Raising Hope (8 page)

It was so typical of Ma to drag me to clean the Hoffmans’ house on my very first day working for her. I hated Sara Lynn Hoffman. I hated her prissy little mouth that never smiled at me, her cool blue eyes that looked right through me, and her blond hair that shone so prettily in the sunlight. I dragged my sneakers as I walked, making a scuffing sound. I was trapped, but I wouldn’t act like I was happy about it.

“You mind your manners,” Ma said, and I could tell she was just bursting with happiness over me having to clean the Hoffmans’ house. “I don’t care how jealous you are of Sara Lynn. This is a job, and you’ll do it well.”

“Ma, I’d rather get rabies shots than be cleaning Sara Lynn Hoffman’s house.”

I stood there with Ma at the Hoffmans’ dark green front door, looking at the freshly painted gray steps and the big black urns with pink and purple flowers pouring out of them. A perfect house for a perfect family, I thought bitterly, and I twisted off a flower hanging out of an urn and twirled it between my finger and thumb.

“Don’t pick Mrs. Hoffman’s flowers!” Ma was hissing like a cat in heat. “Sweet Jesus, I can’t take you anywhere.”

I gave her a mean look and stuffed the flower in my shorts pocket. I scratched my cheek where it felt like a bug was crawling and tapped my foot on the porch floor.

“And stop fidgeting,” Ma hissed again.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Ma . . .” She was driving me crazy. I was about to tell her to go to hell when I heard footsteps tapping toward the door and Ma gave me a sharp nudge.

“Why, Mary! How nice to see you!” Mrs. Hoffman, queen of the phony rich people in town, opened the door. I just stared at her as if I were looking at a Barbie doll come to life. She was all dressed up to the nines, wearing a pink dress printed with green frogs and lily pads. I looked down to rest my eyes from the bright colors of her getup and saw her little coral-painted toes sticking out of white sandals. I brought my eyes back up and noticed she wore pearls. Who the hell wore pearls at nine in the morning? But there she was, her long fingers playing at her neck, fiddling with those pearls. “And Ruth! Are you here to help your mother today?”

“Yes, Ruth is here to help me,” Ma said in her fake “we’re a perfect family” voice.

“Sara Lynn’ll be home soon, Ruth,” Mrs. Hoffman offered brightly, like she was telling me some good news. “She’s just out for a run right now.”

“What do I care?” I felt like saying, but I just smiled and nodded as I followed her and my mother into the hallway of the house. It was cool in there, not like our heat box of a house. Maybe the high ceilings made it cooler, I thought, and I lifted my head to get the full effect. There was an archway in the hall that led into a huge living room. I had never seen such a big room. And it wasn’t cluttered, either, not like the rooms at our house, so cluttered that my junk was mixed up with everybody else’s and we felt like we were drowning in stuff. There was a large white sofa facing a marble fireplace and two plush coral chairs on either side of the fireplace. There was a piano about the size of my bedroom sitting in the corner of that room, and I just stood there looking at the whole scene until Ma jerked me along back to the kitchen, where Mrs. Hoffman kept the cleaning supplies.

“Well, I’ll just go along into the garden, then,” said Mrs. Hoffman. She smiled at us as she put on a straw hat with black ribbons hanging down the back. “You call me if you need anything.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hoffman,” Ma simpered, and I wanted to throw up.

“How many times must I remind you to call me Aimee?” Mrs. Hoffman said lightly. “Haven’t we known each other since before our daughters were born?”

Well, Ma about went through the roof with pleasure on that comment. She giggled and blushed and said, “Oh, gosh, okay, Aimee.”

I had to clamp my mouth shut for fear I might open it and say something I might regret, something like “How did I happen to get such a damn fool for a mother?”

Ma wiped the smile off her face the second Mrs. Hoffman closed the back door behind her, and then she turned to me briskly. “Okay,” she said, handing me a bucket of cleaning supplies. “I’m going to let you start on the kitchen while I dust the living room and dining room. Wash the counters and appliances. Don’t forget to scrub the sink. When you’re finished, I’ll look at what you’ve done.”

“What about letting me dust, Ma, and you do the kitchen?”

“That’s the great thing about being your boss,” she said, smiling in a way that wasn’t a smile at all. “I can give you the dirty work.”

Great, I thought. I just get out of school where my whole life teachers have told me what to do, and now Ma’s got it into her head that she’s going to take over where they left off. “Ruth Teller, have you come in without your homework again?” “Ruth Teller, are you as dumb as you appear to be?” “Miss Teller, I can tell you spent about a second studying for this test. Don’t you care about your future?” I had hated school; I shuddered just to recall it as I wiped down Mrs. Hoffman’s stone countertops. I was no good at school—that was that—but every damn day of my life, teachers would act like this was news to them, like they really were surprised when I didn’t do my homework and study for tests. If they were so smart, shouldn’t they have figured out I wasn’t ever going to be any good at learning? It was just stupid—thinking I was going to change overnight and come in one day raising my hand like Sara Lynn Hoffman.

Sara Lynn . . . ugh. I hit the refrigerator with my cloth and thought of how many A+ papers Mrs. Hoffman must have tacked up to this fridge. Sara Lynn was so smart, she was valedictorian of our class. She got to make a little speech and all at graduation, and I tell you, I didn’t understand half of what she was yammering about. The future . . . blah, blah. The past . . . blah, blah. Who the hell could figure? She’d always been about as boring as the limp cleaning rag I held in my hand. She used to just saunter by me at school, looking above my head like she was checking for birds or something. Never said hi or anything. Wouldn’t be caught dead talking to the daughter of her mother’s cleaning lady.

They were all like that, those rich kids. Just kept to themselves and acted like we were the plague. Although I slept with one of them once—Jeff Barnes. I wasn’t a slut; he was the only guy I ever slept with. Besides, I didn’t want to get on to thinking about that. Just put it out of your mind—that’s what Ma told me to do whenever I thought about something bad.

Anyhow, Ma wasn’t crazy about any of the rich kids, either, except—you guessed it—Sara Lynn Hoffman. Of course, her precious Mrs. Hoffman’s daughter could do no wrong. When we were growing up, it was always “Sara Lynn Hoffman this” and “Sara Lynn Hoffman that.” “That child is so bright!” she’d tell me. “And her manners! Such a polite little thing. You’d do well to be friendly with her, Ruth; never mind that tarty Gina Logan you hang around with.” I’d nudge Bobby, crossing my eyes and sticking my tongue out to make him laugh, and she’d say, “It’s a shame all you two can do is laugh at someone who’s gifted and nice.” We’d just crack up more and say, “We’re not laughing at her, Ma, we’re laughing at you,” and then she’d get in a huff and mutter about how some people just weren’t lucky when it came to the children God decided to give them.

I cleaned the stove next, scrubbing down beneath the burners. Not much dirt was coming up. Either Mrs. Hoffman never cooked or she cleaned up after herself. Maybe that’s why Ma loved Mrs. Hoffman so much—because she wasn’t a slob like some of the other ladies. Ma could tell you stories that would make your hair curl about the filthy habits some people had. Habits like not cleaning the sink after they spit into it or leaving their used tampons lying on top of the trash for anybody to see. Yuck! At least Mrs. Hoffman wasn’t gross. I was hoping to find something disgusting about Sara Lynn, though, something that would turn my stomach. I laughed, imagining finding a floppy, smelly used condom under her bed. Wouldn’t that be something to show Ma? “Look what your perfect Sara Lynn has been up to,” I’d say.

The sink was easy to clean, too. I remembered not to forget the base of the faucet, and sure enough, I got a little crud out of that. It pleased me, so I scrubbed out the drain and got some more. Cleaning was sort of like detective work. You guessed where you’d find the dirt and then you went in and took care of it. I did the dishwasher next, and then I took a dry cloth and wiped down the white-painted cabinets. I stood back to look at my work, and I nodded. I hadn’t done a half-bad job.

“Ma!” I hollered. Then I remembered I was in someone else’s house, so I clapped my hand over my mouth and went into the living room to find her. She wasn’t in there, so I walked across the hall into the dining room. She was on her knees, dusting the legs of one of the ten dining room chairs. They weren’t just legs, either. They were curlicued, fancy legs with designs cut into them. Poor Ma had to dust in all the cracks and crevices of the designs. “Ma . . .” I walked up to her, my footsteps muffled by the large blue-and-red rug, and tapped her shoulder.

“Oh, my sweet Jesus!” she exclaimed, jumping up. “You scared me.” She placed her hand on her chest. “Whew! I get so used to having my mind go off on its own when I’m working . . . I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I’m done in the kitchen,” I said, and I tried not to sound as eager as I was for her to see it. I thought I’d done a good job; I’d surprised myself with how thorough I’d been.

“Okay,” she replied, and she stretched her arms over her head and leaned to one side to crack her back as she threw down her dust rag and walked toward the kitchen.

“Ewww,” I said, following her. I hated when she cracked her back—it was disgusting. All the little bones up and down her spine taking their turn snapping, like someone playing an out-of-tune piano.

“Ewww back to you,” she said as she stepped into the kitchen and looked around. She examined the countertops, getting down at their level and squinting her eyes to see that I had got all the crumbs. She looked at the appliances and the cabinets. “Hmm,” she said, and I could tell she was pleasantly surprised. “This isn’t bad, Ruth. You forgot to wipe off the handles on the cabinets and”—she opened the refrigerator door and pointed to the white, accordionlike plastic folds that sealed the door shut—“you’ll want to wipe down right here. Other than that”—she shrugged—“you’re ready to wash the floor.”

I wiped those cabinet handles until they shone, and then I cleaned every last white fold in the refrigerator seal. When I was done with all that, I scrubbed the floor on my hands and knees until I practically could see my reflection in it.

“Done,” I said triumphantly to Ma as I poked my head back in on her doing the vacuuming. She held up her hand for me to wait a minute, and then, when she had finished, she turned off the vacuum and followed me into the kitchen. I sure was proud of the job I had done. Ma thought I was lazy, I knew, but that wasn’t true. I just hated doing things I wasn’t very good at. I was good at this—I knew I was—and it made me want to do it right.

“Hmmph!” said Ma, putting her hands on her hips and looking around the room. She nodded her head and looked at me, pleased, like she was seeing something new in me. “Not bad at all.”

That was high praise from Ma, and I basked in it like a cat rolling around in a patch of sunlight. I must have done a good job, because she started to treat me a little more like a co-worker trying to get the job done and a little less like a rotten tag-along kid she needed to keep her eye on.

“Time to move upstairs,” said Ma. She hefted the vacuum cleaner, and I moved to help her with it. She grunted appreciatively and said, “Fair is fair. I’ll do the bathrooms up here and you can do the tidying and dusting and vacuuming.”

“What do you mean—bathrooms?” I asked. “How many do they have?”

“Four,” replied Ma.

“Four?!”

“Yep. One in Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman’s room, one in Sara Lynn’s room, one in each of the guest rooms.”

“So there’s a bathroom for everyone, plus one to spare,” I said, shaking my head in disgust. “It’s not fair.”

“Life’s not fair, Ruth,” Ma replied briskly. She loved telling me this, as if I couldn’t see it with my own two eyes. “Nobody ever said it would be.”

We stopped at the top of the stairs, and Ma pointed down the hall. “Door at the end,” she said. “We’ll start with Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman’s room.”

“Don’t you mean ‘Eliot and Aimee’s room’?” I teased.

“Just get to work, smart mouth,” she said, but her lips were twisting up into a smile as she pushed the vacuum down the hall and into the Hoffmans’ bedroom.

“God, Ma!” I gasped. Sara Lynn’s parents’ room was about as big as our whole kitchen and family room area, no lie. It was also neat as a pin. The bed was even made! I chuckled, thinking that there was no way in hell I’d make my bed on the day I knew a cleaning lady was coming over.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Ma walked across the floor and went into the bathroom. She sounded sort of sad, and I wanted to kick the wallpapered wall and leave a scuffmark because Mrs. Hoffman had so much and Ma didn’t have hardly anything at all. The windows faced the backyard, and I peered through the gauzy curtains to see Mrs. Hoffman below, cutting flowers and placing them into a basket.

I frowned and figured I’d better get on with it. I dusted the carved four-poster bed, wondering why in the name of God Mrs. Hoffman had such a liking for carved things. I dusted the bedside tables stacked with books and photos, and the high bureau that opened like a closet, with doors in front. I wiped down the baseboards and windowsills and then vacuumed the rug and washed down the surrounding wood floor. I looked around, pleased, and went into the bathroom to find Ma.

“Ma?” I called over the running water. Ma was on her knees, cleaning the tub.

“Yeah?” she said back, and she looked old to me right then, her face haggard underneath her graying, Brillo-pad hair.

“Done,” I said. “You can check if you want to, but I’m sure I did a good job.”

She looked at me a moment and said, “I don’t need to check. If you say it’s good, then it’s good.”

Now, I bet my brothers’ lives on the fact that the minute I hightailed it out of there, she nosed around to make sure my work was up to snuff. But still, I thought it was nice of her to act like she trusted me.