A Manual for Cleaning Women (7 page)

I can’t handle you being dead, Ter. But you know that.

It’s like the time at the airport, when you were about to get on the caterpillar ramp for Albuquerque.

“Oh, shit. I can’t go. You’ll never find the car.”

“Watcha gonna do when I’m gone, Maggie?” you kept asking over and over, the other time, when you were going to London.

“I’ll do macramé, punk.”

“Whatcha gonna do when I’m gone, Maggie?”

“You really think I need you that bad?”

“Yes,” you said. A simple Nebraska statement.

My friends say I am wallowing in self-pity and remorse. Said I don’t see anybody anymore. When I smile, my hand goes involuntarily to my mouth.

I collect sleeping pills. Once we made a pact … if things weren’t okay by 1976 we were going to have a shoot-out at the end of the Marina. You didn’t trust me, said I would shoot you first and run, or shoot myself first, whatever. I’m tired of the bargain, Ter.

58–COLLEGE–ALAMEDA
. Old Oakland ladies all go to Hink’s department store in Berkeley. Old Berkeley ladies go to Capwell’s department store in Oakland. Everyone on this bus is young and black or old and white, including the drivers. The old white drivers are mean and nervous, especially around Oakland Tech High School. They’re always jolting the bus to a stop, hollering about smoking and radios. They lurch and stop with a bang, knocking the old white ladies into posts. The old ladies’ arms bruise, instantly.

The young black drivers go fast, sailing through yellow lights at Pleasant Valley Road. Their buses are loud and smoky but they don’t lurch.

Mrs. Burke’s house today. Have to quit her, too. Nothing ever changes. Nothing is ever dirty. I can’t understand why I am there at all. Today I felt better. At least I understood about the thirty Lancers Rosé Wine bottles. There were thirty-one. Apparently yesterday was their anniversary. There were two cigarette butts in his ashtray (not just his one), one wineglass (she doesn’t drink), and my new rosé bottle. The bowling trophies had been moved, slightly. Our life together.

She taught me a lot about housekeeping. Put the toilet paper in so it comes out from under. Only open the Comet tab to three holes instead of six. Waste not, want not. Once, in a fit of rebellion, I ripped the tab completely off and accidentally spilled Comet all down the inside of the stove. A mess.

(Cleaning women: Let them know you are thorough. The first day put all the furniture back wrong … five to ten inches off, or facing the wrong way. When you dust, reverse the Siamese cats, put the creamer to the left of the sugar. Change the toothbrushes all around.)

My masterpiece in this area was when I cleaned the top of Mrs. Burke’s refrigerator. She sees everything, but if I hadn’t left the flashlight on she would have missed the fact that I scoured and re-oiled the waffle iron, mended the geisha girl, and washed the flashlight as well.

Doing everything wrong not only reassures them you are thorough, it gives them a chance to be assertive and a “boss.” Most American women are very uncomfortable about having servants. They don’t know what to do while you are there. Mrs. Burke does things like recheck her Christmas card list and iron last year’s wrapping paper. In August.

Try to work for Jews or blacks. You get lunch. But mostly Jewish and black women respect work, the work you do, and also they are not at all ashamed of spending the entire day doing absolutely nothing. They are paying
you
, right?

The Christian Eastern Stars are another story. So they won’t feel guilty always try to be doing something they never would do. Stand on the stove to clean an exploded Coca-Cola off the ceiling. Shut yourself inside the glass shower. Shove all the furniture, including the piano, against the door. They would never do that, besides, they can’t get in.

Thank God they always have at least one TV show that they are addicted to. I flip the vacuum on for half an hour (a soothing sound), lie down under the piano with an Endust rag clutched in my hand, just in case. I just lie there and hum and think. I refused to identify your body, Ter, which caused a lot of hassle. I was afraid I would hit you for what you did. Died.

Burke’s piano is what I do last before I leave. Bad part about that is the only music on it is “The Marine Hymn.” I always end up marching to the bus stop “From the Halls of Monte-zu-u-ma…”

58–COLLEGE–BERKELEY.
A mean old white driver. It’s raining, late, crowded, cold. Christmas is a bad time for buses. A stoned hippy girl shouted, “Let me off this fuckin’ bus!” “Wait for the designated stop!” the driver shouted back. A fat woman, a cleaning woman, vomited down the front seat onto people’s galoshes and my boot. The smell was foul and several people got off at the next stop, when she did. The driver stopped at the Arco station on Alcatraz, got a hose to clean it up but of course just ran it all into the back and made things wetter. He was red-faced and furious, ran the next light, endangering us all, the man next to me said.

At Oakland Tech about twenty students with radios waited behind a badly crippled man. Welfare is next door to Tech. As the man got on the bus, with much difficulty, the driver said, “OH JESUS
CHRIST”
and the man looked surprised.

Burke’s again. No changes. They have ten digital clocks and they all have the same right time. The day I quit I’ll pull all the plugs.

I finally did quit Mrs. Jessel. She kept on paying me with a check and once she called me four times in one night. I called her husband and told him I had mononucleosis. She forgot I quit, called me last night to ask if she had looked a little paler to me. I miss her.

A new lady today. A real lady.

(I never think of myself as a cleaning lady, although that’s what they call you, their lady or their girl.)

Mrs. Johansen. She is Swedish and speaks English with a great deal of slang, like Filipinos.

The first thing she said to me, when she opened the door, was “HOLY MOSES!”

“Oh. Am I too early?”

“Not at all, my dear.”

She took the stage. An eighty-year-old Glenda Jackson. I was bowled over. (See, I’m talking like her already.) Bowled over in the foyer.

In the foyer, before I even took off my coat, Ter’s coat, she explained to me the event of her life.

Her husband, John, died six months ago. She had found it hard, most of all, to sleep. She started putting together picture puzzles. (She gestured toward the card table in the living room, where Jefferson’s Monticello was almost finished, a gaping protozoan hole, top right.)

One night she got so stuck with her puzzle she didn’t go to sleep at all. She forgot, actually forgot to sleep! Or eat to boot, matter of fact. She had supper at eight in the morning. She took a nap then, woke up at two, had breakfast at two in the afternoon and went out and bought another puzzle.

When John was alive it was Breakfast 6, Lunch 12, Dinner 6. I’ll tell the cockeyed world times have changed.

“No, dear, you’re not too early,” she said. “I might just pop off to bed at any moment.”

I was still standing there, hot, gazing into my new lady’s radiant sleepy eyes, waiting for talk of ravens.

All I had to do was wash windows and vacuum the carpet. But, before vacuuming the carpet, to find a puzzle piece. Sky with a little bit of maple. I know it is missing.

It was nice on the balcony, washing windows. Cold, but the sun was on my back. Inside she sat at her puzzle. Enraptured, but striking a pose nevertheless. She must have been very lovely.

After the windows came the task of looking for the puzzle piece. Inch by inch in the green shag carpet, cracker crumbs, rubber bands from the
Chronicle.
I was delighted, this was the best job I ever had. She didn’t “give a hoot” if I smoked or not so I just crawled around on the floor and smoked, sliding my ashtray with me.

I found the piece, way across the room from the puzzle table. It was sky, with a little bit of maple.

“I found it!” she cried, “I knew it was missing!”

“
I
found it!” I cried.

Then I could vacuum, which I did as she finished the puzzle with a sigh. As I was leaving I asked her when she thought she might need me again.

“Who knows?” she said.

“Well … anything goes,” I said, and we both laughed.

Ter, I don’t want to die at all, actually.

40–TELEGRAPH.
Bus stop outside the laundry.
MILL AND ADDIE’S
is crowded with people waiting for machines, but festive, like waiting for a table. They stand, chatting at the window drinking green cans of Sprite. Mill and Addie mingle like genial hosts, making change. On the TV the Ohio State band plays the national anthem. Snow flurries in Michigan.

It is a cold, clear January day. Four sideburned cyclists turn up at the corner at Twenty-ninth like a kite string. A Harley idles at the bus stop and some kids wave at the rasty rider from the bed of a ’50 Dodge pickup truck. I finally weep.

My Jockey

I like working in Emergency—you meet men there, anyway. Real men, heroes. Firemen and jockeys. They’re always coming into emergency rooms. Jockeys have wonderful X-rays. They break bones all the time but just tape themselves up and ride the next race. Their skeletons look like trees, like reconstructed brontosaurs. St. Sebastian’s X-rays.

I get the jockeys because I speak Spanish and most are Mexican. The first jockey I met was Muñoz. God. I undress people all the time and it’s no big deal, takes a few seconds, Muñoz lay there, unconscious, a miniature Aztec god. Because his clothes were so complicated it was as if I were performing an elaborate ritual. Unnerving, because it took so long, like in Mishima where it takes three pages to take off the lady’s kimono. His magenta satin shirt had many buttons along the shoulder and at each tiny wrist; his pants were fastened with intricate lacings, pre-Columbian knots. His boots smelled of manure and sweat, but were as soft and dainty as Cinderella’s. He slept on, an enchanted prince.

He began to call for his mother even before he woke. He didn’t just hold my hand, like some patients do, but clung to my neck, sobbing,
Mamacita! Mamacita!
The only way he would let Dr. Johnson examine him was if I held him cradled like a baby. He was as tiny as a child but strong, muscular. A man in my lap. A dream man? A dream baby?

Dr. Johnson sponged my forehead while I translated. For sure he had a broken collarbone, at least three broken ribs, probably a concussion. No, Muñoz said. He had to ride in tomorrow’s races. Get him to X-ray, Dr. Johnson said. Since he wouldn’t lie down on the gurney I carried him down the corridor, like King Kong. He was weeping, terrified, his tears soaked my breast.

We waited in the dark room for the X-ray tech. I soothed him just as I would a horse.
Cálmate, lindo, cálmate. Despacio … despacio.
Slowly … slowly. He quieted in my arms, blew and snorted softly. I stroked his fine back. It shuddered and shimmered like that of a splendid young colt. It was marvelous.

El Tim

A nun stood in each classroom door, black robes floating into the hall with the wind. The voices of the first grade, praying,
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee.
From across the hall, the second grade began, clear,
Hail Mary, full of grace.
I stopped in the center of the building, and waited for the triumphant voices of the third grade, their voices joined by the first grade,
Our Father, Who art in Heaven
, by the fourth grade, then, deep,
Hail Mary, full of grace.

As the children grew older they prayed more quickly, so that gradually the voices began to blend, to merge into one sudden joyful chant …
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

I taught Spanish in the new junior high, which lay at the opposite end of the playground like a child’s colored toy. Every morning, before class, I went through the grade school, to hear the prayers, but also simply to go into the building, as one would go in a church. The school had been a mission, built in 1700 by the Spaniards, built to stand in the desert for a long time. It was different from other old schools, whose stillness and solidity is still a shell for the children who pass through them. It had kept the peace of a mission, of a sanctuary.

The nuns laughed in the grade school, and the children laughed. The nuns were all old, not like tired old women who clutch their bags at a bus stop, but proud, loved by their God and by their children. They responded to love with tenderness, with soft laughter that was contained, guarded, behind the heavy wooden doors.

Several junior high nuns swept through the playground, checking for cigarette smoke. These nuns were young and nervous. They taught “underprivileged children,” “borderline delinquents,” and their thin faces were tired, sick of a blank stare. They could not use awe or love like the grade school nuns. Their recourse was impregnability, indifference to the students who were their duty and their life.

The rows of windows in the ninth grade flashed as Sister Lourdes opened them, as usual, seven minutes before the bell. I stood outside the initialed orange doors, watching my ninth-grade students as they paced back and forth in front of the wire fence, their bodies loose and supple, necks bobbing as they walked, arms and legs swaying to a beat, to a trumpet that no one else could hear.

They leaned against the wire fence, speaking in English-Spanish-Hipster dialect, laughing soundlessly. The girls wore the navy-blue uniforms of the school. Like muted birds they flirted with the boys, who cocked their plumed heads, who were brilliant in orange or yellow or turquoise pegged pants. They wore open black shirts or V-neck sweaters with nothing under them, so that their crucifixes gleamed against their smooth brown chests … the crucifix of the pachuco, which was also tattooed on the back of their hand.

“Good morning, dear.”

“Good morning, Sister.” Sister Lourdes had come outside to see if the seventh grade was in line.

Sister Lourdes was the principal. She had hired me, reluctantly having to pay someone to teach, since none of the nuns spoke Spanish.