Violet Sun

The Laundromat

  When I remember the summers at my mother’s apartment, my mind always seems to wander on our Saturaday mornings. We would get up early and I would make breakfast while mom would be running about the house trying to get the laundry together. After eating, I’d help her put the baskets and giant bottles of laundry detergent (which my stick arms struggled to carry and often times dragged on the floor) in the back of our small (if not explosive) 1955 Trabant. Then, after my mom had packed all of her newspapers, and me all of my books, and our pockets full of coins and lint, we drove to the Laundromat.

  Once there, we unloaded the car, both with arms full, with items stacked on top of another as if we were ransacking the place, we sat in our usual spot - in the back corner of the small building where no one could see us (though it didn’t really matter since no one really cared) for it was the only corner which had a folding table and the least amount of water leaks from the washing machines - and we began our work.

  Mom would take the darks and I the brights, and we would fill the machines with our dirty socks and underwear until the machines were full and our baskets empty. We would always play a game to see who could empty their baskets faster. Whoever won had to buy the other a triple chocolate ice cream cone from Mr.Wallie’s ice cream parlor next door (though, even if I lost, mom would always buy one for me anyway). Once the winner was claimed and loser’s protests adequately exclaimed we took our seats on the wobbly wooden bar stools and read our newspapers and books. The buzzing of the machines would cause us to jump, and we would shake our heads and shift our eyes to see if anyone noticed (but no one ever did) and went back to work, she would take the darks and I the brights, before we returned to our stools and jumped at the sound of the buzzing machines.

  I am happy to say, mom never made me help her fold clothes - for it was always my least favorite thing about laundry day - so instead, I was the dryer watcher, and occupied my time to wait for the dryers to click off before promptly telling mom which ones were done and which ones needed more time. I would stair at the clothes, spinning, spinning, spinning, in endless circles, watching the dryer suck them up against their hot iron walls before casting them off into the air and sucking them up again. I remember one particular morning when, while reading a special book of mine (which as of late the name escapes me), a character made a comparison between life and a roller coaster. I put my book down in my lap, staring at the dryers whose clothes were still spinning, spinning, spinning, to ponder this puzzling thought. I thought, and thought, before my thoughts weren’t really thoughts anymore, but simply jumbled streams of consciousness that began to spin with the tumbling clothes which still insisted on spinning, spinning, spinning.

  When our job at the laundromat was done and we were driving home that afternoon I said, quite matter-of-factly:

  “Mom, life isn’t like a roller-coaster.”

  “It’s not?” She inquired in an interested tone. “Well, if it’s not like a roller-coaster, what is it like?”

  “A dryer.” I replied simply.

  “A dryer? And why is that?”

  “Well,” I began, licking my lips with as much calculated thought as an eight-year-old could muster. “A roller-coaster stops. But a dryer never stops, mommy. It just keeps on going. It never stops.”

  Grandma doesn’t like dryers. She always says that those contraptions give her nightmares and how many horror stories she has heard about cats jumping in them and dying (though Grany hates cats and thinks they are mischievous, devilish sort of creatures). No, Grany doesn’t like dryers, she uses a clothes line instead.

  I always remember those warm summer days when Grany would do her laundry. She would gather up all of the wet sheets in one large wicker basket and would walk around with it nestled firmly on her hip. She would have one hand griped tightly around the end while the other swayed about lazily as her hips would rock against the wood of the basket causing it to whine. Then, with her bare feet treading across the dewy droplets of the moist Maine grass, she would start to pin the clothing onto the line easily with her delicate wrinkled fingers, her gray frizzing hair blowing behind her shoulders and aware from her ears, revealing the sweet beads of perspiration dripping down her cheek and onto her fine neck. And as the white damp sheets fluttered around her in the cool summer breeze, I wondered why she was alive and mom was dead.