In its narrative structure Clean may sound like a suspense story, but it’s really a memoir-in-miniature narrated by Estela — a sharp woman who’s had to funnel her life into the rooms of her employers’ house. “Claustrophobia” would have been a good alternative title for this novel, which is set almost exclusively in interior spaces.
Why stay inside with Estela, you may ask? The answer is her voice. Listen to this passage, where Estela in her cell answers the question she assumes is on the minds of her unseen inquisitors, as well as us readers:
By now you’re probably wondering why I stayed. … My answer is the following: Why do you stay in your jobs? In your poky offices, in the factories and the shops on the other side of this wall?
I never stopped believing I would leave that house, but routine is treacherous; the repetition of the same rituals — open your eyes, close them, chew, swallow, brush your hair, brush your teeth — each one an attempt to gain mastery over time. A month, a week, the length and breadth of a life.
There are so many sentences in this closely-observed novel where an image or comment suddenly swerves matters from the mundane to the revelatory: For instance, when Estela, in answer to an ad, first shows up at her employers’ address, the señora, then pregnant, looks her “up and down,” while the señor doesn’t even make eye contact: “He was texting on his phone [Estela recalls] and, without even glancing up, pointed at the kitchen door.”
When Julia, as a 2-year-old, begins to bite her nails so compulsively her cuticles bleed, Estela comments:
I kept thinking about the girl, … about her chubby, idle hands, always ready to pop those nails into her mouth, for them to be destroyed by her teeth. I never bit my nails. My mama didn’t either. I suppose for that you’d need to have your hands free.