The Land of Corn and Wine

Tell you the truth, I never liked to fool with rich ladies. There's two kinds of people that hire you to clean their house and one is old ladies and one is rich ladies. Everybody else does their own or they ought to anyway.

In the money department you are better off with the old ladies. Say you worked seven hours, so your pay is twenty-eight dollars. Now, that rich woman will try to talk you down to twenty-five. Rich ladies like a nice squared-off number, especially if it ain't the right amount. Like I care whether my paycheck is a good number or not. But an old lady will round your check up to thirty dollars and give you two or three butternut squashes out of her garden.

I used to always have old ladies cause they was much nicer and when you're a hillbilly like I was, nice counts for something. When I got my first ladies to do, I was kind of young and high-strung, you know. They could say boo to me and I'd just about jump into the closet with the vacuum cleaner. So I liked my old ladies, cause they was nice and easy to get along with, you know.

But I had a good strong back then and with old ladies you need a strong back cause with them it's "Honey, could you put my t.v. antenny up for me? The wind blew it down and my boy can't come to see me until Saturday..." You can probably figure out .how the rest of that little tune goes and it all ends with you climbing up and down ladders and moving their living room suite all around cause they think that the La-Z-Boy would look better under the picture window, "don't you think so, Ruby?" and what can I say but yes.

Since I had my surgery I can't be packin' La-Z-Boys around like I used to. So I got me some rich ladies to do and they could be hard on a person. They would talk on the telephone all day and act like they didn't know you was there, especially if you had to ask them something. But just try to leave a minute early and they are off that phone in a flash. "Ruby, surely you're not leaving already? It's only 5 till. Isn't there something you can find to do until it's time to go?" Sure, I could count all my earthly riches but I don't think it would take me that long.

That's the way Mrs. Belco was. And she had a little dog, real furry, you know? Pekinese, that's what they're called. Mrs. Belco would always say, "Now, Ruby, there's no reason to be scared of Pepe. He has never bitten anyone," but I thought like fun he hasn't. He just waits till you leave.

Pckinese have sensitive ears. Seems like that long hair would cut the noise, but when you run the vacuum cleaner they just go crazy. So I used to sneak doggie biscuits inside my purse and give them to Pepe when my lady was out. It's hard to sweep when you have to watch out for sneaky little dogs. But then one day Mrs. Belco said, "Ruby, have you noticed how bloated Pepe is getting? Maybe I should take him to Dr. Skirvin." Real quick I said, "Oh, no, Mrs. Belco. Dogs always bloat in the summer time. My sister used to have a spaniel that swelled up real bad." I was worried the doctor would tell her that Pepe was just plain fat which she wouldn't like cause she bought dog food made special for sedentary dogs. Me, I'd be ashamed to go to the grocery store and have the girl ring up special food for my dog that lays around all day.

My mother used to say, "Ruby Marie, if you got paid by the word you would be a millionaire." I was just trying to explain about the different ladies I have cleaned for over the years. I switch back and forth between rich ladies and old ladies. I quit the old ladies to save my back and the rich ladies to save my nerves. I couldn't spare myself nothing when I went to work for Mrs. Scutt. She was rich and old.

I never did like her from the first day I worked for her. Now that I think on it, I didn't like her even before I worked for her because of the way she acted on the telephone. The first thing she said was, "Do you smoke? I do not tolerate smoking in my home." She never give me a chance to answer. She said she was calling about my ad in the paper so she must have read it already but she asked me everything anyway. "And you charge four dollars an hour, then?" she says. I ought to have said no, I charge three but I put down four to scare off the customers. So anyway she’s asking me this and that and when she got to did I have references I sneezed real loud. When she called me I was washing clothes and I had soap powder up my nose so I sneezed. My sister Shirley is a sneezer too and one time she sneezed so hard when we was on the escalator in L. S. Ayres that her wiglet fell off and she had to get hold of it real quick before it went under where the little steps fold up.

But anyway I let fly that big sneeze when I was on the phone to Mrs. Scutt and you would've thought I was dirt the way she acted. "Do you have a cold?" she said and not nice either like she was worried about my health. I told her there wasn't nothing wrong with me but she carried on for a long time about how she was very very sensitive and how it was very very important she didn't get any germs near her. I told her my Aunt Mildred didn't like germs either. I always put her Ty-D-Bol in for her so she wouldn't have to touch the commode.

So after about a hour of me saying I didn't have nothing wrong with me and her saying it was very
very important that I didn't, she said I should come on Monday at eight o'clock.

On Monday, I left the house early just in case I got lost on the way, which I did. After while I figured out where I was supposed to turn. The road was nothing but hills and my poor old car about conked out three or four times. There was fence along both sides of the road, the tall wire kind like they have around the National Guard Armory. After a while I figured out I wasn't driving on a road, it was the Scutts's driveway, but it was as long and wide as a road. I was just starting to cuss cause I thought I passed the turn-off but when I come around a bend there was the biggest house  ever saw. Mrs. Scutt didn't say nothing about living in a mansion on the phone and I was hoping there was somebody to mop floors in there besides me.

The house was real fancy but when I found the parking places and got out of my car I seen the blacktop was all cracked and patched up. I come around to the kitchen door and rung the bell and a little short woman answered the door. I said, "Are you Mary Ann? I'm the new cleaning woman and I’m supposed to ask for Mary Ann."

She said she was and took me down the hall to hang up my sweater. Then I followed her along another hall to a long wall with cabinets built into it and each shelf had a piece of masking tape on the edge of it saying what was on the shelf like furniture polish or dust cloths. Mary Ann showed me where everything was, there was lots to remember so I thought I would come back when nobody was around and memorize.

So Mary Ann took down a little wooden box with wire handles on it like they use to put apples in. She put Pledge in the box and dust rags and a feather duster and some other things and then she said come with her. We went through the kitchen which was big and all red (even the floor was red bricks) and then through another room which had a great big drop-leaf table in it and oriental rugs. Then we was in a room with three or four couches in it and some love seats and settees. And there was still plenty of room to walk. Mary Ann told me to dust everything but don’t move none of the papers and only use the feather duster on the picture frames and absolutely never put Pledge on the round table by the window or Dr. Scutt would have a fit. And I said who's Dr. Scutt, is he Mrs. Scutt's husband and Mary Ann said no, Mrs. Scutt and Dr. Scutt was the same person, a college made her a honorary doctor. Mr. Scutt wasn't a doctor or anything, he just owned a factory. It was all too much to remember and I missed about half of it anyway cause Mary Ann had an accent, German I figured or something like that.

So she said come tell her when I was finished dusting and she went back in the kitchen. I couldn't figure out why Mary Ann put me in the living room because there was nothing to dust. Everything was as clean and shiny as a hospital already. But I was getting my money just the same so I set in with my dust rag. There was a big cabinet, you know, like you put dishes in to show off and the wood was carved pretty. I run my rag down in all the cracks and it took me half an hour to just do one side of it.

I was about halfway around the room, and my rag was still clean, when there was a noise that scared me to death, it sounded like a sheep hung up in a fence. Then Mary Ann come clicking across the kitchen and pushed a button on one of them boxes, you know. An intercom. And she pushes the button and says, "Yes, Dr. Scutt," and there was that sheep noise again, it was Dr. Scutt saying Mary Ann. She said it like, Maaaaaary Aaaann, like that. And then she said a lot of things but don't ask me what. That box made her sound like she was talking on a tin-can telephone.

Anyway, Mary Ann listened to the box squawking and then she says, "Sure thing, Dr. Scutt," only it come out "Chure ting" cause of her accent.

She took her finger off the button and come in where I was. She said, "Dr. Scutt wants you to wack-yoom the front hall when you're done in here but don’t wack-yoom the Oriental rugs, just shake them out." And I said, "Do what to the front hall?" and she said "wack-yoom" and she pushes her arm back and forth like she's sweeping and I said Oh.

The rest of the morning I kept seeing Mary Ann coming past the hall door, she always walked real fast, carrying a tray or some papers. Sometimes she would stop and tell me to be sure and get around the edges of a mirror or don't lean the wack-yoom hose on the furniture. Once I saw a man, very little and skinny and old, in his bathrobe. He was moving slow down the hall, his slippers went scoot, scoot, scoot on the hall floor.

While I was dusting the dining room I could see Mary Ann's kitchen and it was the cleanest kitchen I ever saw. All the pots and pans was on hooks and all in a row from the biggest to the smallest. Everything had a shine to it, even the floor, which if you ever tried to put a shine on a brick you would be impressed too.

After while the intercom squawked and Mary Ann come running and she talked into the box.
Then she told me to go upstairs with her. She went up the stairs real quick and I run behind her holding the cleaning basket. The first room was a little bedroom, real plain, then there was another bedroom that was fancy but had a water jug sitting in a basin like we used to use at home. I guess it was just for show.

The next room down the hall was made up to look like the inside of a ship. It had its own bathroom and the bathroom window looked like a port hole. All the rest of the rooms was made up to look like something else and they had their own bathrooms to match.

There was one door along the hall that was shut. Mary Ann said that was where the live-in couple stayed and they did their own cleaning so I should leave it be. Which that was fine with me cause it looked like there was plenty to do already.

Mary Ann told me everything special to do to each room as we was going through but after about three rooms I couldn't remember none of it so I just decided to do the best I could. Mary Ann took off back downstairs cause the intercom was going off in the kitchen. I started in on the ship room. At first I kind of had the creeps, you know, because the whole upstairs was already clean and quiet as church and I could tell nobody had been living upstairs for a long time, if anybody ever did. Sometimes an old person's house is like that, but even an old lady moves her knick-knacks around on her shelf or leaves a water glass on the bedside table. Here, everything was in the same place it had been in for years and years. At first I tried not to make any noise while I was working but then I thought why be quiet? It ain't a museum, is it?

The last thing to dust in the ship room was an anchor that was hung up over the bed. I thought that was kind of dangerous cause it could come down on your head while you was asleep. I didn't know if I should use Pledge on it or just the feather duster or what. So I come down the stairs to the kitchen to ask Mary Ann. But when I come out in the back hall a woman wearing old clothes and a sun hat marched by me, mad as anything. She slammed out the kitchen door just cussing.

Whatever was going on I thought I better stay out of it. I decided to forget about the anchor, and go back upstairs. I was getting the feather duster out of the box when somebody's voice says, "Well, looks like she lost another one."

A woman was in the doorway, in a black dress like a maid has, with a white apron. I said "Excuse me?" and she said, "You just start today?"

"Yes ma'am. What's going on down there?"

"You don't have to call me ma'am," she said. "I'm just the live-in. Looks like she lost another gardener. She's had three this year already."

"Mrs. Scutt, you mean?"

"You're supposed to call her Dr. Scutt. Yeah, she's hell to get on with. You better watch it, she'll be after you when she gets to know you. She's always after Frank and me. Frank tells her where to go, he don't take nothing off her. I tell him not to cross her or we'll both be out of a job but he says he was looking for a job when he come here and he can look for another one any time."

It seemed like she knew a lot about what was going on but I was afraid to get caught jawing instead of dusting. So I said, "I better get to my work."

"Okay," she said and went on out the door. Then she stuck her head back in and said, "And watch out for Mary Ann. She’s their pet and she's two-faced."

I said okay and took my basket back to the ship's bathroom. My watch said it was time to eat lunch so I got my dust rags and set them out and come downstairs. Mary Ann was putting on her sweater by the back door and she showed me how to go out to the back lawn. She said I could eat my lunch out there if I wanted, so I got my brown sack and let myself out. Around the side of the house was a place to spread out my sweater and sit on the grass. The yard looked like a park. I could just barely see the fence way down the hill. The grass looked bad, all yellow and dead-looking. With all that money the Scutts could of paid somebody to take care of their lawn better than that.

After I ate I got my Kools out of my smock pocket but I was afraid to light one in case somebody could see me out a window. Since Mrs. Scutt said on the phone she did not tolerate smoking in her home, I figured that went for the yard too. I walked around the side of the house but there was windows everywhere. I walked back the way I came and I seen a little wooden fence around where (lie clotheslines was. I opened up the gate latch and let myself in, that way I could be private and relax while I had my cigarette. When I was done smoking I put the butt in my pocket and scooted the ashes around in the grass with my foot.

My watch said twelve-thirty so I come back in and climbed up the back stairs. I hurried and did all my bathrooms first and all the dusting except for the back two rooms. That way I could take my time dusting the shelves and such and do a little figuring.

By the time I got to shelf-dusting the creeps wore off and I kind of liked being there. It was peaceful. In the very back bedroom, there was a cardboard calendar standing on a bureau. The little tear-off pages was last year's but up at the top of the cardboard, it had little calendars for the next five years. I counted the weeks and I figured out I would have my $3000 by September 9 and I could quit. Really I just needed $2800 but I thought having some extra dollars wouldn’t hurt any. As soon as I had my savings up to $3000 I could go to Tucson and pay off my double-wide. I had my mobile home all picked out at the Desert Paradise Trailer Court. My sister lives in Tucson and twice I went to visit her so I could find my mobile home. I had to look and look until finally I found the perfect one, it was $8900. I had $3500 in the bank from when my mom and dad died and the farm got sold, I put that down on the trailer and signed the contract. When I got back home, I moved in a rooming house and collected the rent and cleaned the bathroom and all that so the landlord didn't charge me except electric and water. That way I could pay bills with the first paycheck in the month, and put the next paycheck in the bank. I paid on my trailer loan every chance I got and now ail I had to go was $800 including interest. The other $2000 was so I could live for a year while I started up my own business. I had the $2000 in my savings already, if I could just save up $800 from the Scutts's, I'd be ready to head for Tucson.

I had the name for my company already decided and my brother-in-law was artistic so I had him make me up a business card. It said "R & M Cleaning Services" in the middle (R & M was just me, the R was for Ruby and the M was for Marie) and then across the bottom the card said "Reliable Efficient Affordable" and there was a place for my phone number when I got one. I was going to use part of the $2000 to get an office and print my advertisements. Or if it didn't work out I'd still have enough to come back home on. I'd still have my double-wide paid off, so at least I would have somewhere to go when I was old.

Upstairs at the Scutts's, I was thinking about $2000 more than I was about dusting shelves, so every time I heard a noise I jumped. I thought Mary Ann might come up to spy on me but nobody ever come up.  When my watch said four o'clock I came downstairs and put my cleaning things away and put on my sweater and went home.

All the rest of the week everything stayed about the same. I worked downstairs most of the morning, then Mary Ann would send me upstairs for the rest of the day. I couldn't see that the upstairs needed doing every day since nobody ever come up there, but if that was what Mrs. Scutt wanted then okay. Dusting clean rooms was easy and it was nice to be able to go outside and eat my sandwich at noon.

We got our paycheck on Friday right before lunchtime and while I was eating I took out my ink pen and subtracted my pay. I only had $670 left to get. Then I put away my pen and carried my cigarettes over to the laundry fence. After I let myself in and latched the gate I saw a pack of Camel straights laying on the grass with some of them spilled out like they was dropped. The live-in woman must of been sneaking smokes too. I picked up all the Camels and put the pack in my pocket. I would give them back when I went back upstairs.

The live-in wasn't anywhere upstairs so I went down the stairs to the kitchen to see if Mary Ann knew where she was. When I come in the kitchen Mary Ann was talking to herself in German and rummaging around in a drawer. She banged the drawer shut and started looking around on the floor and under the cabinets. The intercom squawked and Mary Ann jumped. She run over and pushed the button and said, "Chust a minute, Dr. Scutt. The soup is almost boil over-I chust turn it off before I come."

But the soup pot wasn't even on the burner, it was over on the counter next to a lunch tray that was all fixed up. Mary Ann let go of the button and started hunting around on the floor again.
I said "ahem" but she didn't hear me so I went, "Mary Ann?" and she about died. I took out the Camels and kind of slid them across the counter.

She looked at me real hard but I said, "I ain't going to say anything" and I lifted my Kools up out of my pocket a little bit so she could see them. She looked at my pack and then she opened a drawer and put her Camels in it. She got hold of the lunch tray and took off down the hall. On her way she turned her head and said "thank you" and I said "that's okay."

When I come back upstairs the live-ins' door was open and the wife was in there stripping their bed. When I went by she said "Hey" so I stuck my head in. She was stuffing the bedsheet down in a laundry basket and she said, "What's going on down there?"

I started to tell about the cigarettes but then I changed my mind. "Oh, not too much," I said.
"Mary Ann’s soup was boiling over and Mrs. Scutt was calling her on the box."

"She runs Mary Ann ragged, but Mary Ann shouldn't take it off of her to start with. Frank always stands up to her, but Mary Ann's scared of her. Mary Ann used to work in their factory, you know. When Mr. Scutt shut down the factory, Dr. Scutt took Mary Ann on to be her housekeeper cause Mary Ann only missed two days in nineteen years and that was when her husband died. She has
to run from morning till night and they don't pay her nothing. They don't pay us what we're worth either and Frank’s going to find us a better place for the winter. We aren't going to suck up like Mary Ann does, not for what they pay."

She was planning on bending my ear for a while.  I said I had to finish dusting and went on back to the ship room. Really, I was almost through so I just run my rag over everything nice and easy. The Scutts wouldn't let us have a radio or nothing, so I was singing a little bit to myself. When I run out of regular songs I started in on hymns. But only certain ones. I never liked the ones about Jesus dying on the cross cause they reminded me of Pentecostals. I never could stand a Pentecostal, especially after my sister turned into one. Her husband talked her into it. We was raised Baptist but my sister wasn't satisfied with it, she was always repenting and converting. For a while she went to some kind of thing called "Jesus Only" where they didn't believe in the Holy Spirit. Then she married Bill Hudson and he turned her into a Pentecostal and if they're not singing about marching to Zion they're rolling around on the floor.

The only hymns I like are the cheerful ones about Heaven, and crossing the river to go home. I used to like this one that went "Drifting, drifting, no port in sight" but then somebody said it wasn't meant pretty, it meant you was drifting away from God. So I switched my favorite over to "Beulah Land." My mother always would laugh when she heard me sing it cause she said it was a black people's song but I don't care. It's the only one I know that makes Heaven sound like a person would want to go there. It starts out "I've reached the land of corn and wine, and all its riches freely shine," which sounds about right to me. Not all gold streets, you still have to grow the corn but maybe it's not as hard.

So I was dusting along and singing "Beulah land, sweet Beulah land" and somebody coughed. Mary
Ann had come in on me when I didn't know it. I was real embarrassed but she said it was pretty, what was it, so I told her. Then she said come downstairs with her, Dr. Scutt wanted me to cut back the plants. The side porch was where all the plants was, there was a big window on each side. Through the back window I could see Frank, the live-in woman's husband, swinging a weed-eater around the flagstones that went up to the terrace. When we got to the side porch, Mary Ann opened a drawer and give me a pair of scissors and told me to cut off all the dead leaves and long stems and throw them in the garbage can out on the terrace.

She went back to her kitchen. I took the scissors and went around to each plant to see what to cut. There wasn't any dead leaves that I could tell. It looked to me like somebody already had just cut everything back. A lot of the stems was still open at the end, not even healed up yet. None of the plants was very big either, the biggest one was a little coleus trying to grow into a big huge pot. But I was afraid not to cut something, so I went around and trimmed just a little here and there on the ones that looked like they could stand it.

I went out and put a little bitty pile of clippings in the trash can outside. When I opened the porch door to go back in, Frank run up and held the door.

I said "thank you" and took my scissors to the drawer and put them away.

His wife met Frank in the porch, I could hear them fussing. She said, "You know she wants that hall buffed every day. The old bastard don't pick up his feet and scuffs the hall up so she can tell you ain't done it." He said, "The pin's out of it again, I told you. Nobody can use the buffer till the pin's back in it." She said something about "pin or no pin" but I didn't hear the rest.

By the start of July I was settled into the place pretty good. Once you learned what the Scutts wanted, it wasn't too bad. Every week I subtracted my pay from how much I had to go and slow but steady it went down. I was going to have to stay an extra two weeks because in June the clutch give out in my car and the bill was almost two hundred dollars.

But I got the cleaning routine down pretty good and I could have my real work done by three o'clock.
So I brought my wish books in and hid them under the bed in the ship room. I had a whole pile of them, one from Sears and one from Deluxe Mobile Home Furnishings and a few more with different things in them. After I finished my work, I would take my dust rag and go in the ship room and look at my wish books. My mobile home was already paneled real nice in all four rooms and I had a deposit down on my carpets -- Autumn Rust shag for the front room, and American Colonial indoor-outdoor for the kitchen, and Oak Leaf sculptured for the bedrooms.

When I got to Tucson, I wasn't even going to have a stick of furniture for a while but I had already picked out my drapes and furniture and bedsheets and slipcovers. It didn't cost anything just to look and pick out what I intended on having. I started on my wish books when I made my first trailer payment because thinking about how I was going to fix up my home made it seem like it was real. Now I was just down to deciding on the door chimes and the mailbox and the bathroom fixtures.
Sometimes I was all set on brass fixtures cause they would go with the tile and the shower curtain, but then the gold ones would look good to me. I was thinking maybe I should get the blue shower curtain instead and that way either kind of knobs would look just as nice. But I was waiting to decide for sure, I hadn't got the new Montgomery Ward yet.

About the middle of August everything just started to go to you-know-where. Mrs. Scutt fired people every chance she got and you couldn't come in the door but you'd run into a secretary or a handyman whamming out the door cussing.

One hot morning I was fooling with the plants in the side porch. There wasn't one thing I could snip off without killing the plants so I was just moving one or two of them around. Mrs. Scutt would make Mary Ann move the plants different places. The old lady wanted them moved where she thought they looked good and they would die cause they was getting too much sun or not enough. So I would sneak in and move them around a little when they looked like they was goners. This one morning I was moving a poor little African violet out of the hot sun when Mary Ann come to get me. Dr. Scutt wanted to talk to me, she said.

I went with her to the kitchen and Mary Ann pushed the button. "She's here, Dr. Scutt."

The box crackled, then I heard "Ruby?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Ruby, if you break something, or find something broken, I wish you would just tell me right away. Thank you." The box cut off.

I looked at Mary Ann. "Get her back on there for me, would you, Mary Ann?" She pushed the button for me.

"Dr. Scutt, I didn't break anything."

"Ruby, I was upstairs last night and I saw that the bureau mirror in the blue bedroom is cracked."

"It always has been," I said, and I looked at Mary Ann, but then I remembered how the live-in said Mary Ann was two-faced. She probably told Dr. Scutt I did it.

Mary Ann pressed the button and said, "She didn't do it, Dr. Scutt. It hass been crack ever since I work here."

"I see," said Dr. Scutt. "Thank you, Mary Ann." The intercom shut off.

I looked at the clock, it was noon so I got my lunch sack out of the refrigerator and went outside before I could get mad enough to quit. Then quick I come back inside and run up the stairs to the ship room and got my wish books out from under the bed.

The porch door shut while I was sitting in the grass, eating my potato chips and looking at door chimes. I was trying to think if I wanted just the plain old ding-dong kind or if it'd be better to have the kind that played five different well-loved tunes. Mary Ann come out with a cup of coffee in her hand and sit down by me.

"Ain't you going to town for lunch?" I said.

"No," she said. "She give me such a headache I don't want to eat."

"Why don't you get you a better lady to do?" I said. "This one runs you too much."

"Sometimes I think so," Mary Ann said. "Den I think oh no you bedder not take the chance. It could be worse, I get along." She drunk a little sip of her coffee and then she went, "You think I could get anodder place?"

"Sure you could," I told her. "Somebody that was lazy or stole things might have to stay on. But you go at it all the time. There's always some lady wants a good worker."

"Maybe," she says. "But such a chance. At least here I know how she is, most time I can get 'round her okay. Anodder lady, maybe not. What you got?  A catalog?"

I showed her. "Yeah, just home decor, nothing much.” But she said to let her see so I give it to her.
"Lots of circles. You know chust what you want, huh?"

"It's for my- Just wishing, you know," I said. "A little game."

She pointed out where I had circles for my bath towels. "Yes, these are the nicest one. Which is your shower curtain?"

"Well, see, I don’t know. Now if I get the brass fixtures, then this one with the ruflle would be good, but then if I get the gold ones—"

"I would get the blue, den whatever you pick is good."

"That's wliat I thought."   I looked at my watch.

"Lord, it's twenty till. We better scoot. She'll be on the box any second."

That night when I was getting my purse to go home, I heard somebody in the kitchen singing. I kind of moved over to the door and listened. It was Mary Ann singing "Beulah Land." It sounded funny with her accent. I let myself out quiet so she wouldn't hear the door slam.

The next morning, I finished downstairs and took my cleaning basket and headed up to the ship room.
I run into the live-in on the stairs. "Your pal is getting hell," she said.

"My pal?"

"Mary Ann. Dr. Scutt's been yelling at her for I bet a solid hour 'bout that mirror. She says Mary Ann don't watch you close enough."

"Hmm," I says, going up the stairs. "I got to dust."

When I come out to eat lunch, Mary Ann already had a newspaper spread out on the grass for us to sit on. She had the new Montgomery Ward book and she showed me a bath mat and matching seat cover that would go perfect with the blue shower curtain.

I showed her the soap dishes I wanted and she said they was just right.

When we went inside the laundry fence to smoke, I told her about what the wish books was for and about R & M Cleaning Services. She said she heard Arizona was supposed to be nice and how did I get the nerve?

About the end of August the weather was hot and so was Dr. Scutt's temper. The intercom went off all day long. "Maaary Aaaaann, Maaaary Aaaaaann," all day long. One day after lunch I went to the side porch just to escape for a while. I forgot to bring the scissors so I went to the drawer to get them and I about got run over by Dr. Scutt's new secretary. She said, "I have had it, I have just had it" and she threw a big pile of papers down on the floor and walked right over them and bam! out the door she went.

Mary Ann stuck her head out of the kitchen.

"Oh boy. One of dem days, I can see. I bedder go find out what is the madder."

I got my scissors and went back to the porch.

The African violet was right out in the sun again and the leaves was wilted something awful. I moved the small philodendron out of the corner so I could scoot the violet in and then I heard, "That violet stays right there."

I turned around and I seen the scariest-looking old lady in the world. The philodendron pot was shaking in my hand.

"You must be Ruby. You look every bit as stupid as you behave. I have had Mary Ann move that violet four or five times but you persist in pushing it into the corner."

I would have been polite if she hadn't of called me stupid. "I might be from the hills but I got the sense to know you can't put a African violet right out in the sun. You'll kill it sure as shooting."

"I do not like insolence in hired help," said Mrs. Scutt. "Or laziness. Why on earth hasn't this ivy been cut back?"

She picked up a pot with a tiny little ivy plant in it that had two little shoots coming out of it.

"It doesn't need it," I said, "ma'am."

"It most certainly does," Mrs. Scutt said, and she reached out her bony fingers to pinch off its last little shoots.

"You better not," I said. What the hell. I'd only have $2700 in the bank to start out with, but if I messed up I’d just come home $300 sooner.

I walked over to her and took hold of the ivy pot. "I quit," I said. "I'm taking this plant and I'm taking a check for $130. I guess you better write it out yourself cause your secretary just went out the door about five minutes ago. Now, git."

She stood there and stared at me, her lips pressed together, then she did.




About seven, eight months after I got to Tucson, R & M Cleaning Services was going good. I ordered a bedroom suite for the spare room.  When the bed came and I got the guest room set up nice, I sent Mary Ann a postcard. "I’m in the land of corn and wine. R & M looking for a hard worker, reasonable pay. Cash advance, you can pay me back. Send answer."

When I picked her up at the Greyhound station, Mary Ann had a present for me in her suitcase. A set of dishtowels, creamy yellow, they matched the kitchen curtains perfect.