At some point the ladies had to consider whether to keep a housekeeper who won’t do windows, doesn’t like to dust, hates cleaning the shower, balks at washing the kitchen mat, won’t use over cleaner, hates bleach and other harsh cleaning products….
The housekeeper takes out the trash and if she happens to see something down at the bottom she wants, she goes dumpster diving. She scores a pair of newish pajamas with a cute little dog and cat print, an old side table, and a broken lamp.
She is industrious about making money and collects all the recycling she can find. She knows who all the drinkers are and where they deposit their empty bottles. She doesn’t hesitate to dig through the recycling confiscating any aluminum, plastic, or glass.
She has a soft spot for people who need more help than she does. She collects items to donate to the battered women’s shelter. She goes through the donations keeping an eye out for anything useful: a clock radio, two older cell phones, a TV that still works, a large bag of professional career dresses…. The women looking for work would appreciate some of these things.
She is a good audience for all the stories and jokes she has heard umpteen times from the old ladies she cares for. She works for at least two of them each day for a couple of hours collecting her weekly sums to subsidize her disability checks. Welfare does not cover all of her needs.
The ladies do not feel as if she is cheating the system. They justify the money they give her as a senior care expense. In their minds she is subsidizing their Social Security. They gladly pay her the pittance she asks for each week.
She is more than a housekeeper to these octogenarians. She is their friend. She visits them in the hospital. She brings them each a card on their birthdays along with a present she buys from the dollar store and a bouquet of flowers she picks from someone else’s yard.
As much as they love her, the list of of chores she won’t do grows even longer. Since she is approaching fifty herself, it could be that her resistance is a sign of her own advancing age. She might need a housekeeper herself soon.
The ladies talk among themselves. She will do windows for some but not others. She loves gardening, pruning, and weeding. She would rather be outside if the weather isn’t too hot. She will cancel a job if the temperature gets into the eighties, but she will come over in the dusk hours to weed and water working until it is too dark to see.
No one wants to let her go. She is a friend and a daughter, who pays attention to details. Even though she complains, she continues to do the list of chores that gets handed to her everyday sometimes sighing loudly when she sees: dusting, oven, shower, or windows on the list.
She decides she will continue working like this until she can’t. She doesn’t take on many new people. When this batch dies off, she thinks she will retire to cleaning her own house. But then again, she’d be bored without the old ‘dams, so maybe she’ll just do it ’til she herself dies…? Who will take care of her? She wonders.
