A note of refusal to the handyman who wants to hang new drywall in my laundry room
It’s kind of an odd story, those balls of lint stuck to my laundry room wall. Funny you should ask about it. My grandmother would scoop lint out of the trap in her old washer, and fling it onto the wall, gleefully singing childhood songs at the top of her lungs as she did:
It’s kind of a silly story…the way she’d fling fluff and sing songs about tobacco chewing monkeys on streetcars with wine guzzling geese in between washing clothes and sheets in a tiny laundry room, squeezed onto a tiny chair she squired from her kitchen, sipping instant coffee and chain smoking unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes – the ones in the red pack, the strongest, were her preferred – flicking ashes, flicking wads onto walls in between puffed drags and verses of impish rhymes. It helped her pass the time.
It’s kind of poignant story. She’d bring a small black and white TV with her to the laundry room sometimes, watching whatever came in clearly…soapy serials swam on the screen as suds swam in the washer, sepia stained cinema classics soothed as she sparingly used fabric softener sheets and spray starch, cups of bleach and bluing poured while a bleached blonde newscaster read numbing news stories. She’d steal naps on that squired kitchen chair sometimes. Sat the chair next to the furnace to keep warm, prop her shoe freed feet up on baskets filled with folded clothes, shoes off to keep clothes clean, curse when she kicked her shoes too far. The cracked concrete floor is too cold for soles to step on.
“Once upon a time/the goose drank wine/the monkey chewed tobacco on the street car line/the street car broke/the monkey got choked/and they all went to heaven but the old billy goat….”
It’s kind of a silly story…the way she’d fling fluff and sing songs about tobacco chewing monkeys on streetcars with wine guzzling geese in between washing clothes and sheets in a tiny laundry room, squeezed onto a tiny chair she squired from her kitchen, sipping instant coffee and chain smoking unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes – the ones in the red pack, the strongest, were her preferred – flicking ashes, flicking wads onto walls in between puffed drags and verses of impish rhymes. It helped her pass the time.
It’s kind of a sad story, because she’d simply sit and sing in a small chair in a small corner of a small room splattering lint scooped from a lint trap onto a slowly peeling wall because it was easier than climbing the one flight of stairs, crossing the threshold back into her cozy flat…her limbs could only manage one good climb at a time, so she’d stay in her basement with her coffee, her cigarettes, her created lint toys, her songs, her need to care for her family any way she could. To wash was to live, and so she washed.
It’s kind of poignant story. She’d bring a small black and white TV with her to the laundry room sometimes, watching whatever came in clearly…soapy serials swam on the screen as suds swam in the washer, sepia stained cinema classics soothed as she sparingly used fabric softener sheets and spray starch, cups of bleach and bluing poured while a bleached blonde newscaster read numbing news stories. She’d steal naps on that squired kitchen chair sometimes. Sat the chair next to the furnace to keep warm, prop her shoe freed feet up on baskets filled with folded clothes, shoes off to keep clothes clean, curse when she kicked her shoes too far. The cracked concrete floor is too cold for soles to step on.
It’s kind of an eccentric story, but that was just her way, like the day she dared tell her priest a dirty joke (“What kind of meat does a priest eat on Friday? Nun! Get it! Nun….” Laughed till she snorted, elbowed the Father until he laughed too, red faces matching red packed smokes shared with him in that laundry room), or how she’d steal packs of Sweet-N-Low from restaurant tables when we went out to eat. “They want you to take it,” she’d say, purloining packets into a sandwich bag she squirreled away in her purse. She’d leave the waitress a sweet little tip to make up for it, slipping it to her smiling. I still have that bag filled with her saccharine stash. Never used one pack, too treasured to tear open, savor sweetness and toss away like the balls of lint on these listless laundry room walls you now say I should tear down.
It’s kind of a charmed story. These walls studded with lint are full of magic – tobacco chewing monkeys, red packed tobacco smoke, laundry soap advertised in sepia during serials – soap she only bought on sale, bawdy jokes broadly told, beaming impish grin, by a broad shouldered, broad humored, proud woman, a crippled queen with a kitchen chair throne in this, her lint filled laundry room castle.
Sorry sir, these walls stay.
(c) 2011 – Tracey Morris, All Rights Reserved
(I don't know what Dear was fussing about in this picture, but I know she meant business.
She would not tolerate any nonsense at Sunday dinner.)
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