Doin' the Laundry

"Mama Didn't even Remember the spankin'" McKee said in amazement after Mama finished doctorin' him up and went back in her room to lay down.

Well, I said," at least ,for once, I didn't get a whippin' for somethin' YOU did!"

McKee made a ugly face and went in the livin' room to watch TV while I breathed a big sigh of relief about last night at the Laundromat bein' forgot, just in case Mama had still been mad, and then went and saw to the little babies' diapers.

Ever since the night Mama caught Daddy down in Prichard at

the Copacabana honky-tonk with Sue, the pretty- head waitress at the bar-be-que joint Daddy owns, she started to drinkin’ a lot and made me or Mckee do the laundry. Then one night after supper, she told Mckee to put some clothes in the washin’ machine while she went and took a nap.

Mckee got mad because he had been watchin’ “Ramar of the Jungle”

in the livin’ room with everybody else, and he didn’t want to wash no clothes right then, while some lions was after Ramar. So he just ran and stuffed three or four bed sheets and a blanket in all on the front side, and ran back to the livin’ room to finish watchin’ “Ramar.”

Mama had showed us to always spread the weight in the tub out

evenly, so it wouldn’t make a lot of racket. I guess Mckee thought he

might get away with it, ‘cause Mama was asleep.

And he did until the wash cycle turned into the spin cycle. We was

listenin’ to Ramar bein’ hailed as a hero by the tribal chieftain, with

drums and dancin’ and such, when we heard such a racket from the

kitchen where the washin’ machine was that it scared us all right off the couch. ‘Cause when that thing had hit the spin cycle, it sounded for a second or two like he’d put bricks in the washtub. Then there was this great big screech, like a freight train puttin’ on the brakes. And then a Boom! that sounded like a car wreck. Broke the tub right off the thing that held it down in the washer. When all us kids ran in there, the top on the washer was sittin’ a little up from the top of where it was supposed to be on the machine. And there was a big bulge along the side of the washer where the washtub had banged into it from the inside when it broke off.

Mckee had thought that the tub bangin’ around a little wouldn’t wake Mama up, ‘cause when she took a nap, she took paregoric to help her sleep. She said it helped her from gettin’ headaches, and when she took it, it was almost impossible to get her up for anything. If somebody called, like our grandmom or somebody, she would just mumble to us to tell ‘em she was sick. So I’d go to the phone and tell ‘em, “Mama’s sick right now. She can’t come to the phone.” After I told a few people this more’n once, they’d start sayin’ somethin’ back like, “I see,” in that way that grown-ups say things when they come to some grown-up conclusion that they don’t like, and they won’t tell you what it is, but they’re not goin’ to say anything else. And if you ask ‘em what it is they see, they either talk to you like you’re a little kid, sayin’ things like “That’s alright, Sweetie, are you gonna be okay?” or they do that “tch-tch” sound at you. That always makes me feel funny when they do those things. I guess my dumb brother Mckee didn’t reckon on how much weight there was in a bundle of wet sheets and a blanket all on one side of the washtub. I’m sure he didn’t know it was gonna break off.

Anyhow, it was the only thing I ever saw that woke up Mama so quick from a paregoric nap.

Anyway, Mama blistered Mckee’s butt for that, real proper. Daddy,

though, he wouldn’t buy her no new one. He said that if she was gonna lay around drunk asleep, with seven kids in the house with no supervision, then she was a no-good mama that didn’t deserve no new washin’ machine. She could just go to the laundromat down on Fulton Road and do her laundry. They got in a real fight, then. Mama and Daddy was callin’ each other names and cussin’ and so forth. And the little kids was cryin’. And me n’ Mckee tried to take ‘em all in the back bedroom, mainly so’s we wouldn’t get noticed. Gettin’ noticed when Mama and Daddy are fightin’ is a losin’ proposition. Finally, Mama just screamed at Daddy that he was out spendin’ her washin’ machine money on Sue the waitress. And he slapped her and left, to go stay in the St. Francis Motel, he said, where he could get some rest from screamin’ kids and crazy women. Some other folks in the family said that the St Francis Motel was where he went to meet Sue the waitress all the time. That’s what Mama screamed out the door at him as he left, too. He just screeled the tires as he left in his ’59 Cadillac.

After that, she started takin’ us all to the Chinn’s All Night Laundromat at the Loop every other Friday night or so. She’d pile all of us and the laundry in the ‘58 Chevy station wagon, and off we’d go. It wasn’t easy, though. It was a major operation to get seven kids and two weeks of laundry for nine people in the car. First we’d have to split up all the laundry into colors and whites and delicates and such. Mama made me ‘n Mckee do it while she supervised. We had to lay everything on separate bed sheets. When we’d got it all on there, we’d take the four corners of the sheets and tie them together in the middle over top of the dirty clothes so we could carry the laundry down to the car. With all those people and all that time between washin’s, it made for some awful big loads in them sheets. There’d be as many as six or seven sheets, and me ‘n Mckee ‘n Mama would struggle all together to get just one of ‘em down the big hill in front of the house, tryin’ to keep the big bag we’d made from hittin’ the ground. Mama said we had to carry it ‘cause she didn’t want it to get dirty. I could’ve just drug it down the hill, and never did figure out why we had to worry about it gettin’ dirty if it already was. Didn’t matter. When Mama was drunk enough to want to get all that laundry done, it meant she was also mad. When she got mad, she’d whip off that little thin plastic belt she used to keep the waist of her dress close around her. Man, she could make that thing pop at the end, like a whip, and she’d draw a little blood everywhere she got you with it. So I never asked Mama that question about it gettin’ dirty but once. You don’t tempt fate in our house. This one particular night, she had worked at the bar-be-que with Daddy, and I expect they had words, ‘cause she came roarin’ in about 2:00 a.m. in the mornin’, and woke us all up to go to the laundromat at the Loop, where Fulton Road runs into Government Street in Mobile. She said she wanted to go at that time ‘cause she knew we would have the machines all to ourselves, and wouldn’t have to worry about Mckee or one of the others doin’ somethin’ dumb and gettin’ somebody mad at us. She didn’t have to tell us. She always went at about that time on a Friday night. It usually worked out pretty good. The little kids all ran around all over the place and played with stuff and had a great time while me ‘n Mckee ‘;n Mama did the laundry. Mama would yell at ‘em once in a while just to keep everybody straight. On this particular night, though, Mama had drunk more’n usual, and she was for some reason in this big hurry. Now Mckee was always doin’ somethin’ dumb at the best of times ‘cause like Daddy said, he just didn’t act like he had “walkin-’ around sense”. There was no way to tell that boy enough things not to do, that he wouldn’t manage to do somethin’ you never had thought of. This time, he was all out of sorts because he’d stayed up late the night before to watch the National Anthem and the test pattern on the TV. It came on after all the programs that told about the war that Daddy had

been in, and how we had to fight old Tojo and Hitler. I don’t know why Mckee watched the test pattern, but he could watch it for hours unless you made him stop.

By about 3:30 a.m., Mama had ten washer loads goin’ and had

started puttin’ clothes in the big dryers. As a load finished in a washer, she’d open a dryer to stop it, and take out the lighter dry clothes and throw in some wet ones real quick. She was real proud of this. She called it her “production line system.” Suddenly, Mama looked through the glass front doors of the laundromat and spied Rena Marie and Nellie Mae playin’ out on the edge of Fulton Road. She yelled out a screech that almost turned my backbone into Jell-O, and ran out the door, callin’ to me to help. She also managed to yell to Mckee on the way out to finish loadin’ that dryer ‘cause it wasn’t finished yet, and he wouldn’t have to put any coins in the thing, but not to put a whole load in it ‘cause that

dryer wasn’t workin’ quite right and she was afraid the drum wouldn’t turn. I was amazed at how she could get all that out while she was yellin’ at me for lettin’ the babies get in the street, and she was at the same time dashin’ for the front door. My Mama is somethin’ else. We got Rena Marie and Nellie Mae back inside, and Mama finally finished smackin’ me for lettin’ ‘em get out, and then yellin’ at them. She told ‘em all to sit their selves down in the chairs and not to let her see ‘em move a muscle ‘cause she’d smack ‘em in the middle of next week. They must’ve believed she could do it, ‘cause nobody even scratched a itch for a good ten minutes. With our crew, that’s sayin’ a lot. Then Mama went to check all the washers and dryers. One dryer had stopped with wet clothes still in it, so she wanted to put more change in the slot. But she couldn’t find her purse. She got real excited, lookin’ under things, and askin’ the little kids if they had seen anybody in the laundromat that might have took it or somethin’. . . . Then she happened to spy it. It was jumpin’ around in the dryer that Mckee had loaded while we was outside gettin’ the babies. It was one of those black plastic kind of purses, but it was her favorite. And since the dryer had been on for a good while, it was meltin’ in the heat. Mama squawked and ran over to open the dryer and get the purse out. But when she opened the door, the dryer didn’t stop. It just kept goin’ like the door was still closed. Mama stuck her hand in to try to grab the meltin’ purse, but all she managed to do was to was accidentally open the purse, still in the dryer, and burn her hand on the hot, melted plastic in the process. Then there she was, squallin’, with seven scared kids lookin’ on, as she tried to pull change, money, driver’s license, and little parts of her favorite plastic purse out of the dryer. Mckee went and hid. Mama was still squallin’ and cussin’ and pullin’ bits of purse and ruined clothes out of the dryer and at the same time yellin’ at me to get over there and help her. But I couldn’t move. I was workin’ too hard tryin’ not to laugh and then get the biggest whippin’ of my life. She finally used that real high voice which I knew, whenever I heard it, that I was near death if I didn’t get real serious, real quick. I stopped needin’ to laugh. And I flew over there to help. Mama was cussin’ the machine, which had finally stopped. And we was pullin’ out the clothes all covered with little bits of melted plastic purse and money and stuff, when Mckee made his biggest mistake of the night. He doubled over, laughin’, holdin’ his stomach like he was gonna bust open. Mama stopped squallin’ and cussin’ and cryin’ over the purse and her burnt hand and the clothes and all. She got cold, graveyard quiet. You’d have thought she was sober except for all the red in her eyes. And it was scary the way they was burnin’ as if they was borin’ holes through the row of washers on the other side of the room. Which was where Mckee had suddenly gone back to hidin’ behind. She suddenly whipped off that thin plastic belt and came towards where I was standin’. I nearly lost my supper thinkin’ she was about to get me, cause I was closer than Mckee. But she was havin’ to go by me to get around to where the machines was that Mckee was hidin’ behind. I don’t know exactly why Mckee had thrown the purse in the dryer along with the clothes. He said he just grabbed up the clothes, and guessed the purse must have been on top, but he didn’t notice. Mama’s purse was big enough so I doubt he could’ve picked it up without noticin’. It was so big it needed a shoulder strap for Mama to carry it with. She said she needed it to carry all the stuff she had to carry for the kids. But she also liked to hide a bottle of gin in it. The gin bottle was the only thing that survived the dryer in one piece, even though it did have black plastic melted all over it. I figure Mckee probably just thought it might be funny to play a trick on Mama (which is a dumb thing to do), but he didn’t reckon on things gettin’ so out of hand. Anyway, he was the one that got the whippin’ of the century. He was pickin’ off scabs on his arms and legs for a week—- everywhere that belt had got him. Funny thing, though. Mama was sober the next afternoon, and she didn’t remember the beatin’. And she felt real sorry for Mckee with his arms and legs all skint up. When she noticed ‘em, she carefully put some Mercurochrome on ‘em and kissed Mckee and told him to be more careful how he rode Eugene’s bike from now on