Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, but the next day was one Sunday
when rest was the most remote possibility in the world for us. The
people in our cabins were checking out one after the other, leaving
their keys in the doors of the cabins or coming into the office and
tossing them on the desk. (One man, leaving early, had got Grant out of
bed at five-thirty just to hand him a key!)
Now, after a happy, exciting night of renting cabins, we were faced
with the result--thirteen dirty cabins to be cleaned.
We had contacted Mrs. Clark, the strongly-built, dark-haired cleaning
woman who did the work for the former owners, but she wasn't coming
until Monday. She would work for us only every other day, because we
were too low on funds to dare spend any on having work done that we
could do ourselves.
I put the baby in her playpen, reminded David again not to play near
the highway, and Grant and I set to work on the cabins. We were tired
anyway after a day of moving and a night of very little sleep, and
whenever I happened to catch a glimpse of myself in one of the little
round mirrors that hung on the wall of each cabin as I worked, I was
shocked. My thick, long hair was tangled and untidy, because of
Banning's cooling but too incessant wind. My eyes looked sunken, and my
face pale. (With so much work before me, I hadn't taken time to put on
any makeup.) I tried to avoid looking in mirrors, because it made me
feel twice as bad to realize how tired and bedraggled I looked.
Grant cleaned the bathrooms, scouring until every fixture shone, while
I stripped the cabins of their dirty towels and sheets, brought clean
ones, and made the beds. I emptied ash trays and wastebaskets and
dusted while Grant vacuumed the floors. That may sound simple, but,
multiplied by thirteen, it becomes drudgery. We plodded along, almost
without hope that we would ever finish. Emptying and polishing the
twentieth ashtray, I cursed the day that cigarettes had been invented.
My hands grew rough and sore from tucking in so many sheets and
blankets, slipping so many pillows into clean cases, and adjusting and
smoothing so many spreads. My back ached. I began to wish I was in Los
Angeles again. I wondered dully how I could ever have considered it
work to clean up just one five-room house, with only two beds in it to
be made.
Every once in a while I had to stop and see that the baby was all
right. David helped by playing in our cabin near her playpen, so that
she wouldn't get lonesome and begin to cry.
At lunchtime there was just one cabin left to clean. Grant said he'd
clean that one, while I fixed lunch. I carried in clean sheets and
pillowslips, hand towels, bath towels, wash cloths, and a bath mat, and
went in to prepare lunch.
I was too tired to do anything but open a can of soup; we were both too
tired to appreciate anything more elaborate, anyway.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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