Maid - Stephanie Land Page 0,34

manner. During my first visit, I spent an entire hour getting the shower clean, wishing I had a “real” all-purpose cleaner. Classic Clean didn’t advertise as a “green” cleaning company. They used natural products to keep costs down and relied on the cleaners’ “elbow grease” to get things clean. Though I’d never tell my manager about it, nerve damage in my spine prevented me from gripping a sponge or brush with my right, dominant hand. I’d had scoliosis, a condition that made my spine curve from side to side, since I was a kid, but recently due to the cleaning work it had pinched a nerve that went down my right arm. To scrub that shower, I had to ball my right hand into a fist, placing the sponge between it and the wall, and press down with my knuckles as hard as I could. To get the shower floor, I’d lock my elbow, make a fist, and put all of my upper body weight onto my right hand to get the soap scum and grime off to prevent hurting my hand. My left hand took over whenever the right one got too tired, but in those first months of six-hour days, when I got home I could barely hold a dinner plate or carry a bag of groceries.

I went overtime for the first few visits, and Pam was livid. Classic Clean couldn’t charge the client more and had to eat the cost of paying me extra. It wasn’t much money, but Pam complained about the financial burden, like I had hurt her personally by going fifteen minutes over. I stressed about taking so long, and it boggled my mind how an entire house, even a small one, could be cleaned in just three hours.

The Porn House didn’t earn its name until I’d been there a few times. One time, I walked into the bedroom, where I had to change the sheets, and saw a bottle of lube sitting on the nightstand in front of a digital clock. It was illuminated by the bright red numbers, and I watched it like it was about to pounce on me. I inched to the corner of the bed to avoid it. Below it, the nightstand drawer was left slightly open, revealing a Hustler magazine. By my feet were a discarded pair of dirty socks.

I recoiled as I reached to pull back the covers. I removed the sheets quickly and used them to scoop up the socks. Everything went in the washing machine. Clean sheets went on the bed, just like I’d been trained to do them—with crisp, diagonal corners at the bottom and the flat sheet pulled all the way to the top. When it came time to dust, I decided to leave the nightstand for last to avoid the lube. Though I’d never fault someone for masturbating while looking at porn mags, I would fault them for leaving it out in the open for the cleaning girl to see.

Maybe he forgot it was Wednesday, I thought.

But over time, I realized the lube was only a symptom of a larger story occurring in the Porn House. The lives of the married couple in that house seemed to be separate. The woman was a nurse and worked odd hours; I knew that from the scrubs carefully placed over a chair in the back room. I couldn’t detect what he did for a living. Though I assumed they were husband and wife, there weren’t any wedding photos on the walls—just portraits of the two of them wearing matching sweaters. The house felt dim, as they seemed to favor earth tones, like navy and dark green. On the window ledge above the kitchen sink sat a frame in an easel with a quote that read, “We’re staying together for the cat.”

The garbage in the Porn House bathroom overflowed with wads of toilet paper, tampons, panty liners, and webs of floss. Their medicine cabinet, left ajar, revealed rows of prescribed antibiotics. Judging from the tissues and snot in the shower, it seemed possible that one of them had an ongoing sinus issue, much like I did, as did Mia, and probably most of the people who lived in the damp climate of the northwest, where patches of black mold appeared overnight in homes, basements, and window ledges.

In the living room were a couch and a couple of chairs that faced the box television and fireplace. The nurse seemed to favor the spot on the couch, next