housework: part I
A story about unpaid labor (read: housework)
The washer is yelling at me, and I don’t know what to tell it. I wish I spoke machine, just like I wish I spoke Spanish. There’s so much of the world I am cut off from because I don’t speak the language. I say, “Hey, what seems to be the matter today?” And Washer says, “Beep, beep, beebop.” I stare at its interface, knowing the dumbed-down visuals and audible cues it transmits are rudimentary translations sent from a complex, hidden motherboard. I follow the pattern of blinking, turquoise lights that move in an infinite loop of left turns. “Hmmmm, I see,” I tell it, then hit the power button. “Beep, boo, bop,” it says in a sad and definitive interval of minor notes, right before its face goes dark. Power off. I count to ten, and hit the power button again. “Ba-ba! Beep, beep, beep.” It’s back. Phew.
I load it up. We’re — machine and I — washing the bedsheets today, followed by a load of active wear. Usually, I’d wash these items on the “Cottons Normal-Heavy Soil” cycle, but the knob doesn’t turn that far anymore. It hasn’t since I tried washing our duvet cover and comforter in one load, with Pine-Sol.
Mom always said, nothing deodorizes blankets quite like Pine-Sol. A couple of times each year, she’d borrow a friend’s car, load it up with every single bed cover in our home (about five large garbage bags worth), and take them to the laundromat to shove into economy-sized washers. I’d tag along, fascinated by these facilities that were unmanned yet managed, with patrons following some intrinsically-held knowledge of how to operate and feed the rows of humming machinery. Mom would let me keep a few of the quarters she’d diligently collected for the washing event. I’d spend them immediately on the vending machines at the laundromat, paying a premium for b-class junk food.
“You don’t need a lot of it. Just one-and-two,” she’d say, dipping the Pine-Sol bottle down on ‘one’ and back up on ‘two.’ The mustard brown solution went glop-glop-glop into the detergent dispenser. Heavy-handed since birth, my one- and two-counts were always a bit more drawn-out. I’d start pouring, then after a few seconds, I’d count my ‘one-and-two,’ which were more like ‘five-and-six.’
Perhaps that’s what broke the “Cottons Normal-Heavy Soil” cycle on my washing machine at Patricia Ave. Too much Pine-Sol. I wanted the soiled covers extra clean, extra piney, just the way Mom made them. On the way home from the laundromat, she’d let me sit sandwiched between the bags in the back seat of the car. It was like a cocoon made of warm lemons. Mom would hum to songs played on the radio, which always seemed to be The Turtles, and she’d always take the alto part, always fudging the lyrics.
“They mess that part up every time!” she’d joke from the front seat, blaming her premature vocal entrance on the “So Happy Together” chorus on the recorded musicians. She passed smiles through the rearview mirror generously, and I’d stare back, mouth gaping in awe at her ability to see me even with her back turned. I’d inevitably doze off, and be carried inside with the rest of the bags, once home.
No, I’d have to settle with “Permanent Press-Knits” for the duration of my life at Patricia Ave., moving about in clothes and linens that would never be as clean as they could be if they were run through the scalding hot water and vigor of the cycle one click to the right. Only I know this.
“It’ll be my dirty little secret,” I think, laughing out loud at my pun. I smush one more pillow case into the mouth of the top-loading machine, and watch the water level rise, filling the drum, slowly creeping into the folds of the garments. The belts, clutch and transmission get to work, jerking the inner basket as the outer tub stays fixed. Such irony, I think. A hair-raising juxtaposition of rhythm and violence. Suds form.
I’m too much of a wuss to tell my husband about the broken cycle. (We’ll call him ‘Husband,’ for short.) If I do, he’ll get involved. Husband never does the laundry, and I prefer it stay that way. The last time he did was over a year ago, and he still points to it in our arguments about housework, to note how he “does everything around here.” Just like when he drags the push lawn mower out of our basement, so that I can mow the lawn. Granted, there are two tight turns to maneuver the clunky piece of machinery from the work room to our back-patio door. Walls could get scratched. Husband carefully navigates the ten feet from inside to outside, placing the mower at the edge of the grass in our backyard, then smacks his hands together as if he’s just spent hours laboring with the grass cutter. Then, I spend hours laboring with the grass cutter. Although lately, he’s offered to pitch in on the front yard, the part that is visible to neighbors and passerby. “How do you think it makes me look, if you’re out there mowing every time?” he asked. Husband has a point. Not good; it doesn’t make him look good at all.
Every Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon I clean our three-bedroom rancher in the suburbs of Baltimore, top to bottom, inside and outside, bedsheets and all. The cleanliness of our house is a matter of pride for Husband. Specifically, whether he is proud of me, or not.
One time, our home was not so clean. It was the home on Highland Ave., in the city. The Highland Ave. home was an old, brick, Baltimore rowhouse that lacked luster. Smack dab in the middle of Baltimore’s most yuppified neighborhood, Canton, our house was the shortest rowhouse on a block of recently renovated and expanded homes. It had a dilapidated addition built off the kitchen that smelled of mold and linseed oil, and a mangled backyard that we eventually worked with the landlord to pave into a parking pad. All our furniture was second-hand, with matte green slip covers tossed over stained couches, and tacky glue squeezed into structurally-important corners of our dining table to hold it together. The Highland Ave. home was both a space and time for us to gather our bearings after a cross-country move from Chicago to Charm City, in 2010.
Three months into moving out East, we purchased a nine-week-old Rottweiler puppy, that we called Rancho, short for Ranchoddas. Ranchoddas, called Rancho, was the name of the protagonist in a Bollywood film about a silly, though brilliant inventor. My Rancho — a sweet, four-legged companion that is now 160 lbs — had the unfortunate habit in his first year, as most puppies do, of eating everything in sight, and pooping it out wherever he saw fit. Even with a standard three-hour, weekly scrub-down, the Highland Ave. home was never up to snuff for Husband; what with our silly, pooping, and absurdly inventive Rancho, and all.
I’d race home during the lunch hour of my new corporate job, a twenty-five-minute drive down I-295, to spend ten minutes with my furry best-friend. After work, I’d race back to Rancho, this time with the purpose of reaching home before Husband. Understandably, puppy Rancho had not yet learned to keep his poop to the outdoors, so every day, during his first six months with us, I came home to a stinky, poopy mess. I never cared. I was just excited to see Rancho.
One evening, Husband beat me home. As I entered the house, the typical waft of puppy poop greeted me, along with sounds of commotion, coming from the laundry room in the back of the house, where we kept Rancho during the day. Husband was pacing back and forth in the cramped space next to Rancho’s pen, holding his nose and grunting. Rancho barked and yelped, demanding to be let out and relieved of his poop-smeared dwelling. As I rounded the corner of the kitchen, coming into Rancho’s line of sight, he perked up, his stub wiggling uncontrollably until his entire backside wagged back and forth. It’s his signature greeting. I shoved my way past Husband and opened the gate, lifting Rancho out of his pen. At four months old, he already weighed close to 30 lbs. The lift was a precarious move in such tight quarters, so close to my fuming husband.
“I’m usually home before you to clean up,” I reasoned with Husband, cradling Rancho against my chest, with one hand propped under his lanky hind legs. “He’ll grow out of this phase.”
“So, this is all just normal for you? Living in dog shit?” he yelled. He’d obviously had time to craft his fury, prepared to fly out the gate at the sound of my keys in the door. “And why are you touching him? I have to sleep next to you! You think I want to lay next to someone that smells like shit?” A zinger he’d undoubtedly practiced in his head, moments before.
“You haven’t complained before, and I clean his messes every day after work!” I shouted, immediately regretting my ham-handed response. I have a habit of teeing him up, to tear me down.
“Oh, so that makes it OK?”
“What?!” I’m lost, and grapple for a thread in the conversation that will take me back to defending Rancho, rather than myself. My confusion infuriates Husband more. He slaps his hand to his forehead, his thumb and middle finger holding his temples, as though to keep his brain intact. A room never felt so small and bordered.
“You wanna live like an animal?” he asked, softening his voice. His lips curl into a smile. He is handsomest when he is angry, and he gets angry a lot. I know better this time, and hold my tongue, letting his rhetorical question linger in silence.
Husband looks me in the eye, clinches his jaws, pulling saliva from the corners of his mouth to the back of his throat, and spits. The clear mucus lands on the linoleum tiled floor, a few inches from my feet. Rancho squirms in my arms, then lands a sloppy kiss, cheek to ear, on my face. Husband shakes his head and forces out a loud single, “Ha!”
“You don’t seem to mind cleaning up dog shit every day, so you won’t mind cleaning that up,” Husband says as he exits the room, bumping shoulders with me and Rancho’s face.
On the rare occasion when we have visitors at Patricia Ave., they say things like, “Your place is as clean as a museum,” or “I suppose a clean house is one tradeoff for not having kids.” I smile, secretly wishing the home was overrun with scuff marks, dog hair, discarded shoes, and crusty utensils hiding in the couch cushions. Husband plays coy, acting as if it takes nothing to keep things looking the way they do.
One time, Husband brought the empty trash bins back in from the sidewalk. He washed his hands a good five minutes afterward, complaining of the grimy buildup on the lids, saying “this must be why your fingernails are always so dirty, Jaan — you need to clean those lids, and your nails.”
Husband calls me Jaan, pronounced “John.” He is from the Indian subcontinent and speaks Bengali, his mother tongue, and Hindi, India’s national language. Jaan is one of twenty-plus words in Hindi that means “love.”
He gave me the nickname after we’d been dating for a year. He was a Junior in college, I was a Senior. Husband, then Boyfriend at the time, had just returned from visiting his parents in Kolkata over his winter break. Kolkata — the correct and non-British spelling of Calcutta — is a city, teeming with people and automobiles. It’s famous for things like being the capital of India during the British colonial era, the present-day cultural capital of India, Mother Teresa, and rasgullas, which are balls of spongy cottage cheese, soaked in a chilled sweet syrup. I visited this city twice: the first time to meet Husband’s parents, the second time to throw a wedding party, four years after we were married. In Kolkata, I apprenticed under Husband’s mother in the kitchen, learning to cook mung daal, and how to mince ginger, fry spices in heated oil, and strain coconut milk. His mother spoke little to no English, but I communicated best with her out of the family. At the end of my first visit to India, she cried as she ironed mine and Husband’s bath towels on the bedroom floor. The ironing would help them fold down better in our suitcases.
“When you came, I didn’t know you,” she said, between sobs, her English perfectly broken. “And now, I am saying goodbye to my daughter.”
At some point during that trip home to Kolkata during his Junior year of college, Husband felt inspired to call me Jaan. I think his mother may have had something to do with it. Also, absence makes your heart do funny things.
This particular version of the word “love” is used as a term of endearment, and translates best as “life” or “to become their everything” or “to complete them.” It has an interesting emphasis on the recipient of all that good, completing, life-giving love. Not so much on the giver of it. I complete my husband, apparently. Though, he is always quick to note if he didn’t point out these basic “life things,” like a woman’s duty to regularly clean the garbage lids, I’d surely let our home fall into disrepair. Thank goodness for Husband. Otherwise…
No, I prefer to keep the housework to myself. I understand it, and it gets me. Husband would just get upset with the washing machine if he knew it was malfunctioning, and inevitably me, drilling us until we produced some rationale as to why Washer no longer does Normal.
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