Maid - Stephanie Land Page 0,38
my shoes before, feeling as if she hardly ever saw her children due to work, and gotten through it just fine. Pam nodded toward the other cleaner, a gruff-looking, heavy-set blond woman with her hair in a scrunchie, who looked grumpier from boredom than from my lateness. “This is Sheila,” Pam said. “She’s leaving us this week.” Sheila and I looked at each other, giving a nod and half smile. We were already unloading the van, which was stocked with a wide assortment of unfamiliar sprays, not used for the weekly cleans. These were the heavy-duty cleaners to remove mold, grease, and stains. She handed me supply trays and bags of rags, impatiently waiting for me to juggle my coffee, which I kept in a recycled jar.
“Before we go in, I need to explain a few things about this house,” Pam said as we stood outside the trailer. She asked Sheila and me to lean in close. Sheila looked at Pam, but I kept looking at Sheila, wondering why she’d quit, swallowing my burning envy.
Pam looked over her shoulder into a tall grassy field. She motioned to it and said, “Through there is the house of the Barefoot Bandit’s mom.”
The Barefoot Bandit was a household name at the time. His real name, Colton Harris Moore, was rarely used, but I knew we had the same birthplace in Skagit County. The Barefoot Bandit was only nineteen years old and had been wreaking havoc around the area lately, breaking into wealthy homes while the owners slept, once leaving behind bare footprints in the dust of a garage. He had broken into the Chef’s House the week before to use a computer and procure my client’s credit card information to order bear mace and night-vision goggles and look for unattended small aircraft. I could picture him sitting at the desk I dusted every other week, knowing how easy it would have been to find credit card numbers amid the scattered piles of papers. Local news outlets called him armed and dangerous and said he was possibly hiding out at his mother’s house.
Though I doubted he was there, the whole scene felt like the setup for a perfect horror story. After all, we were in an abandoned trailer down a long dirt path in the woods. Move-out cleans have a haunted feel to them anyway—like you’re cleaning up a crime scene, erasing all traces of any human interaction.
As we walked to the front door, Pam continued to prepare us for what was inside. She explained that the house belonged to a couple who had divorced. The wife had moved out while the husband had stayed with a couple of roommates. “The owner is under a tight budget, so we need to work very efficiently,” said Pam, turning to face us before opening the front door. “I’ll be here for a few hours today to get you started, and Stephanie—you’ll return tomorrow to finish up.”
I wasn’t sure what “very efficiently” meant. We already weren’t allowed lunch breaks, as it was assumed that we would take a “break” when we drove from one job to the next, stuffing apples and peanut butter sandwiches in our faces. But there would be no traveling today. I’d be here in this double-wide trailer for six to eight hours a day for the next two days, deep in the woods, in a house that didn’t get cell phone reception, so I couldn’t call anyone or even be on call in case of an emergency with Mia.
“Be sure you stay hydrated,” Pam said, fumbling with the lock. She put down the mop bucket she’d filled with extra cleaners and paper towels. “And make sure you take small breaks to rest whenever you need.”
My eyebrows went up at this comment. This was the first time I’d ever heard of our time on the clock having any allowance for breaks. Maybe move-out clean bids included short breaks and regular cleans didn’t. Up until then, I’d assumed we weren’t allowed to sit down.
Most of the houses I had cleaned up until that point were owned by people who could afford to keep them up, and it was rare that I was the first maid to clean it. Move-out cleans are deceptive. The house is empty. There’s no dusting around lamps on tables, or books and knickknacks on shelves, so at first glance it looks like an easy job. Instead, they’re the longest, most unforgiving, the filthiest. Most often, the owner has decided to sell,