D. Dina Friedman

The Laundress

inspired by the painting by Francisco Laso (Peru), 1858

A sheet doesn’t lie, even as it absorbs the stains of the body between its threads: semen, menstrual blood, liquid gas. Though she’s grown up in the high altitude, today the world feels tilted, her stomach unsettled, so she pops a coca leaf into her mouth and tucks the edge of her skirt into her waistband. Underneath, her slip continues to hang low, hiding her sweaty legs. As she wrings the first sheet of the day free of its sins, her nipples under her white shirt begin to sting. No word from Fernando since the day he arrived all feathered and fluted, pressing his urgency as he wrested her away from the rooftop the minute the last sheet had been folded. Because she loved him, she had stolen a fresh sheet and laid it out on the uneven ground. And she didn’t feel guilty at all about the theft. It was a small reward for all the washing, and drying, and reaching.

At first, they reached for each other, but when he tore at her shirt she twisted away, like a sheet desperate to be squeezed clean and hung in the sun. Now, she fears it will be her father, who twists his hands around her slender neck unless she can quickly find a wise woman who can give her the right herbs. The sun, high in the sky, is relentless as she reaches to hang the sheet, wondering if this sheet—if any sheet—can ever be truly washed clean enough.

The thought of sheets, the sudden smell of soap, propels her stomach into spasm. She leans over the rooftop, then, worried about who might be walking below as she heaves, vomits her meager breakfast into a large clay vase currently empty of flowers. Tonight, she will attempt to find a woman who can lay out a sheet in a soft place in the sand and hold her hand when the cramps come. And tomorrow, when she greets the sun’s furious consistency and the baskets of soiled clothing, she might just raise her fist at the sky, not in solidarity, or even in anger. It will be a superfluous gesture of the soul trying to break from the body’s cage, and the body trying to break from the order of the godly universe that holds her here on this roof, washing the ribbed undershirt of a rich man. She’ll feel the sun on her callused knuckles, and maybe a small curse will escape her normally quiet lips. Then she’ll hum to herself as she lifts the next stained sheet, salting the blemished spot and going through the pretense of scrubbing clean.
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Published in many literary journals and nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, D. Dina Friedman is the author of two YA novels: Escaping Into the Night and Playing Dad’s Song, one short-story collection, Immigrants, and two poetry collections: Wolf in the Suitcase and Here in Sanctuary, Whirling. See more at http://www.ddinafriedman.com.