Date: Sunday, September 12, 1999
Subject: The “B” Note – Sisters at the Laundromat – 9/12/99
B-Note: A Laundromat Story
Every woman in the world oughta have a washing machine and a dryer that always works and always comes on and never breaks down – just because – we’ve scrubbed, rubbed, and rang out enough dirty drawers to last into eternity.
Yet we always seem to end up at the laundromat with big loads of stuff, more than half of which doesn’t even belong to us – kids, spouses, linen, dish rags, rugs – you name it.
I see images on television in which women, toting babies, are scrubbing laundry in dirty creeks, women hanging out runged-out shirts on backyard clotheslines (and you know if you have to do that – aint no getting around an ironing board). I listen as we talk about having to wash some clothes out in the bathtub, the kitchen sink, and Bren’s Mom can still work a “scrub board”. For those of you too young to know what a scrub board is – its a board with deep ridges that you rub your clothes against to get em clean. You sit the board in a tub of soapy water and you just rub clothes against it, up and down repeatedly till you think they are clean.
But back to my point – we oughta have – by right of female passage – a washing machine and a dryer – and hell, while I’m at it – a dishwasher. And as long as I’m going with the flow, a robot that automatically picks up dirty clothes off the floor and on command does our laundry and a dishwasher that roams the house and seeks out all cups, plates, forks, spoons, and any other cooking/eating utensil and places it in the dishwasher and washes them things.
Why am I own this vision. Last week, I was down to my last few dollars and one way I cut corners on daily expenses was to not do laundry the week before. So that by this week, I was down to washing out clothes in the bathtub and sink. No problem. By the end of the week though, I’m looking at two week’s worth of piled up laundry and then some. Children don’t understand a request to wear them pants twice, or fold up your clothes and put them away when you take them off. As any hardworking woman can tell you – what folk do around the house has economic and labor consequences – both of which generally fall on the woman to figure out. That’s why we’re often seen as “cheap, petty, nagging, etc.” – well a woman understands that them clothes folk keep stepping over represent – laundry. Them dishes left under the bed, on the living room coffee table, or out in the garage by the truck – got to be washed and put away at some point in time – and for each of those neglects – comes bugs – and who gets the call when roaches camp out in the house.
Anyway, I took my loads of laundry – took five double-loaders at $1.50 a pop, and set them to wash. This was a new laundromat and I found out that they have three different levels of wash – quick, normal, and heavy – or something – a heavy setting means your clothes are real dirty – which mine were – but each setting went up by a quarter – so that $1.50 for quick was the cheapest and $2.00 for heavy was the most expensive. And then you know you gotta dry your clothes after that. A decent dry cycle (at a quarter per five minutes) is gonna cost at least a dollar.
Here I was with a child waiting on a walk to McDonald’s while the clothes were cycling through and a room filled with women negotiating the same phenomena – lots of dirty laundry, kids looking bored, and no one to help willingly – at least with a smile.
One sister though, was singing – she had a really pretty soprano voice and she was kicking it with some old-school tunes. Just singing as she did laundry. The rest of us were quietly tossing in or out dirty drawers, socks, or shirts – washer to dryer.
Then this sister just started talking – like we do – bout how she loves her people – all of em – the uppity ones, the ghetto ones, the regular joes, and the nerdy ones – she was far more colorful than that – but you get the drift. She started talking about laundry, children and life – then another sister pipes in – both have sons and started sharing quips on the difficulties of raising sons.
One had a spouse, the other didn’t – no matter – with or without – men can be “hard-headed”.
“Brothers always want to be in charge,” says one sister. “I can’t afford that. I know my man don’t like it, but my damn house would fall apart if I left him in charge. You know you love em, and you understand what they saying, but what can you do?”
“Girl, I know what you mean, I keeps me a baseball bat. When folk get out of hand I go looking for my bat. My girlfriend said she found a good plastic one from Kmart, bought it and brought it home, but soon as her kids saw it, they took it and hid it. She called me and tole me girl, guess what them kids did, they took my bat! But that’s okay, cause I keeps me a spare,” she laughs.
We all fell out laughing. Its ironic – mostly cause Black women have this reputation of being mean and ornery – but mostly we’re too easy and giving. We talk a good game, but we’re not consistent on the follow through.
We moved on from men and children to the real issue – “us.” How we take care of ourselves.
“Well the first problem is we have too many children,” says one woman.
I thought about that. Here we were, by this time, folding clothes, mostly not our clothes. Everyone seemed to have kids.”But we work hard to take care of em,” says another woman.
Being the weird one in the group, I didn’t say, but I thought to myself, “Suppose there was this alien race in outter space just looking down and observing. And then one day, one alien says to the other – ya know, the females work pretty hard at helping to maintain that planet. There ought to be something we can do to help.”
And another alien says, “Sure, lets beam down as big sexy hunks and give every woman their own personal male servants – and we can bow to their every beck and call for the next two centuries – which in our world represents only five minutes.”
And the first alien says, “You know we can’t do that. The women will kick out all the men and we’ll create a world-wide male refugee crisis on earth. They’ll know that any man with a woman is an alien and they’ll point them nuclear bombs at us, then of course, our cover will be blown. We won’t be “extra-terrestrials anymore. We’ll be just them “player-aliens” in outta space. And the men will start “player-hating E.T.”
And the second alien says, “Okay, well just send down one of the rookies and let him invent a dirt cheap disposable washing machine and dryer, throw in a dishwasher too.”
“Well, how about “free washers, dryers, and dishwashers,” asks the first alien.
“Naw, the men will get suspicious,” responds the second. “Oh, by the way, looking at the time chart here, we’ve got some alien-brothers down there who are due back. They keep reincarnating, trying to cheat on time allotted. Beam back Denzel Washington when you get a minute, fools got them women going crazy. And while you at it, check the “sexy hunk” list over there and see who’s late arriving back – it was okay when all they were doing was throwing panties at the occasional Tom Jones, but the women have gotten a little bolder.”
“I’ll get right on it,” says alien number one.
The laundromat was getting quieter as women finished drying and folding their clothes. At that time, I was about one of the last ones to go. I loaded up my car, and my daughter and I headed for home – thinking how nice that would be – a washer, a dryer, a dishwasher, and a robot to do the work.