Read Online A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin - Free Book Online
Authors: Lucia Berlin
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Only open the Comet tab to three holes instead of six. Waste not, want not. Once, in a fit of rebellion, I ripped the tab completely off and accidentally spilled Comet all down the inside of the stove. A mess.
(Cleaning women: Let them know you are thorough. The first day put all the furniture back wrong … five to ten inches off, or facing the wrong way. When you dust, reverse the Siamese cats, put the creamer to the left of the sugar. Change the toothbrushes all around.)
My masterpiece in this area was when I cleaned the top of Mrs. Burke’s refrigerator. She sees everything, but if I hadn’t left the flashlight on she would have missed the fact that I scoured and re-oiled the waffle iron, mended the geisha girl, and washed the flashlight as well.
Doing everything wrong not only reassures them you are thorough, it gives them a chance to be assertive and a “boss.” Most American women are very uncomfortable about having servants. They don’t know what to do while you are there. Mrs. Burke does things like recheck her Christmas card list and iron last year’s wrapping paper. In August.
Try to work for Jews or blacks. You get lunch. But mostly Jewish and black women respect work, the work you do, and also they are not at all ashamed of spending the entire day doing absolutely nothing. They are paying you , right?
The Christian Eastern Stars are another story. So they won’t feel guilty always try to be doing something they never would do. Stand on the stove to clean an exploded Coca-Cola off the ceiling. Shut yourself inside the glass shower. Shove all the furniture, including the piano, against the door. They would never do that, besides, they can’t get in.
Thank God they always have at least one TV show that they are addicted to. I flip the vacuum on for half an hour (a soothing sound), lie down under the piano with an Endust rag clutched in my hand, just in case. I just lie there and hum and think. I refused to identify your body, Ter, which caused a lot of hassle. I was afraid I would hit you for what you did. Died.
Burke’s piano is what I do last before I leave. Bad part about that is the only music on it is “The Marine Hymn.” I always end up marching to the bus stop “From the Halls of Monte-zu-u-ma…”
58–COLLEGE–BERKELEY. A mean old white driver. It’s raining, late, crowded, cold. Christmas is a bad time for buses. A stoned hippy girl shouted, “Let me off this fuckin’ bus!” “Wait for the designated stop!” the driver shouted back. A fat woman, a cleaning woman, vomited down the front seat onto people’s galoshes and my boot. The smell was foul and several people got off at the next stop, when she did. The driver stopped at the Arco station on Alcatraz, got a hose to clean it up but of course just ran it all into the back and made things wetter. He was red-faced and furious, ran the next light, endangering us all, the man next to me said.
At Oakland Tech about twenty students with radios waited behind a badly crippled man. Welfare is next door to Tech. As the man got on the bus, with much difficulty, the driver said, “OH JESUS CHRIST” and the man looked surprised.
Burke’s again. No changes. They have ten digital clocks and they all have the same right time. The day I quit I’ll pull all the plugs.
I finally did quit Mrs. Jessel. She kept on paying me with a check and once she called me four times in one night. I called her husband and told him I had mononucleosis. She forgot I quit, called me last night to ask if she had looked a little paler to me. I miss her.
A new lady today. A real lady.
(I never think of myself as a cleaning lady, although that’s what they call you, their lady or their girl.)
Mrs. Johansen. She is Swedish and speaks English with a great deal of slang, like Filipinos.
The first thing she said to me, when she opened the door, was “HOLY MOSES!”
“Oh. Am I too early?”
“Not at all, my dear.”
She took the stage. An eighty-year-old
(Cleaning women: Let them know you are thorough. The first day put all the furniture back wrong … five to ten inches off, or facing the wrong way. When you dust, reverse the Siamese cats, put the creamer to the left of the sugar. Change the toothbrushes all around.)
My masterpiece in this area was when I cleaned the top of Mrs. Burke’s refrigerator. She sees everything, but if I hadn’t left the flashlight on she would have missed the fact that I scoured and re-oiled the waffle iron, mended the geisha girl, and washed the flashlight as well.
Doing everything wrong not only reassures them you are thorough, it gives them a chance to be assertive and a “boss.” Most American women are very uncomfortable about having servants. They don’t know what to do while you are there. Mrs. Burke does things like recheck her Christmas card list and iron last year’s wrapping paper. In August.
Try to work for Jews or blacks. You get lunch. But mostly Jewish and black women respect work, the work you do, and also they are not at all ashamed of spending the entire day doing absolutely nothing. They are paying you , right?
The Christian Eastern Stars are another story. So they won’t feel guilty always try to be doing something they never would do. Stand on the stove to clean an exploded Coca-Cola off the ceiling. Shut yourself inside the glass shower. Shove all the furniture, including the piano, against the door. They would never do that, besides, they can’t get in.
Thank God they always have at least one TV show that they are addicted to. I flip the vacuum on for half an hour (a soothing sound), lie down under the piano with an Endust rag clutched in my hand, just in case. I just lie there and hum and think. I refused to identify your body, Ter, which caused a lot of hassle. I was afraid I would hit you for what you did. Died.
Burke’s piano is what I do last before I leave. Bad part about that is the only music on it is “The Marine Hymn.” I always end up marching to the bus stop “From the Halls of Monte-zu-u-ma…”
58–COLLEGE–BERKELEY. A mean old white driver. It’s raining, late, crowded, cold. Christmas is a bad time for buses. A stoned hippy girl shouted, “Let me off this fuckin’ bus!” “Wait for the designated stop!” the driver shouted back. A fat woman, a cleaning woman, vomited down the front seat onto people’s galoshes and my boot. The smell was foul and several people got off at the next stop, when she did. The driver stopped at the Arco station on Alcatraz, got a hose to clean it up but of course just ran it all into the back and made things wetter. He was red-faced and furious, ran the next light, endangering us all, the man next to me said.
At Oakland Tech about twenty students with radios waited behind a badly crippled man. Welfare is next door to Tech. As the man got on the bus, with much difficulty, the driver said, “OH JESUS CHRIST” and the man looked surprised.
Burke’s again. No changes. They have ten digital clocks and they all have the same right time. The day I quit I’ll pull all the plugs.
I finally did quit Mrs. Jessel. She kept on paying me with a check and once she called me four times in one night. I called her husband and told him I had mononucleosis. She forgot I quit, called me last night to ask if she had looked a little paler to me. I miss her.
A new lady today. A real lady.
(I never think of myself as a cleaning lady, although that’s what they call you, their lady or their girl.)
Mrs. Johansen. She is Swedish and speaks English with a great deal of slang, like Filipinos.
The first thing she said to me, when she opened the door, was “HOLY MOSES!”
“Oh. Am I too early?”
“Not at all, my dear.”
She took the stage. An eighty-year-old
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