Cleaning Lady
By RWS
Chinatowns of america--run from coast to coast, from Trinity county to sisikyu mountains, from locke california, to king street seattle, from stockton to San Francisco hidden cobblestone alleyways, from canton to fairfield. leongs, lims, chins, wongs, laus, lees, choys, toms fill the chinatown landscape. gung yan rise like winter storms. steel rails whip around gold mountain. --From "Chinatown Blues for Blues poets" by Al Robles
For some reason I look forward to seeing her. I am a doorman. I sit at a fancy marble desk as classical music is piped in through the overhead speakers. The apartment complex is much like a museum. I spend much time cleaning the marble counter with a cloth and purple colored solution. The floor tiles sparkle and I buff the countertop. I see my reflection along with the reflection of the chandelier. I buff rigorously, using circular motions. I buff over my image, my face—trying to make it disappear but all I get is a shinier version of my own face and cleaning solution mist in my lungs.
She walks in. She smiles to hide her shyness. Hello, she says, carrying a vacuum, broom and bucket filled with cleaning supplies. “I’m here to clean MS’s apartment”, she says. MS, the CEO of some kind of marketing company. I’ve nicknamed him “The whale” for his resemblance to that marine mammal. I picture him floating, his back hovering over the face of the ocean looking into an endless sky, a small bird landing on his barge-like belly pecking away until it pops. The bird flutters away and so does MS, like a big balloon farting away all that air, launching into oblivion among the heavens, only to create a blip upon hitting the water below.
I open the vendor book and ask her to sign it. I look at her hands. Her skin is the skin of a poem, a history of a people who built a civilization, railroads, and Chinatowns in Amerikkk. Her skin is slightly burnt in the bursting sun and cool in the turquoise water of memory. She signs the book and I tell her that someone from the maintenance department will let her into the apartment she is scheduled to clean (since the whale is not home to graciously welcome her with a cavernous belly full of kindness). I call maintenance on the walkie talkie. The supervisor, a burly Latino man who I’ve affectionately nicknamed, “Buffalo meat”, responds by saying that I should call someone in the leasing office to let the cleaning lady in. I call the leasing office—no response, probably busy on the phone. I want to call Buffalo Meat back on the radio to ask him to open the unit but he is gruff, with a tendency to grunt his thoughts as well as his afterthoughts, and, heaven forbid, that I make him grunt unnecessarily. I call leasing again and again there is no answer. The cleaning lady is standing there, on the clock—the clock on her—with a limited amount of time to complete the job—at a minimum rate of pay. I look at the security monitor and see Buffalo Meat leaning against a wall talking to a coworker. The cleaning lady smiles a nervous smile. Is her time not worth anything to these people? We wait.
There’s a musical quality to her voice. When she speaks, the classical music on the overhead speakers fade—all that composition passed down through the ages—violins, oboes, cellos, harps, cymbals—all melt away when she speaks. I ask her where she's from. I’m from China, she says, carrying her cleaning supplies”. “I’m here to clean MS’s apartment”. She’s conscious of her accent but not overly so. Her voice is like the whisper of a bell, or the jazz notes of a vibe player whose sounds fill up a room with colors that only the heart can see. Soon she is led to MS’s apartment, led by a leasing agent with a leasing agent’s voice, leasing agent’s walk and leasing agent’s talk. She pushes her vacuum and balances her supply buckets and brooms through a world that is out of balance. She is left to do her job. She does it. I’m at the desk doing mine. Her name is in the sign-in book. I close it, the classical music plays. Suddenly I hear the vacuum cleaner and the sound of a broom brushing aside what needs to be brushed aside. The classical music fades and i think of my father and uncles who did janitorial work in the past, whose opportunities were limited but whose lives and songs resonate within me deeper than any symphony. Their lives provide the music to which i write. All is silent for a moment. Then I hear the voice: My name is Janice, I’m here to...
Her voice fills this empty space for the moment.