Maid - Stephanie Land Page 0,92
in Alaska.
The next morning Pam called to tell me to stay home. She didn’t want to risk me getting stuck on the road between clients’ houses. Most everything shut down in the Northwest when it snowed only a few inches. Even the freeway below our apartment was silent, with a few parked cars, abandoned by their drivers, scattered along the shoulders.
Mia bundled up immediately, not complaining that her snow pants were still damp from the night before, asking when we could go outside. A former teacher of mine who lived in the neighborhood sent me a message on Facebook, asking if I needed a sled. He said he had a great one, with a rope and everything, that he’d leave for me on the porch. When I told Mia about it, she started jumping up and down, asking, “Now? Can we go now?” I hesitated. Every fiber in my body wanted a couch to sink into, endless mugs of tea, wool socks, and if I really let myself dream, a roaring fire with books to read and a dog curled up at my feet.
“It’s a long way to walk,” I told Mia, knowing it wouldn’t matter. I could have told her we’d be walking all day, and her excitement wouldn’t wane. It was quite a trek for a three-year-old to walk uphill for a mile in snow that came up to her thighs. I had to carry her on my back most of the way. Halfway to the porch where we’d find our new sled sitting on it like a trophy, I had to stop walking. I looked out behind us, over the entire city, draped in thick snow and silence.
Mia and I spent most of the morning outside, with me dragging her home through the neighborhood on the sled, where she lay on her stomach, eating handfuls of snow. I kept seeing signs of snowplows on the main streets and started to wonder if they’d get to ours. The house we lived in sat on the corner of an alley at its lowest point. Each way out was uphill. Pearl, being the teeny car she was, had wheels about the same size as the Red Rider wagon I sometimes pulled Mia around in. I didn’t have snow tires, or even chains, and couldn’t afford them anyway.
After the sun warmed the snow for most of the day, the temperatures dropped below freezing that night, not getting any warmer the next day. Our street was a thick sheet of ice. I watched my upstairs neighbors attempt to get their car up the alley and fail. Another day of work gone. Maybe I could skip a credit card payment that month or take money from the available credit, deposit it into my bank account, and make a payment with that. It was halfway through the month, so most of my bills were already paid, but my current paycheck wouldn’t come for two more weeks when they’d all be due again. And with the weather, it would now be about $100 lower.
We spent most of those snow days in the living room and kitchen. In the bedroom area, it was so cold that we could see frost on the windows through the French doors, and Mia put on her coat before going to grab a toy. Our television got only local stations, so she played her favorite DVDs over and over again. The one about the Hello Kitty fairy-tale ballerina, with the high-pitched voices, made my head hurt. Eventually we turned it off and got out the watercolors instead.
Mia painted pictures while I nodded in approval or read stories to her. I didn’t get time off with Mia very often—usually just every other weekend when she wasn’t at her dad’s. With the absence of money to spend, I had to get creative in keeping her jumpy body and active mind entertained. If it rained, we couldn’t afford to go to the Children’s Museum or even the McDonald’s Playland so she could burn off energy. We didn’t enjoy sunny days at the zoo or waterparks.
Sometimes just walking behind a two-parent family on a sidewalk could trigger feelings of shame from being alone. I zeroed in on them—dressed in clothes I could never afford, diaper bag carefully packed into an expensive jogging stroller. Those moms could say things that I never could: “Honey, could you take this?” or “Here, can you hold her for a second?” The child could go from one parent’s arms to