clean

you remember being called back to the bathroom because the sink wasn't quite clean enough. a spot of grime underneath and along the edge where the faucet met the hard counter managed to escape the futile digging of your fingernail-less attempts to dig it out, you had picked the keratin out every day since you were 5 or 6 years old. you'd joke that your fingernails are never dirty because they don't exist, peeled back to disfigured shrapnel. on weekends when you went away, you'd expect to come back to a room your mom had gone through and cleaned, prying open nightstand drawers and going through shelves. many an embarrassing grade was found this way by her. it was all under the guise of making sure your room - which wasn't your room, really, it was still your parents - was clean. when your 6th grade teacher opened up your classroom desk to show your parents during conferences that it was too messy you were driven to school early the next day so you could clean it, you didn't want to lose an assignment or forget to bring home a graded paper you got for your parents to determine if the grade was good enough (if it wasn't an A, it wasn't), at least that's what they told you about it when they told you it was too messy. jenny two desks over had a moldy burger in hers. the teachers didn't care about her though, neither did her parents, so there was nothing to clean. you'd be sad about this when you reflected on it later. clean is a state of class. in high school your mom would reach across and pop a pimple or fix your hair so your appearance was clean, unasked for physical contact your body naturally reacted to by drawing away physically, wondering if seeing her son pull away every time she reached out hurt her.

as you got older you wondered if it was about actually cleanliness, or perhaps it was really about control. the basement office at home your mom asked you to help organize had a betamax porn video in it your parents didn't 'clean' out, the used car you bought from them had an erotic CD in the glove compartment they didn't 'clean' out. the house of theirs is still pristine largely but then your mom sees the state of your car one day and asks if she can help clean it, if she can pay for someone to clean it, please, anything, it's too messy. either it is a judgement on you or an attempt to control the space you still occupy, who knows. as a kid you had a weekly schedule for when to clean the bathrooms at home, when to vacuum, it seemed like any other household chore setup but you suppose every house is different, you have yet to have had a single friend whose place is as clean as the space you occupied as a kid.

she still tries. cars, desks, she offers to come to your place where you live with your wife and clean it, she promises no judgements but you know that has never been true. every year she calls her mom and she comes down and they clean together, an entire house, organized and managed and tidy. like mother like daughter. your current place is full of post-wedding stuff and it is cluttered and you know the words that would escape her mouth walking through the door would be caustic and judgmental.

when you moved into your first place years ago you let your bedroom become a disaster. depression-aided apathy gave way to a carpet completely covered in trash and laundry and alcohol and tobacco stains, not a single speck of carpet showing. over seventy trash bags and two and a half weeks later one spring it was done. you surveyed the room before you. you were content with the state of it. your mom never would be. maybe the metaphor was there the whole time.