Bathroom Monologue: Artistic House Cleaning

It was her artistic statement. She was young enough to be able to work all day, and young enough to still want to, which was rare in the house cleaning industry. But she came from a long line of people who did damned fine work or they didn’t eat, and the better half of that lineage stuck with her. She vacuumed every crack in the floor, eradicated every spot on every wall, plucked every stray fiber from every overpriced carpet, and left thirty-year-old windows looking freshly installed. In the clergy they sanctified people who did her level of work. Every time, she thought, she’d leave just one scrap of paper behind by the door: a beauty mark on the house she’d face-lifted. It was always in the same place, always easy to dispose of, typically put somewhere near the worst stain had been. It depressed her, then, to find no one saw this as artistic cleaning. They trampled right over her errant trash and complained the drapes looked dusty, or the sink had a grime ring, or that the bathroom smelled funny. They were all false charges, low thoughts from people who didn’t know what lilies smelled like. It just about ruined cleaning other people’s houses for her. Some day, she might not have the strength of will to leave behind a beauty mark of trash. All the other cleaners said so.