Maid - Stephanie Land Page 0,28
farm. I struggled to keep up with caring for Mia while keeping the house clean, and I grew angry whenever Travis looked at me expectantly to feed the horses. The more tumultuous my life at home grew as “the farmer’s wife,” the more uncertain and the more insecure I became over whether or not our time in Travis’s house would last. My ability to work, to earn money, was my only safety net in case the floor dropped out from under us again. And Jenny wasn’t offering enough to support us, not by a long shot.
* * *
Classic Clean, a licensed and bonded cleaning company, almost always had an ad in the local classifieds. “Cleaners Wanted!” it read in bold type. I had always planned to inquire if Jenny’s jobs didn’t work out. Now the time had come.
“Hi. Stephanie, right?” the woman who answered the door said. “Did you find the place okay? I know it can be kind of confusing with all the buildings.”
I tried to smile warmly, even though I’d just argued to the point of tears with Travis about the mud he’d tracked all over the kitchen. “Your directions were perfect,” I said, and the woman looked pleased.
“I’m Lonnie,” she said, extending her hand. “The human resources manager at Classic Clean.”
I reached out to shake her hand, then handed her my résumé. Lonnie looked surprised, like she didn’t see too many of those.
“Oh, well, look at you,” she said, seemingly pleased. It was like the last job on earth. Any money I could make kept me out of ever needing to call a list of homeless shelters again. It unnerved me and made me angry with myself that I’d found us in that position. A regular schedule and a real job would be my ticket to independence, and ultimately our survival. Our future depended on my getting it.
Lonnie nodded to a table in the back of the rectangular office area, built into one of two large outbuildings. She had told me on the phone that the business operated from an office, on Pam’s, the owner’s, property. “Why don’t you take a seat and start filling out our application. We need you to agree to a criminal background check, too, okay?”
I nodded and did what I was told. After a while, Lonnie came to sit down next to me. “You can probably tell by the accent that I’m from Jersey,” she started. It was true. She sounded like Danny DeVito’s kid sister. Lonnie was short and squat, with curly black hair shaped in a fluffed-up mullet—the kind of person you wanted to be on the good side of. She was direct and businesslike, spoke fast, and she’d pause to give me time to process what she said, raising her eyebrows to hear my “okay” before she continued.
“This is our schedule,” Lonnie said, referring to a bulletin board behind her desk so large she needed a step stool to reach the top. “Each client’s name goes on the laminated label, and they rotate through A, B, C, and D weeks. As you can see by the arrow here, we’re on C week currently. Some clients are monthly, some weekly, but most are biweekly, so twice a month. Each cleaner gets a colored dot assigned to them, so we know what cleaner has who.” She stopped to look at me. I stood next to her with my hands clasped in front of me. “You get what I’m sayin’?” she asked, and I nodded. “So, if your background check goes through, not sayin’ I don’t think it will, but you know sometimes you’d be surprised what we find.” She stopped to chuckle to herself. “But anyway, so after that goes through, then we’ll have you come in and get your tray and vacuum and some shirts. What are you, a small or a medium? You probably don’t want a small. It’s good to have some room to breathe. I think we have some mediums. Anyway, do you have any questions?”
I had a lot, but everything I wanted to know about how much I’d make or how many hours I’d work or if they offered health insurance or sick leave seemed unimportant. All that mattered was that the person I was going to replace was a yellow dot, which meant all the yellow dots on that board were now me, which meant I’d work every other Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and once a month on Monday.
Lonnie pointed to a poster on