Cleaning House by Michelle Filippini (Appeared in the January 2010 Issue) God, I’ve let it go—the house that is not my own. (So maybe it’s not really a mess of my own making?) Until the dust fairies collectively gather to absolve me or clean the house, I patiently wait. Through the looking glass darkly my day begins. I think of my cats, reflections of me, whom I have made depressed, and it dawns on me that our outlooks on life would all be sunnier if the exterior windows got washed once in a while. My mother would be appalled. She thinks I don’t invite her to visit because she annoys me, but that’s only half true. She raised me better than this. The inside of my automobile is so tidy my car guests think it’s new. My clothes are regularly dry-cleaned, and I am not overweight. I appear to be a person in control. I just don’t want anyone to come to my house. I choke on the shame and guilt. And dust. My mother from my childhood: It’s summertime, or the weekend, and she is doing what she is always doing, keeping house. Her house-shirt is rolled down to her waist, but there’s nothing liberating about it; the points of her bra could cut glass, or a small child who asks what she’s doing. I’m hot because I’m working. Though we felt bad and vaguely responsible for our mother’s wretched status, my sister and I were never asked to help. Useless, we watched as she picked lint off the chocolate brown sofa with long skinny swaths of Scotch tape and exfoliated the linoleum in the kitchen with a floor sweeper, sighing. Mops weren't as efficient as a bent Jewish housewife wielding a dish-washing sponge outward across the orange and yellow vinyl expanse. Dirt and crumbs and sticky food remnants were banished, and so were we. Housecleaning was serious business. After a certain age, I reluctantly laid aside the childish things that had made me happy, and alternated between long troubled naps in my childhood bed punctuated by the vacuum outside my door, and manic bouts of cleaning my room that left me calmer. Sleeping and cleaning my room: Ah, youth! My mother’s frenzied housekeeping didn’t wane over the years. She didn’t have control over the tumult that was the world outside the house, nor the tumult that had breached the walls and crept its way inside, but she owned that house. Husbands might stray, parents might fail and get old, and children would necessarily disappoint, but the house would not betray her. In pictures and in life, we were so clean we squeaked. I hated when my parents entertained. Did you really just wash your hands? It’ll leave spots on the chrome. Until this house-that-isn’t-mine, I kept a neat, careless home. I took ownership as a renter. I was like everyone else. I worked to afford where I lived, and when I wasn’t working, I was working on keeping up appearances. Normal-like. Not at all like someone who had unclean thoughts. But in this place that I love and hate, I can’t keep it up. I know it’s not me; anyone in my situation would do the same: nothing. From the beginning, we knew that none of this belonged to us. Someday it would, but not before then. It was filled with things not ours. We tried to fit in, tried to fit our things in, but it was a crowded, uneasy alliance. Layers of grime and dust and insect carcasses and piss from long-dead pets called out to the years we weren’t here. Indifference has an odor, and this place stunk. Maybe there was a time when the tide of neglect could have been reversed or at least stemmed. The right person could have turned things around. Things could have been different. I’ve spent my whole life getting here. Me and this house, we understand each other. The dirty and unloved always find a way to each other. The cobwebs in the house are also in my head. If I clean the house, my mind will be empty. Clearly, I need to get my house in order. I’ve got to let it go.
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