Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,16

liked her so much, it’s just that she had already seen the worst & I couldn’t go through it again with someone new. So Yolanda came at 1 p.m. today and I opened the door for her.

She began cleaning this time. I wasn’t quite sure where to put myself so I wandered out of rooms that she was in & into rooms that she was not in. For example she started in the living room and so I hid in my bedroom reading. I heard her tiny footfall as she pattered around dusting. And then I heard her stacking things. And then I heard a little knock on my bedroom door. I was sitting on the edge of my bed, not wanting to lie down in case she should need anything.

“Yes? Come in,” I said, and the door swung open and she popped her head in.

“Do you have a vacuum?” she asked.

I blanched a bit because I knew that I did have one but could not for the life of me remember where it was. I told her as much, feeling very embarrassed because now she knew that I didn’t vacuum.

“I’ll look for it,” said Yolanda, and took off for parts unknown.

I heard her running up the stairs & she was up there for about ten minutes opening and shutting doors & again I felt pierced by something. To have a little someone up there after all these years. I pictured her opening each door in turn, first the doors on the third floor—my mother’s chintz curtains fluttering, delighted to be set in motion after years of stagnancy—and then the doors on the second. I pictured my little train set and the collection of pictures I tacked on the wall as a child. O they were being seen by someone else. Next I heard her descending into the basement and a moment later she came up the stairs and shouted to me triumphantly that she had found it.

It sounded like a lawn mower starting. It had not been used in so long. She vacuumed the whole main floor and when she came into my room I shuffled out of it. Already the living room and dining room looked very different. Cleaner yes but also touched somehow. Different because someone else had touched them. I sat carefully down on my couch and put my hands next to me on either side. My couch felt different too. & the whole place had lost its regular smell and now smelled like lemon and pine.

Not knowing what to do I turned on the television but I wasn’t really paying attention to what was on. I was paying attention to the noises Yolanda was making as she moved about my room. Unlike me she talks to herself. I could hear her little childish whispers, the p’s and b’s and the clicks and tsks. I think she was speaking in Spanish and I wanted to know what she was saying & I was afraid to know what she was saying all at once. I was afraid she was speaking out in annoyance & saying all the things that I thought about myself like how horribly dirty I had let my very dear house become.

Every now and then she emerged from my room carrying some little bit of garbage that I had not even noticed. A napkin or a plastic bag or a shampoo bottle. She took books out and put them on the bookshelf. Every time she passed me she offered me a little smile & said nothing. I pretended to watch the television, which was showing Cash Cab.

By four o’clock she had cleaned the whole downstairs and five or six full garbage bags were sitting by my front door. I did not ask her what was in them. I presumed that I would not want to know.

“When does garbage go out?” asked Yolanda.

“I’ll do it,” I said. I felt hot in the face.

She shrugged and said “Red, blue, and yellow.”

“I’m sorry?” I said.

“Primary colors,” she said, & pushed her chin toward the television, where the host of Cash Cab was saying “Ooooh, close, the correct answer is red, blue, and yellow.”

“I love this show,” she said, and she came around the front of an armchair and sat down hard in it with a sigh.

She looked at her watch.

“You mind if I stay here for a little bit? I got a ride coming,” she said.

The truth was that I did mind. It had been a trying