Clean: Slow for a Reason

 

 

 

Clean (2024)

By Alia Trabucco Zerán

Riverhead Books, 264 pages, Translated by Sophie Hughes.

★★★

 

Reading books from other cultures often requires patience. We cannot assume that North American values, ways of life, modes of expression, and storytelling mirror those of other lands.

 

Clean, a novel from Alia Trabucco Zerán delves into class construction and conflict within Chile. It is told from the perspective of Estela, a maid inside the home of Don Juan Cristóbal Jensen and Doña Mara López, both of whom work in the medical profession. Eventually a daughter named Julia comes into the home. Pay attention to their names because for most the novel the family is referenced as “the señor,” “the señora,” and “the girl,” or “the child.” It is Estela’s way of socially distancing herself from the family for whom she toils everyday in Santiago, Chile’s capitol. Estella is from poor peasant stock in the south of Chile, presumably of an indigenous background. She is nearly 40 when she becomes a maid, a status that highlights the enormous economic and social gaps between employer and employee.

 

On the surface, things don’t look so bad for Estela. She has her own room–off the kitchen of course–with a small TV and a radio. She is paid regularly and no one yells at her. Dr. Jensen pretty much ignores what happens in the household and the señora isn’t openly a tyrant. But, if you ever wondered what a microaggression is, note the myriad ways the señora never lets Estela forget that she is a servant and socially inferior. She corrects Estela’s grammar: “We don’t say armpit…. We say underarm.” You can imagine the señora’s swallowed disgust when Estela said, “they was” rather than they were. Once, the señora showed Estela a beautiful new dress and hung it in her closet. Estela surrendered to temptation and tried it on when she thought the señora was gone. When discovered, the señora responded with the ultimate microaggression: “You’d better wash it.” Estela did, as well as iron away ever wrinkle. It was again hung in the closet, but the señora never wore it. Perhaps the biggest microaggression was that Estela told the couple at her interview that she knew nothing of childrearing and did not wish to take care of an infant. They, of course, promptly had Julia and guess who changed the diapers, heated the bottles, played with the child, and took over every time the infant cried. Julia’s first word was “mama,” by which she meant Estela not Mara, but Estela could tell that the señora was miffed.

 

Estela came to resent the way the couple tried to imprint their values onto their daughter. They put Julia on a diet before she was three, made her take piano lessons, and tried to map out the toddler’s future road to success. When Julia resisted, they resorted to bribery, a pathway that made her into a spoiled brat. Julia also acts as the catalyst for Estela to recall her own childhood and become homesick for her mother. Estela can’t away for a long visit, but that doesn’t prevent relatives from hitting her up for money.

 

 The biggest problem is reflected in the novel’s slow pacing. Several terrible things will happen, but the very tedium and repetition of her life begins to sour Estela to the point where she becomes angry and perhaps is going slowly crazy. Most of her days are exactly alike;  prepare breakfast, clean, watch Julia, clean some more, make the beds, iron, make sure there is no dirt of mold anywhere, cook dinner, wash the dishes, shower, and perhaps watch some TV. Rinse and repeat. Not surprisingly, Estela’s optimism and spirit slowly come undone.

 

Aside from several deaths–one of which is non-human–very little actually “happens” in Clean. That too is by design, as is Zerán’s tactic of breaking the barrier between the narrator and the reader by having Estela speak to us as if we are in her room or thoughts. The novel ends with the words, “Hello? Can you hear me? Is anybody there?”  It’s uncertain where Estela is when she utters those words or why, but it’s not hard for us to imagine ourselves tongueless in the same mental cell as Estela.

 

Rob Weir