Laundry Day
by Jae Thomes
It was Sunday. My day off. Laundry day.
Carefully, I kneaded the port wine out of her favorite corduroy jacket―the acrylic paint off her old blue jeans. My fingertips reeked of hydrogen peroxide and dish soap, but the stains slowly lifted away until they looked like new. Right off the hangers. I imagined her joy at finding the jacket clean. Her excitement to finally wear it to karaoke the following weekend. The jeans would have been dirtied again either way, but with a fresh pallet next time. Maybe instead of those oceanic blues, they would be smattered in sunset oranges, evergreen fog, goldenrod fields. I would clean them out again the next weekend, and she would ask me again, why I bothered. She would ask it with her head on my shoulder; her hair damply stuck to her forehead from an afternoon in the garden; her arms snug around my waist. She would smile to herself―she would already know.
I spent hours pulling the briars out of the folds of her sundresses. The little buggers she collected on August afternoons, chasing sunsets behind the old train trestle in flip-flops until they kicked off her feet. Those nights, her soles would be red, and her heels would come back blistered from that worn faux leather strap. She’d crawl into bed with lotioned feet bundled in socks. The oil stains would seep through to the white daisy-patterned sheets. She’d roll her eyes at my whining, insisting that we never even saw those stains beneath the sky-blue comforter anyway.
I stripped the bed and the pillowcases. Her long brown hair had woven through the hemming, so I carefully unwound them, clipping where they stuck. I shook the covers out off the back porch, watching her curly locks float down to the dirt below. I scrubbed the stains she told me we never saw, until finally, I could no longer see them, even while squinting. All of our bedding came out of the dryer smelling distinctly like rainbow-sprinkles. That mild plastic sweetness wrapped around our bed tight like saran wrap. It was so clean and fresh it could have been on display.
I even remembered her favorite blanket: the one she’d refused to let me touch. As I’d seen online, I ran a fine bristled comb through the matted sherpa for hours until it fluffed up like new. I traced my fingers over the fabric just like we did at stores when passing endcaps of bundled throw blankets, always tempted to buy more for that fresh fluffy feeling you can never quite get back. I imagined her bundled up, just like the winter when the heat stopped working, but this time despite the blistering summer. I imagined her stubbornly insisting that it was cold to validate my efforts. I imagined her waking in the middle of the night, kicking off all the layers until our bed became a tangle of legs and sheets. I imagined her getting up in the middle of the night to crack open the window; the summer night breeze and the scent of dew rolling into her bedroom; the water droplets on the windowsill from forgotten rain. I imagined waking up to that early morning petrichor.
On Tuesday, I wake up alone.
I bundle her blanket close to my chest and shove my face into it―I dig my fingernails into her jacket―her jeans―her dress―her pillow―her bra―her socks―her sweater―everything smells like plastic sweetener―chemical flowers, rainbow sprinkles―detergent―I look for her between every fabric thread―every knitted row―but she is gone―I have scrubbed her out of our sheets―my sheets―
I did the laundry the day before she died. I look for hours, but I cannot find those stains.
Kid-Portions
by Jae Thomes
I’ve gotten used to making kid-sized-portions. Little bear cutouts for her sandwiches—baby carrots cut in half four ways. I lay her lunches out in rainbow order, red peppers, mandarin orange wedges, yellow squash slices, cucumber noodles, blueberries, and grapes. Her plastic blue bowls are getting more and more full every day and we’re left with fewer leftovers. I tell her she’s getting bigger and stronger every time she finishes her sippy cup of milk, even as she struggles to hold it with both hands. I tell her she’s going to grow big and strong when she’s older.
She squeezes my arms and asks if she’ll be as big and strong as I am. I know it’s just genetics; I know I’m not that big and not that strong; I’m 5’7” and 160 pounds soaking wet; I know this world is built against her; I know I’m not nearly strong enough to protect her from everything. She doesn’t understand, she’s so small the whole world looks big. But I don’t tell her that, I tell her she’ll be stronger than me if she finishes her dinner every night. I tell her bite-sized stories about the world in hopes it will prepare her. I tell her in kid-portions, so as not to scare her. I tell her knowing these portions will get larger, and larger. There will be fewer leftovers. She’ll struggle to hold it all in her hands, even when she’s older. I tell her to grab us rocket pops from the freezer. I tell her to have a good night. I tell her I love her. And God, how I wish it were that easy.