Dirty Secret (33 page)

It's been a few months since the stuffed snake incident and I'm feeling good. I feel freer of my mother and her house than I ever have, and I'm proud of myself. I'm also surprised at how easy it was.

I do feel a little wobbly when a student in one of my classes
turns in a story about a woman with thirty-three cats, permanently drawn drapes, and towers of newspapers and mail on her front porch. In the story, she's referred to only as “the crazy cat lady.”

My classes are workshops—the students hand out their stories one week and the following week listen and take notes while the rest of us critique the story. As I'm preparing for class and reading the story for the first time, I feel my face and neck flush when I get to the crazy cat lady. My hands shake. My skin prickles. I don't know how I'll be able to discuss this story without betraying my secret. And it's not just that. I'm a little disappointed in my student; he's sensitive and bright, not someone I'd expect to employ such an easy stereotype.

I always start the workshop by asking what a story's strengths are, and with this one everyone is impressed by the humor. They find the cat lady and her garbage-strewn, feline-filled lawn hysterical.

“Okay, but what else is there about this woman?” I ask the students. “Does she feel like a well-rounded character, or does she feel like a—”

“She's a crazy cat lady,” one of them blurts out. “What else is there to know?”

“What kind of history does she have? How did she get to this point?”

Silence.

I find the whole thing sad. And I'm offended on my mother's behalf.

But just like when I couldn't get upset with our subletter over the “dirty” apartment accusation, I can't get upset now. They don't know any better. Many, if not most, people don't. So many people have no concept of hoarders as real human beings. So many people have no idea that hoarding is a mental illness, and
that those suffering from it have feelings, pasts, and sometimes even children.

I START WONDERING
if there's a story about hoarding I could write for the health website, something that could help humanize the disorder (this is still a few years before the reality shows about hoarding debut). I begin doing preliminary research. Much has been written about the Collyer brothers, but I didn't know that the term “Collyer's mansion,” is used by rescue personnel all along the East Coast to refer to a clutter-packed home, where rescue workers may have a hard time getting through. Similarly, in the Midwest, a hoarded home is labeled a “packer house,” and on the West Coast it's called a “Habitrail house.”

When I read these epithets, I picture my mother's house in flames, with three or four firemen stopped at the doorway, surveying the obstacle-crammed interior as one of them radios in, “We've got a packer house here. Send more guys.”

The thought brings tears to my eyes. I so desperately want her to change, want her house to change. But, I remind myself, I'm done taking care of her. I walked away.

Still, I want to understand. So I read articles, studies, interviews with specialists in the field, and books about hoarding. I'm fascinated by a 2005 study of people who suddenly began to hoard after traumatic brain injuries. One subject was a twenty-seven-year-old man, who after undergoing surgery for a brain aneurysm, began to accumulate tools that were nearly the same (and sometimes exactly the same) as tools he already had. After he bought the items, he completely lost interest; many times he didn't even bother to take them out of the bags.

Just like my mother and her unopened Savers bags clogging up the hallway. It's as if having the possession isn't important.
It's the acquisition, and the high that accompanies it, that matters—which is one reason some specialists are looking into the possibility that hoarding is an impulse control disorder, like compulsive gambling or kleptomania.

The more I research the topic, though, the more I begin to question my idea of writing an article about it. For one thing, so far my articles have all been five-hundred words long. It would be impossible to sum up hoarding in that short a space. And more important, it wouldn't be like the Children of Hoarders message boards where I got an anonymous email account so no one could trace the words
my mother is a hoarder
back to me. I'm a terrible liar. If my editor or someone else asked why I wanted to write an article about hoarding, what would I say?

THE REST OF
that fall, things are okay between my mother and me. She knows she screwed up by sending that stupid stuffed snake and she's on good behavior. When I talk to her on the phone she's more subdued, but not in a depressed-sounding way, just in a controlled way.

In November, she asks if David and I are coming to Minneapolis that Christmas and I say yes.

“Good, because I might need you guys to move a shelf for me.”

“I told you, I'm not setting foot inside your house again.”

“But the bugs are gone!” she says. “My house is safe, I promise!”

“It's not about the bugs, Mom. I just don't want to go into your house. I can't be responsible for it anymore.”

“Fine. I'll just hire someone to do it, then,” she says, as snappish toward me as I've heard in years.

“Good idea,” I say.

*   *   *  

WHEN DAVID AND
I get to Minneapolis that December, we bring my mother to a new Vietnamese restaurant in St. Paul for lunch. It's two days before Christmas; yesterday Sandy suggested I invite my mom to their house on Christmas Eve. They've never done that before.

“Are you sure?” my mom says when I tell her. Her eyes are wide.

“I'm sure. It would be nice, wouldn't it?” I tell her my stepsister is inviting her dad and her high school boyfriend so it'll be a small group of Christmas orphans and not just her.

“You should come, Helen,” David says. “It'll be fun. We'll play Trivial Pursuit.”

“Oh, I love Trivial Pursuit!” my mom says. “But are you sure it's okay?”

“Yes, Mom. That's why they invited you.”

“Well, okay then! Why not?” She picks up her teacup and takes a big swig.

I'm happy to be able to give my mom a place to go on Christmas Eve. Even though she never celebrates holidays and claims not to care about them (and as a kid her family never celebrated Hanukkah or even the kids' birthdays), I always feel sad on holidays because I know my mother is alone. No matter how much fun I'm having there's always a little part of me thinking of her.

The food arrives then and my husband, being the adventurous eater he is, has ordered frog legs. I can't help but think of Abraham Lincoln's bad back leg when I see the withered, breaded stalks.

My mom picks up an egg roll and takes a bite. “These are absolutely delicious!”

“These aren't,” David says, pushing his plate away.

My mom dumps soy sauce on the other dish she's ordered, fried shrimp, which glisten under the restaurant's fluorescent lights.

“You shouldn't be eating greasy food, Mom.” I know I'm nagging, but it's frustrating that she hasn't changed her diet at all since the cancer. And now that I've already started, I might as well continue: “And be careful about using too much salt. Soy sauce has a ton of sodium in it.”

“I hardly ever use salt.” She spears a shrimp. “Oh, I have to ask you two something. See, I've got this shelf in my kitchen, and I want to paint the wall that it's covering, but it's too heavy for me to move. Could you two do it when you drop me off?”

“Is this that same shelf you asked about before?” I say.

“Yup.” She takes a gulp of her tea.

“I thought you were going to hire someone to do it.”

She shrugs. “I didn't know how to find someone.”

“You could have called my dad and Sandy—they would have given you Joe's phone number.”

“I didn't want to bother them.”

David looks at me and cocks his head, as if to say,
Why not?

And I'm thinking the same thing. Oh, why not.

Maybe it'll even be a good challenge, a test of my willpower to see if I can go into her house and resist the urge to clean.

I think I can. And I have to admit, I'm curious about the way her house looks. I'm more than curious: I'm excited. I try to tamp down that feeling. It's just a house, a house I'm no longer responsible for. Just a house.

“Should we?” I ask David.

“Yeah,” he says and I get even more excited, though I'm not about to let my mother know that.

*   *   *  

AFTER LUNCH, ON
the way to my mom's house, I ask David to stop by dad and Sandy's. David and my mom wait in the car while I run inside and grab two pairs of rubber gloves from a box under the sink.

“Don't take this the wrong way, Mom,” I say when I get back into the car with the gloves. “But after what we went through, I'm not taking any chances.”

“It's okay,” she says. “I understand.”

My stomach does a nervous flip-flop when we get to my mother's house, even though I saw the exterior when we picked her up. Her house always looks better in the winter because you can't tell the state of the lawn when it's covered by snow. The sidewalk isn't shoveled, though, which is a problem. In Minneapolis you can be fined for not keeping your sidewalk clear. I don't remember her telling me about a falling out with Mean Lesbian Neighbor, but I'll need to ask her about it. My mom is walking ahead of David and me up the icy, snow-packed path to her front door. I grab his arm and lean close: “Don't touch anything besides the shelf. And don't touch anything at all without these gloves.”

He nods.

When my mother pulls open the door to the front porch and we step inside, I shouldn't be surprised to see stacks of boxes, full garbage bags, and a mound of mail that—judging by its size—is at least a month old. I shouldn't be surprised, yet I am. I take a deep breath and tell myself to stay calm. It's not my problem.

She fumbles to get her plastic coil of keys out of her fanny pack/purse, and I feel a cold dread in my rib cage. I'm beginning to wonder if coming here was such a good idea. But it's just a shelf. We'll be here five minutes. Finally she unlocks the house's heavy front door. I motion to David and we both put on our rubber gloves and step inside.

The hallway isn't as crowded as I feared. The china cabinet is in clear view, not buried by clutter. Some of the coats are actually on hangers on the freestanding clothing rack. Some, though, are piled underneath—I have to pin my arms to my sides to keep from picking them up and properly hanging them. In the corner sits a stack of three boxes with a bunch of mittens and scarves and hats piled on top. All in all, it's not that bad.

Then we walk into the kitchen.

“There's the shelf,” my mom says. “See, wouldn't that wall look good if it were blue?”

“The shelf” is one of those giant metal shelving units that normally go in a garage for tools. This one appears to hold pots, pans, pasta strainers, and other cooking supplies. Each of the three shelves on it is fully packed, but at least they're halfway neat.

I wish I could say the same for the rest of the room.

Her kitchen is total chaos.

Empty paper grocery bags lie like rejected kites all over the dingy linoleum floor. The counter is crowded with cereal boxes and stacks of paper plates and glossy black rolls of garbage bags and cans of soup and at least three toasters. The kitchen table is equally cluttered, if not more so, and the new stove and refrigerator are covered in grime.

And that damn dishwasher is still here.

“Is that thing working yet?” I ask, pointing at it.

“Almost,” my mom says, and I feel my jaw tighten.

“Mom, why? This kitchen looked so good. What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

David's looking around in amazement. He hasn't been inside since the first cleanout, which was almost five years ago. He's probably forgotten how bad her house can get and how overwhelming it can feel to be inside it.

“Tell me,” I say, “what's the point of painting that wall when the whole room is such a mess?”

“Oh, it's not bad,” she says.

I realize that one of the hallmarks of hoarding is lack of insight into the problem, and I've witnessed my mother's blindness to hers more than once. But I'm still shocked. How can she not see it? I feel like shaking her until she wakes up.

Instead, I snatch the roll of garbage bags from the counter, tear one off, and start tossing in trash from her kitchen table.

“Jessie! I need some of those things,” my mother says.

I pause. I look down at the garbage bag, open in my hands. What am I doing? But then again, dumping a few things doesn't count as cleaning. “You need an empty Styrofoam coffee cup? Or dried-up, moldy lemons? Do you really need filled-in crossword puzzles?” I look at the dates on the edges of the puzzles. “From seven months ago!”

“I guess not.”

David has already started taking the pots and pans off the metal shelving unit, stacking them on one of the kitchen chairs. “Helen, where do you want us to move this? There's not really another wall that's big enough for it.”

“I just want the shelf moved temporarily. Just move it forward a few feet so I can paint behind it, and then I'll get someone to move it back.”

“Hang on a minute,” I say. “No. You'll never move it back and it'll end up staying in the middle of the room just like this dishwasher.”

“So I shouldn't bother taking the stuff off?” David asks me.

“No, I don't think so.”

“But how will I paint that wall, then?” my mom asks.

“I thought you weren't going to Savers anymore?” I ask her,
holding up two muffin tins I've just discovered that both bear bright pink Savers price tags.