It’s true, Maid Brigade does have a reputation for exploiting its workers. But not so badly as other local cleaning services.

  You are hopeful, reckless. You are stronger than you appear, a girl who never complains, fit for the rigors of housecleaning that will pay better than your other shitty jobs and will not require smiling until your face aches.

  Thinking—If Mom finds out, what will she think?

  Thinking—Will Mom understand why I am doing this, or will she be ashamed and hate me more?

  Off the Books

  THE CLIENT WAS A “DOCTOR”—THAT IS, HIS NAME WAS PREFIXED by Dr.

  The client had money, clearly. Divorced, living alone in a high-rise condominium building overlooking the Saint Lawrence River. A reputation for good tips but a short temper, high expectations, don’t “engage” with this client you will regret it.

  Most of the Agency’s clients were women. Wives of well-to-do husbands, in large homes. You did not “engage” with them either if you could avoid it. If you were wise. Often, these clients did not tip. They paid (by check) through the Agency which would then pass on to the worker a small gratuity.

  Except, I was a new hire. A part-time hire. Not full-time. No benefits. No weekly checks. Off the books.

  GOES WITHOUT SAYING, OK. BUT AVA SCHULTZ AT MAID BRIGADE will say it, frank, blunt, no-bullshit which is what people love about brass-blond Ava with studs in eyebrows, nostril and the husky upper arms of a woman who has put in time as a house-cleaner herself.

  Don’t fuck with the client, see? Like stealing some dinky thing you think they won’t miss because they will miss it.

  And don’t fuck the client. Period.

  HIS NAME WAS ORLANDO METTI. WE WERE TO CALL HIM DR. METTI.

  I’d been cleaning houses for just two weeks and I was still learning. Still undecided if I wanted to clean other people’s houses. If I was that desperate for money. Willing to stoop, to kneel. Willing to scour away other people’s grime, filth, shit. Willing to grovel for tips. This afternoon I’d been paired with a middle-aged Guatemalan woman named Felice who’d been cleaning for the client for several years. When we arrived at Metti’s apartment on the seventeenth floor of a dazzling high-rise building overlooking the Saint Lawrence River Felice murmured to me, “We take off our shoes now, please. When we go in.”

  Take off our shoes! I hadn’t been forewarned. Fortunately I was wearing gray woolen hiking socks without obvious holes, that would keep my feet reasonably warm through the hours of our labor.

  THE MAN IS A PERFECTIONIST. DO NOT RUSH THROUGH THE CLEANING, he will complain to the agency. The master bed especially—be very careful making the master bed. Kitchen, bathroom, sinks, tub and shower—be sure that they are shining. Otherwise he will refuse to pay the full fee. He will request that you never return.

  Yet to us, Orlando Metti was surprisingly polite. That afternoon. For we had worked very hard. For we had spent a good deal of time removing, with varying degrees of success, dog-urine stains, and worse, from carpets scattered about the eight-room apartment, made by the client’s daughter’s little French bulldog, kept temporarily on the premises while the daughter was at college.

  Soap and water, bleach. Doggy-Out! in an aerosol spray.

  Indeed, the client was polite, almost apologetic.

  Assuring us that the “damned little dog” would not be in the apartment much longer, if he could help it.

  Metti had been absent for most of the time we were cleaning but returned in time to inspect the premises, as Felice had told me he would do. I held my breath as he checked the interior of the refrigerator, one of the tedious tasks Felice had assigned me.

  Held my breath as the (elegantly groomed) client ran his finger along a stretch of counter behind a microwave oven which one might not have thought of cleaning since it was out of sight, out of mind.

  A few minor items needed re-checking, re-cleaning of which only one was within my province, the others Felice’s.

  But Dr. Metti didn’t seem grievously annoyed by these minor mistakes only pointed them out with a grimace somewhere between a smile and a sneer as if saying Gotcha, girls!

  Then, with the dignified magnanimity of the patriarch, though scarcely glancing at us, Dr. Metti declared Good work, girls! and pressed bills into our hands as we left the apartment.

  Twenty dollars. Was this a generous tip?—it seemed so, to me. For there would be another, second gratuity from the Agency included with our payment for the week.

  In the glass elevator soundlessly descending to the ground floor, a fluid vertical slide that made me feel faint, the very smoothness of it, the silence of the descent, a luxury we somehow didn’t deserve but were receiving, a bonus, like another tip—(for Felice and I were a brute sort of proletariat labor, there was less romance in housecleaning than in, even, waitressing)—Felice folded her twenty-dollar bill carefully and put it in her handbag. Her face was tired, drawn, petulant. Her thin-penciled eyebrows frowned. Her lips were pursed tight. She’d been friendly with me previously. She’d been patient giving me instructions, advice. But now when I tried to speak to her Felice frowned and shrugged and turned away.

  Felice was a bosomy woman, with an air of careworn glamour, barely five feet tall. Awkwardly I towered over her. Somehow this made her rebuff all the more shocking.

  Later I would discover from another girl at the Agency that Felice bitterly resented it, that the client had given me the identical tip he’d given her. Though I was only assisting her, and was much younger than she was, and Felice had been cleaning for this particular client for years.

  There was something between them, maybe. No one knows for sure.

  Felice would never say. But maybe—that was it.

  THE FOLLOWING THURSDAY, I WAS INSTRUCTED BY AVA TO ARRIVE at Metti’s apartment at 1:00 P.M. sharp. I would be cleaning the apartment alone.

  But what about Felice? I asked in a panic.

  The client has insisted, he wants just one maid. He will pay the full fee as if there were two. He said—Just the girl next time. Not the other.

  PLEASE WAS A WORD THIS CLIENT OFTEN UTTERED. PLEASE WAS SO pleasant a sound in Metti’s deep-modulated voice, you did not (immediately) register it as a command.

  Have you a few extra minutes, please?

  Or—Do you have time to do an errand for me? Please.

  Soon it became routine. If Dr. Metti returned before I’d finished cleaning the apartment he would ask me to do something extra on my way home, a “personal errand”—a “favor.”

  Would I please?

  Seeing my hesitation (for I had a class at the university that evening) quickly adding that he would pay me extra. Of course.

  Directly to you—is it Vivian?—Violet? Not to the cleaning service. Cash in hand.

  A shivery sensation, the possibility of cash in hand.

  That’s to say, from Metti’s (warm) hand to mine.

  Exhausted from several hours of housecleaning nonetheless I smiled at the client. Taking care that my shoulders not slouch and hoping that I did not look as disheveled as I felt.

  Had to smile—I suppose: no matter that I’d explained to Metti that I had a class in the evening he seemed never to recall from one week to the next. As if the cleaning-girl in his employ existed only when Metti was conscious of her and ceased existing otherwise.

  For I understood how easily Metti could fire me. All it would require would be a telephone call to the Agency and I would never see him again, as Felice was never to see him again.

  (Poor Felice! When we encountered each other at Maid Brigade she stared at me in contempt. Her indignation was such, the hurt brimming in her eyes so intense, I had to turn away, shamed.)

  Few other clients tipped so generously as Dr. Metti, it seemed. Few were as attractive as Dr. Metti.

  So I said OK, yes. Whatever additional tasks Metti wanted from me did not seem like such a burden.

  Agreeing was in fact a kind of pleasure. Smile smile for the attractive (male) (unmarried) client who seemed barely to glance at me but who tipped more generously than anyone in my experience.

  I had not surrendered my dignity. I didn’t think so. Metti had not laid a hand on me—had not come close.

  As an animal—to avoid punishment, to assure nourishment and approval—can learn to behave contrary to its nature, and convincingly, I smiled at Orlando Metti. And I smiled.

  SAVING WHAT I COULD OF THE MONEY I’D EARNED OFF THE BOOKS to send to the family of Hadrian Johnson that would be, in the end, after months of housecleaning, nearly one thousand dollars.

  No one in my life to ask me—But why? It will not bring him back, will it?

  Rat, Waiting

  IT WAS A TIME WHEN I’D BEGUN TO WAIT MORE EXPLICITLY.

  With more clarity, apprehension: as the term of Lionel’s incarceration began to wind down.

  For it seemed to me, I was serving Lionel’s sentence too.

  Seven to thirteen years, and there’d been the expectation at the time of sentencing that of course Lionel would be paroled. Good behavior. No infractions of rules. Support of prison chaplain. High school equivalency diploma.

  Yet, it did not happen. As the years passed, no parole.

  Why, wasn’t clear. Decisions of the Mid-State Correctional Facility for Men at Marcy were classified. No explanation.

  I’d given up writing to Lionel. No more cards, terse cheery sisterly notes flung into an abyss deep as the Grand Canyon.

  Before I’d left Port Oriskany Ms. Herne had advised me to maintain contact with the parole board at Marcy. Just so that you are warned, Violet. If your family fails to tell you.

  Hadn’t wanted to ask Aunt Irma if my parents blamed me for the fact that Lionel hadn’t been (yet) paroled.

  (Tactlessly, not meaning to be cruel, Irma did reveal to me that my parents blamed me for my oldest brother’s death. Of course, this would make sense to them: Jerr wouldn’t have been incarcerated, wouldn’t have been killed by a guard in the prison, if the rat-sister had not sent him there.)

  Jerr hadn’t even come up for parole. He’d been in trouble at Marcy from the start: targeted by the Aryan Nation as one of their own and grateful to be accepted in a prison facility with so many black prisoners. Lionel was serving his sentence differently, in a different area of the prison in which gangs were not so powerful. Yet each of Lionel’s requests for parole were turned down and it was looking as if Lionel would “max out”—serve his full, thirteen-year sentence.

  I had nothing to do with the parole hearings. I wondered if relatives believed that I had and were spreading upsetting rumors. The parole board did not call me to speak to them on or against my brother’s behalf, and I did not volunteer.

  My terror at what Lionel might do to me when he was released had not vanished nor even faded but floated in the shadows at the edge of my vision, I dared not turn my head too quickly and risk seeing it. Still, I would not interfere in his parole hearings.

  Would not beg the parole board—Don’t let Lionel Kerrigan out! He will come to murder me.

  Though surely it would be known by the Marcy parole board that my brother had threatened me at the time of his arrest. That he’d “assaulted” me. Had to be in his computer file. Cross-referenced in the Niagara County Children’s Protective Services reports, in Ms. Dolores Herne’s social worker’s reports. Nothing could dislodge or delete those files. Dating back to 1991, they could not be modified or expunged. Certainly it was known that I’d been removed from my parents’ house, to protect me from my brother. At the time a murder suspect.

  When Lionel is released I will be twenty-six years old. That is much older than twelve, and yet I feel that my life stopped at the age of twelve. I was as young, and as old, as I would ever be.

  Lionel will be just thirty. Jerr’s age when he was killed.

  Will thirty seem young, to Lionel? I have no idea what he looks like now for I can imagine my brother only as he’d been at sixteen.

  I am not so sure that the prison will notify me when Lionel is finally released, as the parole board might have notified me. The prison doesn’t have my most recent address for I’d moved numerous times since. The telephone number I’d provided them no longer exists.

  Don’t want to know. Better not to know.

  Take your chances . . .

  Ms. Herne has no way of reaching me, if indeed Ms. Herne even remembers me. In fact, I am sure that Ms. Herne does not remember me. I am sure that my folder in her files has been marked CLOSED. I am far from a vulnerable child now.

  Possibly, Ms. Herne is retired by now. Turnip Face. I blamed her, for what exactly I don’t know. Turning my brothers against me. Never letting me see my family again . . .

  Out of contact with so many persons who might have helped me. If my life as a rat ever ends I will look back upon these years in the way you would look back upon a fever-dream in which the dreamer is in a continuous state of pursuit, desperation.

  Serving my term. No parole!

  Sorrowful Virgin

  MAYBE HE WILL SEE ME, SOON. ACKNOWLEDGE ME.

  That is all that I want: to be seen by him.

  WANTING TO PLEASE THE MAN WHO WAS NOT READILY PLEASED. Wanting not to disappoint the man who was frequently disappointed.

  For more than once when I was cleaning his apartment I’d overheard Orlando Metti on the telephone speaking harshly to someone at the other end who’d been presumably silenced, abashed by the man’s speech precise and cruel as rapid face-slaps with the palm of a hand.

  Someone female, I had to assume. Ex-wife, or another woman. Fluttering moth-wings, broken.

  But to me, Metti was courteous. What pride I took in this!

  Gentlemanly, soft-spoken. Expressing (mostly) satisfaction with the work I’d done. Pressing tips into my hand.

  It was a matter of anxiety to me, standing only a few inches away from my well-groomed employer, that possibly/probably I smelled of my body after hours of dragging a vacuum cleaner through the apartment, stooping to scour tub, shower stalls, toilet bowls, tile floors. Cleaning, polishing, buffing fixtures until they gleamed with manic and pointless intensity as I’d been instructed.

  Sweated through the thin white T-shirt, you could see the shadowy outlines of my breasts, nipples. If you wished to look.

  My forehead was damp, oily. The little star-shaped scar at my hairline throbbed with heat.

  Out of shyness/cageyness I did not exactly look Orlando Metti in the face. My wistful glances at the man were sidelong, covert. It had become my way to register the world in quick sidelong glances hoping that the world would do no more than glance at me in turn.

  Metti was amused by me, it seemed. The little star-shaped scar intrigued him but (of course) (as it intrigued many men) he was too polite to inquire about something so personal.

  “Would you like a drink, Violet?”

  So unexpected a question, I thought at first that it might be a joke. A test? Heard myself stammer No.

  Standing very still, smiling inanely.

  At Maid Brigade we’d been warned of certain of our (male) customers but no one had named Orlando Metti as a threat.

  “Are you sure? Wine spritzer, vodka soda?”

  The damp T-shirt was sticking to my skin. Damp hair straggling down my neck, hot-tingling scar on my forehead. Determined not to scratch the scar with my fingernails and inflame it.

  “I guess—not. But thank you, Dr. Metti.”

  “Next time then?”

  “I—I don’t know . . .”

  Metti laughed at my stammering reply as if I’d meant to be amusing.

  Now staring more frankly at my forehead—the scar that felt so livid, alive. Wondering if indeed it was a scar, or a birthmark. Tattoo?

  Would you like to tongue it? Kiss it? Suck it?

  Feeling dizzy, as Orlando Metti smiled at me.

  “Y’know, Violet—you could take a shower here. I mean—if you wished. Before leaving.”

  Another unexpected remark I could not answer. My face pounded hotly with blood.

  Metti laughed again, and relented: “All right, Violet. Don’t look so alarmed. We’ll plan for some future time. What I’d like you to do now is—”

  Drop off clothes at the nearby dry cleaner. Drop off a prescription at the nearby drugstore. Or, take the dog for a quick walk, he hadn’t the time or patience for his daughter’s damned dog today.

  HE MEANT TO INSULT ME. ALLOWING ME TO KNOW HE COULD smell my body.

  He meant to excite me. Allowing me to know he could smell my body.

  THE GAME. FOLLOWING THIS METTI WOULD LEAVE MONEY SCATTERED about the apartment for me to discover. And small expensive items—jade cuff links, coins from foreign countries, figurines of crystal or mineral, so small they could easily be slipped into a pocket.

  One- and five-dollar bills. Half-dollars, quarters, dimes and nickels in unexpected places like drawers used to store towels, linens.

  Are you tempted, Violet? Go right ahead, dear. Help yourself.

  Plenty where this comes from!

  And when I’d become accustomed to discovering bills of small denominations, which I always left where I found them, there was a twenty-dollar bill made to look as if it had casually fallen between a bedside table and a bed—and here, on the floor of a closet, amid shoes, a fifty.

  A fifty! This was serious money, to me.

  Of course, I was not tempted. I would never steal from Dr. Metti even with his tacit permission. But the game excited me.

  For the nature of a game is uncertainty. How will it end?

  And who will be winner?

  A treasure hunt, it was. Except nothing would be moved far from its place of discovery, so that Metti could have no reason to think that it might be missing.

  The bills, I would leave in plain view, on a tabletop. Which is where a cleaning-woman would naturally leave something she’d found on the floor in a room.

  Articles of clothing to be put in the laundry, with pockets—frequently there would be coins in these pockets, even folded bills. (Since all clients leave items in pockets, I could not determine if this was part of Dr. Metti’s game, or accidental.) Felice had instructed me: check all pockets before putting clothes in the laundry, place items you find in a small basket in the laundry room where the client is sure to see them.