On the rare occasions when I clean my house, I tend to take on different personas. My favorite is an elderly Chinese lady who is cleaning my house muttering to herself how these people have way too many possessions and poor feng shui. She tends to shake her head rapidly while muttering.
We do have a real cleaning person who keeps our home habitable. She serves as consultant/friend/confidante and, twice a month to the delight of our pups, arrives to care for our home and give us advice. She earns a well deserved hourly wage at least ten times what our maids were paid when we were children. Tracy and her aunt have reprimanded us when we're too messy and instructed us on what needs fixing. We generally know what's going on in her life and she in ours.
I would never ask Tracy to polish the silver because that's my problem and polishing silver seems extremely servile. I have one silver tea and coffee service from my Grandma Rae. I would never use this to pour tea for anyone but my worst enemy because I'm sure the cleaning agent is poisonous.Nevertheless, once a year before Thanksgiving, I go to task and clean the silver.
This involves a conversation where I take on a lot more personas.It is an exercise in humiliation as I think of generations of "the help." Like my Chinese character, my "Black" maid self would be resentful, but dare not mutter.The task would fill me with anger. I think about how hard it is to really shine all those edges, and can imagine how my work would be judged inadequate. I'd be scolded like a child. I, the mistress of the house, would fire myself. I hate my mistress self and want to throw the tea service at her.
For all the women who owned these silver tea services, I wonder what the actual conversation was between them and "the help." I wonder what the thoughts in the minds of the "help" were as they were polishing these valuable objects of status. I find myself trying to imagine the Black women in my childhood home, whom I barely knew, who were responsible for keeping our home spic and span, who ironed the napkins and the sheets - the women I wasn't taught to respect and certainly not to love.
It's ironic but very fitting that I have my Grandma Rae's tea service because I'm not sure she'd notice whether it was polished or not. And she wouldn't care so much. While I'm trying to take care of her stuff, it is not the stuff that brings back memories but the actions –Grandma Rae and I have big moments together when the mixmaster is spinning.
When an object becomes more valuable than the person who is cleaning it, it is disturbing. I know in my heart that if the silver disappeared, I would feel no less close to my grandmother and experience no real loss. I wonder who will want to inherit the silver tea service in my family. It doesn't disturb me. Fortunately, I know this grandmother knew that no piece of silver was ever more valuable than a human being.
It's time for my Chinese cleaning woman to go vacuum upstairs.I can hear her grunting and muttering already about dogs not belonging in the bedroom. Ah, well, someday the feng shui will be right.
