Ants in My Pants

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time around my paternal grandmother. She was, for all intents and purposes, not the most stable person in the world but she worshipped me and would give into all of my childhood whims which frequently included expensive dance classes and liberal trips to the candy store.

She also, being of proper “Austrian lineage,” was a lunatic about cleanliness and would spend hours scrubbing my skin and my scalp with her fingernails when I came in from playing to ensure she had gotten all of the dirt off of me before I walked on her pristine floors. I rarely was able to cross the threshold after a vigorous session of racing around in the dirt with the other neighborhood kids before I was unceremoniously scooped up and deposited in a bathtub of hot water to be scrubbed until she was sure I was not carrying any unknown contagions into her household.

I tolerated all of this because the upside—the expensive dance classes and lots of candy-- seemed to outweigh being thoroughly scoured on a routine basis like a mutt off the street who had picked up fleas.

The one thing I never got used to was her liberal use of starch.

My grandmother starched EVERYTHING.

I went to Catholic school for twelve years and she took great pride in starching my uniforms, polishing my shoes, and making sure everything about me reflected that I was in some privileged institution. I learned to tolerate the starched uniforms but the one thing that got to me was that she also starched my underwear.

Despite the fact that no one was ever going to actually SEE my underwear in those days, sitting through two hours of morning prayers in a hot church in underwear that was so completely stiff that I couldn’t move without being jabbed somewhere unmentionable was completely intolerable.

My mother, after about the 100th call from the nasty old nun who would single me out for having “ants in my pants” and not displaying proper humility before God because I was shifting around so much, finally intervened.

“I don’t care if it is ‘proper,’ she doesn’t need her underwear starched and I am tired of the phone calls saying she is a bad Catholic because her ass itches. Stop starching her goddamn underwear already… you Hitler you!”

(I don’t think I need to mention here that my mother and grandmother did NOT get along).

So imagine my surprise when, more than two and a half decades later, I am having the same issue.

When I got to Uganda, I was adamant that I didn’t need a maid. I reasoned that I am only one person, I am pretty neat and don’t make too much of a mess, and I also don’t relish people hanging out in my house unless I invite them there. So I had determined: No Maid.

Still, it is so common here that I eventually gave in to my friend, Sarah’s, requests that I at least have her sister, Beatrice, come visit once a week to tidy up.

Beatrice is in her final year of high school and is desperately saving money to go to England next year on some Church trip. I like Sarah and like Beatrice so I figured, “OK, what the hell? I hate scrubbing the tile floors and washing windows so maybe it will work out if I have her come once a week…”

The problem is that I simply don’t have enough for Beatrice to do. She comes and spends a whole day here and, because I clean up after myself fairly regularly, there is just not a lot for her to do outside of scrubbing the floors and washing the windows. I tried to leave dishes in the sink one week but got so annoyed about having dirty dishes in the sink that I did them myself before she got here.

She mostly occupies herself with hand-washing my laundry (which I immediately then rewash in the washing machine because I hate stiff clothing that is line-dried) and polishing all of my furniture.

But now that she is used to a regular income (which I later found out is about 8 times what Ugandans pay their housekeepers who come once a day, NOT once a week), I just don’t have the heart to fire her.

So we play a game of me trying to figure out what she can do to occupy her for 12 hours and her doing the same on her end.

This has not had positive results.

Two months ago I found her polishing my pictures. No, not the frames, but the pictures themselves.

As she scrubbed my boyfriend and mother’s faces off the prints, I told her that really, REALLY, I did not need her to polish my photos.

Then she decided to wash all of my print and textile wall hangings that I have gathered from my travels. As I watched a very expensive and rare Ghanaian print bleed down the wall and saw a 200 year old Georgian tapestry begin to crumble before my eyes, I told her that, under NO circumstances, was she to wash the wall hangings.

And that’s when she started starching my underwear.

I didn’t notice it at first and thought I had missed rescuing a pair off the line on my balcony when I pulled them on one morning.

Then, everyday that week, I found that I had the same problem. I would sit in meetings and be extremely uncomfortable and start shifting around because something was just “not right” about my clothes...specifically, my underwear.

I finally caught her in the act the next week with a mammoth-sized bottle of the Ugandan equivalent of “Spray and Wash” in her hands as she wielded it over my Victoria’s Secret undethings on the ironing board (I also hate to iron so this was an activity that I did agree to and she enjoys doing).

“Beatrice, please, please don’t starch my underwear! I like how well you iron but I don’t need my underwear starched, it makes me uncomfortable and it isn’t necessary…but thank you!”

She looked uncertain.

“But you have important meetings, you should be well-presented,” she argued.

(Instant replay of my childhood).

“Thank you, Beatrice, I appreciate that. But really, no one at these meetings is seeing my underwear so can we stick to the shirts and the pants ONLY?”

She just doesn’t buy it.

So for the past two months we have had the starch wars. She brings over her bottle, I find it hidden under the kitchen sink or in my closet, I throw it away, and she buys a new one.

Now I am hiding my underwear. I keep it balled up on top of my refrigerator or in my safe.

I just know there has to be another way…but I haven’t found it yet.

This weekend, while I was away in Rwanda, I left Beatrice a note asking if she could wash my plants on the balcony that are constantly being choked by street dust and grime.

When I got home, they were gorgeous. All shiny and looking brand new.

Then they dropped all of their leaves in 24 hours.

I picked one up and sniffed. The unmistakable smell of starch.

On top all of this, I was sitting in my office talking to my colleague yesterday when he observed, “Why are you so jumpy? Is everything OK? It’s like you have ants in your pants or something…”
I didn’t know where to begin but I don’t really understand the karma of starched underpants.

Or why, twenty-some odd years later, I still have ants in my pants.