I can't lie: labels and status and status through labels do nothing for me; they really never have. So if me partaking in a min wage manual labor job makes me a servant, then I guess that's what I am. It must be what I am, despite my lofty aspirations of becoming a comfortably paid writer/educator and my expensive, extensive history with higher education and degrees. Jinnene the molly maid servant.
What I laugh at regarding this job, however, is not the irony involved in the labels. No, it's that I didn't foresee that it would be perfect fodder for my writing pursuits. I mean, the women I encounter as co-workers at the tiny cleaning company are the pricelessly unlikely types to cross my path if not for this job. But you really can't understand what I mean unless I tell you.
Wednesday, 7:16 or so in the morning. It's February 11th, and it's shitty as hell outside. Rainy and cold and dank and insipid, especially when you know the entire day will consist of lugging a cheap, cumbersome vacuum cleaner, mops, a huge duffel of cleaning supplies, and a bucket with even more supplies up and down a variety of twisty, pisser staircases, or down a variety of different streets, all the while, the whipping streams of rain biting into your face as you think: By joe, my friends were freakin' right--this is hilarious: I am a servant and my life officially sucks.
But before all of that, you meet up with Audra, your partner for the day (daily cleaning teams are comprised of two people). Audra is 1/2 mexican and 1/2 black. She is overweight and has a giant, silver pierced stud protruding from her lower lip. She wears glasses and has a warm smile. You have no problems with her, yet you wouldn't exactly ask her out for drinks. You're not soul mates or anything. After all, you and she speak in completely disparate languages: she employs a vernacular that consists of saying 'mines' for 'mine,' 'dat' for 'that,' and 'husband' for 'boyfriend,' but maybe the latter is a cultural thing. Either way, you are from opposite sides of the tracks, and you don't know what you'd care to share with her.
Unfortunately for you, as it's 7:16 in the morning and you've barely gotten through 1/4 of the hazelnut coffee in your stainless thermos, Audra disagrees. You see, even though you've only known her for a couple of days, she wants to bare her soul with you. She proceeds to tell you, once you've gotten into her car upon departing the company's office in Lakeview, about how she had a 'rough' night. Turns out her 'husband' has been addicted to crack for five years. She and he have been living together in a tiny, scrapped-up studio apartment on the south side. He's been lying to her about smoking crack, and she has (unknowingly) been driving him to the sights for his drug intake, thinking these sites were places where he would work and make money to help her pay the rent.
But not so. Instead, he would use the small sum of money that he did make selling newspapers on street corners to scrap for crack tablets; Audra even spotted these tablets, or 'white pills' as she called them, in an old cigarette box while she and he fought in the street yesterday. Their fight consisted of her suspicions of what he had in the cigarette box, knowing it was crack and asking him to show her, he denying that the crack tabs were in the box, saying it was only cigarettes, and to keep out of his shit. Only after she wrestled with him, she took possession of the box, shook the box, and out into her hand, popped these 'white pills'.
She's telling you all of this, with vivid detail. You're thinking about how she would make a really fucking aces writer; that she calls up some pretty interesting details. She's not like the large majority of the population that flap the jaws incessantly, spouting out snippets of stories that are nauseatingly boring. No, Audra knows how to select her particulars, and she cooks up a good tale. But then again, you've never actually talked to the accomplice of a crack addict ever in your life; and for a second, you wonder which is more true: that you have lived a sheltered life, or that you really know how to choose your life adventures.
Either way, you're also thinking: thank GOD ALIVE that this not my life. Thank GOD ALIVE I was born into less suffering (not that Audra is suffering because she is who she is, but she sure makes less money than you ever have, and you can only imagine that to be associated, if not in love with, someone who is addicted to crack, someone who is 48 years old, by the way--to Audra's 24 years old--can only bring about its own string of suffering). One more thing you're thinking: this is going to be a long fucking day. You think this because you've only been in the car for 15 minutes, and listening to her story is exhausting.
You think this again (that you're exhausted) after Audra turns to you and says: 'See, Ja-neen, I rilly think of you as ma friend...because you listenin ta me rot now. Yeah...you ma friend.' She's nearly in tears. She doesn't know what she will do because she just kicked the 48-year-old crack addict out of her tiny tattered studio, and then he broke in in the middle of the night. And she kicked him out again, but she doesn't feel safe; she thinks he'll steal her things, or bring dangerous people around. And on top of this: she loves him and she's heartbroken. How could she not see that he was using? Jesus Christ.
That's what happening with her. But you're thinking: Fuck, I hope she doesn't ask me for my phone number before the end of the day. And that thought, that you feel that way, that you don't want to be her friend, depresses the hell out of you. Still, you keep your cool and do your best to give her advice. You're parked on Harrison street in Audra's black Pontiac Sunbird or whatever the shit it is. It's raining like hell and you really don't want to clean; you barely slept a wink last night thinking about your own problems (who knows what they are). It's raining and you're telling Audra that she should disassociate herself completely from the addict. You say that he won't learn anything if she continues to offer him a pillar for support. He will never learn to clean up if he doesn't figure it out for himself. And furthermore, she's only hurting herself by allowing him to pull her down.
You can't believe this. Again, your friends were right: how hilarious. And reader, you might not see the humor in this. It's certainly not funny that there are people out there who love users. For god's sake, who hasn't cared about someone who has had a drug problem? But oddly enough, a crack addiction, at least to you, seems like such a high grade of rock bottom (ironic choice of words), if only because of its highly addictive, not to mention physically damaging, nature.
Eventually, as you consult the red numbers of Audra's digital clock, you tell yourself what you have told yourself many many times since you started this job: it's just a job. One day, you will be writing what you love and teaching what you love to people who care (much like you do already, but now it's only part time, and you wish you could do it full time). Right now, you need this gig. But later, one day, you might have some beautiful condo (not unlike the ones you clean), and you'll be free of these bullshit min wage jobs that consist of cleaning toilets and inhaling noxious chemicals and having chats on crack. One day. One day not too far in the future. But for now, the goal is to pay your bills. And you will. But first, you need to work. And that's what you're about to go do.
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