When Stephanie Land was 28, she accidentally got pregnant with a man she’d been dating for four months, a cook in Port Townsend, Wash. This man yelled at her regularly, but she stayed with him until he punched a hole in the door during a fight. Her daughter was 7 months old. Land moved in with her father, but he got violent too, and she left for a homeless shelter. From there, she secured federally subsidized Section 8 housing. Eventually, she began dating someone who had a farm, moved in with him, and started cleaning houses for $9 an hour, a job that offered “no sick pay, no vacation days, no foreseeable increase in wage.” At least one of these $9 hours went to making gas money for the commute. When the farmer broke up with her, she collected money for a deposit on an apartment of her own by appealing to her connections on Facebook. On moving into a studio, she learned it was infected by black mold.
Cleaning, which soon became the main source of Land’s income (she also did yardwork), proved grueling and tedious labor. To every house, she lugged “two spray bottles, one container of powdered Comet, two sponges, one pair of yellow gloves, 50 white rags, two dusters, one Oreck vacuum, two mop handles.” As a rule, she started in the upper left corner of the building or room and worked her way across and down until she was done — not unlike a reader. Her boss referred to her as the business’s best cleaner. Clients who had found fault with other employees did not complain about her.
https://www.nytimes....-land-maid.html
Edited by Victoria Watcher, 21 September 2020 - 05:36 PM.