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Margaret Sorenson spilled another quarter-cup of Spic ‘n Span into the plastic wash bucket and swirled it around with her delicate hand, feeling the grit instantly dissolve into sterile suds. She churned the suds to life and dipped her scrub brush into the hot soapy water to continue the humble task of scrubbing years of accumulated wax from the yellowed floor of her landlord’s kitchen. Her modest red and white checkered house dress, still speckled with furniture polish from yesterday’s house cleaning, pulled across her lap to expose her slim thighs. Margaret poked a finger to tuck a strand of blonde hair behind her nape-tied scarf and, wiping a purling drop of sweat from her unwrinkled brow with a swipe of her sudsy hand, sat up to admire the rewards of her plebeian task. In an arm’s stretch semi-circle around her, an oasis of white glistened in a desert of sandy yellow. Another two hours of sweating and scrubbing and backache, and she would have worked off one week’s rent here at her Geary Street apartment in downtown San Francisco. But the thirty-eight year old woman refused to complain; at least she had a roof over her head, which was a lot more than many women in her situation could brag of.
Fictional reading for entertainment purposes only.