Maid

by Stephanie Land

  Sometimes, after I finished cleaning the kitchen, she made me lunch, insisting that I sit with her at the dining room table. We’d exchange stories about our children over a lacy white tablecloth, eating tuna sandwiches on white bread, cut into triangle quarters, with carrot sticks on the side. She served instant coffee that we’d nimbly sip out of teacups with cream and sugar packets and a silver spoon to stir. It all felt like tea parties I’d pretended to have with my grandma when I was a child, and I told her so. Wendy smiled, then waved her hand to brush it off. “It’s good to use the fancy teacups while you still can,” she said. Her hands shook enough to make the cups rattle on the saucers that were etched with pink flowers.

  Wendy’s house was filled with glass cases displaying knickknacks, photos of her children and grandchildren, a portrait from her wedding day. Wendy caught me gazing at it once. I had been staring at it, thinking how young she and her husband looked, wondering how it is that people can suddenly become so old, how they stayed in love for that long, their heart and body growing together. She smiled and pointed to a glass bouquet of red roses, which sat on the shelf next to their wedding portrait. “My husband always wanted to make sure I had red roses,” she said, and I felt an odd sensation of both envy and tears.

  Wendy’s house was such a typical “grandmother house” that being there made me ache for family or my own grandmother. The kitchen counters were filled with cookbooks and piles of papers—grocery lists and green smoothie recipes. She drank her coffee with packets of imitation sugar and had a basket of them next to the coffeepot, which always seemed to be turned on.

  Wendy’s house was, compared to my others, easy. I wiped down the counters, cupboards, and floor; dusted and vacuumed; and cleaned the half bathroom downstairs. She insisted on doing the one upstairs herself.

  There was a spot on the floor in her kitchen, near the end of the bar, where the linoleum had been worn down and chipped away. I asked her about it once during our lunch together, and she said that was where her husband had sat to smoke cigarettes. She grimaced at the memory. “I always hated it,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee. I nodded, thinking of Travis’s muddy boot tracks across the kitchen floor. “But it’s important to not let those things get in the way,” she said, smoothing her white cardigan over a pin-striped shirt.

  “It did for me,” I said. She looked up at me, her white hair nearly glowing in the afternoon light like a halo. “My boyfriend and I broke up recently. We’d been living together for a little over a year. My daughter’s only three and…they were close. Now we live in this tiny studio apartment I can hardly afford.” I picked up my cup to drink the last gulp of my coffee and to hide my red cheeks. Saying those words all together like that not only made me ache with grief, it made everything real, like it was actually happening, and not just some nightmare we’d found ourselves in.

  Wendy was quiet for a few moments. “I need a lot of help around here,” she said, getting up from her seat at the table. She collected her dishes, and I jumped up to do the same. “You can leave those there. Come with me.”

  I followed her upstairs, past the mechanical seat she used to traverse them on her “bad days,” as she called them. She didn’t seem to get many visitors, and it made me wonder if she put on nice clothes and did her hair for me. I hadn’t been upstairs, except once or twice to vacuum the stairs. Her bedroom was to the right of the landing, where she slept with her portly, snoring white dog, who knew to ring the bell by the sliding glass door to be let out. When she opened the door to the guest bedroom, light flooded into the hallway where we stood.

  Dozens of shoe boxes, plastic containers, and rubber bins lined the walls. There were still more containers balanced in stacks on top of the bed. Wendy sighed.

  “I’ve been trying to sort things into piles of what goes where,” she said. “Because of the cancer.” I nodded and looked at everything she had been doing. “Most of the things for my son are in the garage—the tools and all of that. But my nieces and nephews and their children will want a lot of this.”

  I admired her as she pointed to the piles, telling me what would be given to whom. In my time working as a maid, I’d seen various decluttering projects—garages parceled out in preparation for yard sales or downsizing. But this wasn’t the same kind of project. This was an afterlife project—Wendy had been putting things aside for relatives to have after her death.

  I’m not sure if Wendy knew how much time she had left to live, but if she did, she never told me. The extra work she hired me for during the month of July is how Mia and I survived the unexpected expenses from moving and a $300 car repair that would otherwise have sent me spiraling. I picked her weeds, sorted piles, and deep cleaned areas of her house to save her family from having to do it all. Wendy was so matter-of-fact about asking me to fulfill these duties. I admired her, as weird as it seemed, hoping I’d feel the same peace at the end of my life, calmly sorting piles instead of scrambling to make amends or cross experiences off of a list.

  I spent most of the Fourth of July weekend in her yard, working my way around the weeds in her flower beds and beneath her evergreen bushes. It had been a while since I’d done that work, and I forgot how enamored I’d been of working outside. Most of my days were spent working in stuffy houses, the heat turned down or the air-conditioning turned off, as they sat empty while their occupants were away.

  At home, I battled a relentless black mold. Our sleeping area, with its walls made up of large windows, became a sauna in the evening sun. If it had rained recently, it was more like a greenhouse. Sleeping was nearly impossible for Mia, who’d always slept through anything—even fireworks. Travis stopped by to visit with Mia one evening and, after balking at how hot it was, left suddenly in his truck, returning a half an hour later with an air conditioner he installed in the window for me. He turned it up full blast. Mia and I stuck our faces in the cool air. It felt expensive, like a luxury. Maybe I’d only use it when we got home or right before bed to cool the room down a little, so our electric bill didn’t go up too much. It worried me that the air felt moist. Everything seemed to exacerbate the black mold growing on the windowsills that surrounded us while we slept.

  Outside, I could breathe deep. When I worked, I listened to the noises of a neighborhood instead of music from my iPod. That Fourth of July weekend, many of Wendy’s neighbors were already lighting fireworks or cooking meat on the grill. Occasionally, I’d get a whiff of steak or hamburgers, and my mouth would water. I imagined crisp lettuce and thick slices of tomatoes, cheese, ketchup, and mayonnaise applied generously, all washed down with a bottle of beer. From beneath the evergreen tree, I imagined kids in yards up and down the neighborhood, running around with sparklers. That weekend, Mia was with Jamie, and I found myself hoping that she was at a barbeque with her dad, surrounded by kids her age. I hoped that she would get to see fireworks that night.

  Wendy wrote me checks with a shaky hand, insisting that I be paid my regular rate even for my lunch break. “Your time is valuable,” she said, handing me the check with illustrated pink roses by her name and address.

  After a couple of months, Wendy canceled her cleans. “I just can’t afford them anymore,” she told me over the phone, and I thought I heard regret even through her weakened voice.

  I don’t know when she passed, but I wondered if it was soon after I stopped visiting. I thought often about our conversations over sandwiches and coffee, how the carrot sticks in front of her went untouched, and that perhaps her plate was mostly for show; that, even though she didn’t have the appetite to eat, we weren’t eating a meal alone. Memories of those afternoons with Wendy reminded me not only that my time was of value but that even though I was there to clean a toilet or pick candy wrappers out of her junipers, I had value, too.

  Weekends without work or Mia blared with silence. With the Pell Grant only covering enough tuition for the regular school year, I couldn’t afford tuition for the summer semester due to rent, so I didn’t have homewor
k to catch up on, or a yard to putter around in, or any money to spend on a drink with a friend. Even driving to Seattle or up to Bellingham cost too much money, so I stayed home instead. I tried going to the park to read books on a blanket in the grass, but I seethed with envy for the families and couples eating lunch from to-go boxes, dads playing with kids while moms sat with babies in the shade.

  Purchasing, preparing, and eating food became more of a chore than pleasure, since my diet was so unvaried. When I could afford them, I cooked a big batch of mashed potatoes on Sundays to form into patties that I’d fry with butter, then put an egg over for breakfast or an after-work snack. Besides the protein bars and PB & Js, I ate huge bowls of Top Ramen. I learned how to make my own sauce out of rice vinegar, Sriracha, soy sauce, a little sugar, and sesame oil. The initial cost of the sauces was expensive, about $20, but I couldn’t bear to eat the flavor packets. Those huge bowls of Top Ramen and sauce were my version of a fancy dinner. I added sautéed cabbage, broccoli, onions, or whatever else was on sale, topped with hard-boiled eggs and sliced deli meat on clearance. Fresh produce became a sort of delicacy. I only bought vegetables priced at a dollar or less a pound and only at the beginning of the month.

  For whatever reason—whether it was Mia eating more than usual from being home sick from day care, when I’d have to feed her breakfast, snacks, and lunch, or if she was experiencing a growth spurt—the second shopping trip of the month had to be for minimal foods that barely kept our bellies full and never satisfied. That’s when I bought the cheaper bread and no-frills crackers, the jam I knew was full of sugar, artificial ingredients, and high fructose corn syrup and not much else, which I had to feed my growing daughter anyway, and cheap TV dinners or boxes of prepared food. For a couple of weeks, I couldn’t afford coffee. I switched to black tea, and I wept. Though I knew it was available, I never went to a food bank or a soup kitchen. Our choices were limited, but we weren’t starving, so I could never bring myself to go. There always seemed to be plenty of people who needed it more.

  Mia, thankfully, never seemed to notice, since I was always the one who ate less. But one afternoon I picked her up from her dad’s, and she spent the next twenty minutes talking about a birthday party she’d gone to. Not because of the friends or games but because of food. “They had so many berries, Mom!” she kept saying. “Strawberries and raspberries and so many berries and they let me eat as many as I wanted!” That night, after she went to bed, I looked for any photos that friends from Port Townsend might have posted of the party and found a few. Mia wasn’t in any, but I could clearly see the berries. The whole table was covered with bowls and plates of them. I understood why Mia was so excited. A small package of berries, at five dollars, was an incredibly special treat for her, and she usually ate it in a matter of minutes.

  A few other clients offered to pay me for additional work during those months, and I had steady interest in an ad that I’d posted on Craigslist:

  I WORK 25 HOURS A WEEK AS A PROFESSIONAL CLEANER, BUT IT’S NOT ENOUGH TO PAY THE BILLS.

  Most of the other, competing ads seemed to be husband-and-wife teams who had trucks for clearing out clutter to take to the dump. A few were businesses much like Jenny’s had been: licensed, insured, and with a few employees to juggle bigger jobs. I didn’t think my ad would stand out or bring in any extra income at all, but I got a half dozen calls every time I posted a different variation.

  One short, bright-eyed woman, Sharon, hired me to clean out her rental property before the next tenant moved in. The apartment was grimy but not horrible, and during the walk-through she admitted that she’d never hired a cleaner before. She wanted me to clean out the oven and fridge but not the blinds. I tried to estimate how long it would take me, but I had come to the walk-through with Mia balanced on my hip, and it was hard to get a good look at the space.

  “Four or five hours?” I guessed, distracted by Mia, who was steadily reaching for something on the counter.

  “Oh, I just figured I’d give you a hundred dollars,” Sharon said as we stood in the hallway. Then she handed me a wad of cash. I looked at her for a second, a blank expression on my face, unsure what to do. It was much more than I had been paid for any individual cleaning job before. But she motioned for me to take the money from her hand. “I liked your ad,” she said. “I remember what it’s like, to struggle when you have someone who depends on you.” She looked at Mia, who, growing timid from the eye contact, pressed her head into my shoulder.

  “Thank you,” I said, trying to suppress the feeling that I was getting away with something. “You won’t be disappointed.”

  After I strapped Mia in her car seat, I sat behind the wheel, staring at the dashboard. I’m doing it, I thought to myself. I’m really fucking doing it! I turned around to look at Mia, and I felt my heart swell. We had been through so much together, and yet I was still getting us through. “Do you want a Happy Meal?” I asked. The wad of cash bulged in my pocket. Pride swelled in my chest. Mia’s face lit up, and she threw up her arms. “Yay!” she yelled from the back seat. I laughed, blinking back a few tears, and yelled out for joy, too.

  14

  THE PLANT HOUSE

  My alarm went off for the third time only thirty minutes before we had to be at the specialist’s office for Mia’s ear tube surgery. They’d instructed me to give her a bath that morning and dress her comfortably. Instead I tried calling the office to cancel. Mia’s head and chest were overflowing with thick, green snot. She’d even thrown it up the previous night, and once that morning, all over our floor. There was no way they’d do surgery on her when she was this sick, but I went through the motions, got her ready, and drove to their office on time.

  Mia sort of knew what was going on. I’d told her the doctor needed to look at her ears again, but I couldn’t be in the room with her this time. We’d been to the doctor several times for her ears by then and had seen the specialist once to determine if she was a good candidate for the surgery. My nervousness about it revolved around the anesthesia more than the actual procedure.

  “I put ear tubes in my own son,” the specialist had told me. “I’ll give your daughter the exact same care.”

  When we arrived at the office at eight a.m., they ushered us into a room where they had already set out a gown, a hat to cover up her hair, booties, and a bag for Mia’s clothes. My stomach dropped further with every nurse who came in to ask questions. Mia remained tense and silent, not making eye contact as they weighed her, took her temperature, checked her oxygen levels, listened to her chest, and even took her picture with a Polaroid camera.

  “She’s really sick,” I said to the first nurse, who barely nodded. “She’s had a bad cold. A cough, with green snot. I think it’s an infection,” I said to the next. “The specialist is going to check to see if she needs her adenoids out, he’s not just taking them out. He’s just going to check.”

  One nurse, an older brunette whose hands were so cold Mia had recoiled from them when she tried to listen to her heart, asked if we had a humidifier at home.

  I shook my head no, thinking about the condensation on the inside of our windows, the seams with the spots of black mold that I’d scrubbed off before we moved in and which returned after it rained. “I can’t—” I started to say.

  “Well, you’ll need to get one today,” she said, writing something on Mia’s chart.

  “I…” I looked down. “I don’t have the money.”

  The nurse stood erect, pursed her lips, and crossed her arms, looking at Mia instead of me. “Where are her grandparents? Doesn’t she have grandparents? If it were my grandchild, I would offer to buy things like that.”

  “My family can’t help with things,” I tried to explain quickly, probably offering too much information to this stranger. “Or, my dad and stepmom can’t. My mom lives in Europe and says she can’t help, but my dad really doesn’t have the money.”

  The nurse clicked her tongue. Mia’s eyes had remained focused on her hands, whi
ch she’d folded and tucked between her legs. She must be cold. Or she needed to pee. Every time I asked, she shook her head no. “I don’t know how any grandmother could live so far away from her grandbaby,” the nurse said, then looked me in the eyes in a way that made me feel like I needed to answer, but Mia whispered in my ear.

  “I need to go potty,” she said. Her breath had that twinge of infected snot to it, different from how it normally smelled.

  The nurse pointed us down the hall as she left the room. I carried Mia and sat her down on the toilet. She bent herself completely over, her chest flat against her legs, and threw up a large puddle of green snot. One of the nurses stood outside our room, asking the woman at the front desk where we went, and I waved her down to show her what had happened. There’s your proof, I wanted to say. My baby is too sick for this.

  “I’ll take care of it,” the nurse said. “Just go back to your room.”

  We sat in there for only five minutes, or about as long as it took me to get fed up and reach for the bag to start dressing Mia in her clothes.

  There was a knock at the door, and the specialist came in. He didn’t say hello—he never did—and sat on the chair in defeat. We all sat there looking at one another for a few beats, him sizing us up. “She’s probably sick from being nervous,” he said. “If you’re nervous, then she’s nervous.”

  “I haven’t had time to get nervous,” I mumbled.

  He sat back, crossed his arms, then rose and stood over us. “If you don’t want to do the surgery, then that’s fine. It saves me time, that’s for sure.”

  “No,” I said, furrowing my eyebrows. I wondered if he’d speak to me this way if I was there with a husband or if Mia had insurance that wasn’t Medicaid. “I didn’t say anything like that. She’s been sick. She’s sick. I figured she was too sick to do the surgery today. I don’t even know why I came here. I’m too tired to think about this.”