Before I left Henry’s house, we spent a long time talking. It was hard to tell him I couldn’t afford to continue working for the company he’d used to keep his house clean for so many years. He held up his hands and shrugged a little, then started to suggest that maybe I could help with landscaping, before remembering he already had a crew of men outside mowing his grass and trimming the bushes. I had the urge to comfort him, suggesting he could be a reference for my résumé. This made him straighten again, and then he began rattling off all the qualities he’d be happy to tell anyone who asked.
“You’re a hard worker,” he said, lightly stamping his foot and making a fist in declaration. “One of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen.”
“I really needed to hear that,” I said softly, and smiled at him. I wanted to explain how difficult the decision had been, how uncertain my future was. All I had were a handful of my own clients and student loans to float us through until fall. I wanted to tell him I was scared. It was an odd moment, yearning for comfort from a stranger, but Henry seemed almost like a father figure to me.
The woman who lived in the Farm House happened to be there on my last day. I’d grown to like her. She had called the office once to tell them how much she loved the way I cleaned her master bathroom, and I had to admit that I felt proud of it, too—even though the glass shower was a bitch to get spotless. I always brought my tweezers with me to her house to pluck the stray hairs from my eyebrows in her light-up magnifying mirror. On my way out, she helped me load my cleaning tray, then asked me to look through a box of things in her SUV intended to go to Goodwill. I took a non-stick KitchenAid pan that would be perfect for cooking Mia’s pancakes. Before I got in my car, she looked like she might hug me, but then she reached out to shake my hand. Even though we had a relationship of trust, there was still a divide. She was still a homeowner. I was still a maid.
Our new home had a washer and dryer downstairs in the garage. I could wash Mia’s stuffed animals whenever her cough started to get bad. There was forced-air heat, and air filters and wooden floors, and I doubted mold would ever consider creeping in.
My landlord for the studio wasn’t pleased when I gave him fifteen days’ notice instead of thirty. He said he’d keep my deposit, subtracting whatever amount he lost in not having a tenant to pay rent the next month.
“I’ve done a lot of updates,” I wrote in an email. “This place looks a hundred times better than it did when I moved in.” I added photos of the new curtains in the living spaces and shelves and towel holders in the bathroom, adding that I’d leave it completely detail cleaned. And while he found a new renter by the time I moved out, he still kept part of my deposit.
I started making trips to the new apartment when I could, packing my car with as many books, clothes, towels, and plants as possible. Kurt and Alice invited us over for dinner one night so we could introduce the girls. They ran together in the yard, the huge black dog, Beau, barking occasionally while the two older dogs watched with indifference. At almost four years old, Mia fit right in with the older girls, who were two and four years older than her. Kurt and Alice seemed excited and a little relieved at Mia’s sweet and playful personality.
After dinner, Alice pulled out several legal documents for the rental agreement, walk-through, and something she’d drafted for the work-trade on rent. Landscaping hours worked out to be about five per week spent pulling weeds from their naturally landscaped areas. And every other Thursday from nine-thirty to two-thirty, I would clean the house. I hoped it would be enough time. Their house was huge, but she said it took the regular cleaning company only two or three hours to finish it.
“How many cleaners did they have?” I asked, already knowing the answer would be more than one.
“I’m not sure,” she said, looking at Kurt.
“Probably two or three,” Kurt said.
“It’ll probably take me six or even more in the beginning,” I said, watching their eyes widen. “It’ll get faster once I get to know your house. I work straight through, though. I’m probably a little slower than three people working all at once.”
They seemed to understand, or at least they pretended to. I knew Alice had done all the housework herself before her youngest daughter was born. Since then, between the full-time job and the girls, she hadn’t been able to keep up on the house or yard, and I wasn’t sure what Kurt did to help.
I would keep track of my landscaping hours and submit them, like a timecard, to Alice in an email. It seemed like a fantastic deal for both of us, but Alice still seemed hesitant, judging by the small pile of legal documents she planned to have notarized. She swore it was to protect both of us in case anything happened, but it still seemed odd. I’d done lots of trades by then, and most people seemed more trusting.
Kurt admitted he’d read more of my blog, commenting on what a good writer I was. I blushed and thanked him. It had been a rough couple of years since I started writing online. Hardly any of that I wanted to talk about in person, but having it published for anyone to read caused me to assume they already knew everything so I didn’t have to explain myself. Kurt called it inspirational. I smiled, but winced at the word. People had said that about me before. How can barely surviving be an inspiration, I started to ask.
“If you can handle life with a three-year-old by yourself, in a tiny space, with so little, then I can, too,” one commenter had written.
The blog was an outlet for the beauty of life, but also for my frustrations. Life had still been so relentless in throwing one obstacle at me before I’d been able to fully clear the last. I couldn’t get ahead.
My lived experience seemed vastly different than that of my peers—not even just the moms at the day care. Many times, I ducked out of possible interactions or potential chances at making friends with people I actually liked because I felt like I’d only be a drain. I’d suck people of the resources they had available for friends without being able to give anything back. Maybe I could take their kid for an afternoon for a trade, but it stressed me out not to be able to provide snacks or food. A hungry kid coming to my house on a weekend afternoon meant ten dollars of groceries, sometimes more. And they always seemed to want huge glasses of milk. I couldn’t afford that.
The apartment over the garage made me feel like I had made it to the other side. I felt like I’d accomplished something by finding better living conditions, even if it meant losing my steady income. I’d gained a couple of new clients that week. My childcare assistance was approved to cover a volunteer position at the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault office. I’d somehow found a place in the system that allowed me a tiny bit of time and space to get ahead.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that everything seemed a little too dreamy. One afternoon while I did homework, Mia and the girls drew chalk rainbows on the cement outside the garage, their laughter coming in through the open window. The sun was out, and everything felt perfectly in place.
When Alice called her older girls in for lunch, they whined, asking if Mia could come, too. The girls clambered up to my porch, Mia between them, breathless, all asking at once. When I smiled and said yes, they cheered. I watched them run back down the stairs, all of them giggling, and across the yard to the main house. Then I sat back down at my desk. The fact that Mia was off playing somewhere safe, instead of watching the same cartoon over and over, alleviated the guilt I usually felt at keeping her cooped up while I worked. The days of living in a one-room moldy studio apartment felt far away.
26
THE HOARDER HOUSE
When I arrived for the first clean at what I would call the Hoarder House, the wife opened the door only a few inches. I saw her eyes go from alarm to hesitancy and back again.
“Hi,” I said, smiling. “I’m here to clean your house? Rachel from the Facebook group connected us?”
She nodded, looked down, and opened the door enough to reveal her large, pregnant belly and a small boy clinging to her leg. I stood on the small concr
ete square of their front porch. From inside the house, a bird chirped. More children peered out at me from a large window to my right. When I looked at the woman again, she glanced nervously inside.
“This is my little secret,” she said before opening the door enough to let me in.
I stepped in and wobbled. The door’s path created a clear spot in the floor, the only clear spot in the entire room. My first thought was to not react. In our initial conversation, she’d mentioned needing help clearing out garbage and catching up on laundry. But this was much more than I had anticipated. Clothes, dishes, papers, backpacks, shoes, books. Everything had been left to collect hair and dust on the floor.
The family had stopped making payments on their house. She told me this while we stood in that one bare spot in the front room. I listened as attentively as I could, trying not to feel overwhelmed by the state of the house. She talked quickly and sounded exasperated. They had a rental to move into—the husband, wife, five kids, and soon, a newborn baby.
“We can’t really afford to have you help me,” she said, looking down at her hands on her belly. “But I’m losing my mind. The new house will be a fresh start. I don’t want to move all this.”
I nodded in response and looked around. Every available surface in the kitchen and dining room contained piles of dirty dishes. The corners in the living room had heaps of what looked like books and school papers, mixed with clothes, toys, and more dishes. On one wall, the shelves had fallen from a bookcase and books were strewn across the floor where they fell.
She mentioned they couldn’t pay their bills. She mentioned food stamps. I felt horrible charging her anything, but I couldn’t work for free. Though she hadn’t asked me to come down on my hourly rate, I insisted she pay me half of what I normally charged.
“And how about five bucks for each garbage bag full of laundry?” I suggested, looking for a place to set down my things. “I can bring them back to my place and do it there.” She didn’t answer immediately. Her free hand, the one that wasn’t stroking the top of the toddler’s head, moved up to wipe her cheeks. It paused under her nose for a second, and she nodded. She closed her eyes tight, trying not to cry. “I’ll get started in the kitchen,” I said.
While I began pulling supplies out of my bucket, the boy who’d been hiding behind her leg came over to help. “He’s not verbal,” the woman said. “He hasn’t spoken any words yet.” I smiled at him, taking my yellow dish gloves from the little hands he held out toward me.
That first day, I spent four hours doing dishes, my fingers turning to prunes through the dish gloves. When the hot water ran out, I started cleaning the surfaces. Clean dishes, set out to dry on towels, covered the table, the stovetop, and counters I’d cleaned. How had she cooked for seven people in this tiny room with that little boy clinging to her? I couldn’t tell what they ate. Much of the boxed and canned food in the cupboards was expired, some by as much as ten years. A peek in the fridge revealed shelves dripping with old produce.
A closet in the hallway housed a washer and dryer. Beside a small path leading to the garage, which had been converted to a master bedroom, clothes piled on the floor several inches deep. I started to bag some to bring home with me, stopping a few times to catch my breath. It must have been dust mites. They always made me cough like I was having an asthma attack, and I gasped between coughing fits. When I went for the final handful to fill the second bag, I revealed the floor underneath. And a large spider, and mouse droppings, and I swear what looked like snakeskin. Biting back a scream, I nodded and called it a day.
As I left, the woman thanked me. Tears brimmed in her eyes, and she apologized for the state of the house. “Don’t apologize,” I said, my arms loaded with cleaning supplies and bags of clothing. “I’ll be back at the same time tomorrow.”
Many of my private clients said my presence in their house gave them the motivation to do some cleaning themselves. Those were the ones who had me come once or twice. My regular clients—the biweekly, weekly, or monthly cleans—knew the drill: leave me alone so I can do my job. I didn’t overbid a house to give myself more time. If I was finished with more time that visit, I stayed and did a little more. With the private clients, my reputation was on the line. I’d be the one they’d hopefully rave to their friends about. If they needed someone to hang out with them and chat and listen to their current struggles while we cleared out a huge mess, I could do that, too.
On day two at the Hoarder House, we cleaned the youngest daughter’s bedroom. We bagged up twelve kitchen-sized trash bags, lugged them outside, and put them with the rest to go to the dump. Under the miscellaneous papers, Popsicle stick creations, mounds of forgotten food, deflated balloons, various twigs and rocks, and clothing too torn or small to wear, we found a little girl’s room. I found a few figurines from a dollhouse, and I placed them carefully in the doll-sized living room. We put books and bins of My Little Ponies back onto a shelf, painted purple and pink. We put clothes in the dresser, shoes on the shoe rack. I hung a red dress with a matching coat in the closet. I found a pair of black shiny Mary Janes.
It felt good to clean that room. I thought about the times when Mia was at her dad’s and I went through the clutter in her room. She hated throwing anything away, and I only convinced her to give away toys by bringing her with me to donate them to a women’s shelter or consignment store where she’d get credit. But all the little Happy Meal toys, the drawings, the broken crayons, had to be thrown out. After hours of purging and organizing, Mia would come home, walk in her perfectly clean and organized space, and smile like everything was new again. I hoped the same for that little girl not much older than mine.
I bagged up more laundry before leaving, having returned the two other bags that had been cleaned and folded. At home that night, Mia helped me fold the shirts, socks, and dresses. She held up a skirt to her waist and commented how pretty it was. I watched her twirl around with it.
“Can I have it?” she asked, and I shook my head no. I explained they were another family’s clothes. “Why are you washing them?”
“Because I’m helping them, Mia,” I said. “That’s my job. To help people.”
Only then, when I heard myself say it, did I believe it was true. I thought back to the woman who’d thanked me for cleaning her house and put a wad of cash in my hands, holding them in hers for a second, then telling me I better get going before her husband got home. A couple of my landscaping clients called me their best-kept secret.
I still carried around a day planner, scribbling clients’ names in various boxes, memorizing the schedule as best I could for when someone called to ask if I was available at a certain time or day. I didn’t have to wear a uniform or go to meetings with my boss or have my cleaning supply tray inspected. I didn’t have to stop by an office, miles out of my way, to get bottles refilled with cleaning agents. Five-toilet days still slayed me, but I somehow felt a little better about cleaning them.
After each four-hour session, the Hoarder House looked more like a regular home. I righted the shelves in the living room, swept up all the birdseed, and found dozens of DVDs under the couch. Though I tried to hide it, I felt thankful that she never asked me to clean the bathroom. I’m not sure how long things stayed clean. I’d tidy up the kitchen one afternoon only to see pots and dishes with dried red sauce on them all over the counters and stove the next. I hoped it made her family happy. I hoped it made her feel more peace before her baby was born. Mostly I was glad to be done.
* * *
The building of the domestic violence nonprofit, where I volunteered, was tucked away in a nondescript office park by the railroad tracks in Mount Vernon. I wasn’t just a hopeful volunteer receptionist, I was a client. The back room where I met with my domestic violence advocate had high windows near the ceiling that let in just enough sun to keep alive a scattering of houseplants. Christy, my advocate, had moved from Missoula in the past year. She talked about missing it a lot, especially after I told her the town
had been wooing me for several years.
“Well, why don’t you visit?” Christy said.
I was talking about the brochures from the University of Montana, the ones that showed up in my mailbox every few months like a persistent ex-boyfriend who wanted me back, the postcards and booklets about the creative writing program with bearded, smiling men in Carhartts fly fishing.
Christy nodded her head and smiled. She set down my application for a scholarship, which I’d asked her to help me with, and looked at me.
“You should go visit and see what you think,” she said. She always sounded calm and peaceful. “My kids loved it there. Missoula’s a wonderful place to raise a family.”
“Why put myself through that?” I asked, almost in a huff. “I mean, what if I really like it? It would just make me feel bad.” I picked at the mud on my pants, dirty from weeding a client’s yard that morning.
“Why couldn’t you move there?” Christy challenged, leaning back in her chair.
“He wouldn’t let me,” I said.
“Mia’s dad?”
“Yes, Jamie,” I said, crossing my arms. At our first meeting, I’d recited my script—the one I repeated again and again to therapists or anyone who asked about my history. It began in the homeless shelter, covered the no-contact orders, court case, and panic attacks. That Jamie lived three hours away and Mia saw him every other weekend. Today I added that I wondered if Mia wanted to live with him.
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