The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster

The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster

Sarah Krasnostein




Kim

A short drive north from Geelong, a woman lives in a house with broken windows and dark words sprayed across its exterior in writing that looks like it came from the hand of a giant. It says I HATE YOU and BRAIN and WELL BEING? and HUMANITY and THE SHAME. The windows facing the street are covered, variously, with blankets, a battered blind held in place by a blue plastic flute and a sheet of cardboard. On the lawn, random mounds of large rocks, bricks, wooden planks, metal grilles and wires dot the dying grass. A large handwritten sign that says HYPACRITES is balanced across two of the mounds. There are a couple of sun-bleached garden gnomes and an industrial-sized bag of mulch on which more words have been scrawled in black paint: SAME SONG, SWORDS, HOMELESS.

Sandra is sitting in an immaculate white SUV with a large white sticker stretched across the back window that says MISSIBITCHI. She is scheduled to do a cleaning quote at 9 a.m. As always, she is early and she is on her phone. Someone from the Salvation Army inquiring about laundry costs for a client with bedbugs. Sandra replies that it’s thirty-five dollars per bag, plus pick-up and delivery. She covers the phone and whispers guiltily, ‘I just started charging for that.’ Wrapping up the call, she pops her door open and unfolds her long, slim legs from the car. Sandra is wearing bright pink lipstick, a navy blouse, dark skinny jeans and pristine white ballet flats. As always, her platinum blonde hair is perfectly blow-dried and it floats slowly around her as she turns in the morning light.

The tenant at this morning’s job is named Kim. Sandra has been briefed that Kim describes herself as a puppeteer, a magician and a pet trainer and that, though she is ‘a smart woman’, she becomes extremely suspicious of those trying to help. She will talk about her self-diagnosed conditions which include bipolar disorder and a tumour in her head. Kim is ‘very angry’ because the previous cleaner got rid of her pets, ‘thirty rats, all dead’. I’m still processing the image of thirty dead rats as we walk towards the house. Sandra starts explaining that the goal is to make Kim sufficiently comfortable with the cleaning process so that the job causes her minimal distress.

To reach the short flight of stairs leading up to Kim’s front door, Sandra walks down a cracked concrete driveway, around the colossal bag of mulch, past a red sombrero and under a low-slung makeshift hammock full of water. Though Kim opens her front door, she remains hidden deep inside while Sandra explains that she is here to help but first needs to have a look around.

‘I’m from a private enterprise,’ Sandra explains, breathless from the strain the small climb has placed on her deteriorating lungs. ‘We do organisation. We work with you, looking after your stuff and making sure it’s safe and sound. We do it in conjunction with you, we work together.’ She is fighting for breath, audibly sucking it in where she can between words. After a beat, peering up at Sandra, Kim seems to accept this and steps back, allowing her in.

You could easily mistake Kim for a young boy but she is a mother in her early forties. She is short, she is fine featured and small boned and bloated. She has pale skin and blue eyes that are darting and swooping like swallows. She is wearing heavy black work boots, baggy khaki pants, a big black T-shirt and a long black scarf; also a fingerless black glove on one hand. There is an old black blanket wrapped around her waist like a skirt. Her blonde hair has been hacked into a bob and a white road of scalp shines out where a strip has been randomly shaved through it. She has homemade tattoos on one arm. A long wooden spoon has been tied with rope around her shoulders. Standing in her doorway, emerging from the cavernous darkness of her home, she would present as some type of troglodytic warrior but for the fact that she is radiating fear so vibrantly that it is contagious.

‘Can you just watch where you walk?’ Kim asks. ‘I’ve made it as safe as possible.’ Her voice, too, is that of a young boy, piping but gruff, trying to be brave. She gestures towards a box and says in an off-handed way, ‘I study magician stuff, not that I’ll ever do it.’

Stepping inside, Sandra puts her hand on Kim’s shoulder and says, ‘I hear that you’re an animal trainer. I need help with a dog. Here, look at this.’ She starts swiping through photos on her phone, her long red nail clicking crisply on the screen until she gets to a shot of her Lana, small and white, staring at the camera mid-shiver. ‘She’s Lana Turner and I’m Bette Davis,’ Sandra explained the first time I met that damaged and diminutive creature, who barked continuously at a pitch that made me squint. ‘She’s my security girl. I got her from the animal shelter, but she rescued me.’

Sandra explains to Kim how Lana was probably abused because she cowers at any quick movement, how the dog still refuses to be picked up and runs off, which is real rough because of her lung problem, you see? Kim cracks a half-smile and drops suddenly onto all fours before explaining from down there that Sandra simply needs to adopt a ‘submissive permissive physical language’ with the dog. Sandra nods at the words with vague interest, not conscious of the fact that she has just intuitively executed that same move with Kim, who—even in explaining this—is mirroring it right back at Sandra.

‘Right. You can help me, I can help you,’ Sandra says. ‘We’ll work together.’ She looks at her surrounds, raring to begin.