THE BEET
By Mariam Coker
|
Feb. 27, 2017
The cleaning lady works like clockwork,
fume mask, no gloves.
She cleans the silent,
already spotless, dentist office without music,
Islam ti duro, Islam has come to stay ,
she would sing to herself.
She does not look like her boss.
Her boss does not look at her,
just leaves her a check next to family photos
and tells her not to turn on all of the lights.
Look at her hands.
See how the Pinesol, the Windex, the Clorox,
the cleaning of white people’s shit has aged them.
The cleaning lady’s hands are sandpaper, steel wool, diamonds;
can remove paint from wall, air from sky,
blood from anything.
Her husband does not hold her hand.
I used to go with the cleaning lady to diffuse the silence;
my naive, wide eyes squinted with cleaning fumes,
small hands cleaned corners thoroughly.
Mommy’s helper, they called me,
and watched me grow from cleaning mirrors
to vacuuming the hallway.
I once asked her why we don’t go to this dentist office,
she said we couldn’t afford it.
The cleaning lady has been cleaning the same dentist office for over 20 years,
waxed belly and waxed floors,
it is already in me: back problems and no eye contact.
I am half rag and half obedience.
I would make a good wife.
Hands rough and calloused from the right way of scrubbing a bathtub,
or scrubbing grout from tile, or hand washing blood from anything,
no one wants to hold my hand.
