Maid - Stephanie Land Page 0,97

to the car, I needed the weight of her head on my shoulder and the tickle of her hair under my nose. The pediatrician had given us a prescription for another round of antibiotics and a referral back to the specialist who’d put Mia’s ear tubes in almost a year before.

When we saw the specialist a few days later, they put us in a room with a long, padded brown table. After sitting there for several minutes, the specialist rushed in, again barely acknowledging us, and said, “Why don’t you put her on the table there.” I stood up, still holding Mia, who’d been sitting in my lap, and sat her on the table again. “No, lay her down,” he said, turning his back to us to rustle through boxes of instruments. “I need her head under the light.”

Mia’s eyes went wide as I said, “It’s okay, Mia, he’s just going to look at your ear.” It was hard to be sincere as the specialist rummaged around, calling in a nurse for help, before turning abruptly to me, forcing out a sigh. He sat next to the table on a rolling stool, quickly sticking an instrument in Mia’s ear. My daughter, who hadn’t been able to sleep without doses of ibuprofen and gingerly placed her hand over her ear when she went outside, opened her mouth in a silent cry of pain. The specialist worked quickly, first examining her ear, then cutting a hard piece of cotton to the size of Mia’s ear canal, which he placed in there, adding a few drops of liquid.

“There,” he said. “You’ll need to put antibiotic ear drops in there like I just did.”

“She’s already on antibiotics,” I injected.

“Do you want your daughter to get better or not?”

I didn’t know how to reply. “When I gave her those ear drops before, she got dizzy and fell over. I had to hold her down to get them in.”

“You’re the mom,” he said. He was standing by the door, looking down on me as I sat with Mia in my lap. “You need to do whatever it takes.” Then he opened the door, exited, and closed it behind him so fast I felt a breeze. His words, like the pediatrician’s, burned into me: I wasn’t giving Mia what she needed.

* * *

Spring in the Skagit Valley is called Tulip Season. It begins with fields of yellow daffodils, purple irises, and the occasional crocus. As the weeks go by, tulips of every color bloom, carpet the ground. The locals like to say there are more tulips in the Skagit Valley than Holland. Tens of thousands of tourists descend on the area, clogging up back roads and freeway exit ramps, cramming the restaurants and parks. But although the tulip fields, with their stripes of red, purple, white, and orange, are stunning, I have never much cared for the flower.

Tulip season is a digging out from the long winter, but it also means rain, dampness, and mold. By April, the dehumidifiers in the Plant House were constantly set to high, and another air filter appeared in the bedroom. I wiped tiny spiderlike growths of black mold from her windowsills, knowing I’d have to do the same at home.

Mia coughed at night, relentlessly. Some evenings, when we walked into the apartment, her eyes turned bright red and filled with goopy deposits. It seemed obvious that it was the house—that the home I’d chosen, with the vent that pulled in air from the hundred-year-old moldy basement, was making us sick.

Besides always being sick, my own symptoms didn’t bother me too much as long as I could afford over-the-counter allergy medication. I’d been tested for sensitivities to allergens a year earlier, when my income was still low enough to qualify for Medicaid. The test revealed that I reacted to dogs, cats, some type of grass and tree, dust mites, and molds. “Indoor allergens,” the doctor had said. I’d just started working for Jenny, and my chest cold hadn’t let up for weeks. They’d given me inhalers and saltwater nasal sprays. Moving out of Travis’s trailer—which had black mold in the walls and feral cats living beneath it—had done me a lot of good, but I still had allergy symptoms from the hours spent cleaning up dust mites, cat dander, dog hair, and mold spores in houses across the valley.

The Cat Lady’s House gave me burning eyes, a runny nose, and a cough that lasted until I could change my clothes and shower.