Striped Pajamas

No one hangs their laundry outside anymore. A few of the backyards on our block still have old clotheslines swaying like worn-out trees, but no one actually uses them.

No one but Miss Ada.

Old as the hills and as wrinkled as tree bark, she hangs her wet laundry on her clothesline every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the yard next to ours. As reliable as clockwork, she talks to herself while she pulls old-fashioned clothes pegs from the pocket of her flowered apron and uses them to pin dainty cotton house dresses and striped pajamas on the line.

She was there now, stooping over the wicker basket at her feet as she dug for whatever piece of laundry she’d decided would go up next, sunshine glinting on the white strands sprinkled through her steel-gray knot of hair.

I paused, crouching behind the still-bare bushes dividing our backyard from the alley, studying the distance between the back door and me.

Aw, hell. It was too far. Miss Ada’s eyesight might be going – neighborhood gossip was undecided on that – but everyone agreed her hearing was as sharp as ever. She’d hear me even if she couldn’t quite see me.

Unless…

The elderly woman straightened, the long yellow folds of a sheet clutched in her claw-like grip, and I shifted my weight up from a squat. Once she got that sheet draped over the line, it would block me from her view just long enough for me to make the dash for the back door and safety – and then into my room, and my parents would never know I hadn’t been home sick all weekend.

It wasn’t that far off from the truth. My head pounded and my stomach churned, rebelling against two days of nothing but sugar, pretzels, and alcohol.

Lots of alcohol. Em’s boyfriend was a college guy and old enough to stock the car without raising suspicion before we took off two days ago for the concert of the year – the one I hadn’t even bothered to tell my parents about because I knew exactly what they’d say. A few strategic moans on Friday morning before they left for work and my alibi was as solid as it ever needed to be.

I flicked my eyes back over to Miss Ada. She was struggling to toss the wet fabric over the clothesline without dragging the clean sheet on the grass. My palms itched, reminding me that I used to help her with that job.

Back when I was still the girl my parents thought I was.

There. One edge of the sheet caught, creating a soft yellow curtain between my neighbor and me. It was now or never.

My high-heeled boots wobbled as I tried to hurry soundlessly across the grass toward the back door. The sheet still stood between Miss Ada and my path, although I could see the movement as she tugged on it, struggling to straighten it before pinning it to the line.

I wavered and my mouth opened, ready to call out and tell her to hold on, that I’d help her.

I shut it just in time. If Miss Ada knew I’d been anywhere other than in bed today, my cover would be blown as soon as my parents got home from work.

“And now, Lord, about Brynne.”

I froze. That was Miss Ada’s voice.

Goosebumps prickled across my skin. The cool spring breeze puffed my hair across my face.

She continued, and I wondered if she knew I was there as she adjusted the sheet hanging between us. “You know I have a special place in my heart for that little girl, but she needs your help now, and I’m trustin’ you to take care of it.”

Everyone knew Miss Ada talked to herself while she hung her laundry, but this was something different.

She was talking about me.

And no, my family wasn’t the church-going type, but hell – I wasn’t stupid enough to ignore someone like Miss Ada. I knew it didn’t work logically, but I was pretty sure she’d been around long enough to have seen the Virgin Birth herself. She’d probably helped clean the baby and hummed it to sleep with that raspy voice of hers.

It used to hum me to sleep, too – back when I was still a child and my parents worked late.

They always worked late.

My shoulders slumped as I sighed. Maybe I was still a little bit the girl my parents thought I was. The girl Em and her friends thought they knew would roll her eyes and hurry inside, letting the door slam behind her – but here, in the soft spring sunshine of my own backyard, I couldn’t do it. The memories swirled of Miss Ada singing me to sleep night after night – feeding me her own dinner even though my parents always left something for me in the fridge – smoothing my wispy brown hair out of my face while I cried in the dark—

I couldn’t ignore her.

Dropping my backpack into the grass, I turned and slowly marched across the yard toward the fluttering yellow sheet.

Marching toward my doom.

“Hi, Miss Ada.”

Her wrinkled face popped out from behind the fabric. “Brynne, is that you? Thank the Lord. I can’t seem to get this sheet hung properly. You got a hand I can borrow?”

“Of course.” I reached up and adjusted the sheet, smoothing out the wrinkles and making sure it hung straight so she could pin it in place.

“Thank you, child,” she said, huffing a bit from the strain of manhandling all that wet cloth with her matchstick arms. She moved out from behind it, crossing those arms over her skinny chest as she studied me. “You don’t look good.” She frowned. “If you’re sick, shouldn’t you be in bed?”

I smiled weakly. “Heading there now.” Turning back toward my yard and abandoned bag, I pushed my hair behind my ear, wondering exactly how smudged my eyeliner was. Em hadn’t commented on it, but it was two days old by now.

“Of course…” Miss Ada’s voice trailed off, and I grimaced. I knew that tone.

I turned to face her.

She gave me a little smile. “Seeing as how you’ve been out of bed all weekend, another few minutes won’t hurt you none. Give me a hand with the rest of this basket, won’t you?”

Leave it to Miss Ada to know exactly who had been home – and who hadn’t.

I sighed again. “Do I have a choice?”

She didn’t take offense. “Not really, child, but I like to give you the chance to make the right one.” She winked before pulling a handful of clothes pegs from her apron pocket and handing them to me. “You take a few things to the other end and I’ll meet you in the middle.”

I rolled my eyes, but not so she could see it. “Yes, ma’am.”

The wet dresses I pulled from the basket seeped through my lacy black shirt where they hung over my shoulder. We worked in silence for a few minutes. I didn’t like to admit it, even to myself, but there was something soothing about the motion of shaking out a dress, holding it up to the line, pulling a peg from my clamped teeth and attaching it – all while the sunshine dripped like honey on my head and back, the breeze fluttered hair around my cheeks, and birds twittered distantly from neighborhood trees.

It was a dance I’d done many times before as a girl, helping Miss Ada peg out her clothes when I was barely tall enough to reach the line.

Even my headache agreed, the tiny mallets pounding in my brain easing up while we worked.

When Miss Ada finally spoke again, her raspy voice seemed to be part of the gentle spring day. “Your momma cried last night.”

My fingers froze and I dropped the clothes peg I’d been trying to fasten to a pink cotton dress. Bending to pick the peg up from the cool grass felt like the hardest thing I’d ever done.

Miss Ada’s brown eyes watched me as I straightened and flicked a glance in her direction. My lips felt stiff. “What’s wrong? Did the stock market dip again?” Between my mom’s incessant watching of the stocks – for her job and for her own profit – and my dad’s addiction to what he called “mobile business meetings” I was often surprised at the realization that they’d somehow managed to pause their lives long enough to make me nearly eighteen years ago.

They sure hadn’t paused anything since.

Miss Ada didn’t tsk at me like I half thought she would. She just pulled a pair of blue-striped pajama pants from the basket at her feet and shook out the damp wrinkles. “She saw a report on the news about some kids on what we used to call a joy ride.” She spit out the words like they made her sick. I watched her, surprised at the unusual emotion. “I don’t know who started callin’ them that, but Brynne honey, there was nothing joyous about those rides.”

Slowly reaching up to adjust the dress on the line and fasten it properly, I said nothing, wondering where she was going with this. Wondering what she knew.

Miss Ada sighed like she could pull the sky down with her breath. “My brother Lawrence used to take joy rides with the boys from down at the lumberyard. They’d go all up and down the coast, sometimes for days at a time.” She frowned at the trousers in her wrinkled hands. “They didn’t drink none, and he claimed they were having fun, but he was missin’ out on life.”

She hung the trousers on the line while I watched. Waiting for the rest of it. Waiting for the point.

Miss Ada always had a point.

She patted the damp fabric and stepped back to study the trousers that now swayed gently in the breeze. “Know why I always hang my laundry out to dry, child?”

I blinked, surprised at the topic change.

She turned to study me the same way she’d studied the trousers.

I shrugged and reached for more clothes to hang, trying to avoid her too-clear stare. There was nothing wrong with Miss Ada’s eyes.

Her rasp followed me, still as gentle as the sunshine on the top of my head. “After the accident that took all the other boys—” I jerked my head up at that, but she ignored my reaction, “Lawrence was angry. He was supposed to be with them that day, but our momma had made him stay home and help her with the laundry. After they were gone, he started to drink, and Brynne honey, I loved my brother, but he was a mean drunk.”

She was quiet for a moment, lost in thought, before glancing at me again. “One day he got drunk and had the usual fight with Momma. He left in a fury, and she cried for hours.” She reached out and ran a finger along one of the stripes on the pajama pants. “When he came back, he’d sobered up. Momma was outside, hanging the laundry on the line like she always did. Lawrence went right out to her and hugged her. Said he was sorry. They both cried.”

Miss Ada looked at me again with a small smile. “Lawrence helped her hang the rest of the clothes on the line that day, and every time after that for the rest of her life. Whenever laundry needed dryin’, Lawrence was there to help Momma with it while they talked and laughed in the sunshine.”

I thought again of years with an empty house, dark rooms, cold food in the refrigerator, and laundry sent out to a service in spite of the gleaming machines off the kitchen. What was she trying to say?

Miss Ada chuckled a little, the sound dry but comforting. “Years later, Lawrence told me he’d met a man downtown that day who talked some sense into him and then told him to go home and help his momma with the laundry. Just that. Nothing else. No preachin’ to him about the drink or the joy rides or what he was doin’ with his life. Just told him to go help his momma with the laundry.”

She smiled at me and the sun felt a little warmer on my shoulders. “That’s why I still hang these trousers every laundry day.” She patted them again. “These belonged to Lawrence, and each time I get them wet and then hang them up with the clean laundry to dry, I remember what he said. ‘Just help your momma with the laundry, boy, and see what happens.’”

She stopped and smiled at the clothes hanging from the line. The yellow sheet billowed up between us in a puff of breeze and snapped once as the pink dress hanging beside me fluttered a cool touch against my thin sleeve. From the trees in the next block, a family of birds let loose with a wild chorus of chirping.

The breeze settled down with a contented sigh. The top of my head warmed.

“Miss Ada—” I started, but she interrupted me.

“That’s what I told your momma last night, Brynne honey.” She crossed the grass to stand in front of me and grip my arms with more strength than I’d expected. “Your poppa was yellin’ at that phone of his because they said you couldn’t be a missing person until you’d been gone for too long, and your momma was cryin’ in the dark. And I told her to do her own laundry this morning, and to hang it outside to dry.”

She squeezed my arms – gently – and then released me and turned away. “People don’t always know what they love until they think they’ve lost it, you know.” She bypassed the half-full basket of wet clothes and headed toward her own house. “Just leave the rest there, child. I’ll finish it later.”

I looked down at the cool, damp dress in my hands – and then up at the blue-striped pajama pants gently swaying on the line – and swallowed hard. “It was a different time back then, Miss Ada,” I said softly, sure that she was too far away to hear me. “And your momma loved you.” I blinked back an ache in my eyes. I hadn’t cried for my parents in years. “It was different.”

“Some things never change, child.” Her hearing was even better than her sight. “Some things never change.”

The slamming of her screen door told me she’d gone inside and left me alone.

Slowly – so slowly – I folded the wet dress in my hands and let it drop onto the pile in the basket. Slowly – I made my way across the yard to where I’d dropped my bag. Slowly – I bent down and grasped the stiff straps, swinging it up from the ground. Slowly – I scuffed my boots through the grass toward the back door.

Miss Ada’s momma had loved Lawrence. She’d been home to make him stay instead of going out with his friends. She’d saved his life.

Because she’d loved him.

It was different.

Realizing I was staring at the closed door, I reached out and opened it.

It was unlocked.

I went inside, feeling the too-cool air of the A/C and hearing the too-empty stillness of the house. Dropping my bag by the door, I walked slowly into the kitchen, listening for the too-familiar creaks echoing through the silence.

A sniffle and a soft thwack met my ears.

It was like a dream, one that I stopped believing years ago. Slowly – I moved through the kitchen toward the door we never used. And when I opened it—

My mother stood inside, her normally sleek hair ruffled and wispy as she leaned over the washing machine, pulling out wet clothes and dropping them into a bright blue basket at her feet.

I didn’t know what to say. I’d never seen my mother do the laundry. Or cook. Or tuck me in at night.

She looked up. Tears shone on her cheeks, but then she saw me and her eyes widened – and I saw something in them that I’d never seen before. Something warm.

“Brynne!” Her voice was breathless, her hands pausing, wrapped in the deep blue of my dad’s dripping pajama top.

All the things I wanted to say – all the things I wanted to yell – all the places I wanted to run flashed through my head.

To hell with it – Miss Ada had never let me down yet.

I cleared my throat. “Need some help hanging those out on the line?”