Laundress, Parts 1-9

It’s 2004. The President is on TV, teaching us that Fallujah does not rhyme with Hallelujah. I’m rooting through a white plastic laundry basket, separating the red socks from the cotton sheets. MONDAY, the basket says, in Sharpie letters. There are twenty Monday baskets, and if I finish them before 5, I can start TUESDAY. Wash N’ Fold orders are stacked to the ceiling, because I’m still new at this.

I cash a cup of quarters for the morning. A washer for whites, a washer for darks, a washer for reds and pinks. A washer for rugs, a washer for blues, and if we get shoes, there’s a row of sinks. Why do they save these holey jeans?

Gay marriage is allowed now, out in California. They’re waiting in line. One of my Christian aunts got into such a rage about it, she cried.

White underwear with a red baptism down the crotch. I don’t know where to throw it.

The newspaper seems loud, even when I’m not reading it.

Laundry tells quieter stories.

Can you imagine me?

Eighteen. Not real pretty.

Lucky in a way I’m learning is white privilege, actually.

A freshman. I try to live mindfully, but I feel guilty all the time.

My dad says it’s not luck, it’s God, keeping his eye on the sparrow. My sister (two years younger) ran away from home last fall, and I wonder – is she still under the loving eye?

What I need this spring is money. I am a fledgling, living in a little place with a new roommate, lonely and hopeful and broke. I’m an English major with a minor in anxiety, qualified for nothing. I do work-study and sometimes I babysit, but the want-ads are my new Bible.

My parents left school when they fell in love. They married each other during a winter semester snowfall, and never took the finals. So that’s always an option, I guess. I leave resumes in cafes. I call numbers and leave nervous messages. Only one place calls back right away.

The Suds Palace seeks laundress. Days. Nights. Weekends.

I am hired over the phone. They don’t ask much about me. A raspy woman’s voice growls about hours and tells me to come in on Tuesday.

“What time on Tuesday?”, I query.

“How early is too early?”, she wants to know.

“Eight?”

If this was a test her sigh must mean I failed.

Tuesday is so close and I am so tremulous that I ask for a different day, because I need to curl up in a tight ball and think about it. The voice is not to be moved – she is reproachful at my hesitancy, threatening in her incredulity, so I meekly accept Tuesday as a reality.

I call my mom to tell her I did it, I found a good job, better than the Salvation Army where I used to sort donations. After the first happy congratulations die down, I clear my throat. I try to sound strong and just curious.

“So, have you heard anything from...um…”

But she hasn’t.

Oasis hurts.

Wake up the dawn and ask her why, a dreamer dreams – she never dies. Wipe that tear away now from your eye

Someday you will find me…

It’s the bad-faith promise that rings me out.

Maybe we won’t find her.

I pull my car into the gravel lot. SUDS PALACE, says the sign, turning slowly on a rotating pole. It’s making an effort, and a high-pitched whine.

When I meet the voice from the phone, it belongs to Marion, the owner’s right hand woman. It will be a while before I realize they’re not married. I still half-imagine that every working pair comes in couples, like a fairy-tale Baker and his wife, with flour-dusted arms.

Marion is twice-divorced, it turns out. The owner is her lifelong friend. She’s the only employee that’s never left him, she boasts. In person, she is small, wizened, and brown, with age spots and a windbreaker she never takes off. She wears fuchsia lipstick, with no other makeup, and hums Kenny Chesney songs under her breath. She marshals the press girls and the laundresses, of which I’ll be one.

She doesn’t notice me, hovering by the candy machine, clutching a tortured recommendation from my high school composition teacher. She rings out two or three customers while I shuffle my feet. I know it’s a test. Am I brave? Am I professional? Until her eyes catch mine, I study my surroundings.

Shelves stacked with laundry baskets, all labeled with names and days of the week. A low counter, an ancient register. A green vending machine with chicken barbecue advertisements taped to the side. A metal rack contraption, on an oval track, hung with all the sweaters and dresses to be dry-cleaned, in neat plastic sheets. A small red lever makes it move. I wonder how soon this will feel familiar, along with the hissss cha-clunk of the presses, and the new, quiet voice of my own grown-up thoughts.

When I meet Marion, she asks me how flexible I am. I give her my class schedule, remember my car payment is due, and say very.

She gives me a spray bottle, and some rubber gloves, and says good.

From the parking lot all I see is yellow. A faded, eggy yellow building, long and low with oppressive ceilings, shaped like a bent letter “L”.

There are two doors, one at each end. The first leads directly to the dry-cleaning counter. The other one opens into the laundromat proper, a sea of chipped, once-white linoleum tiles, with islands of 1970’s-era washing machines. I will be in charge of both doors.

The counter is my home place, although it’s a little too low to lean my elbows on comfortably. In any case, there’s a sign scotch-taped to the register that sternly reminds me time to lean, time to clean! From the smooth and cool counter I can watch Route 5 through a big open window, and catch rays of light at the right time of day. The window is smudged with the handprints of small children. I like them, and do not wipe them away.

The lights are dim and flickery after the sun goes down. The fluorescent bulbs buzz and drive sensitive people to distraction. The big lights go off when the press girls go home at four, and then I’m alone. The whole place smells pleasantly to me of chlorine bleach. With the heat coming from the massive tumble dryers, it’s almost like being in a pool house. The only thing missing is the echoing sound of bare feet on tile.

The “coffee station” has to be cleaned up and wiped down every day. It’s a folding table shoved under the front window, sticky with loose sugar, balancing on rickety legs. A smudged metal coffee maker stands with its constant companion, a matching carafe of hot water. I learned the word carafe from my roommate, a waitress, who brings home breadsticks on lucky Saturday nights.

Stacks of old Reader’s Digests crowd the microwave, which I think I’m supposed to clean. The table with its Styrofoam cups full of stir sticks and creamer feels like an alien thing. I never learned to drink coffee. The bag of filters, torn half open, makes me nervous. I vacuum up the sugar and torn packet corners. The carpet is threadbare, and the Hoover catches on the ragged holes. “Just mow around ‘em”, someone offers, passing me with an armload of hangers. Heroism is not expected of me, so I skip the holes.

“Good enough” becomes a mantra. There’s nowhere to hang an “Employee of the Month” sign. The walls are covered with plaques and certificates for achievements in local dry cleaning. One name is repeated over and over on those framed awards – Chuck Chuck Chuck. The owner. He is the constant, with his fat, critical wife, and Marion, their partner. The rest of us are nameless, faceless girls, just blips on the radar of their eternity.

I meet Chuck while he’s halfway inside the Beast, the enormous washer in the back room. She’s for quilts and rugs, and the only machine here with a gender. Muttering what might be half-abashed swear words in there, he’s doesn’t realize I’m here until I clear my throat as quietly as possible. When he draws himself out, I fight nervous laughter. All of his scant hair is pushed to one side of his shiny head, and he has a walrusy mustache. Chuck is a stocky little man, with gray teeth that look weak, and fat bags under his watery eyes. I reach out to shake his hand, which he doesn’t expect, and he reacts awkwardly.

He leads the way to the office, walking in a scuttling fashion, as if he’s embarrassed by the simple mechanics of it, and wants to get to his destination as soon as possible. He wears a flannel shirt tucked into jeans, and a belt fastened under his beer belly. He puts on a jacket as we enter the office, and I realize why. It’s freezing in here.

“No heat where we don’t need it”, he says shortly, rifling through a filing cabinet. I begin to envy the jacket, even if it’s the puffy, elastic-waist style a 10-year old kid might wear on a ski trip. I am handed forms, which I sign without reading. I assume I can litigate my way out of any unfairness later. I’ve seen Law and Order.

“I’m a religious man”, Chuck says, as he stacks bottles of cleaning fluid in his own able arms. Something inside me wiggles like a puppy. He’s a good guy, I think. “I’m a religious man – the religion of clean. But that’s as far as it goes.” The puppy turns around and sits down, disappointed. “My dad and I built this place. Everything I’ve got came from my own two hands, not Jesus or whoever. Hold out your arms.”

Words die in my mouth. He starts stacking the bottles in my arms. I readjust my balance when they get too heavy.

“There’s always something to clean. Washers and dryers get wiped down. Floor gets done. Windows. Counters. Shelves. When you get done, start over and clean it again.”

“Now this is my place”, he says, pausing, hands on hips. I have a roll of paper towels tucked under my chin, listening solemnly. “My family’s livelihood. I’m not paying anybody to sit and think.” He looks into the distance, down the whole length of the Suds Palace. “I don’t need any big ideas or changes. I know how to run this place and make it work.” Suddenly he looks back to me.

“Be neat. Clean. And obedient.”

This last part doesn’t confuse me until he’s already gone.

Sarah is a laundress. Her training is casual, like she’s here ironically.

Here are the paper towels.

Here are the lost hopes.

Here’s how to do a messy bun with the twist ties we store under the envelopes.

Her mother is a wallpaper designer and part-time florist in town. Everybody know her last name.

“Why don’t you work at her store?” I ask. Her look is loaded.

“Family business”. It’s flippant and final.

There are two other “girls” in training, Lori and Amanda, both in their 40’s. We’ll do the Wash N’ Fold, keep things clean, and make change.

The press girls live on their own island, away from the hustle of the washers. The steam and hiss from their lonely corner sounds like the spy-hopping of a whale. They’re too busy ironing to say hello.

Once we can be left alone, we three laundresses will never see each other again, running opposite shifts.

After we get the lay of the land, Chuck’s wife comes in for the state occasion of Register Training. We take turns writing tickets and cashing out imaginary orders. Repeatedly I hit the wrong keys, gritting my teeth every time a blank ticket accidentally prints.

“Stubbornness’ll rot you”, the wife says, tearing off the ticket along the serrated edge. She throws it out. There’s no recycling bin. Sarah tried to bring one in. Now it’s a footstool in the office.

TEST TICKET 10 LB WASH N FOLD.

“That’ll be the last name in the real world. Now print it.”

Shift + C + Print. Isn’t that it? If not, why not? Shift + C + Print. That has to be it! But another blank ticket spits out. She gives up before I do, and pulls Lori in for her shot. I could have gone to Tulane, I think. But the state school was closer. Fifteen minutes from Mom.

“How nice that you’ll be so nearby”, my aunt says, “especially since your sister is… you know…, and your folks are still bereft…”

But I put my application in before she left.

“That should be enough”. And the registers slams home. I didn’t take notes. I hope I’ll be all right alone.

Heather Rae Ackerman is a writer and artist living in Buffalo. Her short plays "The Hook-Handed Man is Not a Feminist" (Green Buffalo Productions) and "The Shepherdess" (Carly and Karcher Productions, written with Tiffany Dillon) premiered in Buffalo in 2018 and 2019. Currently she is writing a collection of poems about the life of Georgia O'Keeffe, touring all the city murals, and reading a lot of Anne Sexton.