A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

by Lucia Berlin

  Of course, the major part of our rehab was going to be honest work. The satisfaction of a job well done. Learning to interact. Teamwork. This teamwork started when we lined up for our methadone at six every morning. After breakfast we worked until lunchtime. Group from two until five, more group from seven to ten.

  The purpose of these groups was to break us down. Our main problems were anger, arrogance, defiance. We lied and cheated and stole. There were daily “haircuts” where groups screamed at one person all his faults and weaknesses.

  We were beaten down until we finally cried uncle. Who the fuck was uncle? See, I’m still angry, arrogant. I was ten minutes late to group and they shaved my eyebrows and cut my eyelashes.

  The groups dealt with anger. All day long we dropped slips in a slip box saying who we were angry at and then in group we dealt with it. Mostly we just shouted what losers and fuckups everyone else was. But see, we all did lie and cheat. Half the time none of us was even mad, just shucking and jiving up some anger to play the group game, to stay at La Vida and not go to jail. Most of the slips were at Bobby, the cook, for feeding those wild dogs. Or things like Grenas doesn’t weed enough, he just smokes and pushes tumbleweeds around with a rake.

  We were mad at those dogs. Lines of us at six a.m. and at one and six outside the dining room. Whipping sand wind. We’d be tired and hungry. Freezing in the morning and hot in the afternoon. Bobby would wait, finally stroll across his floor like a smug bank official to unlock the door for us. And while we waited, a few feet away, at the kitchen door, the dogs would be waiting too, for him to throw them slops. Mangy, motley, ugly dogs people had abandoned out on the mesa. The dogs liked Bobby all right but they hated us, baring their teeth and snarling, day after day, meal after meal.

  I got moved from the laundry to the kitchen. Helping cook, dishwashing and mopping up. I felt better about Bobby after a while. I even felt better about the dogs. He named them all. Dumb names. Duke, Spot, Blackie, Gimp, Shorty. And Liza, his favorite. An old yellow cur, flat-headed, with huge batlike ears and amber-yellow eyes. After a few months she’d even eat out of his hand. “Sunshine! Liza, my yellow-eyed sun,” he used to croon to her. Finally she let him scratch behind her ugly ears and just above the long ratty tail that hung down between her legs. “My sweet sweet sunshine,” he’d say.

  Government money kept sending in people to do workshops with us. A lady who did a workshop about Families. As if any of us ever had a family. And some guy from Synanon who said our problem was our cool. His favorite expression was “When you think you’re looking good you’re looking bad.” Every day he had us “blow our image.” Which was just acting like fools.

  We got a gym and a pool table, weights and punching bags. Two color televisions. A basketball court, a bowling alley, and a tennis court. Framed paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe. Monet’s water lilies. Soon a Hollywood movie company was coming, to make a science fiction film at the site. We would be able to work as extras and make some money. The movie was going to center around the radar disc and what it did to Angie Dickinson. It fell in love with her and took her soul when she died in a car wreck. It would take over all these other live souls too, who would be La Vida residents, us. I’ve seen it about twenty times, in the middle of the night, on TV.

  All in all the first three months went pretty well. We were clean and healthy; we worked hard. The site was in great shape. We got pretty close to one another and we did get angry. But for those first three months we were in total isolation. Nobody came in and nobody went out. No phone calls, no newspapers, no mail, no television. Things started falling apart when that ended. People went on passes and had dirty urines when they got back, or they didn’t come back at all. New residents kept coming in, but they didn’t have the sense of pride we had about the place.

  Every day we had a morning meeting. Part gripe session, part snitch session. We also had to take turns speaking, even if it was just telling a joke or singing a song. But nobody could ever think of anything, so at least twice a week old Lyle Tanner sang, “I thought I saw a whippoorwill.” “El Sapo” gave a talk on how to breed chihuahuas, which was gross. Sexy kept on reciting the Twenty-third Psalm. Only the way she caressed words it sounded lewd and everybody laughed, which hurt her feelings.

  Sexy’s name was a joke. She was an old whore from Mexico. She hadn’t come with the first group of us, but later, after five days in solitary with no food. Bobby made her soup and some bacon and eggs. But all she wanted was bread. She sat there and ate three loaves of Wonder Bread, not even chewing it, just swallowing it, famished. Bobby gave the soup and bacon and eggs to Liza.

  Sexy kept on eating until finally I took her to our room and she collapsed. Lydia and Sherry were in bed together in the next room. They had been lovers for years. I could tell by their slow laughs that they were high on something, reds or ludes probably. I went back to the kitchen to help Bobby clean up. Gabe, the counselor, came in to get the knives, to lock them up in the safe. He did that every night.

  “I’m going to town. You’re in charge, Bobby.” There never were any staff members at night anymore.

  Bobby and I went out to drink coffee under the chinaberry tree. The dogs yelped after something on the mesa.

  “I’m glad Sexy came. She’s nice.”

  “She’s okay. She won’t stay.”

  “She reminds me of Liza.”

  “Liza’s not that ugly. Oye, Tina, be still. It’s almost here.”

  The moon. There’s no other moon like one on a clear New Mexico night. It rises over the Sandias and soothes the miles and miles of barren desert with all the quiet whiteness of a first snow. Moonlight in Liza’s yellow eyes and the chinaberry tree.

  The world just goes along. Nothing much matters, you know? I mean really matters. But then sometimes, just for a second, you get this grace, this belief that it does matter, a whole lot.

  He felt that way too. I heard the catch in his throat. Some people may have said a prayer, knelt down, at a moment like that. Sung a hymn. Maybe cavemen would have done a dance. What we did was make love. “El Sapo” busted us. Later, but we were still naked.

  So it came out at morning meeting and we had to get a punishment. Three weeks, after cleaning the kitchen, to strip and sand all the paint around: the dining room windows. Until one in the morning, every single night. That was bad enough but then Bobby, trying to save his ass, got up and said, “I didn’t want to ball Tina. I just want to stay clean, do my time, and go home to my wife Debbi and my baby Debbi-Ann.” I could have dropped a slip on those two jive names.

  That hurt bad. He had held me and talked to me. He had gone to a lot more trouble making love than most men do and I had been happy with him when the moon came up.

  We had to work so hard there wasn’t time to talk. I would never have let him know how bad it hurt anyway. We were tired, bone tired every night, all day.

  The main thing we hadn’t talked about was the dogs. They hadn’t shown up for three nights.

  Finally I said it. “Where do you think the dogs are?”

  He shrugged. “A puma. Kids with guns.”

  We went back to sanding. It got too late even to go to bed so we made some fresh coffee and sat down under the tree.

  I missed Sexy. I forgot to say that she had gone to town to the dentist but had managed to score, got busted and taken back to jail.

  “I miss Sexy. Bobby, that was a lie what you said at morning meeting. You did so want to ball me.”

  “Yeah, it was a lie.”

  We went into the meat locker and held each other again, made love again but not for long because it was freezing cold. We went back outside.

  The dogs started coming. Shorty, Blackie, Spot, Duke.

  They had gotten into porcupines. Must have been days ago because they were all so infected, septic. Their faces swollen like monster rhinoceros, oozing green pus. Their eyes were bloated shut, quilled shut with tiny arrows. That was the scary part, that none of them could see. Or make a
real sound since their throats were engorged too.

  Blackie had a seizure. Hurtled up into the air with an eerie gargle. Thrashing, jerking, peeing in the air. High, two, three feet into the air and then he fell wet, dead, into the dust. Liza came in last because she couldn’t walk, just crawled until she got to Bobby’s feet, writhed there, her paw patting at his boot.

  “Get me the goddamn knives.”

  “Gabe’s not back yet.” Only counselors could unlock the safe.

  Liza pawed at Bobby’s foot, gentle, like asking to be petted, for him to throw her a ball.

  Bobby went to the locker and brought out a steak. The sky was lavender. It was almost morning.

  He had the dogs smell the meat. He called to them, cooed to them to follow him across the road to the machine shop. I stayed under the tree.

  When he was in there, when he finally got them all in there, he beat them to death with a sledgehammer. I didn’t see it, but I heard it and from where I sat I saw the blood splattering and streaking down the walls. I thought he would say something like “Liza, my sweet sunshine” but he didn’t say a word. When he came out he was covered in blood, didn’t look at me, went to the barracks.

  The nurse drove up with the doses of methadone and everybody started lining up for breakfast. I turned the griddle on and started making batter. Everybody was mad because I took so long with breakfast.

  There still wasn’t any staff around when the movie trailers started pulling in. They began working right away, checking out locations, casting extras. People were running around with megaphones and walkie-talkies. Somehow nobody went into the machine shop.

  They started one scene right away … a take of a stuntman who was supposed to be Angie Dickinson driving down from the gym while a helicopter hovered around the radar disc. The car was supposed to crash into the disc and Angie’s spirit fly up into it but the car crashed into the chinaberry tree.

  Bobby and I made lunch, so tired we were walking in slow motion, just like all the zombie extras were being told to walk. We didn’t talk. Once, making tuna salad I said out loud, to myself, “Pickle relish?”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said pickle relish.”

  “Christ. Pickle relish!” We laughed, couldn’t stop laughing. He touched my cheek, lightly, a bird’s wing.

  The movie crew thought the radar site was fab, far out. Angie Dickinson liked my eye shadow. I told her it was just chalk, the kind you rub on pool cues. “It’s to die for, that blue,” she said to me.

  After lunch, an old gaffer, whatever that is, came up to me and asked where the nearest bar was. There was a place up the road, toward Gallup, but I told him Albuquerque. I told him I would do anything to get a ride into town.

  “Don’t worry about that. Hop in my truck and let’s go.”

  Wham, crash, bang.

  “Good God, what was that?” he asked.

  “A cattle guard.”

  “Jesus, this sure is one godforsaken place.”

  We finally hit the highway. It was great, the sound of tires on the cement, the wind blowing in. Semis, bumper stickers, kids fighting in the backseats. Route 66.

  We got to the rise, with the wide valley and the Rio Grande below us, the Sandia Mountains lovely above.

  “Mister, what I need is money for a ticket home to Baton Rouge. Can you spare it, about sixty dollars?”

  “Easy. You need a ticket. I need a drink. It will all work out.”

  Grief

  “Whatever can those two be talking about all the time?” Mrs. Wacher asked her husband at breakfast.

  Across the open-air, thatched-roof dining room by the sea the sisters forgot their papaya, their huevos rancheros, talking, talking. Later, as they walked by the edge of the sea, their heads were bent toward each other. Talking, talking. Waves would catch them unawares, soaking them, and they would laugh. The younger one often cried … When she cried the older one waited, comforting her, passing her a tissue. When the tears stopped they began talking again. She didn’t look hard, the older one, but she never cried.

  * * *

  For the most part the other hotel guests in the dining room and in beach chairs on the sand all sat quietly together, occasionally commenting upon the perfection of the day, the turquoise blue of the sea, telling their children to sit up straight. The honeymoon couple whispered and teased each other, fed one another bites of melon, but most of the time they were silent, gazing into the other’s eyes, looking at the other’s hands. The older couples drank coffee and read or did crossword puzzles. Their conversations were brief, monosyllabic. The people who were content with each other spoke as little as those who bristled with resentment or boredom; it was the rhythm of their speech that differed, like a lazy tennis ball batted back and forth or the quick swattings of a fly.

  * * *

  In the evening, by lantern light, the German couple, the Wachers, played bridge with another retired couple from Canada, the Lewises. They were all serious players so there was a minimum of conversation. Snap snap of dealt cards, Mr. Wacher’s hmms. Two no trump. The sizzle of the surf, ice cubes in their glasses. The women spoke, occasionally, about plans for shopping the next day, a trip to La Isla, the mysterious talking sisters. The older one so elegant and cool. In her fifties but still attractive, vain. The younger one, in her forties, was pretty, but frumpy, self-effacing. There she goes, crying again!

  Mrs. Wacher decided to tackle the older sister during her morning swim. Mrs. Lewis would speak to the younger one, who never swam or sat in the sun, but waited for the other, sipping tea, holding an unopened book.

  * * *

  That evening, while Mr. Wacher fetched the score pad and cards and Mr. Lewis ordered drinks and snacks from the bar, the two women pooled their information.

  “They talk so much because they haven’t seen each other in twenty years! Can you imagine? Sisters? Mine is named Sally, she lives in Mexico City, is married to a Mexican and has three children. We spoke in Spanish, she seems Mexican really. She recently had a mastectomy, which explains why she doesn’t swim. She starts cancer therapy next month. That’s probably why she’s crying all the time. That’s all I got, before the sister came up and they went to change.”

  “No! That’s not why she’s crying! Their mother has just died! Two weeks ago! Can you imagine … they have come to a resort?”

  “What else did she say? What is her name?”

  “Dolores. She is a nurse from California, with four grown sons. She said that their mother recently died, that she and her sister had a lot to talk about.”

  The women figured it all out. Sally, the sweet one, must have been taking care of the invalid mother all these years. When the old mother finally died Dolores felt guilty, because of her sister caring for her mother, and she never went to visit them. And then her sister’s cancer. Dolores was the one paying for everything, the cabs, the waiters. They saw her buying Sally clothes in the boutiques downtown. That must be it. Guilt. She’s sorry she didn’t see her mother before she died, wants to be good to her sister before she dies too.

  “Or before she dies herself,” Mrs. Lewis said. “When your parents are dead your own death faces you.”

  “Oh, I know what you mean … there is no one to protect you against death anymore.”

  The two women were silent then, pleased with their harmless gossip, their analysis. Thinking of their own deaths to come. Their husbands’ deaths to come. But just briefly. Although in their seventies both couples were healthy, active. They lived fully, enjoying each day. When their husbands pulled out their chairs and sat down for the game they entered it with pleasure, forgetting all about the two sisters, who were sitting side by side now on the beach, under the stars.

  * * *

  Sally wasn’t crying about their dead mother or her cancer. She was crying because her husband, Alfonso, had left her after twenty years for a young woman. It seemed a brutal thing to do, just after her mastectomy. She was devastated, but no, she wouldn�
�t ever divorce him, even though the woman was pregnant and he wanted to marry her.

  “They can just wait until I die. I’ll be dead soon, probably next year…” Sally wept but the ocean drowned out the sound.

  “You’re not dying. They said the cancer was gone. The radiation therapy is routine, a precaution. I heard the doctor say that, that they got all the cancer.”

  “But it will come back. It always does.”

  “That’s not true. Cut it out, Sally.”

  “You are so cold. Sometimes you are as cruel as Mama.”

  Dolores said nothing. Her greatest fear, that she was like her mother. Cruel, a drunkard.

  “Look, Sally. Just give him a divorce and start taking care of yourself.”

  “You don’t understand! How can you understand how I feel after living with him for twenty years? You’ve been alone almost that long! For me it has only been Alfonso, since I was seventeen! I love him!”

  “I think I can manage to understand,” Dolores said, dryly. “Come on, let’s go in, it’s getting cold.”

  * * *

  In the room Dolores’s light was on inside her white mosquito net; she was reading before she fell asleep.

  “Dolores?”

  Sally was crying, again. Christ. Now what.

  “Sally, I go crazy if I can’t read when I first wake up and before I go to sleep. It’s a dumb habit, but there it is. What is it?”

  “I have a splinter in my foot.”

  Dolores got up, went for a needle, some antiseptic, and a Band-Aid, removed the splinter from her sister’s foot. Sally cried again, and embraced Dolores.

  “Let’s always be close now. It’s so good to have a sister who takes care of me!”

  Dolores smoothed the Band-Aid on Sally’s foot, as she had done a dozen times when they were children. “All better,” she said, automatically.