Maybe she thought the bed would be for Mia instead of me, but I didn’t correct her.
Before I left, she gave me a hug. “Oh!” she said. “I have something for you.” She disappeared into the laundry room and then came out with a box, setting it down on a bench in the entryway. It was a set of brand-new dishes, the color bright and blue like the robin’s eggs that Mia and I found all over the farm in the spring. My hand went to my mouth in shock as I took in the four dinner plates, salad plates, coffee cups, and bowls. New. For our new start. I threw my arms around her and thanked her, and then I took a deep breath and carried the box of dishes to the truck.
This was a start, but I had so much work to do—not only in moving but in the work it would take to afford staying.
For two weeks, I put Mia to bed at Travis’s and then packed my car with as much stuff as I could cram into it. At the new studio, I scrubbed the counters, sinks, and tub. Even the walls got a good wipe-down before I hung up the few paintings from the artwork my mom gave me. My favorites were two Barbara Lavallee prints from the book Mama, Do You Love Me? that I’d had since I was little. The iconic Alaskan illustrations reminded me of a happier time, when my family spent our summers fishing, filling the freezer in the garage with salmon and halibut. Our studio was tiny, just over three hundred square feet, with ten large windows—eight in the sleeping area and two in the section with the wooden floor—so I had to be choosy about what ended up on the wall. I tried to avoid looking at everything critically, like I had with the homeless shelter. This was yet another tiny beginning for us. I feared Mia would not see it the same way.
I’d return to Travis’s at almost midnight, after he had gone to bed, to crawl under the throw blanket on the couch. A week before Mia’s third birthday, I took the final hauls of furniture and got everything set up at the studio. I picked a weekend to move when she’d be at Jamie’s. Travis and his friend helped move the bigger stuff, even disassembling and putting together the loft bed his parents had handed down to Mia. They did it while I was cleaning the Farm House. I’d dropped Mia off at day care that morning, knowing I’d pick her up, deliver her to her dad, and never return her to the home she’d known for the past year and a half. I wanted to do it all myself and not have to ask Travis for help, but I’d hurt my back at work that week in a stupid attempt to move a bed. I had to take 800 milligrams of ibuprofen two or three times a day to get through work; the physical pain provided a distraction from the heartache I felt for Mia.
By Saturday night, I had everything moved in. By Sunday afternoon, her toys were in the correct bins, and our clothes were neatly folded and put away. When I picked Mia up and brought her into our little studio, I hoped, as any parent would, that she’d like the new space. I hoped she’d feel a sense of home, of belonging, but she looked around for a bit, checked out the bathroom, then asked to go home to Travis’s.
“We’re staying here, sweetie,” I said, stroking her hair.
“Travis coming home?” she asked. She sat in my lap, on the twin bed Sarah had given me.
“No,” I said. “Travis is staying at his house. He’s sleeping there. We’re sleeping here. This is our house.”
“No, Mama,” she said. “I want Travis. Where’s Daddy Travis?” She started wailing, sinking into me, heaving under the weight of her tiny crushed heart. I apologized, and I cried right along with her. I promised myself to be more careful. I could be as reckless as I wanted with my heart, but not with hers.
12
MINIMALIST
One of the greatest things about a willingness to get on your hands and knees to scrub a toilet is you’ll never have trouble finding work. To supplement where Classic Clean’s hours lacked, I started looking for more clients on my own. I posted ads online and on Facebook. I picked up Donna’s House, a biweekly, four-hour clean on Friday afternoons when I didn’t have to drop off Mia with Jamie. Donna’s House was deep in the hills of the Skagit Valley, toward the Cascade Mountains and the backcountry where my family had lived for six generations.
She was involved with the local Habitat for Humanity and mentioned a few families who’d recently been granted the ability to own their first home—much of it with what the program called “sweat equity,” where family members and friends performed physical work like hammering nails, painting, or landscaping in exchange for a down payment. If finding the time to meet those requirements sounded difficult enough, as an adult with one dependent, I needed a monthly net income of $1,600 to qualify.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that,” I said. She encouraged me to contact the program anyway. But when I really thought about it, I wasn’t sure I wanted to own a home in the Skagit Valley. With the exception of Anacortes and Deception Pass, which were unaffordable at my wages, it didn’t feel like home to me. And Habitat for Humanity didn’t offer a choice of where to live in the county.
“All your family’s here,” she said. “Can’t be more ‘home’ than that.”
“Well,” I said, dusting the tops of the pictures in her formal living room, “I kind of want to check out Missoula in Montana. I’d been planning to move there for college when I found out I was pregnant with Mia.”
Donna had been scrapbooking as we spoke and stopped going through the piles of papers, photos, and stickers on her dining room table and was looking at me now. “You wanna know how to make God laugh?” she said.
“What?” I asked, wondering how this related to my desire to move to Missoula.
“Tell him your plans,” she said. “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” And then she let out a bark of a laugh.
“Right,” I said, turning to dust the molding that stretched down the hallway.
Donna paid me $20 an hour to clean her house and told me to never accept less. Classic Clean charged $25 an hour to have me work in a home, but I still only made nine. After taxes and expenses, I took home $6 an hour. Finding and scheduling clients on my own took a lot of time, especially when walk-throughs didn’t result in a new client. But the unpaid labor of finding and scheduling clients was still worth it and helped to increase my overall wages. That is, if I never managed to damage anything.
The move from Travis’s house added forty minutes to our daily commute. All but two of my Classic Clean clients were in the Stanwood and Camano Island area. But Mia’s day care was still right around the corner from Travis’s house, and driving past it was unavoidable. I almost involuntarily slowed down when I passed it, rubbernecking to catch Travis walking in the door with his muddy boots on. Besides missing the comfort of a partner, there was one thing I couldn’t seem to let go. After a couple of weeks of passing it multiple times a day, I asked Travis if I could stop by to tend the garden. I hated seeing it so overgrown and wilted; perfectly good food going to waste.
“Okay,” he said after a long pause.
“I could bring Mia with me to hang out for a while,” I said. He seemed fine with that. Travis said he’d try to stay involved with Mia’s life as much as he could. But summers meant hay season, and most days he worked from dawn until dusk. She liked to ride on his lap when he mowed. At least she could have a few more times spent in his lap.
Our new life began at seven o’clock each morning. I would climb out of bed, shaking the sleep from my body, and heat water on the stove for coffee. I made one cup for the morning and then poured a cup for the road in a jar. Mia usually ate oatmeal or cereal. Sometimes I’d add water to pancake mix and she’d watch me scoop steaming silver-dollar-sized pancakes onto a plate before adding a dab of butter and syrup. I made do with the usual peanut butter Clif Bar in the pocket of my Carhartts and a toasted peanut butter and jelly sandwich wrapped in a paper towel and tin foil that I’d reuse until it fell apart.
With rent, utilities, car insurance, gas, my cell phone and Internet, the Laundromat, and toiletries, my monthly expenses hovered around $1,000. When Mia or I needed new shoes or even toothpaste, I had to refer to my budget posted on the wall, with a list of e
ach bill that was due and what date it came out of my bank account. That meant only $20 to cushion any unexpected blows, like an electric bill that was bigger than usual. Had I not received a government grant for childcare, I wouldn’t have been able to afford to work at all. Since my income was higher, I had a monthly co-pay of $50. More in wages meant I received a smaller amount of food stamps—around $200 each month now—and it was still all the money I had for food. Even with the increase in money coming in, I had more bills and less supplement coming from the government. So most months we had only about $50 left over for activities or household goods. With the amount of time and energy I spent physically working, the burn of not being able to afford necessary staple items was even more painful.
The downtown location of our new apartment proved to be a blessing. There was a food co-op where Mia had her own “banana card,” which earned her a free apple, orange, or banana every time we shopped. I could use our food stamps to buy one of their deli sandwiches on clearance, yogurt or hummus for Mia, chocolate milk, and her chosen fruit. We’d sit at a table by the big windows that faced the sidewalk. I’d get a drip coffee for a dollar. We sat, smiling at each other, appreciating the ability to go out to eat.
Down the street was a consignment store called Sprouts that had only recently opened. Sadie, the young, blond girl who owned it, was always there with her daughter either strapped to her chest in a carrier or in a playpen.
“Can you take another one of those travel cribs?” I asked her as she sorted through the bags of clothes I’d brought in. Sadie paused for a second to think.
“Is it in good condition?” she asked, bouncing a little to keep her baby asleep while she examined the items.
I had to tell her about the hole in the side of the mesh. “But it hasn’t been used that much,” I said, then decided to add, “I have a jogging stroller, too.”
“I can only give store credit for equipment,” she said, her nose scrunched up with disappointment. “Not cash.”
“Okay,” I mumbled.
She opened the cash register to give me $20 for the clothes. “There’s a lot of nice stuff in here,” she said, smiling.
“I know,” I almost whispered. “I’d been saving it for…” I sucked in my breath, looking at the newborn onesies I’d carefully packed away in the chance Travis and I ever had a baby. “I’d been saving it for no reason.”
Sadie somehow knew what I meant, or maybe she just acted like she did. We’d gotten to know each other after she saw my posts looking for work in a Facebook group for local moms. She’d hired me to clean her house, since she’d neglected it for so long after opening a business while also caring for a toddler and an infant. When I asked if she needed help at the store, she said no at first; then I asked if she’d be willing to barter me cleaning the store’s bathroom for some credit for clothes. Sadie smiled, first at me, then at Mia, clutching her new Thomas the Tank Engine footed pajamas I’d found in the boys’ section, and nodded. With the barter, Mia could walk in and pick out a dress or something that caught her eye when the need arose. I’d make an afternoon of it—going to lunch at the co-op, then over to Sprouts for her to pick something out. Her wardrobe was comprised entirely of used clothes and Walmart stretch pants found on clearance. But she held her head so high whenever it was time to pick out a dress, she might as well have been in an upscale department store.
When we moved into the transitional apartment building, my mom had given me boxes of antiques she’d displayed around the house I grew up in. Now, with the lack of space, it felt more like she’d burdened me with stuff she didn’t want to pay to put in storage. Most of the bigger stuff I took to donation centers or consignment shops because the studio’s small space, much like the homeless shelter where we had room for only one bag, left me no room for any of it. My lack of living space afforded me room only for things that were useful. I thought back to magazines I’d flipped through, with articles featuring smiling couples who’d chosen to minimize their belongings or elected to move into a tiny house, boasting how mindful they were about the environment. They could just as easily choose to move back into a regular house with two bedrooms, an office, and two-point-five baths. I’d feel differently about our studio apartment when I handed over my monthly rent check if I knew I could afford something triple its size.
During the weeks after I had moved from Travis’s to the studio, Pam offered me part of the loft in her shop for storage until I figured out what to do with all of it. I’d gone into Classic Clean’s office to refill my supplies, pick up my paycheck, and formally change my address.
“How’s the new place?” Pam had asked in her cheery way, and I tried to give a positive response, or at least try to imitate her disposition.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I just don’t know what to do with my stuff. Travis doesn’t want me to keep anything there, and I can’t afford a storage unit.” I stopped myself there, trying not to unload all of my stress on my boss. She had such a sincere way of asking how I was, fully listening when I spoke, she had started to fill a maternal role that my life desperately needed.
Decisions over what to keep and what to donate or attempt to sell weren’t easy. Things I stored were equally useless and priceless. Baby books, photos, old letters, and yearbooks had no value but took up valuable space. Then I whittled down my clothing, getting rid of winter and fishing gear I’d kept from Alaska, dresses and shirts I no longer wore regularly. Household things became the hardest to decide what stayed and what went. I not only had to decide what we had space for but what I could not afford to replace. My dad’s chili pot no longer had significant use, but it had a heavy hand in the sentimental value department, along with the casserole dishes my parents got at their wedding. Things, they were all just things, and I didn’t have space for much. So Mia and I each had two towels, washcloths, and sets of sheets. In my closet, which was originally built to house brooms and mops, I kept my entire wardrobe: two pairs of jeans, one pair of khakis, one nice button-up shirt, and a “fancy” dress I bought with my own money. The rest were my Classic Clean t-shirts and work pants. I didn’t have the heart to get rid of many of Mia’s things and found creative ways to store her stuffed animals, books, and toys so they looked part of the decor. There was so much stuff to go through. Decisions to make about what to keep and what to throw away, the amount of loss heartbreaking. I stored some of it in the basement under our apartment, but not much for fear it would get destroyed by the dampness and mold and mice. But I couldn’t get rid of all of those things, either. They were our history.
There wasn’t any way I could have verbalized any of that to Pam in that moment, but she seemed to understand intuitively as she stared at me. Maybe she’d once had the same dilemma as a single parent in compartmentalized space. Suddenly, her face got a kind of Mrs. Claus twinkle, and she told me to follow her.
We entered the door to the smaller shop that sat between the office and her house, and she pointed to a small hidden space at the top. “It’s a really big space up there, and it’s not getting used,” Pam said, shrugging. The loft space had a rickety ladder I’d have to somehow hoist my stuff up to get to the top. On the floor where we stood were various assortments of old things—like the stuff you’d find at a garage sale that had already been picked over. “Whatever you need, take it.” She gestured to the various pitchers and plastic shelves when she saw me looking at them. “Take from any pile. Our church is having a huge yard sale and needs the donations, but if you see anything, you can just have it.”
I looked down and saw an old footstool. “I could use this as a coffee table,” I said. Pam smiled and nodded. “And maybe this jar for kitchen utensils.”
“If you need anything else, even if you need me to wash your work rags, just let me know,” she offered. I wanted to hug her. I wanted her to hug me. I needed a hug from a mom so badly I could easily see myself choking on a few tears and asking for one. “And I do need some help with the yard, if you’re available,” she adde
d.
“I have time next weekend I know for sure!” I said eagerly. “I can check my calendar if you need it done sooner.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “There’s no rush.” She opened the door to a walled-off section under the loft where she stored her cleaning supplies. “Maybe you could organize this room, too.” When she flipped on the lights, I saw a long hallway filled with spare vacuum cleaners, a floor polisher, and rows of mops and bottles.
I was already calculating the extra wages in my head.
Pam smiled at me. Her eyes twinkled a little more. Studying her short, roundish body and kind soul, I wondered if the other cleaners felt as close to her.
On free weekends, I started going through my stuff stacked in the loft at Pam’s. I whittled down my papers, books, and keepsakes to two storage bins. Most of it either went in the trash or to thrift stores, disposing of things I’d once carefully folded to save. One afternoon, when I knew no one was on the property, I went through and got rid of the last of the baby clothes I had set aside—the special newborn outfits I’d saved for last, which I’d hoped, someday, another baby of mine would fill. At least I could exchange them at the consignment store to properly clothe the kid I already had, who seemed to need new pants and shoes almost constantly. But maybe that was the lesson there—appreciating the stuff you had, the life you had, using the space you were given. I wished it wasn’t a forced journey, but I recognized it as an important part of mine.
13
WENDY’S HOUSE
By my third visit to Wendy’s, a new client’s house, her health had started to abruptly and visibly plummet. “The cancer doesn’t give me much time,” she’d drop in conversation, her shoulders uncharacteristically slumping. No response ever felt right, so I mirrored her sage nods, agreeing with her in a grievous way. Yet Wendy’s shirts were still starched. Her house was still so clean I was often confused why she paid to have me work there.
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