She’d kept quiet, because, no, it wasn’t the money, it was Amram’s do-or-die shitah

Leebie could trace the patterns of every last shadow in her room in her sleep.

That is, if she ever actually slept.

With considerable restraint, she refrained from checking the time on her alarm clock. It wouldn’t do any good to know how many hours of sleep she’d already forfeited. How much time had passed since she’d taken melatonin? Way too much. Her body was immune to those pills, and she turned over again in frustration as she listened to the happily fed cats purr in the alley.

At some point, her alarm clock screeched in her ears, which was a good sign: It meant she’d eventually fallen asleep.

It also meant that she had to get out of bed immediately if she wanted the day to start off on the right foot.

From down the hallway, she could hear Amram hurrying Pinchas along in his room. He was a responsible bochur who always made it out of the house on time, but still, Amram checked in on him every morning when he got back from his vasikin minyan. Counterintuitive, if he’d asked Leebie, but then again, he knew better, so why would he ask her?

Whatever. Pinchas didn’t complain, just like Meir never had when he’d gone through this “system” before starting to dorm. That didn’t mean she was okay with it, but thankfully, it was something she could let drop. Instead, she tiptoed past Shaya and Chananya’s room to the small utility closet in the hallway to fetch some detergents and shmattehs. It was part of her Friday morning routine: wake up, clean the bathrooms. She’d learned to stagger the cleaning schedule over the years, so she didn’t spend eight hours in a row cleaning the house for Shabbos.

“Hey, good morning,” Amram greeted her. “I picked you up something from the bakery to have with your coffee. It’s on the counter downstairs — maybe grab a bite before you start? I’m going to vacuum the basement now, because I need to be at Grunners’ for an eight o’clock run. I’ll do the rest of the house when I come home.”

“Okay, fine.”

Nobody understood how this worked — not her mother, not her sister Miriam, none of her friends — but the fact was, it did. Amram never wanted cleaning help in the house, claiming it was a waste of money. And having a stranger roaming around the house was uncomfortable, he said. “Even if we had all the money in the world!” was his argument. “Why should we pay someone to clean our house when we could easily do it on our own?”

From day one, he told her he’d help with the cleaning, and he was true to his word. He vacuumed and washed all the floors in the house every week, and he was the best declutterer she could ever ask for.