Poor White Trash

And my obsession with cleaning: Part 1

I’m great at cleaning. You may not know it from the state of my house today. But I can clean a space better than most. I can do it with the efficiency of a speed freak. Piss me off and I’ll start vacuuming and organizing things as if a demon was inside me. The kitchen will get spotless and the bathroom will shine. Is it in my blood? My upbringing? Or, just my 3rd generation OCD?

We used to joke that my granny’s house was so clean you could “eat off the floor.” My granny kept a plastic cover on her couch. Even then, our feet were never allowed to touch the couch. There were also plastic runners along the main walkways through her house. The plastic was meant to keep us from soiling the floors. The floors she worked so hard to get spotless.

You see, my Granny grew up poor. Not the romantic kind of poor. The sleep on the floor near the coal stove kind of poor. The beg for food after you cooked for everyone else kind of poor. The, you don’t have proper clothes to attend school kind of poor.

Her Mom had died young and her father gave her over to relatives to raise. She was passed around to distant cousins and Aunts throughout her childhood, only achieving an elementary school education. Our family whispers allege that she was most likely sexually molested at some point by an Uncle.

Her way out was marrying my grandfather at the age of 14. My grandfather was 16, a musician and the son of a tenant farmer: the white version of a share cropper in the South. Poor, uneducated, but hard working, they both strove for a good life for their daughters. That meant working in factories while holding down side jobs–baking cakes or doing electrical repairs. For my grandmother, it also meant keeping house and taking care of children. As it follows, as the eldest child my Mom was responsible for much of the childcare and cleaning.

Emphasis on the cleaning. You see they were poor, but they would never ever be “white trash.” Education for their daughters was always secondary to keeping up appearances. Were the pastor to drop by, or anyone else, the house must be spotless.

Years later, when my Mom left my Dad for the last time, we had to live with my grandparents for a while.I was around 8 or 9 years old at the time. I learned to be immaculately clean. Each time I took a bath I was required to scrub out the tub with a can of Scrubbing Bubbles–using only the specific sponge allotted for this task. My grandmother would then come behind me and inspect the tub for any stray hairs that my long blonde curls might have left.

And, God forbid your stomach ever got upset. There was only one toilet in the house. Over the carpeted, cushioned throne was a sign that read, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” I’m pretty sure I developed some serious constipation during that time

I always brushed my hair outside, lest I get hairs somewhere on the inside of the house. That is also where I had to use a nail brush to clean under my nails and clip them. My hands were inspected regularly for dirt that a small child might acquire while playing outside.

I still remember the ferocity with which my granny would insist that I look at the very small piles of dirt she swept up every night in the kitchen. She was always appalled. I never cared. At 8 years old I hated her and her rules.

I thought my grandmother as just mean, evil perhaps. But in my mind my situation was temporary. I dreamed of the day I would return to my formerly middle class life. Clearly, I didn’t understand much about life yet. I know now that poverty and homelessness will do weird shit to your psyche.

To be continued: