Mrs. Clean : Burned Toast and Loud Music Are a Small Price to Pay for a Maid

We have a woman who comes in every Saturday morning to clean our house. My wife works and can’t keep up herself.

I called our treasure the Pearl at first, when I couldn’t remember her name, and it stuck. She is a Pearl--not only because of the luster of her complexion and personality but because she is precious.

She works hard and fast, and she is cheerful, though she tells me she has plenty of problems. She has two children of school age whom she is raising by herself. She says they are both A students, and she is very proud of them. So am I.

For months she came in on Friday mornings, when I was home alone. I would shut myself in my workroom, which she is not expected to clean, nor even permitted to enter; I am afraid she might accidentally make some incomprehensible order out of my disorder.

Sometimes I come out of my room to find her talking on the extension phone in the kitchen. It has a long line so that my wife can talk while she’s working at the sink, and Pearl will be washing the dishes and talking on the phone, which she has tucked between her left shoulder and her left ear. I think she uses the phone to work on her various problems, so I don’t mind.

I used to feel guilty because I didn’t allow her to play the radio when I was home. I cannot work and listen to the radio. But when I would go out in the morning and come home before she was finished, the radio would be on loud, tuned in to some kind of soul-rock station.

When she left, I would always have to change it back to one of our stations.

She seems to exercise a sort of witchcraft over everything that is electronic. She does not dismantle our electronic system as totally as our 2-year-old grandson can, but she can reach a couple of things he can’t, and she is subtler.

She almost always re- adjusts the toaster so that, when we put a piece of toast in it, it either bakes without toasting or burns to a crisp. You might think we would get used to this and readjust it before we try to make toast, but somehow we forget and have to learn by experience every time.

She turns the clock-radio in my wife’s bedroom to her soul-rock station, so that in the morning, when the alarm feature turns the music on, full blast, my wife is shaken out of bed. This, too, we always forget until it is too late.

On hot days, she turns both levers of the air-conditioning thermostat to zero. Consequently, when we don’t come home until evening, we sometimes walk into a house that’s like an icebox.

I once tried to explain the thermostat to her, but she can’t give up the idea that if you set it to zero it will get cooler sooner. I can hardly complain, though, because my wife has the same notion.

Pearl’s most exasperating practice occurs in my bathroom. I am a nut about knowing what time it is, and one of the most important clocks in our house is the little electric clock on my dresser. This is plugged into a two-unit wall plug into which I also plug my electric razor. Unerringly, when she wants to plug in her vacuum cleaner, the Pearl disconnects the clock rather than my razor. Thus, whenever I look at my clock after her visits, it will be stopped, and hours late.

Recently she has been coming in on Saturday mornings; my wife and I go out for breakfast and do a few of our chores, like taking our wash to the laundry, and the Pearl is able to play the radio and talk on the phone all she wants.

She no longer tampers with the thermostat, but she always complains, when we come home, of how hot it is, and I feel guilty. She always makes me feel guilty.

But my wife says she is truly a Pearl and I’d better not do anything to make her leave us.

Maybe I’ll just get a quartz clock for my bathroom and buy her her own radio.