Maid - Stephanie Land Page 0,12

leaves and spider webs off the deck to the ground below. She yelled, “What the fuck?” out from under me. Besides the broom-handle banging, that was the first time she’d spoken even semi-directly to me. “What’s all this shit?” she went on. “You’re fuckin’ shitting on me!” I slinked inside, shut the door softly, and sat stiffly on the couch, hoping she wouldn’t run up and knock on my door.

My upstairs neighbors—a mom and her three children—were hardly ever home. For the first few weeks I only heard them. I’d go to bed around ten p.m., and they’d come walking up the stairs around that time. After twenty minutes or so, they’d quiet again.

One morning as the sun came up I heard them leaving and ran to the window to see them, curious about who the other people in my same situation were.

The woman was tall and wore a purple-and-red windbreaker jacket and white sneakers. She limped from side to side when she walked. Two school-age boys and a girl walked behind her. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through. I only had one to care for. I saw her from time to time after that. The little girl’s hair was always neat, in cornrow braids decorated with bright ribbons. I wondered where they went all day, how she kept her kids so quiet and well behaved. She seemed like a good mother—respected by her children, which I envied. My kid had just learned how to walk upright and seemed to run from or fight me every second she was awake.

“You learn to love your coffee,” my neighbor Brooke had told me when we saw each other after a house check, referring to us being prohibited alcohol. We had sort of awkwardly shuffled past each other, and this was the first time we spoke. I’d known Brooke in what felt like a former life now, back when she poured the beers I’d ordered from her at the bar. I wondered what brought her to this place. But I never asked. Just like I didn’t want her to ask me.

I never talked to any of the men who lived in the halfway house on the far side of the complex. I’d see them standing on the path that went to their apartments, smoking cigarettes in sweatpants and slippers. One older man had family who picked him up every so often, but the others didn’t seem to go anywhere. Maybe they were just doing their time in that place. I kind of felt the same way.

I missed going out to bars. I missed having a beer if I wanted to, not necessarily the beer itself, but not having to worry about the housing authority popping up, having that freedom. I missed having so many freedoms: to go, to stay, to work, to eat or not eat, to sleep in on days off, to have a day off.

Mia and I had what looked like a normal life, one with places we needed to be during the day. I qualified for a childcare grant, but only for half days. My friend’s husband, John, had a small landscaping business, and he paid me $10 an hour to pull weeds, prune shrubs, and clear rhododendron bushes of dead flowers. I’d drive all around the northeast section of the Olympic Peninsula, to little gated communities, with a large garbage can in the back of my car, which contained a white paint bucket with tools and a few pairs of gloves. Some clients had a designated area for me to dump weeds and clippings, or I had to bag them up and set them by the curb, or even wrestle them into the back of my car. John had just a few regular clients with big enough jobs that required my help, so I filled the majority of my time with jobs I found on my own and worked my way up to charging $20 to $25 an hour, but with travel time I could work only two to three hours a day.

Landscaping meant crawling. Most people hired me to clear weeds from whole hillsides covered in wood chips. I’d spend hours on my gloved hands and double-kneed Carhartts, filling buckets, trash cans, and garbage bags with weeds that people paid me to organically kill by pulling out of the ground. It was good work. But, being seasonal, it would end in a matter of weeks, and I didn’t know what I’d do for work after that.