By Kevin M. Kearney
Iberia wanted to know if I’d seen a Clean Out.
In my first two months at The Home, I’d seen plenty of things. Wayne slugging Keno during afternoon meds. Sophia launching her used tampon across the cafeteria. Stephen showing off his enlarged scrotum, a mass of skin I mistook for an overinflated volleyball.
It was my first real job. I think I liked it.
The Home was a world away from my quiet life with Mom, who was proud I’d landed a steady gig and amazed by the stories I returned with each night. “Unbelievable!” she’d say, every time, even when, objectively speaking, many of them were believable. These were people who’d lived on the street for years and sometimes skipped their anti-psychosis meds. It’s all relative, I guess. She’d been at Rite Aid for close to two decades. No one showed off their enlarged scrotums there, at least as far as I knew.
But Iberia, who’d been at The Home since its founding, told me everything I’d seen was nothing compared with a Clean Out. “You know Hoarders?”
I nodded, remembering an episode where the crew discovered a freezer full of dead cats.
“Those people?” She paused, letting the question float in the air between us. “Lightweights.”
The Clean Out was for Ms. Sandra, whom our Manager said had died in her sleep. It was a turn-of-phrase I hadn’t heard since I was little, one I’d since decided was bullshit. Nobody died in their sleep—they had aneurysms, or choked on their vomit, or suffered massive heart attacks. Maybe something had happened while they’d been in bed, but it wasn’t sleep that got them. “Overdose,” Iberia whispered on our walk to the room and mimed a needle striking her forearm.
The room smelled like sawdust and damp laundry. When Iberia turned on the overhead lights, I heard scuttling along the wall. Mice, I figured, though I prepared myself for something bigger to sprint across the floor. I removed a contractor bag from our cart and whipped it open like a jet-black parachute, hoping the sound might scare off whatever was hiding in the shadows.
Iberia was at Ms. Sandra’s desk, staring down at something. “Fuck me,” she said, and laughed. I got closer and saw what she meant: it was an open jewelry box with close to a dozen golden bands inside, each of them holding a shimmering rock. “Are these diamonds?” she asked, bringing one of the rings up to the overhead fluorescent.
They all looked like copies of Mom’s engagement ring, the one she still wore even though it’d been years since Dad passed. “I don’t like the look of a naked hand,” she told me once. “I don’t like how people assume.” Dad bought her the ring before he had money for a real one. According to Mom, it was a placeholder, though he never got around to replacing it. I don’t remember if it’s something they talked about before he passed. He’s been gone so long that sometimes I struggle to remember specific details. The color of his eyes, the way he laughed. Small things that feel enormous.
“Could be cubic,” I told Iberia, using the same shorthand Mom had passed on to so many well-meaning admirers, a self-conscious reflex she was never able to kick. “Imitation diamond.”
Iberia slipped the band on her finger and stretched her arm, trying to see how her hand might look to a stranger. “Feels real,” she said. It looked immaculate. “Clean Outs aren’t usually this good.” She took the ring off, then tried on another.
Our Manager had informed us that any valuables—“sentimental, monetary, or otherwise”—needed to be cataloged and then brought to the Front Office so they could be delivered to the next of kin. “I guess we should tag it,” I said.
Iberia kept admiring her hand. “Did you know Ms. Sandra?”
I didn’t, not in any meaningful way. She’d lived on the Women’s Floor, a part of The Home I avoided at all costs. She ate her meals alone, muttering in front of an open Bible. Our only real interactions were in the meds line. She’d swallow her lithium and Lexapro in silence, then thank me for my work. “You are a nice little boy,” she used to say in high-pitched tone, like something from Sesame Street. When I first told Mom the story, I did the same voice and she laughed and laughed. The next morning, I poured her a cup of coffee and she smiled. “You are a nice little boy,” she said.
“She didn’t have any family, really,” Iberia said. “Maybe a cousin or something. Distant, you know? Practically strangers.”
“So…” I said, hoping Iberia wouldn’t make me ask the question.
“So?” She was smirking, apparently enjoying my discomfort.
I took a deep breath. “So, you’re saying you don’t think we should tag it.”
“I’m saying a distant cousin doesn’t deserve it more than us.” She waved her hand as she spoke, the glittering crystal following her movements. “A distant cousin wasn’t serving dinner. A distant cousin wasn’t giving meds.”
I knew it was wrong, at least legally. It was theft, according to Network protocol, and what our Manager had said, and probably a number of official documents I’d signed without reading. But I didn’t say anything when Iberia handed me one of the rings, didn’t object when she told me we’d be fine so long as we kept our stories straight.
Mom would have questions. Like how I could afford a diamond on $13/hour. Like why I’d buy something so expensive when I was theoretically saving for my own apartment.
I figured I’d eventually have a plan.
That night, Mom asked about the shift, and I told her it was slow. I wondered if she could tell that I was lying, if she could somehow see the ring in my pocket. When I got upstairs, I stashed it in my nightstand. That was a year ago. It’s still there.
Every night before I fall asleep, I tell myself I’ll wake up in the morning, walk downstairs, and finally hand Mom the ring. “It’s mine,” I hear myself saying. I hear myself believing. “And now I want it to be yours.”
Kevin M. Kearney‘s writing has appeared in Slate, Stereogum, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere. His novel HOW TO KEEP TIME was released in 2022 by Thirty West. More at kevinmkearney.com.