The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster(4)

The bedroom. Kim sleeps on the top level of a bunk bed next to a broken chest freezer with the word CUNT scrawled on it in large brown letters. There is an accordion in the middle of her bed. A web of cellophane and rope has been twisted around the bed posts; various funeral booklets are stuck here, suspended like flies. Upstairs, in the other two bedrooms, piles of clothes and sheets, everything the colour of newsprint. Also, an electric guitar with strings missing and a toy helicopter, its blades smeared with crayon.

‘I can get you a fridge,’ Sandra says casually to Kim as they descend the stairs. ‘And a washing machine, a fancy new one. And a dryer.’ When Sandra does a deceased estate and there is no next of kin to take the bed linen or TV or furniture, she stores these orphaned items and waits for the right fit, then she installs them for free into the freshly cleaned homes of her hoarding and squalor clients.

With an autistic client who had been sleeping on the cement floor of his bare apartment, she once explained, ‘The TV came from a murder, I stored it so it was aired out and ready to go, there was a lounge and I had a table, so I gave him that.’ She gave another client, going through a divorce, ‘a proper lounge suite with a recliner, a foldout bed, a vacuum cleaner, kitchen stuff, a whole range of linen, and I’ve got pillows for him. This is going to be a major transformation for this guy.’

She does this because she is deeply generous but that’s not the entire explanation. There’s also her drive to execute each job as perfectly as possible, which sets her apart from the other industrial cleaners who are happy with doing adequate work. But that’s not the whole story either. She has been intuitively righting her environment—cleaning it, organising it, coordinating it, filling in gaps where she can, hiding them where she can’t—since she was a child. It is her way of imposing order on her world and it brings her profound satisfaction.

Kim walks out of her bedroom and into the small laundry room which leads outside. She is volatile, emitting instability like radio waves, and I too feel jumpy, nervous. While the type of high energy that Sandra gives off always feels warm, like a car engine that’s been driving for hours, Kim crackles. Suddenly, she shoots back out of the room and runs circles around us, bent low at the waist. I startle and, without thinking, grab Sandra’s arm.

‘It’s the dog,’ Sandra says lightly. Kim’s dog managed to get inside and she is chasing it back out so that it doesn’t attack the rats. We continue into the laundry room where a screen door leads to the backyard. There is no washing machine, no dryer. Just taps on the wall. There is a low table covered in a bedsheet with a velour pillow in the centre, on which various items are stored in boxes that once held tea-light candles and rolling papers. There is a crayon-streaked kettle and toaster, empty packets of chips, bread, tea bags. A small picture of the Virgin Mary hangs high on the wall of this makeshift kitchen. Also, a small postcard of Einstein. The dirty floor is carpeted with a brown blanket on which pink-handled cutlery appears to have been deliberately positioned. There is a toilet in a tiny room off to the side; the floor there is strewn with ten volumes of the World Book and the walls are painted bright blue and covered in green writing: OOH PUNCH & JUDY SHOW!, SUICIDE TAB 111 11, MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB. A frying pan lies at the base of the toilet, a crucifix dangles from the toilet-paper holder.

Surveying the dining situation, Sandra asks Kim if she would like a microwave. ‘I, uh, I…uh…I would do that…’ Kim replies quietly, then pins a coffee can between her feet and hops it to the other side of the room.

The backyard is vast. A Hills hoist is stuck like a cocktail umbrella in the dead centre of the dead lawn; debris everywhere in the spongy yellow grass. Despite it being the end of summer, the bushes and trees along the fence line are devoid of leaves. An entropic mound of trash and broken furniture oozes towards the house from the far corner of the yard. This is where Kim deposited the stuff that was crowded up to the ceiling inside the house during the last inspection.

I hear Kim telling a story inside like she’s at a bar with friends; Sandra breaks out into long laughter with her. Then they come outside and Kim, frowning, squats and lights a cigarette butt. Sandra’s phone rings. ‘Good morning, Sandra speaking,’ she answers pertly while sitting down on a milk crate and majestically crossing her legs. Balancing her clipboard on her lap, she listens while making notes. The little dog trots over and places its front paws on her leg.

‘We might have to take up the carpet,’ Sandra says, staring into the middle distance and stroking the dog’s head. Her perfectly manicured nails are extra-long acrylics, sufficiently durable for her to participate (ungloved, as is her preference) in an all-day trauma clean and emerge looking as though she has just been at the manicurist. At least, if you don’t peer too closely at the undersides. She favours juicy bright shades of cherry red or apricot or watermelon, or a glazed glitter baby pink. Intensely practical about her appearance, as she is about most things, she has opted for permanent eyeliner, lip liner and eyebrow liner so that she can throw on minimal make-up and be ready for the day. Her eyelashes and eyebrows, like her hair, are white blonde and her eyes are very blue, slightly wide-set and enormous. Regardless of what she is doing that day or how long she has been doing it for, she looks immaculate and smells lovely.

The dog jumps onto Sandra’s clipboard, leaving brown paw prints on the paper. She reaches around it to continue making notes. ‘See, that’s because body fluids go through to the underlay. It can be the size of a coin, but spread out underneath,’ she explains into the phone. ‘You can surface clean it but if you have children crawl over it at some stage, you’re likely to be sued later on. In my mind, I’m not happy with that. I’d rather you be safe, sound and it’s sterilised. We can certainly look at that for you. That’s the trauma side of things but there may be an industrial clean needed, like if the walls need to be washed down because the body fluids have evaporated in the heat or if there was gas in the room, I’m not sure how they killed themselves.’ The dog launches itself off Sandra’s arm, ripping two puncture holes in her skin. They start to bleed more than you would think. ‘It’s my paper skin,’ she whispers, covering the phone and then wiping at the blood. Her cortisone inhalers cause skin atrophy; just now it tore like wet tissue. ‘Where’s the house?’ she asks. ‘Ah, that’s just a hop, skip and a jump for us.’ Pleased, she finishes the call.