Someone Has to Clean Up the Mess

Passing Strangers: A woman has to take the long way home

Passing Strangers is a weekly series of fictional portraits— keyhole views into the lives and inner worlds of other humans. These are standalone pieces but if you look carefully, you might begin to see a how they’re all brush strokes in a broader landscape. Visit the table of contents to find all the portraits.

On days she was given a tip after cleaning the last home of the afternoon, she would stop at the corner market and buy a Yoohoo and a bag of Fritos. Before making her way back to the cramped apartment she shared with her sister, her sister's four kids, and her cousin, she would stop and sit in the park to enjoy her treat.

Today that treat cost three dollars more than it had on Wednesday, and if people hadn’t been in line behind her, she would have put the stuff back and left empty-handed. The place she used to go stopped accepting cash, and she didn’t have a card. She would never have a card.

Even if she got over her guilt for spending the extra money, she wouldn’t have been able to enjoy her snack on the bench by the fountain. There were too many people in the park today. She paid little attention to such things before, but these days, in any large gathering of strangers, her heart hammered in her chest. In the crowd, at just four feet, ten inches, she could have been mistaken for a child if not for the deep creases in her forehead and her stooped posture from years of bending over mop buckets and other people’s toilets.

There was loud music playing somewhere in the distance. Like most of the music she heard from passing cars, it sounded cold and relentless like the pounding of machines on a factory floor. She missed the lilt of mariachi songs, the way they galloped and made you want to move your hips.

When she reached the place where the road forked, there were several policemen forming the dashed line of a barrier between her and the route to catch her train. A white couple in workout clothes, engrossed in conversation, passed straight through one of the gaps without even looking up.

She stopped.

A man bumped into her from behind and cursed loudly. Heat rose to her cheeks and she smelled the stink of her own sweat. Her eyes fixed on the belt, the gun, and cuffs of the cop closest to her. She thought of her nieces and nephews waiting for her, the TV blaring.

The crowd was flowing around her like she was a stump in a river. She turned against the current and worked her way through to the opposite shoulder. Someone’s small cooler smashed painfully into her breast but she kept moving.

She had to get back. The four extra miles around the park to get to the train would make her very late. The kids would be hungry. There would be a mess.

But she would be there to clean it up.

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