From the Independent Producer Project of KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is Unfictional.

Unfictional is a program of true stories and personal documentaries, but today on the program,

a new story from radio artist and storyteller Joe Frank.

He's been making strange, dark, uncomfortable,

and hilarious programs for most of the last three decades,

but every few months he premieres a brand new program especially produced for Unfictional.

And like many of his stories, it straddles the line between the outrageous, the absurd, and the truth.

From KCRW and KCRW.com, it's unfictional and the poor are always with us.

By Joe Frank. Once I had a cleaning lady from El Salvador. Her name was Dolores. She came to my house once a week for roughly four hours.

She dusted, polished, vacuumed, did the laundry.

Although she lived in the US for at least 10 years, she spoke virtually no English.

My attempts to communicate with her were often done in Pantomime. It was as if

we were playing charades and I found it annoying that she'd made no attempt to learn English in the country in which she'd found refuge.

Once I found Dolores in my garage, rifling through boxes of old clothing,

blankets, dinner wear. When she saw me, she was startled and said, for the church.

Apparently she wanted me to donate my old possessions to her parish, or she was trying to steal from me. It was impossible to tell.

In any case, during the week that Dolores was away, my apartment would slowly sink into disarray.

Pins, papers, loose change, CDs and clothing would pile up everywhere.

Once I bought a large pack of Unibald pens, and after a few months I couldn't find even one of them.

Where they'd gone was a mystery.

But I was so disorganized and lived in such chaos that I couldn't tell if I'd misplaced them or if Dolores had stolen them.

My white Nike athletic socks and t-shirts seemed to be in dwindling supply and my favorite gray sweater,

...