I’m not your fucking maid! oh….wait.

“Do you mind if I defrost a few rats in the sink?” Felice asks me.

I’ve been housekeeping here for a couple of months now. Felice has 13 boa constrictors and 5 pythons. They are hungry and need to eat.

They eat defrosted rats.

“Not at all. It doesn’t bother me.” It’s her kitchen.

“Some of my other housekeepers didn’t like it,” she says, going in to the room where the deep freeze hums.

Being ‘fine with snakes’ was a major condition of our agreement when I started the job. I assured her I wasn’t squeamish of boa constrictors, corn snakes, or cages of sacrificial mice; now is my chance to demonstrate defrosting rodents don’t disturb me unduly.

But I am realizing belatedly that I’ve never really had the opportunity to determine whether this is true or not, this being ‘fine with snakes’.

They are all safely in cages so I am mostly ‘fine’; however, I experience small twinges of atavistic horror as I examine them through their glass walls. They look both lazy and smug.

Sometimes when I’m bending over to vaccum under a table or something, I’ll hear a thump and look up. I’ll meet the beady gaze of a snake in full predator mode, his tongue flicking in agitation as he thunks his head fruitlessly against glass, trying to get me.

They’re all hungry right now because Felice had a problem getting her last order of frozen rats; she finally managed to drive out to her source yesterday, a 100 kilometer round-trip.

This is one of a few regular gigs I have going on. After a few hours of work I’ll cycle off, into the sun or the drizzle, the day still young. I’ll curl up in a cafe with my greyscale pens and notepaper, making comics while my cheap coffee gets cold.

I feel content for the first time in a long time, despite the dwindling bank account, despite frozen rats and being told to clean up thumbprints after dirty teens. I crave time like it’s candy and right now I will do anything to get some of it, and not have to put up with typical jobby crap all day, day-in day-out. I was really tired of shipping and receiving, sending out garbage designed to break in order to get it back at some point, so I could fix it.

Now I’m a maid, I guess. It’s not fancy. I like that. It’s humble and indisputable and can’t be couched in corporate mumbo jumbo. There’s no meetings, no lingo.

And with my time I’ve joined a dance troupe, I’m writing and comicking and getting exercise and volunteering at the Mission. Life is both less and more full.

*

Felice fills up the sink with hot water and puts in some ice-cube rats.

“Soon, babies!” she sing-songs to her cages.

They put dishes in that sink!