This is the seventh in a series of autobiographical short stories by author Rita Antoinette Borg, collectively titled A Funny Thing Happened to Me….
A funny thing happened to me one particular Saturday morning. As a young girl of 10 growing up in New York City in the 1970s, American television had only three channels – ABC, NBC and CBS. These channels dedicated Saturday mornings to children viewers who longed to watch nothing other than cartoons!
Kids hankered for Saturday to come along to watch cartoons like Scooby-Doo, Catch the Pigeon, Johnny Quest, The Archies, The Monkees, and so much more. Saturday mornings were pure bliss – we'd wake up late, have breakfast in front of the TV, play, and watch anything we wanted with our pyjamas on until 2 o’clock. At 2 o’clock, our parents would come home from work, ruining all our fun.
Since our dad was never far away, as he worked as a superintendent in our building and connecting synagogue, he was just three floors away. Mom worked as a maid, however, for several clients. She ventured out into the city streets to other homes.
The well-to-do of New York loved my mom. They often said of her that,
“She cleans like no other person I know.”
Her reputation as the best cleaner in the Westside of the city grew and grew. Even the great actor, Peter Ustinov, was one of her clients before he died.
I, personally, never understood this cleaning business. I have not inherited the housework gene from my mom; this entitlement belonged to my eldest sister, Carmen.
Carmen, too, like my mother, loves, loves, loves to dust, scrub, wash and do whatever it takes to make a room/house spotless.
Like I said, I did not inherit the clean gene.
As a kid, I read voraciously, ravenously! In all honestly, we all did except for my mom. But cleaning was important too for Carmen, especially if mom had told her to do it in her absence on a Saturday morning.
On this particular Saturday morning, I had been reading my all-time favourite children’s book, Charlotte’s Web by E.B White. It has talking animals, a human saviour of animals, different, hilarious animal characters and most of all an animal happy ending.
I remember borrowing the copy from the Riverside Library where I was allowed to walk on my own to get books from there.
I couldn’t stop reading about Wilbur, the pig, Charlotte the spider, and Templeton the wily rat and their antics. Carmen, however, had other thoughts. She wanted me to vacuum the living room carpet.
First, she plugged in the vacuum cleaner for me, then, she showed me how I had to move the machine up and down to gather the dust into the cloth bag, and she showed me how to swerve the cleaner head to get to every nook and cranny of the blue and black large carpet. It looked easy enough. Carmen nodded and proceeded up our hall to clean our small kitchen.
I started well. Almost!
I moved the vacuum cleaner up and down and up and down and up and down. I was cleaning! Then, I got an idea! It was a great stupendous idea! Why not read and clean the carpet at the same time?
I sandwiched my copy of Charlotte’s Web between two protruding notches coming out of the main handle of the vacuum. I turned on the switch and proceeded to vacuum the carpet. Easy!
I remember reading the first three paragraphs of the second chapter called, WILBUR, of this American classic, “FERN loved Wilbur more than anything. She loved to stroke him, feed him, to put him to bed...”
A tremendous roar interrupted me and made me look up from my reading, I saw my 13-year-old sister yelling at me.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Kids hankered for Saturday to come along to watch cartoons like Scooby-Doo, Catch the Pigeon, Johnny Quest, The Archies, The Monkees, and so much more
Bewildered, I said, “I’m vacuuming the carpet as you told me to.”
Carmen shook her head so rapidly that her long black hair twisted in a bun tumbled down her shoulders like a whip, and said,
“That’s not how to vacuum a carpet! I told you to clean up; not read!”
Astonished, I said, “But I am cleaning. Look.”
We looked down at the carpet together; I had vacuumed only a patch or area of the carpet while reading the book.
Carmen looked at me like she always looks at me to this very day when she’s mad at me and said,
“Are you sure you’re my sister?”
She was furious.
She grabbed my book from the notches of the vacuum handle, threw it across to a nearby sofa and said those now infamous words,“If you don’t vacuum this carpet NOW, I’ll tell mom and dad when they get home. And you know what that means, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“Mom and Dad will never let you go to the library ever again!”
I quickly learned how to properly vacuum a large square carpet with that floral pattern that's stuck in my mind forever.
After my sister had cleaned the bathroom, two bedrooms, kitchen, three closets, the landing and the laundry, and when mom returned home, Carmen told mom everything! She did not keep her word!
Mom got really angry in Maltese, which at that time, I understood next to nothing. I heard a lot of words starting with the ‘Ma’ sound. She pounded her fists on her head and chest. I remember gazing at her in dismay and thinking,
“All this fuss for a dirty carpet?”
After yelling and running around in circles, Mom looked down at me as if to ask, “Where did this kid come from?”
She stared at me for some sizeable seconds and in her broken English asked,
“I no understand you! What is better, a clean house and nice husband or you want to read silly books?”
I loved my mom; I never wanted to hurt her feelings. I tried hard to suppress my laughter.
So I took a big breath and said, “A clean house and a nice husband, Mom for sure!”
She smiled and patted my head.
Funnily enough, while I said this, behind my back, I crossed my fingers with one hand while grabbing my copy of Charlotte’s Web from the mustard-coloured sofa with the other. I wanted to find my way to the second chapter to read about Wilbur the pig's fate as soon as possible.
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