Cleaning Day

***Language warning: this story contains strong language***


CLEANING DAY
3/8/2004

Bonnie glanced out the window as she washed the dishes. The brilliant blue of the early summer sky drew her eyes. Her backyard was sunny and inviting, the tiny deck surrounded by the blooming annuals she had planted just two weeks before. Her watchful gaze took in the budding oak tree, the apple tree, the lavender plants, and the yellow cotton sheets flapping gently in the morning breeze.

Today would be the day.

As Bonnie rinsed the last plate and carefully placed it in the draining rack, Jeff came stumbling into the kitchen. He was unshaven and bleary-eyed, suffering the after effects of last night’s binge. He didn’t look as though he had slept at all, though Bonnie had heard his snores most of the night. His stench was powerful, and Bonnie wrinkled her nose.

“Get me some breakfast,” Jeff spat at her as he sat down at the little round table and picked up the newspaper.

“I’ve already eaten and washed up, Jeff. It’s past ten o’clock.”

“Do you want to be that stupid, you dumb bitch?” Jeff glared at her from around the newspaper, his dark eyes clouded with unspent fury. “I said, get me some breakfast.”

Bonnie nervously twisted one end of her pink and white gingham apron.

“Okay, Jeff,” she said quietly, removing a shiny copper-bottomed frying pan from the dish draining rack. It was an old pan, in need of a new handle or at least solder for the current one, but Bonnie kept it as clean as new. She wiped it dry with her apron and set it on the stove top. As she cracked eggs into the pan, she looked over her shoulder at Jeff still sitting at the table. She wondered what it was eight years ago that had made her think she loved him. She couldn’t remember if there had ever been any real charm or appeal. She couldn’t remember if he had always been hotheaded. She couldn’t remember much of anything about him before the first time he had hit her, a blow that had come on her wedding night.

The wedding had been small and quick. She had worn a faded floral sundress and a white straw hat Jeff had said she could buy new. He had worn a threadbare brown suit with white shoes. They had stood in front of a judge in the county courthouse to take their vows, Jeff’s somber older sister their only witness.

After a quiet supper at the diner in the middle of town, Jeff had taken her to a motel on the outskirts for their wedding night. The motel was a little rundown, the green paint faded and peeling, the sign proudly proclaiming a color television in each room. It was in their tiny room over the sounds of that color television that Jeff had struck her. At seventeen, Bonnie had been a nervous bride, afraid of what she knew was to come in the marriage bed. Jeff had not wanted to wait. He had not wanted to be patient or gentle with his young wife and had responded to her tears with violence. He had punched her face, and when she was sufficiently cowed, had ripped the sundress from her body and relieved himself on her, rolling over with a groan when he was finished.

The next morning, Bonnie had woken to a bruised jaw and a ravaged spirit.

Eight years of marriage hadn’t changed or mellowed Jeff at all. In fact, he’d gotten worse. Bonnie carefully flipped the eggs in the pan and slid them onto a plate with a slice of buttered toast. The eggs were as perfectly “over easy” as any could be. She set the plate in front of Jeff and went to the counter to pour him a mug of coffee. As she turned to bring the mug to him, he flung the newspaper down and eyed his breakfast with disgust.

“What the fuck is this?” Jeff’s tone and face were frightening; Bonnie was disheartened.

“You- you said you wanted breakfast. I made eggs. You knew I was making eggs.” Bonnie set the coffee down on the table and backed away, bumping into the counter and holding its edge behind her back. She bit her lip as she saw Jeff begin to rise from the table as if in slow motion.

“I don’t want over easy, bitch. Why are you so stupid all the time?” Suddenly he was upon her, pulling her hair and dragging her from the counter to the table. He slammed her face into the plate and rubbed it around as if she were a bad dog who messed in the house. She could feel the yolk in her nostrils as he continued to grind her head into his breakfast.

“You eat that shit,” he said angrily, giving her leg a vicious kick and her head a final slam. He left the kitchen, swearing at her all the way down the hallway into the bathroom. Each curse seemed to echo loudly in the tiny house and inside Bonnie’s brain.

She lifted her head slowly, bits of egg clinging to her eyelashes and runny yolk sliding down her cheeks. She wanted to cry but knew had to remain strong. She resolutely wiped the egg from her skin with the gingham apron and willed herself to stay calm. Today would be the day.

She heard the sound of the shower running as she dutifully cleaned up the mess her husband had made. She wondered what her life would have been like if she hadn’t married him. Would she have been better off or worse? She knew she couldn’t have stood one more month, one more week, in her parents’ house, watching her father beat her mother in one drunken rage after another. Bonnie never returned home after Jeff had picked her up from school and taken her to the courthouse. She had heard a few years ago that her father had drunk himself to death. Although she sometimes felt sorry for her mother, she couldn’t bring herself to care what had happened to her father.

When she had finished cleaning the table and the dishes, she rinsed the apron in the kitchen sink, looking out the window to her charming backyard as she did so. When the apron was rinsed of all the bits of egg, she wrung it out firmly. Brushing aside a wisp of mousy brown hair from her eyes, she went out the kitchen door, hearing the hollow aluminum bang of the screen door as it shut behind her. She went into the backyard, tilting up her face for a moment to feel the comforting warmth of the sun on her skin. The scent of the lavender permeated the air, and Bonnie drew it in as deeply as she could as she plucked two clothespins from the line and secured the apron there. She thrust her hands into the pockets of her dress and looked around again. It was a lovely yard, carefully tended only by Bonnie, a retreat she felt was all her own. She would miss this refuge, but it couldn’t be helped. Today would be the day she would leave it.

Bonnie went back into the house. She could hear Jeff’s movements in the bedroom as he dressed after his shower. She took a duster, a rag, and a spray bottle of cleaner from the broom closet in the kitchen and quietly padded down the carpeted stairway to the basement. The family room she had thought inviting and warm when she and Jeff bought this house now seemed chilly and remote. She snapped on the overhead light, shivering a little in the cold, remembering the silky warmth of the sun in the yard. She made her way through the room, dusting this and dusting that, spraying cleaner and wiping down the glass front of the fireplace. Bonnie enjoyed cleaning. She took pride in her neat and tidy little home, the rituals involved in her housekeeping offering a comforting consistency to her days. She plucked a long piece of ivory from the mantel, the tusk from a narwhal that Jeff had brought home one night after a poker game. She dusted it thoroughly, running her hands along the smooth, cold spiral. She gently replaced the tusk in its spot, taking care to point the tip toward the wall.

When she had finished wiping and tidying, Bonnie opened the heavy closet door at the back of the family room. She pulled a suitcase from the bottom shelf and set it aside on the floor. It was old and worn and not very big, but it would do.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Jeff’s voice surprised Bonnie and she whirled around as he came down the stairs, clad in stiff blue jeans and boots, his hair still shower damp. He had not shaved, and his chest was bare.

“It’s cleaning day, Jeff.” Bonnie’s voice was soft. “I have some cleaning out to do.”

“I’m going out,” Jeff growled in return. “You better not have this shit laying around when I get back. And I want dinner on time!” He turned back toward the stairway.

Bonnie pulled herself up to her full height, breathed deeply, and took her plunge.

“Jeff.” She said it clearly and firmly, firmly enough to cause her husband to stop and turn back to her, suspicion evident in the narrowing of his eyes.

“Jeff,” she said again. “I don’t want you to go.”

“What? What did you say?” His voice was low and dangerous, and he advanced toward her with one agonizingly slow step. She saw the glitter of the brass plate on the toe of his boot.

“I…” Bonnie swallowed hard, then forged ahead. “I don’t want you to go.” She drew up her chin and forced herself to look into his eyes, black and dangerous with his rising anger. She could read the fury in them as she retreated, just as she done in the kitchen earlier. As she leaned away from Jeff, the back of her head butted against the fireplace mantel.

“You bitch!” he shot at her, advancing yet one more step. “You…do…not…tell…me… what to do.”

Bonnie watched as Jeff’s hand reached for his belt buckle. She stood transfixed as he slowly removed the belt from his crisply pressed jeans. She heard the hiss of the leather as it swung through the air. She felt the razor-sharp sting as it struck her flesh, slicing it open. She saw the blood flow from the injury.

Bonnie screamed.

………………..

Bonnie loaded the last of her things into the trunk of the car. She gave a tug on the lid, pulling it down firmly to latch it. She wiped the dusty residue onto her jeans. She tucked her hair behind her ears, hair made a sunny golden blonde that afternoon with a box of Miss Clairol. Jeff didn’t like Bonnie to wear jeans, but she had kept this pair hidden, buried in the bottom drawer of her dresser, waiting for a chance to put them on. She liked the way they fit on her hips. She liked that she wasn’t afraid to wear them today. She went up the concrete step to the kitchen door, trying it to make sure it was locked. She walked around to the backyard, wanting one last glimpse of her garden. She looked lovingly at her oak and apple trees, at her lavender and her annuals, at the freshly turned earth that was to have been her vegetable garden. She felt a stab of regret that she wouldn’t be there to watch her vegetables flourish, but it simply couldn’t be helped. Bonnie had no time nor room to err. It was time to go.

With a road atlas to guide her and a full tank of gas, Bonnie backed the car out of the driveway with one final, wistful look at the cottage that had been her home. She drove out of the lane and then sped off onto the highway at sixty miles per hour, ready now to put distance between her and the life she’d shared with Jeff.

As she drove, she thought of Jeff a little sadly. She wished it had been different. She wished Jeff had been the kind of husband she’d longed for, wished it hadn’t come to this. Jeff hadn’t cared much for Bonnie’s garden. He’d laughed and sneered at her efforts to grow prize-winning flowers and big, ripe tomatoes. How fitting that now, in her absence, he would be the one to feed and nurture her vegetables.

She reached for the bit of ivory beside her on the car seat. Her fingers ran along the cold, hard length of that tusk, closing over the sharply pointed end. She supposed that at some time it would have to go, but for now she enjoyed the strength it gave her. It had been difficult to clean properly, but she had taken care of the job. Bonnie was very good at cleaning.

Today was cleaning day.