Bonding with my Cleaning Lady She stood in my doorway, six feet tall, with short hair, broad shoulders and a take-no-prisoners attitude. "Hi, I Erika," she said in Hungarian-accented English, extending a firm handshake. Her eyes swept across the expanse of my living room and kitchen. "Mees, your house ees a mess!" I quaked in the face of her Eastern European contempt and shamefacedly showed her to the cleaning supplies. I have had other cleaning ladies before -- young and old, some who liked to chat with me, others who liked to talk on their cell phones. Some had been slow and meticulous, others slap-bang efficient. But I had never had anyone like Erika. Yes, she washed my floors and cleaned my bathrooms, but she also reorganized my closets and repaired my appliances. She was old enough to be my mother, yet she carried three heavy loads of laundry, stacked one atop the other, down two flights of stairs to my basement with frightening speed. There was nothing she couldn't do, and I was terrified of her. "Gila, isn't this what we're paying Erika for?" my husband would ask as I feverishly swept through the house on Tuesday nights, picking up every stray speck of dirt on the floor. But he didn't understand. He didn't have to undergo her silent inspections, to see her raised eyebrow as she encountered a kitchen full of dirty dishes from the night before. All my inadequacies were exposed to her, and I felt the need to utter periodic comments about my kids, shaking my head in exasperation as we’d enter a bedroom full of dirty laundry on the floor. I also made constant reference to my work, to helpfully remind her that even though Wednesday was my day off, I did work the other days of the week, and it only looked like I was home all day and still couldn't manage to keep my house straight. But we both knew that I wasn't fooling anyone. I was sure that if I walked into Erika's apartment, I would see color-coded closets and garbage cans you could eat out of, even though she worked full time.
32 / The Center Spirit / April 2022
At the beginning, Erika would complain about how hard she worked by me, and several times she threatened to leave if she found an easier job. She did eventually find her dream job, an older couple with no little children and a small, neat house, who were willing to pay her even more than I was. But Erika didn't leave me. She rearranged her schedule to fit both of us in. She loved my children. I sometimes wondered if that's what kept her coming. My 3-year-old would cry, "Erika! Erika!" as she walked through the door, and she would lift him up, giggling, until he touched the ceiling. She had a 5-year-old son, and on the Wednesdays when school was closed, she would bring Daniel to play with my boys while she cleaned. One day, she told me that she had given up her job at the dream house. I was surprised. "They not want me to bring Daniel there,” she explained. “When school is closed, what I should do? But they not want small children. Not nice people, not like you." I glowed with pride. We were beginning to understand each other. Erika had two daughters still living in Hungary, both in their 20’s. She had not seen them since she came to America more than ten years ago. She and her husband started a new life here, with Daniel, their American son, and she was strong and proud. I wondered about her, wondered how it felt