andrea kleinhenz
andrea kleinhenz is a writer from cleveland.
Laundromat Daze:
An “O” Mage to Monique Wittig
Drunk, the women say they are drunk. Great fields of scarlet poppies have been trampled underfoot. Their heads, their torn petals hang loosely or lie in confusion on the ground. Not a drop of dew is visible on the flowers. The women dance. They hold each other round the neck and let themselves fall to the ground, lips black, eyes starting. They say they are drunk. Their arms and legs are bare. Their loosened hair hides their cheeks, then, flung back, reveals shining eyes, lips parted in song.
(From Les Guerilleres, by Monique Wittig, p. 62)
Oh, oh, oh, oh. My. God Dess. When it rains, it pours. I am forced to leave the Cape. I can still feel the ocean in me; hear the endless summer rain pouring past the window of my basement bedroom. Stains of mildew spread throughout the wallpaper, the mold creeps along the floorboards. At last I think it is like abundance. And then I open the closet to watch the organic breakdown of my clothing. The mold frightens me by growing everywhere. I frighten myself. I smell the mold in the darkness.
ACREMONIUM ALTERNARIA ASPERGILLUS AUREABASIDIUM BEAUVERIA BOTRYTIS CHAETOMIUM CLADOSPORIUM CURVULARIA DRECHSLERA
The mold is wiped down in the dark with Lysol spray. Later, I say, asshole, my landlord is an asshole. He has deprived me of my home; driven me to the overbearing fecundity of a stranger’s house. He is a cringing cur, preying on the isolation of single women. Sobbing, I notice that both his balls are missing.
On the long ride back to Ohio, I shed hot tears saying that I’ll wear a rust belt for a girdle leaving beauty far behind me. A bird shits on the window. I cannot see the car ahead of me. Huge pierogies, cheese and sauerkraut, are painted on ubiquitous billboards. I arrive at my parent’s house. They say they are affronted by the smell of the mold. Later they seize my arm, talking rapidly, saying I must wash all of my clothes. At a certain point they hold their noses and scream.
If anyone frequents the Laundromat she can hardly remain sane. Through the pollution, strip malls and car dealerships can be seen, men in polyester suits. The Laundromat is full. People lug large baskets of clothes down the long, narrow aisles. There are no Lana Turner moments. A pervert briefly flashes me as he rides his bicycle past the big picture window. I notice his balls are missing too.
The women around me separate their wash. I separate my wash. There are piles of darks, and white and in-between. At a certain point the sweet scents of detergent and fabric softener assail my sinuses, but I am stoic. I watch the whites go round and round, agitating the soap to great thundering crests of foam; a three-pronged fork is flung out of one of the dishtowels. The trident grates against the glass window and I hold my hands over my ears to ward off the sound. I do not listen to Rush Limbaugh I say to a man with a bad haircut. He is covered in polyester and seems mesmerized by the fork.
Nearby there is a desperate woman. She has stuffed her white and colored wash into one bag. She admires the blouse I am wearing and asks about the thread count. I say I am not wearing a bed sheet, but check the label anyway. It is a good brand, Jones of New York, an artifact from my days as a consumer. There is no money in my purse now. There are no paychecks in my bank.
This woman says she must tell me everything, the rushing of her words, like a river broken from a dam. From her hair I notice the stink of sulphur; the dull flames in her eyes reflect the Styx. A nervous smile plays about her lips as she speaks hour after hour, about her descent into the dark:
She says she is weak with fever and therefore throws all of her clothes into one machine. She says she is a nurse who makes $32 an hour, her husband only $6.75 though his sperm count is still potent. She says she must have children as she tosses red pants in with white blouses. Her twins died when she miscarried at 6 months, 20 years ago, the spin cycle revs up and the machine lurches gently, but now she needs fertility treatments because she is 43 years old and sick and stressed.
She watches the clothes pressed against the glass window. A foam of pink soap bubbles up from the material and she pops a piece of gum into her mouth. The scent of cherry is evident as she chews fast and speaks even faster. There is no respite from her nursing job except to return to school, a Masters degree in administration should get her off her aching feet. And now she is ready to head home, stuffing all of her clothes, now pink, into a duffel bag.
Come with me she says to see my 40 chickens and 30 pigeons and dozen ducks and geese and one husband and 13 dogs. My mother is really crabby, a cunt, a whore—but we haven’t slapped each other lately—and she likes my birds. The dogs are tied by chains, each to a tree, their ribs showing, their fangs flashing. She leads me to the pigeon coop, ushers me past the churning fur; we step into a stinking she where red-eye birds with brown stoles around their necks or others with fan-like tails perch on shit-covered planks.
Then we walk into a sprawling garden laden with heavy cabbage and sweet hillbilly tomatoes and she fills a bag with these and cauliflower, peppers, shallots, beets and turnips for my trip back home.
They say that I have never ceased to attract the weird, the haunted, the eccentric or eerie and freaky, the oddball, outlandish or peculiar. They say that sleeplessness burns a hole in the wall of consciousness. They say that insomnia should be assaulted with Zoloft, Paxil, Prozac, Trazadon, Ambien, Valerian. They say I should smash anxiety like a bug under glass.
CODA:
CALIGO ATREAUS SATYRINAE PAILIONIDAE CHAROXINAE DANAIAE NYMPHALINAE BLUE MORPHO
I am in exile from the East and its ocean and seek solace in the Midwest, in the transparent chrysalis of the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. My parents humor me. We are floating in a bubble of baobab trees and iridescent butterfly wings. The velvet hunger of a blue morpho hovers above my shoulder. When I inhale its prayer against my skin, a filament of tenderness quivers with prescient antennae. The cluster blossom is an explosion of owl butterflies whose satyr thirst for nectar imposes fluttering communities of eyes, they are implacable, they mimic the wisdom of the third eye. In between the vapors of construed rain forest drift brilliant thoughts, carmine-edged in black or carnelian hieroglyphics that shatter convention.
Before this slight meditation on butterfly wings I think of blood and death on the Cape, before I moved. My four-year old charge and I pay our weekly obeisance at a cranberry bog across the street. His angelic face is wreathed in dark, Italian curls. He is a sweet companion. Just two days before we barely breathed, watching as a female snapping turtle balanced like a tiddlywink above contractions; leathery white eggs pushed into a shallow hole. A slender beige garter snake with a stomach bulging was stretched out in the dirt under a bush and the red tail hawks were held aloft by soft piles of clouds. But now devastation lies at our feet. We say the tabernacle has been violated the trampled eggs the shattered carapace the naked vertebrae that which is violated that which is murdered that which sinks into decomposition. My composure is splintered by successive waves of grief. The birth/death cycle is framed in scruffy
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