I pull up in front of a complex of endless Soviet-style apartments and walk over to the immaculate travelling hardware store that is the STC van, where I am handed a white disposable jumpsuit. The package specifies the garment’s ‘application’ as follows: Asbestos Removal, Abattoirs, Painting, Forensics, Insulation, Laboratories, Factories, Food Processing, Waste Control, Medical, Law Enforcement, Pesticide Spraying. I am also given a disposable respirator mask and a pair of blue rubber gloves. Four of Sandra’s cleaners are there: Tania, Cheryl, Lizzie and Dylan, everyone reduced to a small cheery face sticking out of a white disposable hood. Dylan, tall and still baby-faced, hands me two flat white things that look like chefs hats but turn out to be shoe covers. I glance at the others to figure out how to put them on.
With our hoods up and our blue gloves on we stand there looking like something between Smurfs and astronauts. Except for Sandra. Sandra is wearing a slim-line purple parka—ironed—with jeans and spotless white canvas sneakers. Sandra looks like she should be enjoying a Pimm’s after a walk along the beach. Instead she leads us through the security gates, into an elevator and up one floor to a flat where a young woman died of a heroin overdose and lay undiscovered for two and a half weeks in the summer heat. Sandra will collect the deceased’s personal items for the family, appraise what needs to be done to rent the apartment again and supervise the cleaning.
A man on the ground floor looks up and asks what we are doing.
‘Just some maintenance, darl,’ Sandra reassures him, which, in its way, is the truth.
One of the cleaners unlocks the door. Sandra has a quick look inside. ‘Ugh. Stinks,’ she says. ‘Right. Masks on, breathe through your mouth!’ She warns everyone to watch out for syringes while helping Tania don her mask. Tightening it, Sandra says to her wryly, ‘You may never breathe again, but don’t worry about it.’
Cheryl takes out a small jar of Tiger Balm and rubs it into each nostril before slipping on her mask.
Sandra remains unmasked. ‘Been doing it for so long, I don’t bother…Grin and bear it!’ she sings.
It is not her most visible trait—you would miss it altogether if you did not know her well, if she had not let you in sufficiently to welcome your calls with a sweetly rasping, ‘Good morning my little dove’—but that is what makes it her strongest: a bodily fortitude so incredible that it cannot be ascribed to mere biology. Aside from carrying around with her a lime-coloured leather handbag of fine quality in which she keeps an electric-blue tin of mints, six lipsticks, three jail-sized key rings, tissues, a camera, a little black diary for notes, a pen to write them with, a Ventolin inhaler, a mascara, a bottle of water, her iPhone and a cord with which to recharge it, Sandra also carries the burden of lung disease so severe that she cannot take more than a few steps, however slowly, without fighting for breath. And though you will hear this struggle, and though the sound of it is excruciating (even if it doesn’t descend into one of the frequent coughing fits so powerful it seems like it will turn her inside out), she will get on top of it as quickly as possible, accept no concern or special treatment, and resume whatever activity or conversation was interrupted with such competent dexterity that, if you remember it at all, the interruption will seem as significant as one sneeze in a cold.
It is, of course, not a cold. It is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with lung fibrosis and pulmonary hypertension. It can be managed with daily oxygen use, rest and the avoidance of environmental threats, but it is incurable.
Sandra uses her oxygen tank sparingly because she believes that the more she uses it, the more she will need it and it is one of the Golden Rules of Pankhurst ‘not to be reliant on any person or any thing’. So while she keeps the tank at the ready, it is more in the spirit of a safety net (‘If I end up getting pneumonia, then I’m fucked.’) rather than as a tool for daily living. As regards rest, she does not. She works at least six days per week and while she might make it home, some days, by four o’clock to watch The Bold and the Beautiful, it is not unusual for her to leave home at 6:30 a.m. and return at 7:30 p.m. She averages twelve hundred kilometres per week, driving to and between jobs across the state.
She will sometimes take perfunctory precautions against the environmental threats she encounters numerous times each day (sick clients, black mould spores, pathogens in accumulated biological material) by wearing a mask or gloves. But these are quickly cast off because they impede her ability to work efficiently, and because she does not want to alienate her already-distressed clients.
‘I’m meeting someone there, quite often a family member, I don’t want them to go into shock, like, “This person from outer space has come here.” I grin and bear it and I go in,’ she explained to me once.
In addition to severe pulmonary disease, Sandra also has cirrhosis of the liver. The causes of her conditions are various and not susceptible to confident isolation. The chemicals she used in the early years of her cleaning business may play a role; so too her decades of double-dosing female hormones. Then there are viruses and biology and a factor euphemistically known as ‘lifestyle’, which carries with it specious overtones of culpability. Her drinking, and her years of heavy drug use earlier in her life, conform with the fact that trans people have higher rates of self-medication.
I mentioned once to her how I read that, even on the normal dose of hormones, the medical recommendation is to stay as healthy as possible through diet, exercise and abstaining from cigarettes and alcohol. Her thoughts on this were expressed by a prolonged period of deep laughter and, as she finally dabbed at her eyes, the comment: ‘Fuck me, that’s a bit like a comedy routine.’
Sandra has not had a cigarette in ten years, but while she has abstained from alcohol during the periods in which her health has been particularly bad, she allows herself ‘a [couple of] glass[es] of wine [and]/or Scotch’ every evening—against medical advice, given the condition of her liver.
Every day she wakes up early to the drone of the television in order to drown out the demons that wake alongside her. And though it’s only partly successful she gets up anyway and dresses nicely anyway and goes out to run a business anyway. She hustles for more work and repeatedly tears herself away from the Velcro of her mind to crack jokes and, after a long day of driving between jobs that range from the distasteful to the apocalyptic, she returns home to cook herself and Lana a fillet steak, administers that speedily nibbling dog a sliver of Prozac and pours herself her drinks after retiring to her couch to finally enjoy a few hours of peace.
Which is all to say that Sandra’s diagnoses, while true, are not truer than her will. But she’s long known that the body can be a liar. So when you ask her how she is doing, she will say, ‘Oh, you know, mustn’t grumble,’ and then scoop you up and rush you through the latest updates on her plans for beauty treatments or expanding her business.
‘Once I make up my mind to do something, I’m very powerful. Nothing can gild the lily. I’m very focused. It’s like smoking. Since I was diagnosed with lung problems, I stopped like that.’ Sandra snaps her fingers, and the gold heart dangling from her bracelet clinks against the chunky chain. ‘There’s no weaning or waning, it’s bingo. I’m a firm believer that you’re as powerful as your mind. Firm believer. Mmmm,’ she growls in agreement with herself.
Thirteen-hour work days and six-day work weeks and forty-eight-hundred-kilometre months and deep laughter from the woman whose health was judged, by three different specialist panels, too risky to waste a lung transplant on. All agreed that she would not survive the surgery, in part because of the condition of her liver. She told them, ‘I don’t want to die grasping for air. It’s better that I have the operation. I’m in a win-win: I either get the operation and I live, or if I die, I go out trying.’ Still, she was denied.
Her outrage at this was expressed once when she told me that one of her hoarding clients, an elderly man whose oxygen bottles were sitting in a pile of his own faeces, had mentioned that he had been offered a lung transplant but wasn’t sure he wanted it. She was utterly enraged recounting this to me: ‘He gets a chance and I don’t?!’ She could understand neither how he was a better candidate nor how one could be ambivalent about the proffered organ. ‘You take opportunities when you get them, baby!’
When I asked Sandra’s doctor what the average patient with her comorbid conditions would be doing each day, he replied that they would be at home, resting. I mentioned how much she takes on and her seemingly infinite energy, and he responded drolly but with clear fondness and admiration: ‘She should just be tired all the time. I can’t imagine what she would have been like without this.’ He stopped to ponder the counter-factual scenario for a moment before shaking his head. ‘It’s just incredible.’
Sandra’s lifestyle is not what runners would call a suicide pace. On the contrary, it is deeply sustaining. ‘I like to keep busy,’ I heard her explain to a client once. ‘Having a terminal illness, I find that it keeps my mind busy, I don’t think about it, and I stay positive.’ She has no more chances for a lung transplant. ‘None at all. Signed, sealed and delivered. How many times have they had me dead and buried? They should name me Lady Lazarus,’ she laughed. I had seen for myself the months of deep depression that followed the panel’s final decision. The months when she found that the less she did, the less she wanted to do, until she was, yes, willing herself to die.
‘Breathe through your mouth! Concentrate on it!’ Sandra commands as she turns the doorknob and leads the charge straight ahead into the dim apartment.
The first thing I notice is the flies. Their papery corpses are crisp underfoot. I wouldn’t say that the place is carpeted with flies, but there is a pretty consistent cover of them on the tiles. It is a small apartment. The laundry cupboard is located in the tiny foyer and the dryer door is opened wide. A basket of clean clothes is on the floor beside it.
I walk past a bathroom and two small bedrooms and into a living room–kitchen area. The TV has been left on and is playing cartoons. There is a balcony at the far end of the apartment; a breeze blows in through the open sliding door and over the sofa, which has been stripped of its cover but not the person-shaped rust-red stain spread across the seat nearest the window. The stain is shocking and frightening but not as frightening as the tableau of life suddenly interrupted.
Cheryl is in the main bedroom guessing about the face of the woman whose underwear drawer she is emptying. Tania is making an inventory of the kitchen. She opens drawers and cupboards, taking photos of everything inside. The top drawer has the full complement of cooking utensils owned by high-functioning adults. The cupboard has a big box of cereal, a jar of Gatorade powder. A grey plastic shopping bag of rubbish is suspended from the handle of the cupboard under the sink.
‘Everything has to go,’ Sandra says, striding through.
‘The fridge comes with the apartment,’ Lizzie reminds her.
‘Ah.’ Sandra is dismayed. I watch her mentally flick through the library of disinfectants in her van. ‘What else comes with the apartment? We need to be clear or else we’ll throw everything out.’
The lone magnet on the fridge says: If your doctor is closed, we’re open. After hours medical helpline…
On one side of the kitchen sink is a pile of clean syringes. On the other side, an unopened box of organic cotton tampons, tossed there like they were purchased an hour ago and are waiting for the milk to go into the fridge before they are taken to the bathroom cupboard. Tania photographs a drawer full of grey plastic bags.
Everyone has gathered around a few framed photos of the deceased woman with friends or family.
‘What a waste, hey,’ someone says, peering into it rabbinically.
‘Pretty girl,’ another says. I wonder if that’s what she looked like when she died, or at the time in her life she would forever try to return to.
The cleaners are quiet and efficient; quick and respectful. They remind me of nurses. Black mounds of dead flies are pooled in the light fixtures. I scan the bookshelf. There is Narcotics Anonymous. There is The Secret of Attraction. Taking Care of Yourself and Your Family and When Everything Changes, Change Everything. There are DVDs. There is Bridesmaids. An ad for Big Hugs Elmo, the toy that hugs back, comes on the TV. I go into the main bedroom.
A copy of The Instant Tarot Reader holds a piece of black fabric in place over the window near the bed. There are bottles of Ralph Lauren perfume and a pink salt lamp and an organic lip balm from Miranda Kerr’s line.
‘Anything that’s personalised, anything that’s got her handwriting, her name…’ Cheryl reminds Lizzie as they squat to sort through the desk at the foot of the bed. They are winding up her phone charger and putting her handbag near the front door.
Sandra instructs Dylan to take the clean syringes and seal up the yellow plastic container of dirty syringes on the coffee table for the police ‘as evidence of drug activity’. Although the police do not disclose investigative details to Sandra, she knows this death is not being treated as a homicide. Still, she suspects the woman was not alone when she died. ‘You do your own Sherlock Holmes. You play detective all day long,’ she told me once.
I cross the hall. The bathroom cupboards are open. There are the usual creams and appliances. Fake tan. The brand of exfoliator I use.
I go back into the living room and force myself to look around slowly. I see two scattered bed pillows covered with the same red-brown stain as the one on the couch. Drying blood. I see a viscous smear of human shit on the floor under the couch. I see a big bottle of Pepsi Max, still full, and a pack of cigarettes on the coffee table, also full. I do not see any living flies. The apartment is simultaneously so full and so empty; absence is a presence like dark matter and black holes.
Sandra places a birthday card with a sassy cat on it into a white rubbish bag full of personal items and then instructs Dylan to look carefully through all the books to see if there are any photos between the pages. The family want anything that’s personalised. It’s important.
The four small rooms are an encyclopaedia of striving and struggle. The basket of clean laundry. The elliptical machine painted thick with dust. The kitchen drawer of grocery bags at the ready for reuse. The Narcotics Anonymous handbook and the Secrets of Attraction. The clean syringes. The smell of death, unnoticed for two and a half weeks at the height of summer, which is seeping through my mask and into my mouth.
We step outside for a moment. There is blood on Lizzie’s gloves; redder—fresher—than the blood on the fabric of the couch. Someone asks Sandra where it came from if the house was locked up.
‘Maggots,’ she replies dryly. ‘Cycle of life. It’s quite amazing.’
While Sandra teaches Dylan how to double-bag the personal items so they don’t smell, how to wrap tape around the top in a way that is easy for the family to open, I stare across into the windows of the identical apartments surrounding us.
This is how it ends, sometimes, with strangers in gloves looking at your blood and your too-many bottles of shampoo and your now-ironic Make Positive Changes postcard of Krishna and the last TV channel you flipped to on the night you died and the way the sun hits the tree outside your bedroom window that you used to wake up looking at. This is how it ends if you are unlucky, but lucky enough to have someone like Sandra remember to go through your books for pieces of you to save before strangers move their furniture into the spots where yours used to stand.