‘Maid’: Untidy account of life on the dole
When Stephanie Land fled from her abusive boyfriend with her baby daughter, she had few options. Raised in a middle class family in Washington state and Alaska, she was 29 and had supported herself since high school through a series of jobs without real futures. She hadn’t managed to pull the trigger on college and had no family she could rely on in any but the most superficial ways.
She lived with her young daughter in a homeless shelter, then in low-rent apartments she could barely afford, supporting them both with her meager income and whatever government aid she could snag. Her memoir, “Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive” (Hachette Books, 288 pp.), is Land’s telling of the few years she spent mostly as a house cleaner and the often-degrading experience of trying to latch onto the patchy safety net that exists for those who struggle.
Here are insights in the book:
Aid isn’t easy
Cobbling together the various pieces of public assistance that help a person bob slightly above water is complicated and time-consuming: standing in endless lines, keeping files of paperwork that show you’re three nickels away from sleeping in your car, arranging your work schedule around government office schedules. “I was,” Land wrote, “overwhelmed by how much work it took to prove I was poor.”
Being faceless is hard
Although one of the hallmarks of an excellent housecleaning person is the ability to glide more or less silently through the house – causing as little dis- ruption to the homeowner as possible – Land wrote that a huge frustration felt in that line of work is feeling faceless, invisible, interchangeable. A small bit of conversation and acknowledgment matters.
Pain is a constant
Cleaning houses for hours, day after day, beats up necks and backs and knees and other body parts more than most people understand. Cleaners suffer from a range of pain issues that never go away because they can’t afford to take a day off, seek medical treatment or get a massage or physical therapy. Land downed ibuprofen by the handful (when she could afford it) to dampen her aches.
Maids know family secrets
They take note of clients’ bathroom habits, medication use and even social patterns based on what they observe while cleaning toilets, picking up clothing and shoving aside papers to polish counters. Moreover, house cleaners – some house cleaners, at least this house cleaner – do sometimes snoop through their clients’ possessions or try on clothes.
Judgment hurts
Most on government assistance are not able to easily brush off the critical eye, the arched eyebrow, the mumbled comment. Land wrote about the “bag of shame” filled with groceries she paid for with a government-issued food card, of people studying the contents of her shopping cart. “I got the feeling,” she wrote, “that people who needed government assistance were assumed to be a very uneducated bunch and were treated accordingly.”
Land’s honesty – acknowledging many bad choices, envy and sometimes contempt toward the people whose houses she cleaned – makes “Maid” a book with much candid detail about the frustrations with the limitations of programs she relied on. It is a picture of the soul-robbing grind through poverty that millions live with every day.