As I’ve explained, I am letting my computer-geek husband support me for a year while I take a break from teaching in the suburbs. Once I write about my maids, my psychiatrist, and my hot yoga class, this blog will qualify for White Privilege Chronicle of the Year.

Housework is difficult for most people, I think. For the Squirrel Tribe (as one of my ADHD Facebook support group sistren calls us), it can be a perpetual sinkhole of shame and apprehension. I started trying to claw my way out a few years ago by hiring someone to do my laundry. It helped, but I was still afraid the kitchen would someday be cited as a biohazard on a CPS report. So I traded the laundry service for twice-monthly housekeeping.

Dave had resisted this move for years because he couldn’t stand the thought of strangers in the house unsupervised. But since he now works from home, he finally capitulated. Our first attempt resulted in this situation, according to him: “This woman pulls up in a Mercedes. She is carrying a caddy of cleaning supplies but she is dressed to the nines, pearls and heels and a skirt. I’m on a conference call, so I excuse myself and go back to work. About every two minutes she sticks her head into my office and yells, ‘Sir? Sir? I don’t understand what you want me to do.’ Finally I go out there and she says, ‘Uh-uh, I can’t do this,’ and she walks out.”

Do you know what it’s like to have your house declared too dirty to be cleaned?

Dave insists that the problem was her, not us. He says this was obviously a gig job, she was not a professional, she probably thought she would vacuum a few rugs and be done. She didn’t know what it was to clean a house. But I was pretty destroyed. So he said he’d take it from there, and he hired the Mollys.

According to the Molly Maid Web site, they “give you back some of the free time you deserve.” A lot of housekeeping companies take the “you deserve it” tack. This is a polite lie, of course. This has nothing to do with deserving. People with resources somehow “deserve” quite a number of things.

I admit I like the name. It seems to hearken back to a time when it might be my own ancestors you hired to clean your upper West side brownstone: Molly, or Mary Margaret, or Bridget, or Kate. We had a lot of Kates. But this is a lie, too. We had bakers and dressmakers and horse breeders and crocheters of fine lace. Perhaps they are lost to the records—such people often are—but my family tree doesn’t seem to feature many freckled red-haired nannies or scullery maids. And in this part of the country, it’s never Molly at the door on Friday. It’s Lupe, and Luz, and María, and Rosa.

They are inevitably early, sometimes by several hours, and if I’m home they catch me off guard as I scramble to shovel the worst of the mess out of the way: toys and towels and shoes and—what is this thing? Into the hamper with you, small plastic something-or-other. I am grateful always for my education, which allows me to say in passable Spanish, “Hello. I am sorry. There are clothes everywhere.” And, as I duck into my library to hide, the ever-useful, “Está bien?”

Sí. It is always bien. They do not say, “No, you disgraceful sloven, it is not bien. It is a disaster area fit for FEMA. How can two grown people raise a child in this tornado path? What have you three been doing since two Fridays ago? Do you invite people in off the street to throw yogurt containers and wet towels on the floor? Because otherwise, we don’t see how this is possible.”

It’s self-centered, I know, but I can’t help wondering what they make of it all, what conclusions they’re drawing. What kind of person has six rosaries, a drafting table, a Nativity out in June, and a sconce of the Horned God Cernunnos? But realistically, I doubt they bother feeling more than mild exasperation, if anything at all. It’s a job. I want, very badly, to believe they do it with love. Teachers are the same, I guess. It’s important to believe that teachers love your children. And we do, more than some parents know. But oh, how I bristle at the intimation that all teachers must love all students, all the time, or admit to being terrible instructors and toxic human beings. If I can keep from letting it show, I have a right to feel what I feel about my work. Don’t I?

Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a moot point because I have never in my life been able to keep from letting everything show. When I loved my students, they knew it. Didn’t they? And when I couldn’t love them enough, didn’t they punish me for it, day after goddamn day?

I like to imagine that these women just shake their kindly heads as they vacuum. Oh, another Happy Meal toy. My nieto has the same one. Dave says they’ve expressed interest in (and wonder at) Truman the Enormous Cat, and the last time he was gone at the vet they asked after him. They don’t have to do that. That is kindness.

Maybe I taught one of their children, once. It’s not impossible. If I did, I hope I did it well, and with love. Because I doubt that what they’re paid is what I really owe them.