W: Barb #3

Three days it took us to clean out that apartment. Three days, for a
two bedroom apartment with a tiny kitchen and one bathroom! The air
conditioner didn't work and the roaches were so bad I seriously
considered taking a sip or two of my sister-in-law's rum. She'd brought
it with her to help me clean up and I promised myself not to say
anything as long as she kept working. I had a cigarette going the
entire time so I wasn't exactly without my crutch.

The roaches! At one point I took a clock off the kitchen wall and there
were so many that it looked like chocolate syrup was dripping onto the
floor. I threw the clock down so fast that it shattered into about a
hundred different pieces, mixed in with roach parts. What a mess.

When my sister-in-law and I got to the apartment we banged on the door
for a full minute before my nephew answered. I could hear him moving
around in there before he opened the door, and the first thing I
noticed was the smell of bleach. I could tell he'd tried to pick up a
bit, but when I sat on the couch it wobbled. Later I saw he'd stuffed
all sorts of things - clothes, newspapers, dishes - under there. I told
myself that he'd at least made an effort, sent him and his little
sister to school, and got to work. God only knows where their big
sister was but that was a battle I'd have to fight later.

The kitchen alone took one day. Apparently the kids had been eating
nothing but spaghetti and jarred sauce. I found a bunch of ground beef
wrappers just thrown onto the kitchen closet floor and sauce splattered
all over the stove and counter and wall. The freezer was so frosted
over that there was about three inches of available space. I unplugged
it and went at it with a butter knife and a hair dryer. I didn't care
if the knife scraped up the sides, it was a rental. Some of the freezer
ice came loose in big chunks, packages of meat and fish and corn frozen
inside like some sort of archaeological dig in Antarctica. The
refrigerator wasn't much better. It looked like everything that had
ever been put inside of it had spilled into one big sticky mess that I
had to pour boiling water over to dislodge. And, get this, I found
roach eggs in the crisper. At least I think they were roach eggs, which
look like quartered pecans only lighter in color. I vacuumed those
right out. That's how ridiculous it was, using a vacuum on the
refrigerator.

Halfway through the kitchen we had to go buy more trash bags. My
sister-in-law was three sheets to the wind by then. I drove through the
neighborhood and, I swear, I must have had the only running car on the
block. On every corner it was a different nationality, all of them
staring at us like we were trespassing. I suppose we were.

The next day we hit the living room, throwing anything not bigger than
a breadbox into the trash. Maybe it was wrong to do that but I couldn't
face it. I knew those kids were coming with me back to Colorado and
there just wasn't room for all that junk. And it was junk, stuff you
wouldn't even take out for a garage sale, you'd be so mortified of the
neighbors seeing. I filled one trash bag alone with soda cans and
take-out food containers, all of which the roaches had picked clean.
Each time I reached for something else I was sure a mouse or a rat was
going to wrestle me for it. And I don't do rodents.

Oddly enough the bathroom was the easiest to clean. We sprayed
everything down with two cans of magic bubbles and wiped away. It
didn't look like anything in there except the toilet had been used
much, though I did find a whole pile of dirty underwear under the sink.
All of it had been worn until it was stiff and stained beyond repair.
Into the trash it went.

I was fine until the third day, when we went into the back bedroom. It
was a dark little room that my sister basically used as a closet, even
though it had a bed and dresser. The bedspread and drapes were meant
for a boy's room, some science fiction theme or another, but I already
knew my nephew never slept in the room. I'd found a mat and some
blankets in a corner of the living room and asked him about them. "This
is just where we sleep," he said, like it was the most natural thing in
the world. I guaranteed him he'd have a bed of his own back in
Colorado, and all he said was, "That would be fine," like some adult
making hotel reservations.

But back to the bedroom. My sister had a good eye for clothes. The
closet and dresser were full of silky dresses and velour tops with
pants to match, leather shoes and sandals with low heels and thin
straps. Her brassieres looked like a rainbow all lined up in a drawer,
and I was relieved to see she actually kept her underwear clean. She'd
charged most of it, I was sure, if all the past due credit card bills
on the television meant anything. I stood for a while in front of the
closet, running my hand over the fabrics and nudging the shoes with my
foot. And I just broke down, my eyes watering and that awful pressure
in my chest just needing to come out. Because even if I was mad as hell
at my sister, I was doing exactly what she'd been running away from her
whole life by pawing through her things and taking over. All she ever
wanted was the life I saw in her closet, a few fine things and a place
to keep them, along with a chance to be somebody else.

Though if I'd known then what I found out later, I might have taken a
pair of scissors to that closet instead of standing there crying like a
baby.