The Glamorous Life

         I parked my bike behind the inn, turning off rather abruptly from Westminster Highway, one of Richmond’s busiest roads. Had it been typical working-day hours rather than 5 A.M., I would have been dodging heavy traffic to get to my job at the motel that served much of Vancouver’s air travel support network that summer of 1988. Guests would arrive at The Richmond Inn in the twilight hours or a midsummer’s day sun casting its glow at their backs. As readily, there might have been breezy rain or the eerie darkness one associates with pre-dawn swelling behind them, as the automatic doors sealed shut.
         Apart from the day I interviewed for this position, I would never again feel the swoosh of those street-level front doors close at my rear.
         Workers like me entered the building from behind and below. I hoped that being delegated to the basement-level wouldn’t be a forecast of my future. Perhaps even then, I held in my subconscious a belief that aspiring openly towards a certain loft could be perceived as arrogance. So, I kept that hope within.
         I set my knapsack in the housekeepers’ quarters, a room that had as its purposes greeting, eating and transitions and pulled on my green tunic, trimmed with a colour indecipherable. It looked second-hand, washed on repeat. But unlikely in service of goodwill, someone had handed it back to be passed on to me for my service. I clipped my gold plastic name tag, “Myra” engraved in black, Vijaya script over my heart. I joined the rest of the women in collecting my cleaning supplies and stocking my cart. I set my stopwatch and headed down to my first room assignment of the day, a queen suite, vacated early by a pilot who had napped before his red-eye flight.

                                                                         ***

         I didn’t yet know that to put a room right—shutting the door on the lingering smell of cleaning solution and a vision of smooth clean linens—would become somewhat satisfying.
How could that be?

                                                                         ***

         My father, Dr. Virgil, DPM, was a podiatrist. He ran a practice in Richmond run much like a family-run restaurant or small grocery shop, doing brisk commerce. Call it character-building, helping out, or a form of education: every one of us four Virgil kids had been required to do an office stint. We would complete stacks of billings that were then submitted to the provincial government for payment on each patient’s procedures. When my father would lecture at podiatry conventions in the United States—events that would extend into family trips from the venue in Portland, Oregon to the Okanagan—we would sit in on his presentations, which would include images on slides of badly deformed toes and feet. We would accompany our father on Saturday rest home runs, placing solution-soaked cotton on the bunions of well-worn feet.
         Ingrown toenails and callouses don’t prep themselves for removal, one should note.
         Where is my medical bag? My father would wonder out loud with the expectation that I would scurry up with it—a black leather with rounded handles and a clasp at the top that any one of my siblings can recall with detail. Here it is, boss, I’d quip as though I were Tattoo from Fantasy Island. Stop that nonsense. Let’s go. He wasn’t amused. I would apply and discard both the shavings of hardened callous and the pads that had been used to soften the skin of the patients —layman’s work. 
         This was my “job” and one I was so used to from having started so young, I have never questioned it. I’d work alongside my mother, Glo, who as part office manager, part assistant, and the entire administration of the podiatry practice by choice, never again used her pharmacist qualifications to their full extent once she joined my father at the office. I remember thinking that it was a shame that she left her profession, but I don’t recall asking her why—or if she had regrets.
         Along the way of the daily ‘picking up after,’ I developed the notion that this type of work, health care adjacent with its smells of disinfectant masking fungus or neglect, was not for me. Although there was some comfort in seeing a foot put right, callouses cleaned and smooth to the touch, couldn’t generate a deep sense of reward. It wasn’t as though people were racing to express their appreciation for my bag-toting, prep and clean-up services.
         I sought a change to my station, perhaps a role that would play as more glamorous.

                                                                         ***

         Freshly graduated, I moved to Montreal in the summer of 1987. I had graduated from Richmond’s Matthew McNair High School having delivered a relatively poor showing, given my “potential.” I had gotten myself caught up in the nightlife that had emerged after Vancouver had hosted Expo 86, the world fair featuring renewal and innovation. My dance moves improved at the expense of my grades.
         Getting a job in Montreal was tough because Montreal turned out to be more French than I’d anticipated. Most publicly-funded services were provided, by law, in French. British Columbian grade school French wasn’t up to the task, a fact of which I was surprisingly naïve when I had packed myself up to move east. I am not even sure I considered the differences in language at all.
         I became a nursing assistant at a senior home, joining a cadre of unilingual women of colour—Jamaicans, Bajans, Filipinos. I knew without anything having to be said that these women had come from away to make better lives for themselves and their families. I also knew from the system of beliefs that also went unsaid in families like mine, that although these might not have been the jobs these women had anticipated undertaking for years on end, work was work. This mantra was one with which I had grown up with, although I am not sure the other caregivers would have understood that from the sight of me alone, and I never bothered to make it clear. They would fix me with their gazes, as though challenging me to make something of our thankless, endless cleaning of old folks and their spaces, as I arrived from classes or dressed as though I had come directly from a nightclub, which at times I had.
         I temped, rotated, and shift-worked at the 30-bed, multi-location facility, attending to the care and keeping of all body parts of its aging clientele. I changed bed pans, sheets, diapers. I wasn’t fazed by the sight of human excretions, but I realized I couldn’t withstand a para-health, glorified cleaning-working lifetime like that, as noble as it might be.
         I am ashamed to admit that, even today, I aspire to something that shows how much more I have to give; I don’t want to be on display, but I want people to know that I have extra gears, quietly higher pursuits. I don’t want to be underestimated.
         Still.
         I suppose my demeanor even back then said, “this won’t be my life, not forever, like yours.” Although exceedingly polite, what a snit I must have seemed to the caregiving teams at the old folks homes, chasing some sort of ideas of some high-glam, glorious future.
         The images that Montreal women cultivated, even Black women, did not feature mops. Pining for cool, I reinvented myself as a Montrealer, aided by the cousin of a friend from home. I’m Gerri, the girl said with a flip of her shiny, salon-styled, cap of black hair when we were introduced. Matte red lipstick. French couture. Tailored black blazers. Jeans designed by Marithé et François Girbaud. Only the best, Gerri advised.

By night, at least, I gloried in the glamour of it all, that time in Montreal.

                                                                         ***

         Returning home to work for the summer was a requirement. Everyone knew that. But returning home to Richmond to work at my father’s office after a year of aspiring to Montreal’s chique was unappealing. I pleaded my case to try something different. And finally, in that summer I was turning 19, after about 10 years served to my count, I was granted release. 
         With zeal, I started applying for jobs at clothing chains and department stores. Bata Shoes. Zellers. Sears. I’m seeking a job that aligns with the emerging me, replete with benefits, it need not be, I told them.
         But neither Reitmans, which catered to young women’s transitioning-to-work wear, nor its counterpart, Mariposa, called me; nor the edgy but affordable Le Château, where I had spent good money cultivating my new Montreal self.
         Unbeknownst to me, my father started asking around. A patient of a colleague had spoken to a friend who knew someone in high places at The Richmond Inn. Dr. Virgil, we may have something for your daughter, the motel manager had apparently said. Hearing of this opportunity and stymied by the lack of success my efforts were yielding, I said I will make a wonderful front desk receptionist as I re-draped a black silk scarf around my neck—a gesture cultivated on the sidewalks of Montreal en route to the clubs.
         They only have openings in housekeeping, said my father. 
         A chambermaid? It couldn’t be. 
         Having been solicited, though, the offer would Not be declined.
         The Richmond Inn it had to be.

                                                                         ***

         I donned a green polyester smock trimmed with white that mimicked in shape a bowler’s jersey and was delivered to the basement of the motel. Given my reception, I was neither expected nor welcomed, and neither, it seemed, was the manager of high places, a man with manicured hands that worried at his lapels, who I never saw again. Luk pan how she run. G’wan mon, go weh. Tek yuh self upstairs, big  shot. These were the catcalls thrown quietly, laughingly, at his back.
         The women, ranging in age from their mid-40s upwards, again all unilingual women of colour, then turned their gazes to me. So many words in those unflinching looks. I took their looks as appraisal, disbelief that a 19-year-old girl, sporting an arrogantly bronzed mohawk afro, would survive in their line of work.
         Luk pon her. She a come down here like yard queen, this I could hear in a Jamaican-accented quip.
         I was shown the ropes by Manuela, a woman from the Philippines, whose shoulders, broader than mine, spanned six palms wide. She stood like a teapot. Manuela had done some nurses’ training, a fact I overheard in the lunchroom, a spare, concrete-walled room that featured exposed plumbing and chairs from which tufts of stuffing emerge from blackened slits in the plastic upholstery. The women had worked together for years and didn’t invite me into their conversations.
         But I listened as the talk circled around me. 
         I discovered that a 23-year-old Manuela had arrived in Canada 30 years prior to learn that she would have to re-sit almost all her exams to take up work as a registered nurse. Ya hear bout Man-wella. Deh mon dem want her tek exam again. All dat work, she do. Na, mon. It no right dat they do that to her. I really sorry for her.
         Manuela had needed to work right away. Too much time passed at the motel, time in which Manuela rose to care for and supervise the housekeepers, Manwella, you’s a true boss woman, ya know, while blotting her true aspirations. I suspected from their exchanges that Manuella wasn’t the only one.
         I received Manuela’s brisk instruction on the care and keeping of a motel room, gruffness packing our interactions. Defeat spilled into the air like the stuffing of those chairs—barely contained. I sought Manuela’s approval by enthusiastically hoovering each room, pending inspection. I suppose that whatever I was doing, I liked to be seen as doing it well, and the feeling of potential failure in this task could result in a lifetime of this work reaffirmed my commitment to further study like no parental admonition ever could.
         You have 30 minutes to clean a room, Manuela told me as my initial enthusiasm to prove myself waned by the end of the first week.
         Give her that man in 302, one of the women cackled. He need to stop using the towel like it soap an’ wata, and clean himself inside de shower, using her index finger to emphasize the point. The talk continued over and around me. Oo-wee, he ain’t got nothing on the woman in 404. All dat hair. Mercy. She done clogged the drain again.

                                                                         ***

         Slow down, girl. You’re making the rest of us look bad.
         I got chastised for setting a target of 28 minutes. But goal setting was what kept me from abandoning the piles of sullied sheets.
         I began to talk to myself as I scrubbed, for there was no one else. Only three more hours. That’s six rooms. What will I wear to The Warehouse tonight? The Warehouse being a popular nightclub amongst Black folks that had opened earlier that year.
         I stayed because I had no choice, although not in the same no-other-options way that painted the lives of my coworkers. Not at all. But my parents had made clear over a lifetime of expectations that one completes what one has started.
         I too had come to hold this belief.
         Whether it’s in my interest or not, to this day I still strive to finish what I start, as though I have no choice.

                                                                         ***

         The pay was not great, but it was money. Most guests seemed to have no qualms about leaving grime on the towels—it was true about the man in Room 302—then leaving the towels on the floor. Periodically, they’d leave a tip which gave me a fleeting sensation of having been honoured for my efforts, of having been seen, a feeling of joy co-mingled with humility about the work itself.
         Might I call it glory?
         It occurs to me that the counterpoint to this sensation is something of which I am not proud. I allowed the disdain and indifference of the 3-star motel patrons, despite their occasional acknowledgement of any kind, to sully my view of housekeeping (and to my health care adjacent stints) as a rewarding occupation. That the place where we sat, snack- and lunch-breaked was dank with moisture that seeped from the buffed surfaces above, didn’t help.
         It didn’t feel like a space where joy could thrive.

                                                                         ***

         The only way to cope, it seemed to me, was to make each task a challenge. How efficiently can you clean a tub; wipe a desk, Myra. Is this the best placement for this chair? Maybe these throw pillows belong over there.
         Once I’d accepted that it wasn’t necessary to break any housekeeping records for doing the work faster yielded no reward and in fact, annoyed the other women, I put my back into the scrubbing of those tubs and toilets, for the tasks themselves.
         Meaning I cleaned simply to clean, enjoying the simplicity and purity of the work and its outcomes—unexpected satisfaction.
         A feeling I chase to this day.

                                                                         ***

         The morning glares were replaced by brisk morning greetings. A cup of coffee was surprisingly proffered one morning during shift break—this from a woman whose sudden smile revealed a singular gray tooth nestled amongst the others. The other chambermaids chuckled at the schoolgirl (that’s what they decided to call me) who had been working too fast to no end. She soon quit, they’d said, as though my naivety included a hearing impairment.
         You back again, schoolgirl? They laughed as though I’d shared a joke when I showed up each morning, perhaps to their surprise. I stayed on, though, ironically coming to enjoy the sight of freshly scrubbed porcelain. 
         Only once did I ring to report I’d be late for a shift. I had overslept. I was aghast and called in, breathing with the effort of trying to get dressed and explain at the same time, to assure them that I was coming as fast I could. Seemingly unable to convince Manuela that it was indeed me, Myra, panting on the phone, I finally capitulated, proclaiming, It’s Schoolgirl.
         Aah, said Manuela. Don’t worry. See you soon.

                                                                         ***

         Time passed sooner than I’d expected but longer than I’d hoped. My two-month stint as a chambermaid was over. Back in Montreal, The Richmond Inn appeared to have leveled a final lesson beyond how to tighten bed corners and find good will in dark spaces. 
         The following summer I applied to work as a concierge at the Pacific National Exhibition. Perhaps ignorant of its French translation to “janitor,” someone in the PNE’s corporate office had declared that a PNE Concierge was a sexy title for someone who delivers top-tier, personalized services to the wealthy and their affiliates.
         The Concierge Services Division had been newly launched to fete and escort corporate sponsors through the exhibition. The PNE was a cornucopia of shops, stalls, and product demonstrations. It featured the newest vegetable graters, lemon juicers and carving knives. Prized animals, livestock and produce were showcased. Fireworks served as backdrop to The House of Dreams, a model home of the future and most coveted raffle prize. This 15-day national fair was attached to Playland, an amusement park featuring an historic wooden roller coaster that opened annually from mid-May through to August.
         The PNE paid well, and Concierges could choose their own attire, which included a selection of scarves if one wished. I was given a beeper and carte blanche to show the sponsors’ executives around. It’s all I’ve hoped for, I thought to myself.
         Yet, despite my assigned clients already seeming to have everything they could wanted, they wanted more. They beeped and they beckoned their wants. They handed me their kids to mind, their complimentary candied apples and corn dogs to discard after just one bite. Their constant requests made two weeks’ worth of interactions feel like two months—time made to feel equivalent, in terms of duress, to that spent at The Richmond Inn.
         In the final days, I was assigned to accompany Loreta, the sales representative for a gold-level event sponsor. Gossamer-tressed Loreta spent much of her time between attractions, flipping her hair forwards and then back again, a gesture of show over comfort or practicality. Fluff and puff.
         Straight, chestnut hairs trailed the shoulders of Loreta’s coral-coloured silk blouse, an unlikely but sexy choice for an amusement park junket. A few disagreeable strands escaped their owner to settle on my own simple but classic beige sweater set.
         I brushed at them but resorted to removing them between pinched fingers one at a time and then in the face of their stubborn resistance, twisting them from my hands.
         And just like that, I was mentally back at The Richmond Inn, kneeling between tub and toilet. A bleak feeling battled the deep sense of respect I had acquired for the struggles of the women I’d met. Women who might never leave their stations, and who had been silently prideful and defensive of each other and their work. Perhaps they had been anchored in the knowledge that the people they clean up after are, save their wealth like everyone else.
         But luk pan how she run, me that is, picking up after the likes of Loreta and thinking she better off. That’s what the women of the Richmond Inn might have said, with pity for me, no less.
         Loreta’s shimmering hair and nails played as indifference to the sodden mess of her own unnecessary making, indifference to the affront of its placement and very creation.
         Loreta’s calculated sensuality played along as indecency to me.
         It seemed a downright indecent way to behave at Playland, where whole-hearted, good clean fun was meant to be had.
         Loreta washed up vigorously, grabbing at more paper towels than were needed and discarding them in the pool of soapy water that had accumulated at the edge of the sink.
         A cleaner appeared behind us; her blue polyester uniform piped with white—a frayed string mop on display. We exchanged a glance in the mirror: me with my matte red lipstick and French couture, and Marie, the woman whose name, etched in that familiar but faded black Vijay script, was almost indecipherable on her plastic name tag.
         I picked up the sopping mass and placed it in the readily available garbage slot; a fanciful attempt at a tithe of my own making that revealed the sink’s slick, white porcelain surface.
         My reward was a slight nod, a hint of a smile, as the image in blue apparated into the first stall, mop in hand.