I opened my front door, still in my robe, a towel twisted on my head, and a small grey-and black-haired woman stood on the orange doormat. “Missus Rae?” she asked.
“Yes. Stephanya?”
“Oh yes. Hello Missus,” she smiled, stepped through the doorway and embraced me.
“Oh hello,” I said, surprised by the hug, worrying that my left breast was slipping out of the terrycloth. “Come in,” I said, stating the unnecessary as our arms descended. I pulled the flaps of the robe tight around my torso as Stephanya rounded the corner into the living room.
“Oh, vedy pretty, Missus,” she said grazing the living room and kitchen with her eyes.
“Thank you,” I said. I’d expected her to be younger and now felt a little embarrassed. My unease expanded each time she addressed me as “Missus” and I wondered if it was a cultural formality - a sign of respect to someone newly met - and whether I should be addressing her as such. It seemed awkwardly reversed: a fifty-year-old woman referring to me as Missus - too haughty a prefix for a 28-year-old single woman who couldn’t manage to keep even the bathtub in her 900-square-foot condo free of muck, no children or pets (not counting dust bunnies or hair rats) to blame for the disarray.
I guided her through the bedroom and the bathroom and began pulling cleaning supplies from the back of the hall closet. “No mop,” she said forcefully as I moved winter coats and sample-sized cans of paint to the side, “no mop.”
“No?”
“No, I . . . I just,” she bent slightly at the knees and wheeled both hands in opposite directions like the circular brushes of an automatic car wash.
“Oh, really?” my voice pitched upward in disbelief.
“Oh yes, Missus. Is better.”
Oh Jesus. With the Missus and the scrubbing of the floor on hands and knees the same age as my mother’s. I complied, shoving the mop back into the corner of the closet and showing her the towels underneath the kitchen sink that she could use for the hardwood.
When I emerged from my bedroom fifteen minutes later dressed for work, I noticed that Stephanya had also changed into work attire: a muted floral moo-moo and stocking feet. She had set about removing stacks of CDs from the wooden shelves and dusting. “Missus. The vacuum. You show me?” I’d brought the vacuum into the living room the night before and it sat on the brown and beige spotted rug, plugged into the opposite wall. Stephanya made a downward jerking motion, her hand wrapped around an imaginary handle. Always skilled at Charades, I knew that she needed me to show her how to unlock the vacuum’s neck from its upright position. The vacuum had been a total pain the ass from day one. I’d picked up the wrong box on my fourteen hundredth trip to Bed Bath & Beyond the weekend after I moved in and, after removing its hulking red body from the box and realizing it was not the Eureka Optima Lightweight that I’d intended to purchase, I couldn’t muster the wherewithal to load it back into my trunk and return to the store. So I kept it and cursed it’s heft and inflexibility as it lumbered from room to room, until eventually I began “vacuuming” the dust bunnies with a wad of damp toilet paper and a lazy hand. In the last two months of constant travel, I’d ceased even trying to keep up with the creeping dirt and grime. Stephanya watched as I stomped on the gray button on the back of the Red Beast with the heel of my boot and the vacuum’s neck gave way. “Ah, yes. Thank you, Missus.”
I gathered my purse and showed Stephanya how to lock the door when she left. “Okay, Missus. Vedy nice,” she said, nodding approval as her eyes moved from my boots, up my pencil skirt, over my sweater to my ponytail.
“Oh, thank you,” I replied, “Have a nice day, Stephanya.”
I had dinner with J after work and we fought about the same things over miso soup and Dragon Rolls. On the street he said, “Shit happens in relationships.”
And I said, “There’s too much shit between us.” And something under his flesh seemed to break and he turned and walked away. I took a cab home because it was late and was thankful that the driver idled in front of my building until I’d made it through the heavy outer door.
When I flicked on the light and stepped into my living room, I remembered having clicked the door shut with Stephanya inside that morning. Light bounced off the hardwood floor, books and magazines lay stacked neat like pancakes on the coffee table, the linear footprints of the vacuum evident on the rug underneath. I unzipped my boots and carried them to my bedroom where I found the bed tightly made. Like a lonely man deluding himself about the affections of a prostitute, I forgot for a moment about the wad of cash left in an envelope labeled “Stephanya” on the breakfast bar that morning. I felt that she’d vacuumed and scrubbed and polished out of love. I realized how long it had been since I’d felt the warmth that unexpected care sends bursting from your gut to your fingertips. Or was it that long since I’d felt the warmth from giving it? For a moment, I wanted to call J and offer him a clean slate - our relationship with the linear footprints of the vacuum still evident.
As I padded from my bedroom to the kitchen for a glass of water, relieved to not have hair and dust sticking to my bare feet, I knew that to keep things fresh and clean and good would mean maneuvering frequently the inflexibility of the vacuum, scrubbing the corners of the bathtub before the orangish residue of mildew took hold, keeping the tables and vases and plants wiped clean of the dead skin that humans shed over time, seemingly harmless until it’s coated everything, making it difficult to breathe.
At 28, I should be able to do this, I thought. Still, I wasn’t sure I was up to the task.
Recent Comments