When I was a kid, we went through a succession of housekeepers. My mother told me that when I was about 3, she walked in to find the current one lying on the couch, smoking pot and having me run food to her from the kitchen. After a time, we settled on one woman who called herself V.L. As in “Vee Ell”. <\/p>\n
V.L. chewed tobacco, and for many years she used to spit it into our washing machine during the rinse cycle. As a child, I constantly had odd-smelling, yellow-tinted whites. She was a haphazard cleaner with a tendency to sweep stuff under the rug rather than pick it up. She called everyone “honey”. A garrulous sort, she could corner you (she had little regard for personal space) and talk at you for quite some time.<\/p>\n
My friend and I used to run to my house for lunch during senior year in high school. We’d open the front door, hear the faint whine of the washing machine, look at each other panic-stricken and simultaneously say “Oh, shit. It’s V.L. day!”<\/p>\n
When I started dating a guy during that same year, V.L. set up a little shrine to him, with a framed picture and some candles. She called him my “sugar daddy”.<\/p>\n
Once she told me that she needed to teach me how to iron, because I “ain’t ever gonna learn it from mama”. Once I overheard her muttering to herself – a very common circumstance, but this time she was saying that she was “workin’ for a family of pigs”.<\/p>\n
Yet under all this was a heart of gold. One time, just out of the blue, she brought me a quilt that she had made for me. It was a nine-patch, all made of polyester doubleknit. Mom refused to fire her (most likely because Mom was a total wussy and wasn’t up to the confrontation) even after the “pigs” occasion. I think V.L. worked for our family until the day my dad died.<\/p>\n
He remembered her in his will, but being the sort of person who liked to see<\/i> peoples’ reactions when given a gift, he gave her her inheritance while he was still alive. After his death, our lawyer sent her a form, asking her please to sign it to waive further claims against the estate. She hired herself a lawyer of her own and sent back a furious letter wondering why we thought she was trying to rob Dad.<\/p>\n
She died in 1998, at the ripe age of 84. I think about her surprisingly often. She was a real character, but I hate the thought that she spent 6 years thinking that we thought of her as a thief. She was not one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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