU DO IT”

  Why would you do that?” Jamie yelled into the phone, his tone getting higher, more urgent. “Why would you stop on a highway? How could you be so fucking stupid?” The exact words I’d been repeating in my head already. In his voice, even.

  “Okay, I’ll call later,” I said before I hung up.

  Mia started crying. She wanted to talk to him. She wanted him to come get her. I felt a familiar sinking in my stomach, fear that he might use this to get custody, that this might be the thing that won him the case he always threatened me with whenever I did something he didn’t like. He wanted me to have to pay him child support. He wanted me to suffer.

  Grandpa’s light blue Oldsmobile crept through the traffic still backed up from the accident. A few cops waved him in. Even though he was shorter than the shortest cop, who’d handed me a ticket, Grandpa was all business when he got out of the car, nodding at the handful of first responders who remained. But when he walked up to us on the side of the road, his face was red, flushed. I thought for a moment he might be angry with me. “Are those things coming with us?” he asked, pointing to the pile of belongings awkwardly stacked on the shoulder of the highway. I nodded.