August break

The woman picks the bottle of all-purpose cleaner out of the cupboard. It’s the cheap type, bubble gum pink, industrial fragrance burning through the lungs. She pours some into a bucket filled with water, before reaching for a towel lying on the top cupboard, the bucket in her other hand. It’s the middle of August, it’s warm, the air is thick and sticky. There’s no air conditioning but an old ceiling fan that makes a tedious sound. It wants you to know it’s working hard to cool down the room. A child is crawling at the woman's feet, trying to undo the laces of her sneakers. She realizes that she forgot to bring a stool to put the bucket on while scrubbing. Without a stool she needs to put the bucket on the floor and then surely the boy will knock it over. She has to go back to the kitchen, all while holding the bucket and with one child glued to her ankle. That too, is tedious.

She heads towards the kitchen, checks the thermostat on the way. It’s not even 9am but it shows 26 degrees already. It’s this time of the year when the temperature never really goes down and the air remains muggy all through the night. When the day starts over, it feels like the warmth is compounding, that degrees are adding to each other instead of moving up or down. Back to the main room, she puts the bucket on the stool, grasps the towel and starts scrubbing away dried remains of food stuck under the table. Though food might be a big word to describe it. What she’s scrubbing looks like some left over banana that’s been chewed, swallowed, spit back, mixed with mucus, kneaded by little hands and spread all over what’s within reach. It is now inlaid in every square centimeter of the table. Meanwhile the child is getting impatient. He doesn’t cry, no tears or anything like that. He makes high-pitched sounds, exhaled at a regular rhythm. Aiming at seeking attention or exercising his voice, hard to tell.

He was supposed to be in another location today but as it turned out the location was full and she was asked to change her schedule over the weekend. It will be just him and her. It sounds peaceful but it's not, and she prefers small groups. Kids keep each other busy, whereas left alone with adults they become excruciatingly demanding. She glances through the window, the temperature will make it hard to play outside. There’s a tiny yard attached to the facility with a sandbox and a slide where the kids can spend an awful lot of time playing on their own but there is hardly any shade or air. Half an hour in the morning is probably the most she can make of it. Inside, the old fan keeps the main room breathable. There’s another one in the sleeping area.

The boy still clinging to her, she moves carefully, bucket in one hand, grabbing toys lying on the floor with the other. She should have done the cleaning on Friday, after all the children had left, like she normally does, but on that Friday two children were late to be picked up. When the last parent finally arrived, she too was late for her daughter and so she closed in haste.

The sounds produced by the boy become more rapid, and turn into real cries. Until now when she was working her daughter was staying with her best friend, under her best friend’s mother’s supervision. The mother had been increasingly complaining though. That her house was not a summer camp, that she had enough of responsibility with her own children without having to add one more. Blah blah blah. Never mind. Until school starts again, her daughter would stay alone at home. It was only a matter of a couple of weeks. Meanwhile the boy rolls over on the floor, checking if she’s watching. She’s not. Her eyes are somewhere else. Lost. The thought of her 9-year-old alone at home all day makes her sick. She checks her phone, resists once more the urge to call.

The cries have stopped, the boy found a momentary distraction in the fan. Standing on his toes, he turns the switch off and on, and off again. Meanwhile the woman continues scrubbing. A small piece of rice waffle stuck between the leg and the base of the table. When she was a child she would often stay home alone. For the most part of her childhood it was just her and her father, and he would disappear unpredictably, for several days in a row. She learned early on to be on her own. On one particular evening of January, as she was preparing for the night, entering the bedroom to get her pajamas, she found a homeless guy sleeping in her bed. She froze on the spot, a cold, liquid fear traveling through her body for what felt like eternity. When she finally came out of it, she left the house and ran to a neighbor. It happened more than two decades ago but the memory is still vivid.

The on-and-off switch of the fan has stopped being amusing and the boy started crying again. His eyes are bloated, his cheeks swollen with sweat and tears. He’s trying to climb his way up the woman’s leg, enraged and helpless. She looks at him, wonders how such a tiny, fragile body can produce such a grinding sound. She blocks the noise and withdraws further into her head, absorbed in getting some slime out of the cracks of a wooden doll house. Truth is, no one really cares about the cleanliness of the room. It is the middle of August, she’s the only adult on the premises and that will remain as such all week. “Affordable childcare”. Everything is ugly, broken, or both, staff is kept at the bare minimum and parents’ expectations are low. Still, she cannot make herself stop scrubbing.

The boy is now squealing, his face scarlet. The woman avoids meeting his gaze, knowing it will only amplify the crying. The neighbor had called the police in order to remove the homeless guy, and the police raised questions about a 9-year-old girl alone at home at night. Her father lost custody and by May that year she was a foster child. He visited a few times at first, showing up randomly with candy, and then one day she was told about an accident. He was drunk, missed a turn. There was no other victim. She was 11.

She moves to the sleeping area, disappears from the boy’s sight for a few seconds. He pauses, follows her, starts crying again. She checks her phone, sees a missed call. Not her daughter, the landlord calling for the rent. She’s late, she knows, he knows that she knows. He also knows that she will pay in a few days, still he can’t help but call frantically until she does. She won’t call back. Instead she moves to the kitchen, looking for some peace and quiet, and she dials her daughter. Who doesn’t pick up. She pictures her, lying in her pajamas, putting the phone away as she sees her mother on the screen.

She notices that the cries have stopped again and quickly heads back to the main room. The fan has been off for fifteen minutes or so and the air has become heavy. Thick, like pea soup. She feels it but doesn’t reach out for the switch. Instead she checks her phone once more even though she knows that her daughter has not called back. And then she sees the bucket, which the boy has knocked over on the floor. He’s now playing in the dirty pink water. One glance at her and he starts crying again, harder than ever.

She should quickly grab him out of the dirty, slightly toxic, water, rinse him with fresh one and change his clothes before wiping up the floor. Without thinking about it. That’s what she should do, what she would normally do. But she does not. She freezes, no one really knows how long.

In a heartbeat, she grabs the boy, another heartbeat, lays him on the floor, another heartbeat, puts her hand on his mouth. And then, she presses, hard. The boy looks at her, terrified. The cries are blocked by her hand, his body tries to escape, remove the hand, turn his head, bite. Breathe. The air passing through is getting thinner and thinner, and the effort exhausts him. The fog around them deepens. She holds her breath.

In her pocket, she feels her phone vibrate.