Almost instinctively, I did the same to Lonnie’s bathroom, starting directly to the left of the bathroom door, the left part of the top of the mirror, and went from there. Any spray that didn’t quite make it to the mirror landed on a surface that would be cleaned anyway. It also made it hard to miss spots. A maid’s job is, essentially, to touch every square inch of a house’s surface. With some homes having four bedrooms; two full bathrooms; two half baths; a kitchen; and dining, living, and family rooms, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by how many inches there are, and how to make sure they’re all clean.
When I told Lonnie I’d finished with her bathroom, she pursed her lips as she prepared to inspect my work. Just a few seconds after she’d disappeared into the bathroom, she shouted, “Stephanie!”
I ran in after her. Facing the mirror, she bent over to a pike position, then stood up quickly, then bent over again, then asked me to do the same. Her finger pointed at spots on the mirror I’d missed that could only be seen from a lower viewpoint. She then ran a hand over her countertop. “You need to redo everything,” she said, shaking her head. “Soak the hairspray on the counter and the wall.”
My eyes widened. I’d forgotten the wall.
She had me run my hand over the counter to feel the sticky surface and told me to feel for that all over the bathroom. The hairspray film was indeed everywhere, even on the back of the toilet, another spot I’d missed.
“The bathtub and shower look great, though,” she said, patting my shoulder again before leaving me to it.
As I stood in the empty bathroom, staring at my image in the mirror, I thought of my mom bragging to her friends. “Stephanie sure can make a tub shine,” she’d told them. My reflection now showed someone humiliated, hunched over, wanting to run from not only cleaning another woman’s toilet while she sat in another room looking at a catalogue, but that she’d told me to do it again.
Just when a decent amount of work hours started to light up on the horizon, Jenny fired me. Through text, of course, sent at eight p.m., after I’d turned down a house she’d scheduled me for the next day. I had a different house to clean for Classic Clean, which she knew and had forgotten, but she used it against me anyway.
“I got this client just for you because you said you needed more hours,” she wrote. “This isn’t going to work out. I need someone who’s a team player.”
I didn’t defend myself, knowing Lonnie would be pleased to have me all to herself. The pay at Classic Clean was lower, but their organized, businesslike nature made up for it. For now, at least. It needed to. They were all we had.
8
THE PORN HOUSE
For the first couple of weeks, I shadowed Catherine, the girl I’d replace. She was tall and older than me but drove a newer-model Jeep Cherokee. She said she was going to start working full-time as a bookkeeper for her husband’s construction business instead. This had been an additional job for her while business was slow. She seemed tired but happy to be visiting her clients’ houses for the last time.
I followed Catherine’s Jeep to different houses for two weeks, trying to mimic her in the easy, calm way she approached them. In the days before Christmas, I noticed that she often got a little card from clients with $10 or so inside. They had no idea there were two cleaners or that she’d be replaced by me. Every time a client left one, she acted like it was a pleasant surprise, and I got the feeling that it was her Christmas bonus and not a regular thing. I’d have to work an entire year, scrub each toilet out by hand two dozen times, to get a $10 tip.
We were instructed to enter most often through back doors or through a side door off the kitchen. We’d walk in with our neatly organized caddies full of sprays and brushes, a large bag of square white rags, a vacuum, and mops. I had little experience on how to use it all in the beginning. Classic Clean was much different than working for Jenny—we were there to scrub everything by hand. My work was no longer about just dusting and polishing to make things smell nice and shine. And we did it all with a plethora of sponges and brushes and organic soap and vinegar.
I’d fumble my way in, trying to carry my supplies from the car all in one trip, and set up a “work station,” just as I’d been told to do. I opened the binder to my timesheet and wrote in the last name of the client, then called the office to leave a voice mail to clock in, noting the start time. In the beginning, it was a race down to the minute as I fought to finish each house in its allotted three or four hours and clock out.
My days started to have some regularity again, beginning with dropping Mia off at the day care around the corner from our house. I never felt great about that day care, but it was the only place that would accept my childcare assistance money. Not only did I think the facility was cold, crowded, and its workers looked like they hated their jobs, Mia came home with a new illness immediately after getting over the last one. I needed her to be there so I could work, even though I sacrificed her well-being. My ability to earn wages was the only thing that mattered to us now. Once, I stood at the entrance to the day care, holding Mia’s clammy toddler hand. I knew that she needed me. She needed us to be home, but I couldn’t explain that I might lose my job if I stayed home with her, and what that could mean for us. We paused before going through the doorway. I looked down at her, her upper lip thick with ropes of green snot.
“What is coming out of your nose?” asked a dark-haired woman, who I assumed was the day care assistant, one I’d never seen before, as she sauntered over to us. She directed the question at Mia, but she was really talking to me. As Mia reached up for me, the assistant turned away from us, shaking her head. I felt terrible that I had to leave Mia there. After doses of Tylenol, after her throwing up the night before, I didn’t have a choice.
Mia’s day care only called for me to pick her up if she became listless and lethargic, if she threw up repeatedly, or if she had a high fever. Some days, by the time I got her home, I parked her on the couch in front of the TV, under her blanket, half holding a sippy cup of juice, and she didn’t move until it was time for her dinner and bath before bedtime. Travis would sit next to her, and they’d watch cartoons while I cooked and cleaned.
Despite my building resentment, I saw that Travis truly loved Mia. He liked having a little buddy to accompany him on the four-wheeler or sit next to him on the couch to watch TV. But I think I loved what we represented more than what we were. He was a wonderful father figure, more than making up for what Jamie lacked. A working man, like my dad was. When work slowed down, he was goofy and made pancakes. For me, the goofiness didn’t make up for the listless, somewhat constant gaze at the television screen, but I saw Mia’s eyes shine when she looked at him. I envied that. I wanted to be smitten with him, too. Seeing them on the couch like that, after I’d worked a full day, made me feel a little safer—maybe even that things could possibly be okay.
At work, after Catherine had gone, Lonnie and I developed a ritual. With each new clean, she went along to “introduce” me to the house, as if each home had a spirit that I had to get to know.
This was the happiest I’d see Lonnie. She really seemed to find some personal connection in these homes. “You can get to know each other,” she’d say with a wink.
Much of what Lonnie told me in these meetings about each house wasn’t on the printed-out document we received for each client. There were unmentioned notes that clients would never see, like, “You’ll really need to get in and scrub that shower because it gets so grimy in there” or “Watch for the pee that gathers on the floor in the half bath off the den.” But it opened my eyes to my job in a new way, that beyond the professional front, we secretly acknowledged the disgusting nature of our job.
At Classic Clean, I rotated as the sole cleaner among only a handful of houses to start. Wednesdays were long, six-hour days, cleaning two smaller houses that stood next to each other on the edge of a bluff overlooking the ocean.
Many of my clients lived on the neighboring Camano Island, which was a thirty-minute
drive from Mia’s day care. A lot of the clients commuted to work in Everett or Seattle, at least an hour away. I really had no idea but just assumed they must have been big-city doctors and lawyers to afford the property taxes for the places they called home. Camano Island was wedged between the mainland and Whidbey Island, so most of the houses I cleaned had a view of the ocean. My Wednesday houses were two of my smallest, with detached garages that were twice the size of the clients’ living space.
Lonnie told me to clean the married couple’s house first, giving the other client time to leave before I started on his house. The morning we walked up to the first house, Lonnie nodded toward the house next door. “We’ll give him some time to get up and moving. He’s very sick.” I asked what from. Lonnie shrugged. “His wife passed away,” she said. “You’ll see. It’s sad.”
From then on, I called it the Sad House. I couldn’t think of it any other way. Other houses earned their nicknames the more I got to know them: the Cigarette Lady’s House, the Farm House, and so on.
When I started, it seemed so odd to me that neither of my Wednesday clients knew they had a new cleaner, but the house and I were properly acquainted. I don’t think Lonnie had to give them a heads-up unless instructed because of our invisibility. It would look bad if clients knew what a high turnover rate the company had. Perhaps they would feel weird knowing how many strangers rotated through their homes. I wasn’t a personal maid, but part of a company. They had hired and trusted the company, not me. I spent a half dozen hours in their house a month, and I don’t think they even knew my name.
The Porn House, as I’d come to calling it, was that first Wednesday home. The house really had only three rooms, with large windows facing the bluff and a rose garden in the back. Two people with a dog and a cat in a small space meant dust, hair, and dander. I had to pay close attention to places like mantels, tops of televisions, and the laundry room.
“This shower,” Lonnie said, opening the slider to reveal a stand-up shower in the shape of a square covered in hair, shampoo bottles, and what looked like a wad of green snot. “You’ll need to soak it.”
Our cleaning supplies were extremely minimal. In my tray, I had one refillable bottle of half water and half Dr. Bronner’s castile soap. In another was a quarter white vinegar and the rest water. I had one container of powdered Comet, one pumice stone, a toothbrush, a few green scrubby sponges, and two sizes of handheld scrub brushes. For this shower, with its visible film of soap scum and grime, there was a protocol.
The first thing I’d do is take out all the shampoo bottles, washcloths, and loofahs and neatly set them outside the door. Then I’d spray the entire shower with what Classic Clean called the all-purpose cleaner to soak it. After cleaning the counter and toilet, I’d fill a small milk jug that had been cut in half with water and set it in the shower. I’d need a sponge, a scrub brush, both of my spray bottles, and a few rags. I’d spray the inside of the glass doors again, sprinkle Comet on my sponge, and scrub it all, left to right, top to bottom.
Then I’d rinse with the vinegar water, dry it with a rag, scrub any missed spots, and call it good before turning my attention to the rest of the shower, which needed to be scrubbed in the same manner. During my first visit, I spent an entire hour getting the shower clean, wishing I had a “real” all-purpose cleaner. Classic Clean didn’t advertise as a “green” cleaning company. They used natural products to keep costs down and relied on the cleaners’ “elbow grease” to get things clean. Though I’d never tell my manager about it, nerve damage in my spine prevented me from gripping a sponge or brush with my right, dominant hand. I’d had scoliosis, a condition that made my spine curve from side to side, since I was a kid, but recently due to the cleaning work it had pinched a nerve that went down my right arm. To scrub that shower, I had to ball my right hand into a fist, placing the sponge between it and the wall, and press down with my knuckles as hard as I could. To get the shower floor, I’d lock my elbow, make a fist, and put all of my upper body weight onto my right hand to get the soap scum and grime off to prevent hurting my hand. My left hand took over whenever the right one got too tired, but in those first months of six-hour days, when I got home I could barely hold a dinner plate or carry a bag of groceries.
I went overtime for the first few visits, and Pam was livid. Classic Clean couldn’t charge the client more and had to eat the cost of paying me extra. It wasn’t much money, but Pam complained about the financial burden, like I had hurt her personally by going fifteen minutes over. I stressed about taking so long, and it boggled my mind how an entire house, even a small one, could be cleaned in just three hours.
The Porn House didn’t earn its name until I’d been there a few times. One time, I walked into the bedroom, where I had to change the sheets, and saw a bottle of lube sitting on the nightstand in front of a digital clock. It was illuminated by the bright red numbers, and I watched it like it was about to pounce on me. I inched to the corner of the bed to avoid it. Below it, the nightstand drawer was left slightly open, revealing a Hustler magazine. By my feet were a discarded pair of dirty socks.
I recoiled as I reached to pull back the covers. I removed the sheets quickly and used them to scoop up the socks. Everything went in the washing machine. Clean sheets went on the bed, just like I’d been trained to do them—with crisp, diagonal corners at the bottom and the flat sheet pulled all the way to the top. When it came time to dust, I decided to leave the nightstand for last to avoid the lube. Though I’d never fault someone for masturbating while looking at porn mags, I would fault them for leaving it out in the open for the cleaning girl to see.
Maybe he forgot it was Wednesday, I thought.
But over time, I realized the lube was only a symptom of a larger story occurring in the Porn House. The lives of the married couple in that house seemed to be separate. The woman was a nurse and worked odd hours; I knew that from the scrubs carefully placed over a chair in the back room. I couldn’t detect what he did for a living. Though I assumed they were husband and wife, there weren’t any wedding photos on the walls—just portraits of the two of them wearing matching sweaters. The house felt dim, as they seemed to favor earth tones, like navy and dark green. On the window ledge above the kitchen sink sat a frame in an easel with a quote that read, “We’re staying together for the cat.”
The garbage in the Porn House bathroom overflowed with wads of toilet paper, tampons, panty liners, and webs of floss. Their medicine cabinet, left ajar, revealed rows of prescribed antibiotics. Judging from the tissues and snot in the shower, it seemed possible that one of them had an ongoing sinus issue, much like I did, as did Mia, and probably most of the people who lived in the damp climate of the northwest, where patches of black mold appeared overnight in homes, basements, and window ledges.
In the living room were a couch and a couple of chairs that faced the box television and fireplace. The nurse seemed to favor the spot on the couch, next to the lamp, where their cat often sat. Her husband obviously sat in the chair where a basket of outdated issues of Hustler was tucked between stacks of travel magazines. For about a month, the dining room table was covered in brochures for several all-inclusive resorts, but I don’t think they ever went. Clients usually canceled a clean if they left on vacation.
In the back room, adjacent to the laundry room, a twin bed was neatly made, with folded nurse scrubs on the chair next to it. Behind it was a nook, stacked with romance novels, the kind of books lined up on grocery store racks with illustrations of muscled, shirtless men embracing long-haired women. I wondered why she slept back there. There was a king-sized bed in the bedroom, along with a narrow dresser that had an urn with a dog collar wrapped around it. Maybe he snored. Or maybe she had to get in and out of bed at irregular hours.
But the porn and romance novels struck me. I imagined them sleeping in different beds, in different rooms, each fantasizing about a different partner and possibly a different life.
Travis and I had started to resemble t
his. Not to that extent, but he’d come in from work, eat the food I’d made, then sit on the couch watching TV for four hours before moving to our bed to watch more TV, the tiny one with the timer. He usually set it for sixty minutes.
When I first moved in with Travis, he had a TV the size of a queen mattress sitting on a homemade entertainment center. He’d leaned it forward to get the angle straight and secured it to the wall with large chains. I’d gawked at it when I first came to his house. He’d upgraded since then to a regular flat-screen with a store-bought entertainment center. But the screens were about the same size. I seethed at it all the same.
Travis bought me a laptop for my thirty-first birthday. After Mia went to bed at night, I sat at the kitchen table, writing in an online journal I had started keeping because my right hand was so weak, I couldn’t hold a pen. Sometimes I did homework or chatted with friends online, my back to Travis while he watched TV.
9
THE MOVE-OUT CLEAN
Mothering, for me, so often meant learning to say goodbye in the hope of gaining trust in my return. Many things I learned from therapists throughout the turmoil Mia and I endured with Jamie said that, in order for children to develop emotional intelligence and be resilient, it’s important, if not vital, for them to have one stable caregiver in their life, one adult person who doesn’t waver in being there when they say they will. It didn’t matter how many caregivers came in and out of their lives, appearing and disappearing, as long as one pinnacle person remained. Through Mia’s earliest years, when the real shuffle started between day care and going to her dad’s for the weekend, I became incredibly strict in keeping our schedule, our life at home, a predictable pattern. Every bathtime’s end began a series of movements: a towel laid over the toilet, lifting Mia to stand in the center, drying her body and head with another towel, tickling her in the same way. Every bedtime story, kiss, saying, “Goodnight, I love you, see you in the morning,” fell into the same niche of familiarity. As a mother, this became my biggest gift to her, because it required so much of me to always be there when I said I would and never, ever falter. My hope was, if everything else in her life was chaos, at least she knew that wherever we called home, there’d be pancakes cut in the same way.
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