A Manual for Cleaning Women (20 page)

Friends

Loretta met Anna and Sam the day she saved Sam’s life.

Anna and Sam were old. She was eighty and he was eighty-nine. Loretta would see Anna from time to time when she went to swim at her neighbor Elaine’s pool. One day she stopped by as the two women were convincing the old guy to take a swim. He finally got in, was dog-paddling along with a big grin on his face when he had a seizure. The other two women were in the shallow end and didn’t notice. Loretta jumped in, shoes and all, pulled him to the steps and up out of the pool. He didn’t need resuscitation but he was disoriented and frightened. He had some medicine to take, for epilepsy, and they helped him dry off and dress. They all sat around for a while until they were sure he was fine and could walk to their house, just down the block. Anna and Sam kept thanking Loretta for saving his life, and insisted that she go to lunch at their house the next day.

It happened that she wasn’t working for the next few days. She had taken three days off without pay because she had a lot of things that needed doing. Lunch with them would mean going all the way back to Berkeley from the city, and not finishing everything in one day, as she had planned.

She often felt helpless in situations like this. The kind where you say to yourself, Gosh, it’s the least I can do, they are so nice. If you don’t do it you feel guilty and if you do you feel like a wimp.

She stopped being in a bad mood the minute she was inside their apartment. It was sunny and open, like an old house in Mexico, where they had lived most of their lives. Anna had been an archaeologist and Sam an engineer. They had worked together every day at Teotihuacan and other sites. Their apartment was filled with fine pottery and photographs, a wonderful library. Downstairs, in the backyard was a large vegetable garden, many fruit trees, berries. Loretta was amazed that the two birdlike, frail people did all the work themselves. Both of them used canes, and walked with much difficulty.

Lunch was toasted cheese sandwiches, chayote soup, and a salad from their garden. Anna and Sam prepared the lunch together, set the table and served the lunch together.

They had done everything together for fifty years. Like twins, they each echoed the other or finished sentences the other had started. Lunch passed pleasantly as they told her, in stereo, some of their experiences working on the pyramid in Mexico, and about other excavations they had worked on. Loretta was impressed by these two old people, by their shared love of music and gardening, by their enjoyment of each other. She was amazed at how involved they were in local and national politics, going to marches and protests, writing congressmen and editors, making phone calls. They read three or four papers every day, read novels or history to each other at night.

While Sam was clearing the table with shaking hands, Loretta said to Anna how enviable it was to have such a close lifetime companion. Yes, Anna said, but soon one of us will be gone …

Loretta was to remember that statement much later, and wonder if Anna had begun to cultivate a friendship with her as a sort of insurance policy against the time when one of them would die. But, no, she thought, it was simpler than that. The two of them had been so self-sufficient, so enough for each other all their lives, but now Sam was becoming dreamy and often incoherent. He repeated the same stories over and over, and although Anna was always patient with him, Loretta felt that she was glad to have someone else to talk to.

Whatever the reason, she found herself more and more involved in Sam and Anna’s life. They didn’t drive anymore. Often Anna would call Loretta at work and ask her to pick up peat moss when she got off, or take Sam to the eye doctor. Sometimes both of them felt too bad to go to the store, so Loretta would pick things up for them. She liked them both, admired them. Since they seemed so much to want company, she found herself at dinner with them once a week, every two weeks at the most. A few times she asked them to her house for dinner, but there were so many steps to climb and the two arrived so exhausted that she stopped. So then she would take fish or chicken or a pasta dish to their house. They would make a salad, serve berries from the garden for dessert.

After dinner, over cups of mint or Jamaica tea they would sit around the table while Sam told stories. About the time Anna got polio, at a dig deep in the jungle in the Yucatán, how they got her to a hospital, how kind people were. Many stories about the house they built in Xalapa. The mayor’s wife, the time she broke her leg climbing out of a window to avoid a visitor. Sam’s stories always began, “That reminds me of the time…”

Little by little Loretta learned the details of their life story. Their courtship on Mount Tam. Their romance in New York while they were Communists. Living in sin. They had never married, still took satisfaction in this unconventionality. They had two children; both lived in distant cities. There were stories about the ranch near Big Sur, when the children were little. As a story was ending Loretta would say, “I hate to leave, but I have to get to work very early tomorrow.” Often she would leave then. Usually though, Sam would say, “Just let me tell you what happened to the wind-up phonograph.” Hours later, exhausted, she would drive home to her house in Oakland, saying to herself that she couldn’t keep on doing this. Or that she would keep going, but set a definite time limit.

It was not that they were ever boring or uninteresting. On the contrary, the couple had lived a rich, full life, were involved and perceptive. They were intensely interested in the world, in their own past. They had such a good time, adding to the other’s remarks, arguing about dates or details, that Loretta didn’t have the heart to interrupt them and leave. And it did make her feel good to go there, because the two people were so glad to see her. But sometimes she felt like not going over at all, when she was too tired or had something else to do. Finally she did say that she couldn’t stay so late, that it was hard to get up the next morning. Come for Sunday brunch, Anna said.

When the weather was fair they ate on a table on their porch, surrounded by flowers and plants. Hundreds of birds came to the feeders right by them. As it grew colder they ate inside by a cast-iron stove. Sam tended it with logs he had split himself. They had waffles or Sam’s special omelette, sometimes Loretta brought bagels and lox. Hours went by, the day went by as Sam told his stories, with Anna correcting them and adding comments. Sometimes, in the sun on the porch or by the heat of the fire, it was hard to stay awake.

Their house in Mexico had been made of concrete block, but the beams and counters and cupboards had been made of cedarwood. First the big room—the kitchen and living room—was built. They had planted trees, of course, even before they started building the house. Bananas and plums, jacarandas. The next year they added a bedroom, several years later another bedroom and a studio for Anna. The beds, the workbenches and tables were made of cedar. They got home to their little house after working in the field, in another state in Mexico. The house was always cool and smelled of cedar, like a big cedar chest.

Anna got pneumonia and had to go to the hospital. As sick as she was, all she could think of was Sam, how he would get along without her. Loretta promised her she would go by before work, see that he took his medication and had breakfast, that she would cook him dinner after work, take him to the hospital to see her.

The terrible part was that Sam didn’t talk. He would sit shivering on the side of the bed as Loretta helped him dress. Mechanically he took his pills and drank pineapple juice, carefully wiped his chin after he ate breakfast. In the evening when she arrived he would be standing on the porch waiting for her. He wanted to go see Anna first, and then have dinner. When they got to the hospital, Anna lay pale, her long white braids hanging down like a little girl’s. She had an IV, a catheter, oxygen. She didn’t speak, but smiled and held Sam’s hand while he told her how he had done a load of wash, watered the tomatoes, mulched the beans, washed dishes, made lemonade. He talked on to her, breathless, told her every hour of his day. When they left, Loretta had to hold him tight, he stumbled and wavered as he walked. In the car going home he cried, he was so worried. But Anna came home and was fine, except that there was so much to be done in the garden. The next Sunday, after brunch, Loretta helped weed the garden, cut back blackberry vines. Loretta was worried then, what if Anna got really sick? What was she in for with this friendship? The couple’s dependence upon each other, their vulnerability, saddened and moved her. Those thoughts passed through her head as she worked, but it was nice, the cool black dirt, the sun on her back. Sam, telling his stories as he weeded the adjacent row.

The next Sunday that Loretta went to their house she was late. She had been up early, there had been many things to do. She really wanted to stay home, but didn’t have the heart to call and cancel.

The front door was not unlatched, as usual, so she went to the garden, to go up the back steps. She walked into the garden to look around, it was lush with tomatoes, squash, snow peas. Drowsy bees. Anna and Sam were outside on the porch upstairs. Loretta was going to call to them but they were talking very intently.

“She’s never been late before. Maybe she won’t come.”

“Oh, she’ll come … these mornings mean so much to her.”

“Poor thing. She is so lonely. She needs us. We’re really her only family.”

“She sure enjoys my stories. Dang. I can’t think of a single one to tell her today.”

“Something will come to you…”

“Hello!” Loretta called. “Anybody home?”

Unmanageable

In the deep dark night of the soul the liquor stores and bars are closed. She reached under the mattress; the pint bottle of vodka was empty. She got out of bed, stood up. She was shaking so badly that she sat down on the floor. She was hyperventilating. If she didn’t get a drink she would go into DTs or have a seizure.

Trick is to slow down your breathing and your pulse. Stay as calm as you can until you can get a bottle. Sugar. Tea with sugar, that’s what they gave you in detox. But she was shaking too hard to stand. She lay on the floor breathing deep yoga breaths. Don’t think, God don’t think about the state you’re in or you will die, of shame, a stroke. Her breath slowed down. She started to read titles of books in the bookcase. Concentrate, read them out loud. Edward Abbey, Chinua Achebe, Sherwood Anderson, Jane Austen, Paul Auster, don’t skip, slow down. By the time she had read the whole wall of books she was better. She pulled herself up. Holding on to the wall, shaking so badly she could barely move each foot, she made it to the kitchen. No vanilla. Lemon extract. It seared her throat and she retched, held her mouth shut to reswallow it. She made some tea, thick with honey, sipped it slowly in the dark. At six, in two hours, the Uptown Liquor Store in Oakland would sell her some vodka. In Berkeley you had to wait until seven. Oh, God, did she have any money? She crept back to her room to check in her purse on the desk. Her son Nick must have taken her wallet and car keys. She couldn’t look for them in her sons’ room without waking them.

There was a dollar and thirty cents in a change jar on her desk. She looked through several purses in the closet, in the coat pockets, a kitchen drawer, until she got together the four dollars that bloody wog charged for a half-pint at that hour. All the sick drunks paid him. Although most of them bought sweet wine, it worked quicker.

It was far to walk. It would take her three quarters of an hour; she would have to run home to be there before the kids woke up. Could she make it? She could hardly walk from one room to the other. Just pray a patrol car didn’t pass. She wished she had a dog to walk. I know, she laughed, I’ll ask the neighbors if I can borrow their dog. Sure. None of the neighbors spoke to her anymore.

It kept her steady to concentrate on the cracks in the sidewalk to count them one two three. Pulling herself along on bushes, tree trunks, like climbing a mountain sideways. Crossing the streets was terrifying, they were so wide, with their lights blinking red red, yellow yellow. An occasional
Examiner
truck, an empty taxi. A police car going fast, without lights. They didn’t see her. Cold sweat ran down her back, her teeth chattered loudly in the still dark morning.

She was panting and faint by the time she got to the Uptown on Shattuck. It wasn’t open yet. Seven black men, all old except for one young boy, stood outside on the curb. The Indian man sat oblivious to them inside the window, sipping coffee. On the sidewalk two men were sharing a bottle of NyQuil cough syrup. Blue death, you could buy that all night long.

An old man they called Champ smiled at her. “Say, mama, you be sick? Your hair hurt?” She nodded. That’s how it felt, your hair, your eyeballs, your bones. “Here,” Champ said, “you better eat some of these.” He was eating saltines, passed her two. “Gotta make yourself eat.” “Say Champ, lemme have a few,” the young boy said.

They let her go to the counter first. She asked for vodka and poured her pile of coins onto the counter.

“It’s all there,” she said.

He smiled. “Count it for me.”

“Come on. Shit,” the boy said as she counted out the coins with violently shaking hands. She put the bottle into her purse, stumbled toward the door. Outside she held on to a telephone pole, afraid to cross the street.

Champ was drinking from his bottle of Night Train.

“You too much a lady to drink on the street?” She shook her head. “I’m afraid I’ll drop the bottle.”

“Here,” he said. “Open your mouth. You need something or you’ll never get home.” He poured wine into her mouth. It coursed through her, warm. “Thank you,” she said.

She quickly crossed the street, jogged clumsily down the streets toward her house, ninety, ninety-one, counting the cracks. It was still pitch dark when she got to her door.

Gasping for air. Without turning on the light she poured some cranberry juice into a glass and a third of the bottle. She sat down at the table and sipped the drink slowly, the relief of the alcohol seeping throughout her body. She was crying, with relief that she had not died. She poured another third from the bottle and some juice, rested her head on the table between sips.