Getting a Cleaning

Bedbugs scare me. We had a lot of them a few years ago. Back when I was little. I think about it sometimes at night in my room, but that’s not what keeps me up anymore. My parents are getting divorced. They don’t know I know, but I do.

Sometimes I sneak around the house at night when they think I’m sleeping. It started with the bedbugs, I just didn’t wana be in my bed. And it then it got kinda fun, so I kept doing it. But then one night, I’m crawling under the dining room table, my arms getting all scratched from that rough carpet, and my parents were talking about what they’d do with me and the house if they’d split up. Well, I stopped short under that table and cried without a sound. Someplace inside me knew it had to be real. It almost made sense for them, I just didn’t know why.

The house is pretty quiet after they tuck me into bed. My mom watches TV in their room and nowadays I usually see my dad at the kitchen table, just staring at the wall. He used to be really happy, kind of a loud dad, like fun loud. But not anymore. There’s this little pathway between the couch and the wall and I fit right through it. I can see him pretty clear when I get to the end of the couch. Each time I hope I’ll see him happier but I haven’t yet. He just sits at the table with a glass of water. It’s weird to see him drink water in a glass, usually he just uses the plastic cups me. He takes these little sips from the glass until there’s only a little left and then he takes it all down in one gulp. I never see him drink water like that during the day. Then he just stares at the wall or lays his head on his arm across the table. He cried sometimes, but I usually left before then. I’m sad for my mom and me, but I’m more sad for him, because I know how he used to be. My mom was never such a happy person, at least not as long as I’ve known her. But my dad, he was different.  

I hoped he would get happier when the aliens came, but he still didn’t. My mom got happier, and so did I. The aliens were pretty friendly. I liked how they talked. Soft and kinda low, like my grandma used to talk before she died. The aliens had these little hairs on the sides of their faces, just like my grandma had. Reminded me of her.

I heard my mom say that we were lucky because other aliens weren’t so friendly. So, we lucked out with this group. She said these aliens were very eeevolvdd. I didn’t know what that meant. I think it means smart. Which would make sense because Uncle Jack, he’s really old and the smartest person I know, even smarter than my mom, he said that the dumbest alien is still about a thousand times smarter than the smartest person. So, they had to be super smart. 

              They looked kinda strange. They had these blue nails and purplish pink skin with big curves of fat all over. My mom would say they probably don’t eat healthy. She didn’t say that, I’m just thinking about what she would probably say. And they had these big green eyes. I liked their eyes. They were like my friend Mary’s eyes, just bigger and kinda watery, like they were always crying. Except they didn’t look sad, they all looked really happy.

              The aliens could talk in English too. They probably knew all the languages, that’s what Uncle Jack said. And they were funny. I liked how they laughed, kinda like the sound little birds make when they talk to each other. I liked to listen to them laugh. Made me feel good.

              One day I saw two aliens talking to each other. It was outside the supermarket. They don’t eat food like we do. Mary said that they eat light, but I’d rather eat food. I like how food tastes. So anyway, these two aliens were talking right outside Jose’s Market. It was a low sound, like the sound a car makes after you turn it on. One of them saw me watching them and he put his hand up and smiled at me. I smiled back and kept right on walking.

              Then a little while after that I saw a small alien, just sitting on a bench in the park. It looked like a girl alien. She was a little shorter than me and had something yellow and watery that wrapped around her like a dress or maybe overalls. It jiggled when she moved and shined even when no lights were shining on it. I asked her her name. She said it was Rose.

              “That doesn’t sound like an alien name,” I said.

              She laughed, this nice laugh, just like the little birds. “We just use names that Earth people will understand. What’s your name?”

              “Alex. How long are you here for?”

              “The Guardians said we’ll be leaving in about a week, in your time. They have to gather some things first.”

              “What’s a Guardian?”

              “They lead us. We all travel together. Came to earth to collect data on the planet.”

              I didn’t know what “data” meant but I was too embarrassed to ask. She seemed pretty sure about what she was saying.

              “How old are you?” I asked.

              “A little more than four thousand…” she stopped talking and she put her purple finger up in the air. “Sorry, I had to do the math in my head. In Earth years, I’d be about 16,000 years old.”

              “Wow that’s really old,” I said. “I’m ten. Ten years old. Not thousand.”

              She laughed again. I loved her laugh.

              We were quiet for a little and then I noticed a light coming out of her chest. It started small, in a little ball of reddish orange. Then it got bigger and kinda shot off into her yellow overalls until the overalls changed from yellow to blue. I just kept watching. Then the blue got really bright and swooshed around like it was a pool of water, even though she was still wearing it. Then my head felt heavy and a few teardrops fell down from my eyes. I saw them drop onto my shirt, which was weird because I didn’t even know I was crying, they just dropped right down. And then all of a sudden, the weirdest thing happened – my head went totally blank. I couldn’t think of anything, like nothing. Not about words or trees or the little birds or my mom and dad. Nothing. My whole head had just emptied out. I loved it. 

              That must’ve lasted a few minutes, but I couldn’t know for sure. Then Rose’s skirt-overalls turned back to yellow and I could think again. I never felt so good before.

              “What was that?” I asked.

              She didn’t reply, so I waited. She was nice enough to make my head feel so empty and smooth that I figured it was only nice of me to wait for her. She opened and closed her big green eyes a few times and breathed really deep, so that her yellow overalls got bigger and smaller, bigger and smaller. Then she breathed up to the sky and I saw these little purple flashing lights go right up to the stars. Finally, she looked back at me.

              “I was cleansing you,” she said.

              I didn’t know what that word meant, but I had to ask this time.

              “It means cleaning you.”

              “Like when my dad cleans the car?”

              She nodded and her yellow overalls jiggled like a bowl of Jello. She looked excited. “How do you feel?”

              “Great! I never felt this good before.” She jiggled again. “Do you clean everyone?”

              She shook her head. “You’re only the forty second human I’ve cleaned. I’m very new to this. We’re only allowed to clean people that want to be cleaned. So, it’s kind of limited,” she said looking around the park. “Can’t just go around cleaning everyone that needs it. That’s what the Guardians say. But we clean who we can.”

              I thought about it for a minute. “But how did you know I wanted cleaning?”

              Rose smiled. I followed her eyes down to my chest which was glowing bright pink. I never saw my chest have any color other than my skin, and especially not a color that I could see through my shirt. “Did you do this?” I asked pointing at my chest.

              She shook her head. “It was there already, you just couldn’t see it. We can see it though,” she said nodding and pointing to herself. “Pink means it was just cleaned. Yellow means the human wants to be cleaned. Dark red means do not enter. We see a lot of that,” she looked around the park again. “Yours was yellow before, but now that we cleaned it, it’s pink. I love to see pink. Isn’t it beautiful?”

              I said it was. And it really was. I didn’t want to take my eyes off of it. “So, what is it?” I asked.  

              “It’s your connection to the Universe. Some humans want to connect more, some don’t. And some are connected but don’t realize it. That’s where you were – you didn’t realize you’re already connected. It’s part of why people get lonely sometimes. So, I just helped you clean up a little bit and now we got a nice pink glow going.”

              I didn’t follow most of what she said, but I had to know what a Universe was.

              “Oh it’s everything. Anything you can see or feel or think of. They’re all just different parts of the Universe.”

              “So, I’m a part of the Universe?”

              She nodded. “And now you can feel it even more.”

              I looked down at the swirling pink in my chest and smiled. I liked this.

              “So, you can clean other people right?” I asked. She nodded yes.

Something sad creeped up in me and I thought about my dad. I hoped thinking about him wouldn’t make the pink swirl in my chest go away.

              “Could you clean my dad?”

              Rose blinked a few times and I saw her eyes turn to a lighter green. She looked up at the sky and then back at me. “I’m sorry, I can’t right now. Not yet.”

“Do you know when you could?”

She was quiet a minute and blinked her green eyes again. “Maybe on our next trip over here. I’ll

have to see. It’s hard to tell with humans. And the Universe has different ways of making humans ready for cleanings. That’s not a schedule I have access to.”

That didn’t sound good, whatever that meant. But I nodded anyway and checked my chest to make sure the pink was still swirling. It was. I was just hoping my dad could get cleaned while Rose was here. I didn’t know when she’d be coming back. Then I thought about my mom, but I figured if my dad didn’t want to be cleaned my mom definitely wouldn’t. So, I didn’t wana risk wasting a question.

“What about my Uncle Jack?”

              Her eyes went light green again and she looked up. “He’s already been cleaned.” That made me happy, because I knew he’d like to get a cleaning. This is Uncle Jack’s kinda thing.

              A minute passed as I wondered when Rose might come back to our planet and do some more cleanings. I asked her, but she didn’t know.

              “We just follow the Guardians,” she said.

That made sense. “So, what do you do with people that don’t wana get cleaned yet?”

              Rose lifted her purple hands and patted down her overalls which jiggled a little bit. “Everyone gets cleaned eventually. Just at different times. So, you don’t have to worry about other people’s cleanings, it’s all on a schedule. Maybe they’ll be ready for cleanings the next time we come. Or maybe not. Maybe they’ll be ready for a cleaning and we won’t be here. But don’t worry, there are many ways to get cleaned. Especially here on Earth. Earth is a hard planet to live on, so there’s a lot of different types of cleanings all packed into the planet. Cleanings tend to find people when they want to do it.”

              I think I understood that last part. It’s like my neighbor Beth’s dog, Patty. If she doesn’t want a bath, nobody on the whole street can give it to her. Gota wait until she’s nice and dirty. Then she’ll want it. I figured that was the same with my dad.

So, I put my hand out to shake Rose’s hand. I didn’t know if that’s what aliens did, but it’s all I knew how to do. Her hand was smaller than mine and kinda dry looking. I was hoping her blue nails wouldn’t touch me, but they did. And thankfully, before I could make a face, this wonderful feeling went right from my hand to my arm and deep into my chest. It was so nice and peaceful. I didn’t ever want to let her hand go.

              Rose and the others left last week. I miss hearing their laugh. And the pink swirl in my chest went away a few days ago, so things are kinda back to normal. I saw Patty this morning, she was absolutely filthy. She jumped right into a pile of mud after yesterday’s rain. Then she let Beth spray her down with the gardening hose. My dad sat with me on the porch and watched Patty get her shower. All I could think about was when my dad might be ready for a cleaning. Maybe by the time Rose comes back. I hope so.