Limpia for When the Realtor Comes

Close the door behind the last potential buyer as he walks out of your home. You have told them you intend to stay, your Tenants Union handbook carefully placed on the table at the top of the stairs. That is as much as you can do for now. But they have entered your home, with 24 hours’ notice, walked through every room, opened doors, and looked through windows to assess the view. At least you made them take off their shoes. They had to step around your child playing with his friends, walked through the cooking smells of your kitchen as your compañera prepared dinner.

Wait till they have left your street. Sweep and clean the entrance, down the stairs and out the front door, out, out. Wipe down all things touched by these uninvited strangers. When was the last time you cleaned the doorknobs?

Open every door and window. Stand in the middle of each room, face the street, pull your arms back and clap your hands together, shooing out the energies.

Smudge each room with sage. Begin at the front door, up the stairs to the hall, around to the front room, wave the smoke in the four directions, across doorways and into the shadows of every corner. Let the smoke waft up to the cobwebbed ceiling. Hum as you walk, taking in the smell of earth, the smoke of ancient fires burned by ancestors who lived on this land long before this house was built. Allow the bundle to burn out in abalone. Tomorrow you will bury the remains in your garden.

Ring the chimes by the stoop to let the neighbors know you are still here. Water the rue. Close the doors and lock them. This is your house again, for tonight.

Leave a bowl of water and rock salt, flowers and cuttings of lavender and rosemary, mint, and lemon balm from your little garden of potted herbs. These are the things you have grown here. You will continue to grow here, you and your children.

After dinner, light a candle and burn sweetgrass. Remember the evicted, down the street and in other neighborhoods. Remember those without homes, and those separated from their families. Remember the others who lived before, so forgotten that the government denies them a name on their rolls. Ohlone. Remember the animal people, evicted and extinguished, left as drawings on a flag. Grizzly. Remember the water people, the long return, the ones who help them, the ones who bring down dams. Salmon. Remember the standing people, who once populated the mountains and valleys to the north, east and south, whose wood was cut to build this house. Redwood.

Remember they endure in beauty. Remember their life is fighting, but also joy, the two inextricable, joined in the smoke of sage and sweetgrass. Sleep well. In your home.

END