Housekeeping

When I was about six, my mother told me that she had hired a housekeeper. This was the best news I had heard in years. I had always felt overburdened, what with having to make my bed every day and occasionally unloading the dishwasher. Not to mention the endless chore of putting my dirty clothes in the hamper.

I pictured our future housekeeper to be an older, grandmotherly-like woman in a starched maid’s uniform, perhaps with a little white hat. I envisioned her cleaning my room and making cookies. She would probably call me “dear” and pat my head in a loving manner.

As it turned out, our first housekeeper was a rather haggard woman of questionable legal residential status named Alejandra. She wore no uniform and she made no cookies. I don’t think she even bothered to learn my name. Alejandra would diligently clean the house, and then she would leave. That was it.

I was completely disillusioned with the whole idea.

I do not know how much English Alejandra spoke or understood because she made precious few efforts to interact with us. This became particularly apparent and progressively awkward during the car rides. She had no transportation of her own, so my mother would load us all up and we would drive a considerable distance to Alejandra’s home to pick her up and then return her there at day’s end.

During these sojourns to the South side, my mother went to great lengths to create a light friendly mood and steady conversation, but it was hopelessly one-sided. Nods or an occasional grunt from the passenger seat were Alejandra’s usual contribution when my mother would carry on her cheerful chitchat.

“Just look at those clouds,” my mother said one day, as we were stopped at a red light, pointing to magnificent white puffs that scrolled back to reveal a brilliant sun. “When I see clouds like that it makes me think today is the day Jesus is coming back.” Alejandra had no reply to that and instead gestured for my mother to turn on the radio.

At some point, my mother decided she would rather vacuum her own floors than run a taxi service and Lala was no more.

And that’s when we met Lucy. A woman of tremendous strength and an enormous affinity for do-it-yourself hair dye, she has been our housekeeper for longer than some of my siblings have been alive.

Lucy was initially part of a team of Mexican housekeepers that worked for my mother and many of her friends. This was an organized outfit equipped with their own cleaning supplies and a ramshackle old van that transported them from house to house. Erma, their merciless leader, kept her cleaning crew on a blistering schedule with the speed, precision, and efficiency of a double-lane McDonald’s drive-thru.

The group suddenly disintegrated after a number of valuables mysteriously went missing from some of the neighboring homes. One day, Lucy was the only one who showed up to work. She very simply explained that Erma and her gang had made off with the loot and as far as she could tell, had made it back across the border, never to be heard from again

All of the neighborhood ladies hailed Lucy as an angel, but I wasn’t so sure. I’ve always harbored a secret theory that my housekeeper is actually a criminal mastermind. Perhaps after growing tired of sharing the profits, Lucy developed a devious plot to run off her competition while simultaneously plundering her employers’ jewelry boxes. I wouldn’t put it past her.

I base this suspicion after years of observation of Lucy implementing a carefully constructed plan that centers around a steady demand for more money while doing substantially less work. Even at the very beginning, she had us all trained at a very early age to pick up all our toys.

“Isn’t that your job?” someone would timidly ask.

“No,” was her matter-of-fact and authoritative response. We shrugged our little shoulders and started scooping up our Legos in handfuls.

During the summers when school was out, Lucy would often begin working before my siblings and I were out of bed. “You’re laaaazy!” Lucy would exclaim in the condescending tone most employers are not accustomed to hearing from their workforce. “Its summer!” we would counter. She would shake her head at us, clearly disgusted by our sluggishness.

Before long, Lucy learned to use our laziness to her benefit. If we were not awake when she was ready to clean our rooms, she simply skipped them altogether. Soon my mother was the one banging on our bedroom doors. “You better be up by the time Lucy gets here,” was my mother’s steely warning in a tone most people reserve for robbing banks.

Lucy also has very explicit directions for her birthday. For weeks before the blessed day, she starts reminding us of her upcoming personal holiday. The general expectation is that we buy a cake, sign a card, and gather around to sing “Happy Birthday” to our beloved housekeeper. The most important requirement is the supply of additional funding. “You give me 200 dollar,” is a phrase Lucy is fond of saying as her birthday draws near.

Because Lucy does virtually no cleaning, a few years ago my mother surreptitiously hired another housekeeper to come on Lucy’s days off to do all of the work we pay Lucy to do. She swore us all to secrecy for fear that Lucy would find out and we would all be subject to our housekeeper’s considerable wrath. My mother lost sleep at night worrying that Lucy might show up unannounced and discover her indiscretion.

Years later, I’m not sure if Lucy has ever found out about the secret second housekeeper, but I’m inclined to believe that she would not entirely disapprove. Lucy is much happier that the house is cleaner because there are now fewer tasks for her to avoid during her working hours.

We try to overlook Lucy’s little idiosyncrasies because after all, she is very old (probably close to seventy), and also because we realize we can be somewhat difficult clients.

When I was sixteen, I threw my old truck into reverse and gunned it as I backed out of the driveway. I had forgotten that Lucy usually parked right behind me, but I was promptly reminded of this when my car came to a sudden and unexpected stop. The crash was terrifically loud, but I was still hopeful that perhaps the damage was not too bad.  I had tremendous experience in the way of smashing cars.

For reasons that are still not all together clear to me, administration at my high school allocated all of the side streets next to the campus as sophomore parking. This meant that while the juniors and seniors, the kids with more driving experience, glided seamlessly into allocated parking spots, the sixteen-year-olds played bumper cars as we were forced to experiment with parallel parking. It was not uncommon for a fellow student to bash your car two or three times as they backed in, backed out, backed in, backed out. I was always surprised how loud each bump was and also how little damage occurred.

Keeping all of this in mind, I held feebly to the hope that perhaps the damage incurred might go unnoticed. But as it turned out, my truck had smashed into Lucy’s car with such force that it dented the driver-side door completely in half. That door would never open again. My parents were nice enough to pay for the damage, but in the meantime until it could be fixed, poor Lucy was forced to climb through the passenger-side door for weeks, dragging her elderly carcass over obstacles like the center console and the stick shift to get into position behind the steering wheel.

Over the years, I think Lucy and my family have developed a mutual understanding and an enormous amount of patience with the other. We had to.

As it stands now, Lucy shows up more or less when she feels like it. She may or may not iron a few shirts as the spirit moves her. After an hour or so of moping around the house, chastising us for not making our beds, she sits at the kitchen counter and spends a great deal of time preparing, eating, and generally enjoying a bologna sandwich. We never used to have bologna, but Lucy can be persistent.

“Where you bologna?” she demanded of my mother.

“Bologna? We don’t have any, nobody here likes bologna,” her employer explained.

“You get bologna.” Lucy declared in a tone of finality.

My mother now buys a pack a week.

A few months ago, Lucy became seriously ill. After returning from a stint in the hospital, she informed my mother that she would be unable to work anymore.  My mother was sad, but of course she agreed.

Lucy had but one reservation, “What about my birthday?”

“Your birthday? That’s months away.”

Lucy nodded, patiently.

“You mean, you want to celebrate your birthday now?”

“Yes!” Lucy immediately agreed, as if the whole thing had been my mother’s idea.

“But I don’t have a cake,” my mother lamented.

Once again, Lucy was silent.

“I guess I could just give you your two hundred dollars.”

Lucy nodded her approval.

After her impromptu birthday celebration, there were many tearful goodbyes and promises to visit. Lucy would never clean our house again.

Or so we thought.

Sometime later, Lucy called my mother with the joyful announcement that as it turns out, she was feeling quite a bit better and would be returning to work immediately.

My family recently celebrated Lucy’s birthday for the second time this year.