The Blinding Light (3 page)

“Good thing I ride a bike then,” I replied as I gestured to my transportation.

“Hmph.”

I scrambled to my feet and followed the woman up the front path to the door. She produced a set of keys and unlocked the deadbolt before entering and disarming the alarm system. I looked around the entry hall and realized that Mrs. Lee was looking me up and down—and finding me wanting from the looks of it.

“How long you
tink
you goin’ to last in
diss
job, huh?”

“Uhh….”

“The last housekeeper? She last ten days. You goin’ to last longer
dann dhat
, you
tink
?”

I glared back at the woman who barely reached my breastbone. She wanted a glaring competition, did she? We stared at each other without blinking for a very long minute before she broke first.

“Hmph. Maybe you last longer, after all. You’d better. Miz Wes’ make me clean
diss
stupid house when the others quit. I no like
diss
client.” She spun on her padded soles and marched on, throwing back over her shoulder, “How much does Miz Wes’ tell you ’bout
Mista
S’anford?”

I followed her, swiveling my head from side to side to see everything. There wasn’t much to see, to my great disappointment. The house was relatively empty with no pictures on the walls and plain beige-and-white furniture. It felt like a rather sad house. “Uhh…. Nothing apart from he’s a rude son of a bitch.”

“Hmph. So she di’n’t tell you
hees
blind?”

Blind?
“Blind?”

“Hmph. You a baby on
diss
job. You last two days, tops!”

I gave Mrs. Lee’s back an evil smile. “I betcha I last longer than you did. How long did you last?” She dumped her bag on the table in the kitchen, so I placed my backpack next to hers and pulled out my uniform.

“I last seven weeks.”

I nodded. “Okay, then. So in seven weeks and one day you can come and apologize to me for calling me a baby, right?”

A wry smile came over her face. “Hmph. Maybe you last longer, after all. What you called?”

“Jake.”

“You can call me Miz Lee.” She grinned widely at me, showing a row of uneven but white teeth, as if she’d made a funny joke.
Hmph.

I
T
TURNED
out that Rule Number One in a blind man’s house is that everything has a place and it must be kept there. I supposed that it made sense. If you moved the furniture around, then he’d be running into it all the time.

The floor of every room had discreet strips of masking tape to indicate where the legs of the furniture had to line up. Mrs. Lee told me she tested the man one day by moving the couch an inch to the right and he complained to the company that night. I knew right away that this man would be a barrel of fun to work for.

The laundry room was lined with papers showing schedules for the housekeeper and photographs illustrating every single task. There were pictures of how to fold washing, how to stack the shelves with groceries, where to put his socks, and even how the corners of the bed sheets needed to be tucked in. I mentally rubbed my hands together, thinking of the challenge. How long could I last before I tripped up?

On the laundry bench were two bound instruction manuals. I raised my brow at the sight—several trees had been cut down to make those two thick items. One turned out to be a list of detailed instructions on every possible task that one may undertake in the house, the other was a list of the brands of foods to buy. Mrs. Lee saw my disbelief.

“
Mista
S’anford is very picky man. They di’n’t have his preferred brand of bleach one day, so I bought another. Uh, uh, uh. He pick it up right away. He tell me off next day.”

Along with the manuals, there was a printed bit of paper left neatly on the bench. Mrs. Lee picked it up and began to read, frowning as she did. “Hmph.
Mista
S’anford leave orders each day. Hmph. Orders and problems.” She muttered something in another language and threw the paper on the bench. I took a look at it.

Dear Mrs. Huntley….

“Who is Mrs. Huntley?” I asked.

“Hmph. Miz Huntley was three housekeepers ago. We jus’ no tell him
dhat
’nother housekeeper quit. We jus’ send in new one. He never see us. He jus’ write
hees
nasty notes and go on
hees
merry way.”

I rolled my eyes and continued reading. The letter was in bullet points with nary a please or thank-you to be seen.

Dear Mrs. Huntley,

• The oven needs to be cleaned. Either do it today or tomorrow.
  
• There are three letters to be posted. I left them on my desk.
  
• I am not satisfied with the last selection of mince purchased. Either choose a different sort or change butchers.
  
• The sunroom was not vacuumed yesterday.
  
• Don’t forget my dry cleaning pickup.
  

Sincerely,

P. Stanford.

I swallowed and reread the letter, thinking that perhaps he’d put a “please” in there somewhere and I’d missed it. Everybody used the word, didn’t they? But I was unable to find one at all. Mrs. Lee
hmph
’d again and left the room. I took a minute to chuck on the dark-blue shirt that was my uniform and followed her.

That day had my head spinning. Mrs. Lee showed me everything that needed to be done on the day’s list, and together we washed clothes, vacuumed, dusted, and did dishes. After lunch I crammed myself into her tiny car, and we whizzed to the local shops to do the errands. I picked up the man’s dry cleaning, purchased stamps and posted his letters, and dropped into the butcher to buy meat.

By the time I had finished, Mrs. Lee was halfway through her task of grocery shopping. We had Mr. Stanford’s shopping list and the inch thick instruction manual to tell us what brand to buy. It was a slow process of reading the printed list from Mr. Stanford, finding the correct aisle for the product, looking up the item in the manual, and then finding that particular brand on the shelf. I pushed the trolley while Mrs. Lee read the list.

“Okay. What’s next?”

“Pineapple.”

“Tinned? I think that’s over there. Does he want sliced or pieces?” I turned back to the shelf while Mrs. Lee flipped through the pages to see what sort of pineapple the man ate.

Finally she found it and reported, “Pieces in the Golden Circle brand. Naturally sweetened.”

“What size?”

“His list says a small tin.”

I sighed. This was terrible. “Okay. Small it is. What’s next?”

“Rice.”

“Brown or white? Long grain? Jasmine?”

Flick, flick, flick.

“White. Jasmine. One kilo in the Koala Brand.”

“There’s no one kilo Koala Brand left. The shelf is empty.”

“Hmph. Just buy the two kilos and maybe he won’t notice.”

And on we toddled. When we came to the pet food aisle I stopped. Mrs. Lee had informed me that Mr. Stanford had a guide dog, and I had seen the bowls and bed myself. “Does he have dog food on the list?”

Mrs. Lee shook her head. “No. You have to get special stuff from City Farmers over on South Street. It weigh twenty-five kilo. Plus he will tell you buy worm tablets and biscuits and stuff for that animal.”

“South Street?” I had a horrifying vision of me riding my bike ten kilometers through the rain trying to balance twenty-five kilos of dog food under my arm.

“Yeah. You drive car and he pay you petrol.”

“But I don’t have a car.”
Could I ride and still get paid for the petrol?

She shrugged. “Not my problem. You talk to
Mista
S’anford. Ha ha ha.”

I was glad something amused her.

A
FTER
OUR
shopping trip, Mrs. Lee introduced me to the world of blindness. Mr. Stanford’s groceries needed to be carefully opened and placed in labeled Tupperware containers so he knew what each one was. All the tinned and bottled items needed a label. In braille.

And boy oh boy was that fiddly! There was a special labeler where you could find the letter you wanted, line it up with the correct braille symbol, and then push the button, and the machine would print it for you—one fucking letter at a time. Mrs. Lee had me make a label for pineapple and man, that word is long! I’m sure she picked that one on purpose instead of peas.

I left Mrs. Lee to work the machine while I washed the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. I put the groceries away, referring to the photographs in the instruction manual to get it right.

Mr. Stanford had a whole bunch of neat gadgets to help him get around in the world. There were devices to hang on the edge of your coffee mug to tell you when to stop pouring the water, the kettle and telephone both spoke to you if you pressed a button, a special reader could tell someone the color of something that you pointed to and (my favorite) was a machine that could scan a page for text and read it back.

I got in trouble from Mrs. Lee by playing with that one. I put Mr. Stanford’s bossy letter in the scanner and had the machine read it to me to make sure I hadn’t missed any
pleases
or
thank-yous
.

I hadn’t.

Mrs. Lee came back the following day to make sure I was alright with all the jobs, but after that I was my own man. It wasn’t bad as a job—boring and repetitive, but I could make my own schedule and play my music as loud as I wanted and no one complained.

On my first day without Mrs. Lee, I had an unexpected visitor drop by the house—Mrs. Martha West. I was cleaning the shower when I heard the doorbell go, so I made my way through the house and opened the door still holding my rubber cleaning gloves, unsure of what to expect on the other side.

“Mrs. West,” I exclaimed.

“Mr. Manning. May I come in?”

I stepped back and allowed her into the house. “Sure. Come on in. Was there a problem or something?”

Her heels clacked on the wooden floor as she made for the kitchen. She was obviously familiar with the house, and I saw her look around, inspecting for dirt on the floor and dishes in the sink.

I tried again, hoping that her appearance didn’t mean I was fired already. “Is everything okay?”

She ran her hand across the top of the sideboard and scrutinized her fingers for dust. “Everything is fine, Mr. Manning. It is usual that I pop in on my employees to check that everything is satisfactory with them and that there are no issues. With Mr. Stanford being such a… particular client I wanted to make sure any problems were dealt with swiftly.”

“Oh. Fair enough. I haven’t any problems. Has he complained about me already?”

“Actually, no.” She looked happy about that. An awkward silence developed between us then, and I was unsure what to say. It wasn’t my house so I couldn’t really offer her a coffee or anything, and she was actually interrupting me from doing my job. I tapped my rubber gloves against my jeans and waited. Finally, she caved first. “Okay, then. Unless you have any problems, I’d best be on my way.”

She turned and marched back toward the front door. I strolled after her. “Actually, Mrs. West? I have one question. When do we get paid?”

She paused at the door. “Thursdays. I believe you’ll find your first wage in your bank account this afternoon, Mr. Manning. Good day.”

I locked the door behind her and broke into a grin. Yes! Payday! I could maybe splash out and buy something decent for dinner. I laughed to myself as I realized that something decent would probably mean baked beans on toast.

F
RIDAY
THERE
was a note waiting for me in the laundry.

Dear Mrs. Huntley,

• There is a parcel waiting for me at the post office. Make sure you pick it up when you do the shopping today.
  
• The meat you bought last time was adequate. Buy it again.
  
• I have left an extra list of items I need from the chemist.
  
• You have changed your perfume. I don’t like it.
  

Sincerely,

P. Stanford.

I read the note twice and with glee, ran it through the scan-and-read machine, just to hear it out loud. The man was a menace. I laughed at his last demand—
You have changed your perfume. I don’t like it.
It actually wasn’t a demand at all, just a statement of fact.

I was impressed that the man noticed the change in smell from his housekeeper, but there wasn’t much I could do about it, even if I wanted to. Since it wasn’t an order from His Royal Highness, just a statement of fact, I decided that it could be ignored.

I completed my morning tasks and rode to the shops for his groceries. It was a bit of an effort to get them back, but I noted down my “mileage” on my timecard that I would send to the office at the end of the week. I sat and labeled his stuff, vacuumed the house, cleaned the bathrooms, did the dishes, and tidied up. At three minutes after three in the afternoon, I locked the door and left stuffy Mr. Stanford to his grumpy ways and rode home.