MRS. WONG
Mrs. Wong said:
“First time so bad.”
“I don’t know if she ever clean before.”
“Long time so dirty.”
Well, I cleaned yesterday, and we need you to clean the oven, and the stove, and the windows, and the walls. This door handle. I opened a large drawer with about 250 keys and trinkets and bits of dried herbs and sugar from cooking. We may clean this out as well. And we need to vacuum here, and here, and behind here. Here is the broom, a very small broom, and the new vacuum. We sat on the floor together assembling the vacuum, taking the plastic bits and tiny screws off, not reading the directions, and getting it together, together.
“So dirty, never clean before.” Perhaps not, or perhaps so. Mrs. Wong has become one of our best friends. You don’t normally clean with your cleaning lady but we were having so much fun. Mrs. Wong brought the party.
One time when we got high in here, I felt a man walk by me. Besides that, I feel safe. Totally in the space. I sleep well in Shan’s closet. Here is the key. It goes into the skeleton eye socket in the hallway, that’s how you know it’s the right apartment.
Mrs. Wong came and left like a phantom. She has been here- subtle changes and both locks locked- I would describe it as mild cleaning. An invisible clean. The kind where you know something happened, but you can’t quite tell what.
The morning after Mrs. Wong had been here in the afternoon, I looked into the bathroom through the glass door and realized Mrs. Wong had cleaned the film right off the door windows and I could see directly into the tiny bathroom. Whereas otherwise, the lack of thoroughness presided, this job took elbow grease. The toilet and shower are in full view from the hallway, kitchen, and living room. You can see both the toilet and shower from the street below as well. So, if you’re looking for a show at the corner of X and X in Chinatown, you can find us! Incidentally, the bathroom had an open window for about five years, which was plastered and drywalled over but left open. Completely open. There was a draft. A very large draft. A draft that makes you wonder how you could live with such a draft, but humans have put up with worse.
There is most likely still a draft but no open window. She sure had washed the windows. Till the cloudy film was stripped off, and we could see right through. She had cleaned what we didn’t want to be cleaned. What was not dirty.
We already left the door open when we were peeing in the morning or any time of day. A way for a girl to check in on her friend- to make sure we kept communicating, kept the conversation going, with eye contact. Sometimes in the shower too. We are close.
That morning, a tiny screw came off the vacuum - and Mrs. Wong and I looked for it for days. She mentioned it to Greta and me. In such a small apartment, the screw was missing, and we just couldn’t see it. When the virus came, after a month or two we both texted Mrs. Wong and didn’t hear back. We lost her.