Visitors

We need to clean the House today. 

Sadie had the thought as soon as she opened her eyes that morning. Her husband’s family was flying into town that day. Flying all the way from Texas to New York. 

The house is a fucking wreck. 

When she eventually dragged herself out of bed, she eyed every room of her house with disdain. The bedroom with its bed on a box spring on the floor, the damn sheet that lifted up on the corner to reveal the mattress protector, Every. Damn. Night. The dirty sheets and pillowcases and blankets. The clothes on the floor, the night tables covered in a random array of objects. More clothes on the closet floor. 

She entered the bathroom and sat on the toilet. Glancing around the room she noticed the mirror that was dirty and discolored along the edge. The walls needed scrubbing, the baseboards were dusty and dirty. Oh dear god, the bathtub was covered in dirt marks. She stood and looked in horror at the floor surrounding the toilet, it looked like a dark abyss of grime. 

Granted, she assured herself, this was an old house, built in 1950 and barely renovated in all that time, in almost 100 years. What was one to expect? It was like The Burrow, the house from Harry Potter, right? No one could expect perfection from an old house like theirs. They didn’t even own it, in this economy they could never purchase a house, this was a rental of course. They would love to tear apart the disgusting bathroom and put in a new floor, a new mirror, better lighting, new baseboards, everything clean with a fresh coat of paint for the filthy walls. 

Okay don’t panic, they don’t arrive until 6 PM. 

She grabbed some Lysol wipes from the cabinet and began scrubbing frantically at the walls. There was toilet cleaner and shower cleaner under the sink. She applied those liberally and stood staring at the dark crevices next to the toilet. The part of the floor that sat neglected between the toilet and wall and bathtub and just…grew in blackness. 

Her husband walked up the stairs and entered the bathroom. He put a hand on her shoulder.

“Coffee is ready downstairs. Don’t stress. We’ll get the house cleaned.”

She nodded stiffly, distracted. Then began to tackle the dark spot on the floor, scrubbing with all her might. Her husband pulled a Lysol wipe out of the canister and began to help, wiping walls and baseboards. 

“It’s an old house, you know? We’re never going to get it perfectly clean.”

“I know.” She said.

Once downstairs Sadie eyed the living room, dining room, barely glancing into the kitchen. Her coffee sat on a side table. She sat on the couch, drank her coffee and stared at the carpet, covered in detritus. 

“I’m heading to the store, going to get some meat to BBQ.” her husband said, leaning over to kiss her forehead. 

“Okay…I’ll…try to get some cleaning done.” She said, wondering how long she could stay sat on the couch, avoiding cleaning. Until he returned home? No she couldn’t do that. 

They had only been married a little over a year. She had met his siblings of course, and his sister-in-law, his nephew. But they hadn’t been married then. What would they think if they came to a filthy house? Who was this lazy tramp he had married? Besides that, they had never had anyone come over to stay multiple nights. They had had people over of course, not often, but occasionally, but never to stay. Multiple nights.  

Sadie held onto her phone as the door closed behind her husband. She checked her emails, she checked Instagram, she checked Youtube. Was there anything to distract her from this? Anything at all?? No. Not a thing. 

She sighed heavily and got up, resigned. She would have to at least clean the kitchen. It was an absolute disaster area. They had cooked one time that week, and there it sat, wrecked, dishes piled in the sink, every single inch of counter space taken up by objects and crumbs. It was a very small kitchen, practically a hallway kitchen, barely enough room for two people to be in at once. Similar to the bathroom. The two most important rooms of the house, tiny. That was how people chose to live in the 50’s apparently. Why would you need two bathrooms? Or even a bathroom larger than a closet? Or a kitchen larger than a hallway? Why would two people need to ever be in the kitchen at one time? Just the wife, right? 

Sadie shoved air pods into her ears and turned on her audio book. If she couldn’t read her books, the least she could do was listen to someone else reading them to her while she cleaned. 

She pulled on pink rubber gloves, one after the other. 

The dishwasher was unloaded, then re-loaded, the remaining scattered dishes were washed by hand and placed on a drying mat next to the sink. Then the sink was scrubbed with a yellow smiling scrub daddy. Then the stove was scrubbed until the scrubby stopped coming up black. Then the counters wiped down, every crumb scooped up and every spill wiped up, every stain removed. 

She picked up old lemons, old avocados way past their time, anything that belonged in the trash. Chips put away, bread put away, any object that could possibly be shoved into a closet or a cabinet or a drawer was flung in said place, indiscriminately. 

There. Counters were almost bare, and clean. Sink empty and clean. She moved on to the dining room, removing objects from the table, scrubbing the table clean with a Lysol wipe. She pulled the vacuum out from the closet and strapped on some ear protection. Her audio book blared, uninterrupted. 

She stopped, noticing that the vacuum was not sucking properly. 

Dammit. Probably hair. 

She turned it off, knelt down, opened the front only to discover the largest mat of rolled up hair she had ever witnessed in this vacuum. It had been awhile since she cleaned it out. Scissors were grabbed from the nearest drawer. On her knees again she cut frantically at the rolled up cylinder of hair, hacking and chopping. It wasn’t working. She searched and found a box cutter. She sliced at the dark brown hair until finally it separated and she was able to tug the entire mass out. She sat staring at the mass of hair. It looked like 50 brushes worth. 

How am I losing this much hair? She thought dully. 

Hair went in the trash, vacuum turned back on. Living room carpet, hard wood floors, kitchen tiles, all vacuumed. 

Her husband returned from the meat market with racks of ribs. 

“What room of the house can you clean?” She asked him, feeling the sweat dripping down her neck, her back, her forehead. 

“Is there anything you’d rather me do that you don’t want to do?” He asked. 

“Sedrick’s litter box needs to be cleaned out. The bathroom needs to be cleaned.”

“Isn’t the bathroom already clean?”

“No. The toilet and bathtub need to be scrubbed.”

“Okay.”

“Also if you could clean our bedding and set up your siblings’ beds?”

“Okay.”

Sadie felt her stomach rumbling. She needed food. And an iced coffee. She eyed her perfectly spotless kitchen which had taken over an hour to clean. The thermostat said it felt like 94 degrees outside, with 70% humidity. There was wilted lettuce in the fridge. Chicken in the freezer. In order to make herself a light, cold lunch she knew she would have to dirty up a knife, a cutting board, a bowl, maybe another bowl, a fork…who knew what else. She couldn’t bring herself to do such a thing. Not with a perfectly clean kitchen. Before the family was to arrive. 

She pulled out her phone and typed, “salad” into Google Maps. Her thumb dragged against the screen as she looked at all the establishments willing to make her a cold, refreshing salad. Her mind wandered to the conversation her and her husband had had the night before, about why their bank account looked so low, why it seemed like they were unable to save as much money as they would like to and should be. Was it inflation? Student loans? Was their pay not keeping up as much as it should? Or were they eating out too much and not cooking at home enough?

“I’m ordering from Pita Pit, you want anything?” Sadie pointed her phone screen at her husband. He took the phone from her and looked at it. 

“Get me the chicken pita.” 

“I’m getting iced coffee too, you want one?”

“Yes please.”

Sadie walked out into what felt like a moist oven. She unlocked the truck, climbed inside, placed her purse on the passenger seat and sighed heavily. It felt nice in a way to escape the bustle of the house, to remove herself from the cleaning and the stress. She would take her time, she thought, on this little errand. 

Food and coffee were obtained, when Sadie began to feel stabbing pains in her abdomen. 

Great. Let’s play that fun game where I try to determine what is causing me abdominal pains today. Could it be my scarred ovaries? Is it a UTI coming on? Is my bladder becoming inflamed due to stress? Are my pelvic muscles tightening due to stress? Is it my intestines?

Sadie drove home as soon as she could. She ran up the stairs to the bathroom. 

Ah. It was the guts. With a mild possibility of bladder inflammation. Great. 

Her and her husband ate their salad and pita at the newly cleaned kitchen table in silence. She stabbed violently at the pieces of lettuce. 

“Are you okay?” Her husband asked. 

“Yeah!” Sadie answered brightly, turning her frown into a smile. “I’m going to just take a shower after we eat.” 

She stared as her husband dropped chunks of cucumber, tomato, chicken, and sauce onto the table. He moved to clean it up and managed to spill more food onto the table. Sadie got up and left him to finish cleaning it. 

In the shower she turned the water to “hot” and blasted her lower back and stomach. She squeezed a handful of shampoo onto her scalp and scrubbed. She watched as clumps of hair rinsed off of her and to the drain, piling up in a dark mass. She applied conditioner and then brushed it in with a wide-tooth comb. When she lifted the comb to look at it, she could see it was filled with her hair. 

Why am I losing so much hair?

Is it because of stress? Anxiety? Is it because of my chronic pain? Is it because I’m getting older? Is it because, is it because, is it because?

She pulled the clump of hair from the comb and then stooped to scoop up the clump of hair compiling on the drain. She couldn’t throw the clump of hair in the trash. Everyone would see it and wonder, what the hell is wrong with the owner of this hair? Why is it in the trash instead of on her head. When Sadie emerged from the shower and squeezed the water from her hair she could feel more clumps of hair being detached, loose hairs that clung to her hands. She pulled at the loose hairs and an entire clump of 10-15 hairs came out. She tried to calm the sinking feeling. 

Okay, it is 1 PM, we still have 5 more hours until they arrive. We can be presentable, we can be human. It will be okay. 

Sadie toweled off and got dressed. Rain had started pouring outside. She sat at her desk and opened up her computer. 

First, I need to write this down.