*Note: this was originally posted on Sept. 15, 2011.  It has been edited for submission to Into The Bardo, A Blogazine.  “The Bardo” is a place of transition, perhaps akin to Purgatory.  It is common ground and a sacred space of sorts.  It’s intriguing to think of the Laundromat as a place like that.*

David Attenborough makes a point in The Life of Mammals video about “Social Climbers” – monkeys.  He says that you can tell how large a monkey’s social group is by the size of his brain.  Baboons live in large, complex social structures and have the largest brains of all the monkeys.  Surviving and thriving in a social environment means that you have to be able to assess situations and make an array of decisions – how to make allies and with whom, how and when and whom to fight, how to secure a mate and improve your chances of passing on your genes.  Navigating social life is even more brain-bending if you’re human, I think.  More subtleties are involved.  Here’s a case in point: the laundromat.

When Jim and I were first married, I did laundry at the laundromat.  I hated going there, for several reasons.  First of all, I was pregnant.  The smells nauseated me; the physical demands of standing to fold and hoisting large loads of clothes around exhausted me.  It was a depressing place to be physically, but perhaps even more uncomfortable was the social aspect.  You never know what strangers you might encounter.  I have had some rather pleasant days at the laundromat.  I met a psychic, once, who was very interesting.  She could tell I was skeptical and not receptive, but she kept on talking to me nevertheless.  Gradually, I relaxed and figured out how to respect her and appreciate her and communicate that to her.  We parted with a hug and wished each other well.  Mostly, I get a pleasant experience if I can do my laundry in silence and read a few short stories at the same time.  What I often find is that the laundromat is a place to observe human suffering, my own and others’.

I happened to have selected a book of short stories by William Faulkner as my laundry companion.  I grabbed it off of Steve’s stack figuring that short stories would fit nicely into those periods of time between cycles, and I wouldn’t mind being interrupted or distracted as much as I would if I were trying to tackle “heavier” reading.  What I didn’t think about was that these stories of post-Civil War race relations would be cast for me on a backdrop of the urban reality of this century…and that the same awkward tensions would result.   I felt like some of his characters, eavesdropping in the kitchen, when people in the laundromat would chatter on their cell phones to friends and social agents.   Outwardly, I guess I was trying to be invisible.   I couldn’t help picking up snatches of their lives and wondering about their stories.   For example, Jerry and his family…

I’ve seen Jerry twice now.  Yesterday, I recognized him as I approached the laundromat.  He was wearing a diaper under sweatpants, shoes, and no shirt.  He was hitting his head repeatedly and grunting.  Or maybe it was more like moaning.   The woman he was with may have been his mother.  She was in a wheelchair with an artificial leg that looked like a sandbag.  He was with another woman as well, perhaps his sister.  She was the one doing the laundry.  I remembered them from a month ago.  They came with about 7 large, black garbage bags full of clothes.  They took a social services shuttle bus to get there; I knew this from hearing the mother make cell phone calls about being picked up.  This woman had the sweetest, kindest voice you would ever hope to hear.  Her voice was full of compassion and pain; it was lilting and rich and Southern.  I would cast her as a black Mammy in one of Faulkner’s stories.  Her manners were impeccable.  If she had to pass around me, she excused herself, and I felt like apologizing profusely for being in the way.  Her daughter (?), the other woman, spoke almost unintelligibly as she did the laundry and corralled Jerry.  Even the woman in the wheelchair told her, “I can’t understand what you’re saying.”    Jerry likes to wander.  They don’t want him to wander out to the street and get hit by a car.  They don’t want him to bother the other people in the building.  Their voices called out periodically, “Jerry.  Jerry, come over here.”  “Jerry, honey.  Stop!  Jerry, come here.”

When Jerry wanders near me, I don’t know what to do.  I keep my head down and my eyes in my book.  Would I frighten him if I made eye contact?  Would he frighten me?  Another gentleman was there.  He helped bring Jerry back inside when he wandered out.  The mother thanked him, “You’re so sweet.  Thank you, sir.”  They exchanged names.  He told her that he has a grandson who was hit by a car at age 7; the grandson is now 25 and has brain damage.  “Oh, so you know.  You understand,” she sighed.  I learned that Jerry is 32 years old.

In the other corner of the room, there was a mother with a 5-year old daughter, London.   She looked about 5, anyway.  London had a pacifier.  I heard her mother yelling at her.  “London!  Get up offa that floor!  Sit your butt down here!”  Her voice was sharp and angry.  London began to cry.  There is not much to interest a 5 year old in the laundromat.  She hadn’t brought any toys or books to occupy her.  The mother talked on her cell phone while London played with the lid of the laundry hamper.  I made eye contact with the child as we went about our business.  She silently bent her wrist toward me, while sucking her pacifier.  “Oh, did you hurt yourself?” I asked.  “London!  Get out of the way!” her mother said.

In the Faulkner story, Master Saucier Weddell is trying to get back to Mississippi from Virginia.  He is the defeated.  He and his traveling companion, his former slave who is very attached to him and his family, find themselves in Tennessee at a farmhouse.   These victors are extremely suspicious.  They think Mr. Weddell is a Negro.  Actually, he’s Cherokee and French.  The story is short, but intense.  The traveler and the farmer’s younger son end up being killed in an ambush by the farmer and his Union soldier son, Vatch.  The last two sentences read, “He watched the rifle elongate and then rise and diminish slowly and become a round spot against the white shape of Vatch’s face like a period on a page.  Crouching, the Negro’s eyes rushed wild and steady and red, like those of a cornered animal.”

I finished my laundry in silence.  I waved my fingers and mouthed “goodbye” to London who had been banished to the corner.  Her mother didn’t see me.

At home, the late afternoon sun shines down on the quilt on my bed.  Steve isn’t home, and it’s very quiet.  I feel like crying.  My brain is not big enough to figure out why.