The Janitor Who Came to My Graduation

Six Forty in the Morning

The house got very cold and very quiet after my mother left for work.

When I started high school, I began walking to school early. It was eight blocks. I would rather be cold for eight blocks than sit alone in that kitchen for two hours listening to the furnace kick on and off.

The first morning I got there at six forty, every door was locked. I stood by the side door near the gym with my hands in my sleeves, feeling stupid, wondering if I should walk back home.

Then the door opened, and there was Mr. Varga.

Every kid at our school knew Mr. Otis Varga. He had been the head custodian for thirty-one years. He had a white crew cut, a ring of keys on his belt the size of a dinner plate, and he called every student “sir” or “ma’am.”

“Ma’am,” he said that first morning. “You’re early.”

“My mom works the early shift,” I said. “I didn’t want to stay home.”

He looked at me for a second, the way a man looks at a fence post to see if it’s straight. Then he held the door wider.

“Well, you can’t stand out there. It’s nineteen degrees. Cafeteria’s warm. Sit by the radiator and don’t touch my wet floor.”

I sat by the radiator. Twenty minutes later he came by pushing his mop bucket and set a foil-wrapped bundle on the table in front of me without breaking stride.

It was a breakfast burrito. Eggs, sausage, a little cheese, still warm.

“Ardith makes too many,” he said over his shoulder. “Somebody’s got to eat them.”

I found out later that Ardith was his wife. I also found out that Ardith never made too many of anything in her life. She made exactly what she meant to make.

She made one extra burrito, five days a week, for four years.