WORK HISTORY

I cleaned a rape counseling center on Sunday mornings. I began with the toilets. They were American Standards. The building was at the edge of the new highway and the possibility of a car landing on the roof was valid. This was the deep South, so just about everyone else was at church or brunch. Each door had its own key. The one to the front door was twisted and bent and I often had to extract it with pliers. As soon as I got inside I turned on my headphones and opened the windows. Someone turned off the AC on the weekends, leaving the place smelling like lemons and scallops. The refrigerator only contained diet soda and fat-free butter. I never found money or drugs. I straightened lampshades and pulled staples from the rug and vacuumed up the chad that the three-hole-punches ejected. I took the soda cans out of the trash and took tissues and food out of the recycling bins. I drew the line at feminine hygiene products and gum and hypodermic needles. The security guard in the nearby parking garage always waved to me even though I didn’t work in his building. His booth’s windows were slimy and opaque from years of salty wind coming off the beach. He was a middle-aged black man with a gray mustache but no gun. Someone told me his name was Jack but I can’t be sure. On the north side of the counseling center sat an abandoned schoolhouse. On the south side was a barbecue restaurant overdone in pastels like a fast-food hospital. One time I left the front door open while carrying garbage to the dumpster and when I came back a teenage girl was sitting in the lobby. Her skirt was torn down the side as either an act of violence or a statement of fashion. I was worried that she’d want to use the phone I had just wiped down or visit the bathroom I had just disinfected but when I asked if she had an appointment she just moaned. When I asked if she wanted to call someone she just whimpered. I offered her a diet soda and she took a sip, then set it aside and walked away just like in the movies. She reminded me of someone who had once dented my locker with her foot. It took the previous cleaner three hours but I would do it in two, then read a back issue of Highlights for Children or People or whatever had been donated that week. I hoped to come across a picture of someone I knew from high school but never did. Once a month I swept the fireplace, though I didn’t understand why anyone needed one in a city so hot that the roads were half-melted by noon. The girl returned two weeks later dressed a little more appropriately. Her name was Bianca. We sat on the porch for a bit. She asked if I wanted to touch her. I told her I had a girlfriend. She shrugged and asked if getting tattooed hurt. I said it was like getting tickled with a razor blade. She asked to see my ink so I showed her my legs and arms and neck. Then she put her hand on my shoulder and pushed off like a boat sending itself to sea. One day I saw a man crawl out of the old schoolhouse carrying a burning rag. He ran to the edge of the highway and threw it over the wall, then went back in the window he came out of. It was my only employment at the time. I got paid $25 per week. I was $30,000 in debt. I applied for a job at the animal shelter. The interviewer asked if I had ever cremated anything or severed a dead animal’s head and when I said no she gave me a dubious twisted look. I told her I could vacuum curtains. They didn’t hire me but I was able to steal three candy bars from the charity box. Bianca came back the next week. I was wearing rubber gloves and an apron that read, You’ll Eat it and You’ll Like it. She had a tattoo on her upper arm — a blue duck holding a gun, one feathery digit on the trigger. She wanted to hang out. I knew she was going to come onto me like the girls who hung out near the alligator ranch. While I vacuumed, Bianca lay down on one of the couches and waggled her feet and hummed and snapped her gum. She cornered me a short while later and grabbed my face and smashed her little soft lips against mine, then said “Thanks” and waved over her shoulder and left. I never saw her again. I ran into Jack the security guard at the gas station. He was buying a case of beer. He drove a green Cadillac with a gash in the roof. His vanity plate read, GODCHLD. He didn’t recognize me. I noticed an article clipping on someone’s desk: a local tattooist had been arrested for performing illegal clitoral modifications. He’d saved the trimmings in a jar of formaldehyde. One time I got paid extra to rake leaves. When I ran out of bags I poured some into the schoolhouse and dumped some onto the highway and kicked some down the sewer grate. I took a break on the porch and just then a stray dog passed by. I gave him some water and then he laid on the sidewalk until a piece of trash from the barbecue hospital blew past and he chased it out of sight. I got up and stepped onto my headphones and snapped them in two. While I waited for the glue to dry I read an article in a back issue of Woman’s Day: “Ninety Casseroles: From Liver to Leftovers.”