Filth

Krista has the stomach flu. She moans and rolls around pathetically, wears loose, scroungy clothes and repetitively asks, "What do I do, it's awful, I can't stand it."
"Oh my God you are pathetic," I wail.
"I know I'm grossing myself out," Krista says.
I have no sympathy of course, she is always SO sick. She is terribly unhealthy and has the worst stomach ache, headache, toothache, backache all the time. Especially when it is time for school, or when it is her turn to do dishes.
"I don't friggin' care you are going to friggin' school dammit. Dammit!" I say.
I hate it when she is home from school. She made a smoothie in the blender last time she was off school and I should have known better than to buy the dark frozen berries because when I encountered the kitchen hours after her graceful attendance, the dark frozen berries proved to have been a mistake. It was obvious that she had made a smoothie with the dark berries but how she made it was yet to be discovered. By the look of things she took the crunchy icy berry chunks in her teeth and jaws and shook her head viciously from left to right while gnashing her teeth. With berry spewing through gaps in her lips she must have pirouetted and tumbled up and down the kitchen floor for several minutes possibly jumping up onto chairs and table for what else could explain the red blotches and drizzles on the ceiling, the tops of the walls and cupboards and strategically dripping down my new and elegant yet casual velvet (yes unwashable, dry clean only velvet) curtains. It is not that the red frozen berries when blended created the darkest, richest deepest drippiest hue I've ever seen, its just that aside from fresh pints of maroon blood spattered on a very stark white background, I can't think of any. The center of the 14” tile stone flooring (that I love and was the key selling point on this house) was relatively clean, using the term loosely. But the edges of the kitchen, under the cupboards near the walls, were splattered, and mind you the usage of the word splattered in this context is the quintessentially proper usage of it, with reddish-maroon, wine-colored, deathly dark smoothie. It was dripping in gruesome angry globules from the cupboards low and high. The tile countertops no longer gleamed in long stretches of ivory but instead were polluted with abortion-like fetus parts. I tell you the red goo was all the way in the dining room, on the glass slider and even residually on the living room couch. It is not that fresh smoothie is terribly difficult to wipe up in such massive quantities and in such far-reaching arrays, tedious and time-consuming yes, but terribly difficult-no. However, red, berry smoothie is in fact quite difficult when left to dry and harden on a hot California summer day when of course is the time that one might choose to spew blended dark fruit pieces about ones mother's new and spotless kitchen.
"Krista get down here dammit!" I am a raving lunatic.
She came down immediately which translates that she knew she had something coming.
"What in the hell. What in the hell is going on in here? Dammit!" I screech.
"Mom calm down. Deep breaths...come on do them with me. Here we go, in (pause) now out," she is funny even when I want to destroy her.
"Deep breathe my fucking ass. What have you done to my antiseptic and sterile white with stone tiled floor and ivory tile counter-topped kitchen?" I am hyperventilating but my eyeballs haven't rolled completely out of my head.
"Mom, Mom, Mom, settle down. I was making a smoothie and all was well, I took the blender pitcher from the counter to the table and then tripped and dropped the pitcher. Smoothie went everywhere I tell you. I worked on cleaning it up already for a really long time because I knew you would be mad," she grovels appropriately.
I do believe that she tried to clean it up because of that center swiped quasi-cleanliness on the stone-tiles. But she is so sycophantically accommodating that I know I'm being manipulated. Some people know how, what and even when to clean. (I will address the important relationship between timing and cleaning later). Some do not. Sadly, Krista is among those of the latter specimens. One day for instance I asked her to clean up her tuna lunch mess.
"I already did," was her earnest reply.
"No you didn't there is still a mess everywhere," I say patiently.
Standing right next to me, looking at the same exact kitchen from the same exact physical perspective, she incredulously says, "Where?"
"Everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere," I am calm, I am nurtured, I am loved. I tell myself.
"Okay, okay Mom you are anal," Krista says.
"If you can smell rotting fishy, dead tuna meat then you haven't cleaned properly," I say.
"Mom I smell nothing," she means it. "Mom I see nothing," she is serious. I swear that this is the exact conversation we shared. The girl doesn't smell, know, feel or intuit dirt which is partially what separates the clean from the not clean. Laziness takes care of the rest. I pointed out to her the odorous piles of tuna and tuna juice, various crumbs, utensils, remnants on leather place-mats and on mahogany kitchen table. She picked up the can and dripped tuna juice across the counter-top and floor then threw the can away but on top of the closed lidded trash can. Did a half-ass swirl of a rinse on the dish and stuck it sideways next to the previously soldierly and perfectly arranged dishes in the dishwasher, left the fork with dead and decaying tuna guts dripping from tines inside the microwave where she had warmed up a french roll, dragged a dish cloth over the counter in such a way as to spread crumbs and tuna guts more evenly over the counter, tossed the wet, dripping, tuna soaked rag onto the once gleaming stainless steel faucet, then skipped across the tuna juice trail on the floor and transferred it from the soles of her feet and dragging, tattered bell bottom jeans into the living room so that the lonely carpet didn't feel neglected of oceanic creatures. But back to berries. Krista spent more time cleaning while I pointed out globs and gobs that somehow escaped her vision. I goaded and inspired her to continue with encouraging aphorisms.
"You are such a slob, finish this. What am I your friggin' slave. You work until it is done. Oh wouldn't I like to be done with my work so I could sit on my lazy butt and watch TV like you do all friggin' day."
There remains smoothie on the ceiling and velvet curtains even as I sit at my computer today. It is a reminder of the imperfections that family life unexpectedly brings, a reminder of pre-familial and unattainable standards of perfection and cleanliness crippled by the dull ache of reality. Dare we hope for a time of perfection and antiseptic cleanliness when the children are grown? An environment void of all dripping berry juice, tuna globs, happy soggy Cheerios, crashed computers and dirty toilets? A time void of human imperfections? Void of those who make messes, don't clean right and create high blood pressure in their mothers? A time void of daughters, disappointments, ruined expectations, disturbing mothering traits and long looks at inner ugly self? Void of me as mother? Dare I hope? Yes often, guiltily, lustily I hope for a time alone. All alone. Adrift and single. Void and alone, simply all by my clean antiseptic self. Alone. Solitaire. I reiterate void. Void of Krista. Void of Brook. Well when you put it that way, it doesn’t sound so good so nevermind. I will tolerate the filth.