A Manual for Cleaning Women (30 page)

“It doesn’t sound as if any of them are in a position to care for you when you’ll need it. Oh, Carlotta, if you had only stayed in Chile. You would have had a serene life. You would still be queen of the country club.”

“Serene? I would have died in the revolution.” Queen of the country club? Change this conversation, quick.

“Do you and Hilda go to the seashore?” I asked.

“How could anyone, after the coast in Chile? No, there are such throngs of Americans. I find the Mexican Pacific boring.”

“Basil, how can you possibly find an ocean boring?”

“What do you find boring?”

“Nothing, actually. I’ve never been bored.”

“But then, you have gone to great lengths not to be bored.”

Basil moved his almost uneaten sandwich aside and leaned toward me solicitously.

“Dear Carlotta … however will you pick up the pieces of your life?”

“I don’t want any of those old pieces. I just go along, try not to do any damage.”

“Tell me, what do you feel you have accomplished in your life?”

I couldn’t think of a thing.

“I haven’t had a drink in three years,” I said.

“That’s scarcely an accomplishment. That’s like saying, ‘I haven’t murdered my mother.’”

“Well, of course, there is that, too.” I smiled.

I had eaten all my triangles of sandwiches and the parsley.

“Could I have some flan and a cappuccino, please?”

It was the only restaurant in the Republic of Mexico that didn’t have flan. Jello,
sí
. “What about you, Basil, what of your ambition to be a poet?”

He shook his head. “I still read poetry, of course. Tell me, what line of poetry do you live by?”

What an interesting question! I was pleased, but perversely unacceptable lines came to mind. Say, sea. Take me! Every woman loves a fascist. I love the look of agony! Because I know it’s true.

“Do not go gentle into that good night.” I didn’t even like Dylan Thomas.

“Still my defiant Carlotta! My line is from Yeats: ‘Be secret, and exult.’”

God. I stubbed out my cigarette, finished the instant coffee.

“How about ‘miles to go before I sleep’? I’d better get back to Sally’s.”

Traffic and smog were bad. We inched along. He recited all the deaths of people we had known, the financial and marital failures of all my old boyfriends.

He pulled up at the curb. I said good-bye. Foolishly, I moved to give him a hug. He backed away, into the car door.
Ciao
, I said. Exult!

The house was quiet. Sally was asleep, after her chemo. She stirred fitfully. I made some strong coffee, sat by the canaries, near the fragrance of tuberoses, listening to the man downstairs playing his cello badly.

I crept into bed next to my sister. We both slept until it was dark. Victoria and Mercedes came to find out all about the lunch with Basil.

I could have told them about the lunch. I could have made it a very funny story. How the marigolds grew out and Basil couldn’t tell it was the clock of flowers. I could have impersonated him acting one of the old ladies in
Arsenic and Old Lace.
But I lay back against the pillow next to Sally.

“He won’t ever call me again.”

I cried. Sally and her daughters comforted me. They did not think I was a fool to cry.

Mourning

I love houses, all the things they tell me, so that’s one reason I don’t mind working as a cleaning woman. It’s just like reading a book.

I’ve been working for Arlene, at Central Reality. Cleaning empty houses mostly, but even empty houses have stories, clues. A love letter stuffed way back in a cupboard, empty whiskey bottles behind the dryer, grocery lists … “Please pick up Tide, a package of green linguini and a six pack of Coors. I didn’t mean what I said last night.”

Lately I’ve been cleaning houses where somebody has just died. Cleaning and helping to sort things for people to take or to give to Goodwill. Arlene always asks if they have any clothes or books for the Home for Jewish Parents, that’s where Sadie, her mother, is. These jobs have been depressing. Either all the relatives want everything, and argue over the smallest things, a pair of ratty old suspenders or a coffee mug. Or none of them want anything to do with anything in the whole house, so I just pack it all up. In both cases the sad part is how little time it takes. Think about it. If you should die … I could get rid of all your belongings in two hours max.

Last week I cleaned the house of a very old black mailman. Arlene knew him, said he had been bedridden with diabetes, had died of a heart attack. He had been a mean, rigid old guy, she said, an elder in the church. He was a widower; his wife had died ten years before. His daughter is a friend of Arlene’s, a political activist, on the school board in L.A. “She has done a lot for black education and housing; she’s one tough lady,” Arlene said, so she must be, since that’s what people always say about Arlene. The son is a client of Arlene’s, and a different story. A district attorney in Seattle, he owns real estate all over Oakland. “I wouldn’t say he is actually a slumlord, but…”

The son and daughter didn’t get to the house until late morning, but I already knew a lot about them, from what Arlene told me, and from clues. The house was silent when I let myself in, that echoing silence of a house where nobody’s home, where someone just died. The house itself was in a shabby neighborhood in West Oakland. It looked like a small farmhouse, tidy and pretty, with a porch swing, a well-kept yard with old roses and azaleas. Most of the houses around it had windows boarded up, were sprayed with graffiti. Groups of old winos watched me from sagging porch steps; young crack dealers stood on the corner or sat in cars.

Inside, too, the house seemed far removed from that neighborhood, with lace curtains, polished oak furniture. The old man had spent his time in a big sunroom at the back of the house, in a hospital bed and a wheelchair. There were ferns and African violets crammed on shelves on the windows and four or five bird feeders just outside the glass. A huge new TV and VCR, a compact disc player—presents from his children, I imagined. On the mantel was a wedding picture, he in a tux, his hair slicked back, a pencil-thin mustache. His wife was young and lovely, both were solemn. A photograph of her, old and white-haired, but with a smile, smiling eyes. Solemn the two children’s graduation pictures, both handsome, confident, arrogant. The son’s wedding picture. A beautiful blond bride in white satin. A picture of the two of them with a baby girl, about a year old. A picture of the daughter with Congressman Ron Dellums. On the bed table was a card that began, “Sorry I was just too tied up to make it to Oakland for Christmas…” which could have been from either one of them. The old man’s Bible was open to Psalm 104. “The earth shall tremble at the look of him; if he do but touch the hills, they will smoke.”

Before they arrived I had cleaned the bedrooms and bathroom upstairs. There wasn’t much, but what was in the closets and linen cupboard I stacked in piles on one of the beds. I was cleaning the stairs, turned the vacuum off when they came in. He was friendly, shook my hand; she just nodded and walked up the stairs. They must have come straight from the funeral. He was in a three-piece black suit with a fine gold stripe; she wore a gray cashmere suit, a gray suede jacket. Both of them were tall, strikingly handsome. Her black hair was pulled back into a chignon. She never smiled; he smiled all the time.

I stood behind them as they went through the rooms. He took a carved oval mirror. They didn’t want anything else. I asked them if there was anything they could give to the Home for Jewish Parents. She lowered her black eyes at me.

“Do we look Jewish to you?”

He quickly explained to me that people from the Rose of Sharon Baptist Church would be by later to get everything they didn’t want. And the medical-supply place for the bed and wheelchair. He said he’d just pay me now, pulled off four twenties from a big stack of bills held by a silver clip. He said after I finished cleaning to lock up the house and leave the key with Arlene.

I was cleaning the kitchen while they were in the sunroom. The son took his parents’ wedding picture, his own pictures. She wanted their mother’s picture. So did he, but he said, No, go ahead. He took the Bible; she took the picture of her and Ron Dellums. She and I helped him carry the TV and VCR and CD player out to the trunk of his Mercedes.

“God, it’s terrible to look at the neighborhood now,” he said. She didn’t say anything. I don’t think she had looked at it. Back inside she sat in the sunroom and looked around.

“I can’t picture Daddy watching birds, or taking care of plants,” she said.

“Strange, isn’t it? But I don’t feel I ever knew him at all.”

“He’s the one who made us work.”

“I remember him whipping you when you got a C in math.”

“No,” she said, “it was a B. A B-plus. Nothing I did was ever good enough for him.”

“I know. Still … I wish I’d seen him more often. I hate it, how long it was since I came here … Yeah, I called him a lot, but…”

She interrupted him, telling him not to blame himself, and then they talked about how impossible it would have been for their father to have lived with either of them, how hard it was to get away from their jobs. They tried to make each other feel okay, but you could tell they felt pretty bad.

Me and my big mouth. I wish I would just shut up. What I did was say, “This sunroom is so pleasant. It looks like your father was happy here.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” the son said, smiling at me, but the daughter glared.

“It’s none of your business, whether he was happy or not happy.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. Sorry I don’t slap your mean old mouth. “I could use a drink,” the son said. “There’s probably nothing in the house.”

I showed him the cupboard where there was brandy and some crème de menthe and sherry. I said how about they move into the kitchen and I could go through the cupboards, show them things before I put them into boxes. They moved to the kitchen table. He poured them both big drinks of brandy. They drank and smoked Kools while I went through the cupboards. Neither of them wanted anything, so it all got packed up quickly.

“There are some things in the pantry, though…” I knew because I had my eye on them. An old iron—carved wooden handle, made of black cast iron.

“I want that!” they both said. “Did your mother actually iron with that?” I asked the son. “No, she used it to make toasted ham-and-cheese sandwiches. And for corned beef, to press it down.”

“I always wondered how people did that…” I said, talking away again, but I shut up because she was looking at me that way.

An old beat-up rolling pin, smoothed from wear, silken.

“I want that!” they both said. She actually laughed then. The drink, the heat in the kitchen had softened her hairdo, wisps curled around her face, shiny now. Her lipstick was gone; she looked like the girl in the graduation picture. He took off his coat and vest and tie, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. She caught me checking out his fine build and shot me that dagger stare.

Just then Western Medical Supply came to get the bed and the wheelchair. I took them to the sunroom, opened the back door. When I got back the brother had poured them both another brandy. He leaned toward her.

“Make peace with us,” he said. “Come stay for a weekend, get to know Debbie. And you’ve never seen Latania. She’s beautiful, and she looks just like you. Please.”

She was silent. But I could see death working on her. Death is healing, it tells us to forgive, it reminds us that we don’t want to die alone.

She nodded. “I’ll come,” she said.

“Oh, that’s great!” He put his hand on hers, but she recoiled, her hand moved, grabbed the table like a rigid claw.

Whoa, you are a cold bitch, I said. Not out loud. Out loud I said, “Now here’s something you’ll both want, I bet.” A heavy old cast-iron waffle maker, the kind you put on top of the stove. My grandmother Mamie had one. There’s nothing like those waffles. Really crisp and brown outside and soft in the center. I put the waffle iron down between them.

She was smiling. “Now this is mine!” He laughed. “You’ll have to pay a fortune in overweight luggage.”

“I don’t care. Do you remember how Mama would make us waffles when we were sick? With real maple syrup?”

“On Valentine’s Day she’d make them in the shape of a heart.”

“Only they never looked like hearts.”

“No, but we’d say ‘Mama, they’re exactly like hearts!’”

“With strawberries and whipped cream.”

There were other things I brought out then, roasting pans and boxes of canning jars that weren’t interesting. The last box, on the top shelf, I put on the table.

Aprons. The old-fashioned bib kind. Handmade, embroidered with birds and flowers. Dish towels, embroidered too. All made from flour sacks or gingham from old clothes. Soft and faded, smelling of vanilla and cloves. “This was made from the dress I wore the first day of fourth grade!”

The sister was unfolding each apron and towel and spreading them all out on the table. Oh. Oh, she kept saying. Tears streaked down her cheeks. She gathered up all the aprons and towels and held them to her breast.

“Mama!” she cried. “Dear, dear Mama!”

The brother was crying now too and he went to her. He embraced her, and she let him hold her, rock her. I slipped out of the room and out the back door.

I was still sitting on the steps when a truck pulled up and three men from the Baptist church got out. I took them around to the front door and upstairs, and told them everything that was to go. I helped one man with the things upstairs, and then helped him load what was in the garage, tools and rakes, a lawn mower and a wheelbarrow.

“Well, that’s it,” one of the men said. The truck backed out and they waved good-bye. I went back inside. The house was silent. The brother and sister had gone. I swept up then and left, locking the doors of the empty house.

Panteón de Dolores

Not “Heavenly Rest” or “Serene Valley.” Pantheon of Pain is the name of the cemetery at Chapultepec Park. You can’t get away from it in Mexico. Death. Blood. Pain.