21.Dear Diary,
I’m scared that my cleaning lady hates me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not afraid for my safety or anything like that. Mostly what I’m afraid of is that there’s been a horrible misunderstanding. That Sarah (that’s my cleaning lady) thinks I’m not the person I actually am. Or even worse, thinks I’m a person that I’m actually not. Basically a bad person. A person who likes to accuse, and point fingers. But that’s not who I am. I want Sarah to feel welcome in my home. I want her to feel that as she cleans my home, she’s cleaning her own home. That she could almost move in if she wanted to. Not that she could, and that’s not because of her. I’m sure Sarah would be a lovely roommate. No, it’s because of me. I’m too much. I know I’d drive her crazy to the point where she would want to murder me. Just kill me in cold blood. Stab me in the shower so all the mess was only in the bathtub. Or if it was a bath, she’d throw in the plugged-in Vitamix (that I never use). Still making sure that the only mess was in the tub. Or maybe she’d poison me. Fill my toothpaste up with bleach or something. I guess that wouldn’t kill me, though. It’d just all stay in my mouth that way. Very little would be swallowed. However, maybe being absorbed through the teeth would be enough? Right? The teeth go right to the heart. My sister died that way. She had a rotten tooth and it gave her a rotten heart. Oy, terrible. I wish I missed my sister more than I do. I feel so guilty I don’t. Anyway, my sister is why I try to floss as much as I can. Unless I’m too tired, of course. And I know that’s terrible but if I’m a certain type of tired I can barely bring myself to brush, let alone floss, my teeth. But I know I have to. When Menachem was alive I’d floss, otherwise he’d call me disgusting and say he didn’t know which end of me he was kissing. That made me floss, all right. But now, who do I need good breath for? I’ll never have sex again. I’m sure Sarah has sex. Lots of sex. She’s a person who I’m sure experiences pleasure on a regular basis. She has that glow about her. And I feel awful that there is this misunderstanding that could in any way be diminishing that glow. I know it’s not me, though, probably. It’s what I represent. I represent that type of woman who treats her with disrespect. Who orders her around, and thinks she’s stupid just because she’s cleaning my house for a living. When that’s of course not what I think at all. I grew up cleaning my house. I wasn’t stupid. I got all of my homework done. I graduated high school and college at the top of my class. Was I the smartest one? Far from it. But I held my own. My son told me the other day (or rather he yelled at me the other day) that I speak too loudly to Sarah. “You raise your voice in volume, because you think that’s going to make her understand you better, but it doesn’t. It makes her think that you’re talking down to her.” I don’t agree. First of all, I don’t notice the voice raise. I know when I raise my voice. It’s not that often that I do, so when I do, trust me, I notice it more than anybody else. That being said, this one day I felt like she did get noticeably annoyed with me after I did her the favor of warning her not to put the wrong type of floor cleaner in the bucket. There’s cleaner for the wood floor, and cleaner for the tile. And the tile cleaner will just destroy the wood. Sure, I tell her every week, but she cleans a lot of houses and I’ve never seen her take any notes when I’ve told her what to do, and I sure have never given her any written instructions. So to me it would be easy for her to forget. If I were her I would want to be reminded. So that’s what I do every week. Remind her about every little thing that she could justifiably forget because she’s so busy and so very tired. Well, last week I told her and she looked at me with a rage I had never seen her look at me with before. Looked me right in the eyes. Like I was a wolf that had just eaten her child. Then she took her fist and she hit her thigh. I’ve never seen anyone hit their thigh so hard. And I knew in that hit that she didn’t want to hit her thigh. No, not her thigh. She wanted to hit my thigh. Or even worse, my arm. Maybe even my head. Oy vay, if she hit my head as hard as she hit her thigh, she would have definitely knocked me unconscious. Then I tried to make it up to her. I asked her if she wanted my leftover dinner from the night before. I was bad. I got myself a burger with fries. But at least the burger had grilled onions. I cut it in half, because I knew that I would probably only eat half, and should only eat half, so I cut it exactly in half to make sure I didn’t have too much or too little. Plus I had some fries. I asked her if she was hungry and wanted the leftover half of the burger. I told her that I never touched it. I cut it with a knife, but my hands had barely touched it, plus I wash my hands so thoroughly before I prepare food or eat that my hands had less germs on them than a brand-new bar of soap. She said no at first. But I begged her. Pleaded with her to eat the burger half, and if she was still hungry I’d gladly order her more. She must have been more hungry than angry because she finally agreed to eat it. I was so happy that she was going to eat the burger half. Happy that I could make up for anything that I might have said or done. But then when she bit into it she got this look. Like fear and also disgust. She spit the burger all over the place, and started dry-heaving right in the middle of the kitchen. Turns out Sarah hates onions on a burger. Who hates onions on a burger? And if that’s the case, maybe ask me if there’s onion on it before you take a bite? Onions are not a weird thing to have on a burger. In fact, it would be weird if a burger didn’t have onions. McDonald’s, the most famous burger restaurant there is, puts onions on their burgers. It’s not like it had cranberries on it and I didn’t tell her. Or even bacon. Not everyone eats pork. I certainly don’t. But onions? That’s like someone getting mad at you for not telling them that ketchup was on a burger. Anyway, I think that did something. Because since the onion incident things really haven’t been the same with her. She hasn’t smiled at me for two weeks. And her hellos and good-byes are almost at a whisper. And for what? Onions? I don’t know. Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe she still loves me. I love her. I really see her as a part of the family, and she really is just so very good at cleaning. I’d probably let her go, if I knew of anyone else who could possibly clean as good as her. But it took so long to find someone as good as Sarah, so I’ll risk it, I guess. Hopefully she gets her cheery self back again soon. And if one day my son comes in and finds me stabbed to death in my shower, at least the rest of the house will be spotless. God forbid. I’ve been crying a lot around her. And it’s not that I need her to take care of me. That’s not our relationship. She’s never been one to mother me. But it’s the warmth of her presence that brings me a certain comfort. Because when I get sad, things get so cold and I need warmth. My son used to give me that warmth, but I think he’s mad at me, too. I don’t know, I think he’s maybe reached some kind of breaking point with me. There’s no patience for me anymore. Really everyone seems to have lost their patience with me. Things have been so hard since Menachem died. I don’t know why people can’t see that. I don’t know why they can’t cut me a little slack. Sure, it was eleven years ago. But what is time. There’s nothing like losing someone. Especially a husband. It changes everything. I always knew that I was going to die someday, but now that he’s gone I really know it. Maybe that’s why people have lost their patience for me. Maybe my time’s up soon and everyone can feel that and maybe they’re afraid of death. Or they’re afraid of losing me and they can’t deal with it. Sure, maybe that’s it. Maybe this impatience and this coldness is all out of love, and fear of losing me. I don’t know. Who’s to know? What do I know. All I know is I thought things would be different by now. I thought I’d have a son who called me every day. A son I’d have to tell to leave me alone, because I have my own life and other friends and I can’t just only spend time with him. I thought I would have to remind him that he can’t marry me, because I’m his mother. That I’d wake up on a Sunday morning to the security alarm going off because he broke into my house to serve me breakfast in bed. I thought I’d have a cleaning lady who called me mother. Who would use a big chunk of the money I paid her to buy me a first-class ticket to Mexico, and when I refused it she’d threaten to quit if I didn’t take it so that I’d go and meet her biological mother and tell her that she was my daughter now. And her mother would be fine with it because she’d know what a wonderful mother I’d make for her daughter. I wish more people would look at me. Their eyes avoid me. They know I’m sad. I wish strangers would come up to me on the street and ask me for advice because of the natural wisdom I give off. I wish I’d be walking down the street with my cleaning lady and someone would do that. And then Sarah would watch me give a total stranger amazing advice. Maybe then she’d be proud to be working for me. Maybe then she wouldn’t hate me so much.