You can make your own glass cleaner. Most people know this, maybe, but I didn’t until a few months ago. There are a variety of recipes available online. Different measurements but all variations on rubbing alcohol, white vinegar, and water. Something the women I clean for all have in common is they buy the Windex With Vinegar! I imagine they feel that they are returning to the basics, to some before time. A shared, imagined past without free-floating cancer-causing particles everywhere.
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Ellen’s husband is still out of town. The driveway is still a sheet of ice and I am overcome with self pity when I fold the laundry, “Marie Kondo” style as Ellen instructed me. I have never been particular about folding my own clothes. Joel was particular about folding his. Even when high on ketamine, sick from a stray suboxone pill, he made sure to fold his shorts, hang his limp t-shirts on his clothing rack.
The last time I saw him, he was so thin. It was the first time we’d seen each other in months. He refused to eat a patty melt he’d ordered, the diner’s fluorescent lights glinting off the plastic cheese. I couldn’t imagine any of the clothes he was so particular about folding even fitting him anymore. I was back in Pennsylvania for my grandmother’s funeral. He told me his band was playing a show, that I should come. I told him I’d be back in Virginia by then. “Right,” he stabbed at his coleslaw, separating strands of green from orange, “nevermind.”
Ellen’s husband’s underwear are thick bikini briefs, some European brand. His hair is long and gray. I find it everywhere. Pillows, shower walls, in baskets fresh out of the dryer, strangling the sleeve of his daughter’s nightie. I snap the strand with my nail and look out the window at the fake log cabin across the street and beyond that, blue mountains.
When Ellen hired me she took me around the house, pointed out all the mistakes made by her previous cleaning women, and asked, “You’d never do something like that, would you?” Then, she had me do a test cleaning in the basement. The family does pizza movie nights down there on Fridays, she explained. A sectional couch and a cracked clawfoot tub turned sideways, waiting to be photographed for one of Ellen’s art projects. She liked me enough to call me back and offer me Mondays.
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I listen to 90.5 The Light FM on my way to work. Today, someone on there said the silence in the morning is the presence of God. I’ve been listening to this station for comfort. It makes me feel like maybe there’s a sealed lid at the bottom of the world. Most mornings I ignore the silence altogether. I take my stomach ulcer medication, spread cholesterol safe butter on rye. I boil water and dump it over a mound of instant coffee.
Judy had to go to a meeting so she texted me the garage code. I like Judy. I can tell she feels uncomfortable about hiring me. I was originally in contact with her husband, but passed off to her. She is tall with wide shoulders but wears blazers anyway. She works in an office and buys Hilary Clinton’s books and believes she is doing something good for the world by reading them to her two young sons so they can grow up to respect women.
I feed the dog fifteen treats and rub his belly. I take my time in the kitchen, really scrub it good. The microwave too, even though Judy hadn’t specified to do that.
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Valentine’s day. Ellen’s toddler is home with a fever. Dryer is broken, still. I ate only oatmeal for breakfast and imagined it sopping the acid in my stomach, swashing against the walls of my antrum.
Snow flurries on the Leland Cypress. I dust the blinds with microfiber. Ellen teaches from eleven to twelve so I finish upstairs by ten forty five, then dust and do dishes and tidy up until I can resume vacuuming.
The husband sword fights with the toddler while I wash dishes. They strew puzzle pieces across the floor and disappear out the garage door.
The husband decides to cook lunch when I am about to mop the kitchen. He leans over a boiling pot of pasta. With my back to him, I can smell the wine, but I don’t turn around to see what he does with it. Pasta sauce, I guess.
The trash can lid’s jaw unhinges when I press the pedal. I throw out a magic eraser and see the wine bottle. Pinot Grigio. I could go to Kroger on the way home, buy five boxes of wine and no one could stop me. Over two years without a drink but I’m not immune to temptation.
Dirty mop water swirls down the drain.
“Please dump that in the toilet, not the sink,” Ellen says. Pesto dribbles from her lip. I take the three quarters full bucket to the bathroom. I feel incredibly stupid for not knowing to do this without her instruction. When they take the toddler upstairs, I mop without first sweeping up the spilled parmesan. I leave without asking them about their Valentine’s plans.
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The vacuum must weigh close to fifty pounds. While I drag it from stair to stair, I worry that I am developing a degenerative muscular disease. In the living room I do ten push ups to prove myself wrong. Last month I could only do four push ups and now I can do ten. When I can do twelve in a row, I’ll reduce my risk of a sudden heart attack by thirty three percent.
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On my drive to work it looks like it is going to snow but never does. Concrete blocks of clouds, cows draped in blankets, I see them from the highway.
Where do the Christian rock bands find their lead singers? How do they all sound the same? The next song is about Heaven- how our loved ones will be there, how there will be no more death or sickness or tears, how it’s going to be so good we can’t even imagine anything like it. I swipe tears from my eyes because I don’t want Heaven to be anything but the best parts of earth.
After that song they advertise underwear, baby food, plumbing services. It occurs to me that I’ve never truly surrendered myself to anything, not even as a child confessing Jesus Christ as my savior. I attempt it in the car, surrender. I repeat prayers out loud:
God grant me serenity.
Thy will be done.
In Jesus name.
I wait for something in my chest to shift. All I feel is acid creeping up my throat, proof of my still active ulcer. I ask God to take the heartburn away and nothing happens. I chew chalky tablets of medicine to the sound of more commercials.
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While the Comet cakes on the shower floor, I think about Joel’s knees, how they were always swelling and aching over some ten year old pain. A soccer injury he claimed, though I could never picture him playing a sport, especially a team one, where they slap backs and ride afternoon buses. I would kiss his knees in circles around the caps. Does it still hurt? I would ask and he would say yes. Then he’d sigh and rub CBD cream in and flip the cap off the Naproxen. He really was trying to be good, to not take anything stronger, to give the epsom salts a real chance.
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I paid too much to get my cat’s blood paneled. I’ve been worried that his dandruff is indicative of kidney failure but he’s fine, the vet says. Give him a can of wet food a day. His name is Simon.
Joel claimed to be allergic to Simon. He’d show up after a shift and make a big show of pulling out the Benadryl and asking for a Red Bull to chase it. Then he’d say he couldn’t sleep over on account of having to work the next day, even though his bartending shifts never started until two in the afternoon. When he did stay over, we had to lock Simon out of my bedroom. Then Simon would yowl at my door all night. Of course Joel hated that too, and said it was why he never wanted to sleep at my place in the first place.
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I came in an hour later than usual. It rained so hard I could hear it through my headphones. A little lake formed across the street next to the telephone pole. Everything outside is brown, green, gray.
Judy’s dog won’t stop barking even though I gave him two treats.
She and her husband are sleeping in different beds. On hers, two flat crumpled pillows and magazines on how to be a better parent. He’s in the guest room. The quilt is ruffled. I straighten it out and then dust the desk.
On a legal pad, Judy has written a self improvement list:
More patience
Boundaries
Carve out time to be creative
I notice a new pink floral dress hanging in the closet as I vacuum.
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I am trying this new thing when I pray. They suggested it on The Light. Thanking God as if I’ve already received what I am asking for. Patience, kindness, love, the absence of fear. Qualities I’ve never been able to muster up within myself. I pray to my old God, my childhood God, even though it’s not the belief I subscribe to anymore. A reflex.
This morning I have dry, dull PMS skin and brittle nails. I pack a peanut butter sandwich in a plastic bag and mix my coffee with chicory to reduce caffeine. I am comfortable enough at Judy’s house to sing now. Mostly just the chorus of something over and over. Today it’s that one Randy Travis song about the weather and hair and old women talking about old men. I thank God for the energy to clean Judy’s home quickly, and with a glad heart, and it always comes.
Sometimes I wonder if the husband is dead because I haven’t ever met him. But then, I wipe new grime from his toothbrush in the guest bathroom every week.
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Ellen fires me in a simple text. I forgot to sweep behind the toilet. It’s a relief. Especially because this morning I’ve convinced myself of a new disease, a digestive cancer, though I can’t pinpoint exactly which part of the digestive tract I believe is malignant. Small intestine, maybe. I want to email the doctor, ask for a full body MRI but can’t come up with a list of enough legitimate symptoms.
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I talked to Joel on Monday. He called me and said he’s been mailing demos to John Hinkley, hoping to start a band. “It’s a beautiful love story when you think about it,” he says, “the guy writes beautiful music.” I wake up at four am and search John Hinkley’s name on Spotify and play a song called “We have got that chemistry.”
It’ll get it stuck in my head. I’ll sing it at work while I scrape chipped paint from the windowsills, preparing them for a fresh coat of paint. And I’ll think about how nice Joel fixed up the back room to move his father’s hospital bed into. Piling up microfoam pillows and leaning record covers against cheap table lamps. Humming to himself while banging on the painted shut wood. Finally able to open it about an inch so that April air was able to get in.
I shove my face into Simon’s fur and roll my tongue against his skin until he tries to bite. Then I caress behind his ears and get up to pee.
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New job. Fake plants and tacky silver picture frames. Cigar cutter amongst keys and receipts. Interior design is not their passion, I think. My friend used to say this whenever we’d enter a party or a restaurant decorated with tapestries or machine stamped canvases.
New international bibles on bedside tables and backs of toilets. I think of Judy’s house, of the Hilary Clinton books. Everyone is just trying their best, I think, and it feels newly profound.
She is a nurse, he is a plumber. She works from home and is eight months pregnant. I kneel at the baseboards, palm a Pinesol soaked rag in circular motions. She is on the phone with a patient, explaining pre-op procedures.
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I want to dial into The Light and ask about preemptive prayers. Can I prevent an illness by begging? Or do I have to wait to fall sick, receive miraculous healing then? And the chemicals in all the cleaning agents I use, even the houses with all-natural products, are they harming my health? Which chemicals will be revealed as cancer causing in twenty years time?
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Judy’s husband is sleeping in their bed again. My ulcer has healed. I no longer have to swallow the chalky pills. Just avoid pineapple and red meat. It is harder to invite God’s presence when my body is not sick. No physical pain to center my prayer, so my mind drifts. One minute I am pleading with God, asking him to keep death away, and the next, I am reaching into the freezer for a low fat ice cream sandwich, scrolling on my phone.
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The nurse doesn’t have anything to dust with. I had to ask her for some Pledge. She didn’t know what I was talking about. She said, “Text me a picture.”
I spray the Pledge and watch it foam on the cherry wood. She sits at the kitchen table doing telehealth visits, asking people if they’ve ceased their supplements and swallowed enough fluids on the day before their surgeries. Her newborn daughter rocks to sleep in an electric cradle.
On her lunch break, I ask things like what’s a normal blood pressure or heart rate? Is 98.6 degrees really the standard? This week I think I have bladder cancer but I’m too nervous to ask about frequent urination. All my symptoms could be attributed to anxiety anyway and last week I thought I had a uti, went to urgent care, and they tested my pee and found nothing. They probably would’ve picked up something in that test if there was anything to pick up.
She asks me if I have siblings. She asks if I’m planning a summer vacation. She asks if I can go back to the mantel and wipe a spot I missed.
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I’m scraping stickers from the playroom window. From the porch, removing the screen, teal blue Windex on water stains.
I’ll have a family one day, I want to tell the nurse. I’ll have a boyfriend and I’ll make him salads with red cabbage and shredded baked chicken on top and one day he’ll ask me to be his wife. I’ll have kids to fold clothes for. Women like this probably think I don’t want kids. They hear I am in school and they see that my hair is cut above my shoulders and they make certain assumptions about my views on child rearing. But they are wrong, I want a baby more than anything. I feel the most pitiful when I am folding their clothes or cleaning up the three year olds toy kitchen set because it is so very clear what they have and what I don’t.
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I swear I’ve cleaned up five birthday parties in the past six months and there’s only four people in the family. And how likely is it that they were all born on this same side of the year? I hardly turn the faucet on, so I can watch the red icing rinse from the spindly white candles. I find Spider-Man paper plates behind the couch. When I run the vacuum, for the first three minutes, it smells like ramen noodles.
This morning, after brushing my teeth and before driving to work, I tried to sit still with myself and feel the presence of God, like the hosts on The Light are always saying to do. I felt nothing except a twinge in my left shoulder and I thought of Joel. Something stupid like how the floor of my car was littered with his lens wipe wrappers. His Lactaid in my beach bag. His mother begging him to apply for state government jobs so he could have health insurance.
I don’t want him to hurt, even after all the ways he did me wrong.
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Wiping down Judy’s bathroom counter, I knock over a tube of Natural Nail™ filers. People buying into infomercial goods makes me want to cry. I still think products are going to change my life, too.
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On the drive home The Light is nothing but commercials for custom Bible covers, local elections, summer concert series still months away. I take the long way past the reptile store and the gas station that sells the good kind of chicken on a stick. Mist rises from the mountains and the sky is gray but it’s warm. Too warm, and damp. One of those unseasonably warm winter days when you can smell the thawing.
There’s a new host on The Light today. I didn’t catch her name. She says she will play a song or two and then take calls. I want to hear your testimony, she says, and then provides the number. While I pull onto the shoulder, I recite the number aloud, over and over again so I don’t lose it.
I’m not going to give a testimony. I’m going to ask a question.
But I know she’s not going to have any answers.
I just want to hear my voice through the car’s stereo. Like as a child, squatting by the box fan on the living room floor and talking into it, listening to everything come back to me in pieces.