Things Reveal Us
I drive by our first house many times a week. In 2001, when we got word that Brett was hired at the college in Atlanta, we planned a frenzied weekend to actually BUY a house. Realtors took us through 37 houses in two days, and we bought a semi-renovated post-war place with a drive-under garage that reminded me of my Grandma Ruth’s. The roof had been dormered to add a second story, with a master bedroom and a kid’s room tucked into eaves. I loved the angles and knee walls of Ben’s room, and the way the raindrops sounded on the slanted roof just above us when the nights were wet.
The couple that bought our house keeps to themselves; I see their cars come and go, but I never see them. Then one day I noticed that their old car was replaced with a minivan. I figured they were having a baby. A week or so later, a big box from diapers.com was by the curb. Definitely a baby. Later, balloons tied to my old porch. When I ran into Jason, I finally had the chance to ask. “Looks like you had a baby!” I said through my car window.
“We had two! Twins!” he leaned down and answered.
“Wow, that’s a handful. What are you doing for their room?”
“They’re in the upstairs bedroom. Both cribs fit fine, and that way they’re close by.”
I pictured the L-shaped room that had been Ben’s. It had tiny doors that led to closets under the eaves and two sunny windows on each side. And it flitted through my mind to wonder if I’d managed to thoroughly clean the “booger wall” next to where his bed had been. I wouldn’t want the sweet little babies to be exposed to boogers from 2005.
Now, I have a cleaning service, so hopefully Ben’s boogers are regularly scrubbed away (and hopefully he’s now learned to use Kleenex). As further evidence that I am a bad person, I have a cleaning service, not a cleaning lady. I could be noble and say it’s so I don’t end up like Zoe Baird, kept from political appointments because of payments to undocumented household help. But that would be a lie—that’s just a happy side effect.
I have a service because I don’t want to deal with people. I have enough emotional entanglements without worrying about whether my cleaning lady’s car was broken into, or whether her kid will graduate from high school, or any of the other drama tinged with guilt that accompanies such relationships. I never even see the women who clean my house…I leave a check, and I come home after work and see if they did a reasonably good job.
One day I was late and the women were early. Joshua was here, too, and we were bustling around getting coffee and briefcases together while the ladies unpacked their supplies.
“Sorry we’re in the way. I’m Deb,” I shook her hand.
“I’m Ebony. I’ve been cleaning your house for a over two years now,” she said.
“REALLY?” I’m sure my eyes were huge. They leave a note every other week when they come, but I never really registered that the same name was there. I really am a bitch.
“Yeah,” she answered, and looked at me deeply, “I’ve seen how much the kids have grown just by their things.”
And it struck me. This woman knew all about my life. And I had never, ever met her. She saw us slowly move in. She saw the furniture arranged and replaced and rearranged. She saw our old dogs get more and more frail and then disappear from our lives. She saw our puppies go from the tiny crate to the medium crate to the big crate, as their barks deepened. She saw the crib give way to the big girl bed, and the rattles be replaced by dolls. She saw Ben’s bubble bath turn to “grown up soap,” and even saw the deodorant on his counter. She saw Brett’s belongings move slowly to the basement, and then out altogether, along with half of our stuff. And she saw me begin to fill the void, making the house feel like a home to me more than ever before.
“You’ve seen it all change,” was all I could manage.
“Yes, yes I have. And it looks real good now.”
I have never seen her again, but she probably still sees the things that reveal me.
Revelations and Rebuilding. By Becca Sokolov (beccalov) 