
10-31-2009, 08:26 PM
Something I wrote for class last year. Looking for general critique and commentary. Hope you like it.
The drink was long, and scolded her throat like burnt coffee. The aftertaste was worse when mingled with the blood. The guitar replaced the beeping of monitors. Punctuating every heartbeat. Announcing her failure to the room.
Her vision found a room as white as blank paper, where she was the accidental smear that doomed the paper to the trash. Her clothing dripped with bloodied vomit and charcoal, and if her family bothered to clean it, it may see the laundry detergent in a more pleasant form than fresh from her stomach.
Ironic, she thought. That it would be cleaned with the same lavender soap that ruins it now.
A nurse held her hair back as her stomach lurched. Empty. She gagged as blood and spit oozed from her mouth into the bucket. Empty. Her stomach and sides hurt. Empty.
“You know,” the nurse assured her parents. “Most kids have fun before this happens.”
Her parents saw no humour in the nurse’s commentary. Empty.
The room slowly filled with the newfound awkwardness of two people forced to share living conditions. Like a leaking sink, the tension rose until someone hired a plumber to fix the pipes, leaving the housemates to clean the mess. Both women assured their parents with “I’ll see you again soon,” or “I love you,” with no mention of “good-bye.” They acted like it was a phone call to someone driving to your house; both would see each other too soon to warrant an “end.”
Her roommate was Meg. As they talked, Meg seems to make sure that no inch of skin below her neck showed; despite the warm weather, Meg wore black opera gloves. As the time passed, Meg wasn’t the only one in long sleeves in the sun.
The first day, she didn’t drink anything. The nurse kindly insisted water, and by the end of the day her bedside table was covered in plastic cups. By the end of the week, she could swallow one cup. The following week she could drink a bottle. Cups and laundry soon became regular parts of the décor—when she cleared them, something about the room seemed lacking.
The doctor forbid her to wash her laundry, so she instructed the nurse to her hamper every Thursday. Meg was kind enough to accompany the assistant, so they had a laundry day together. Meg always extended a kind invitation, but the nurse smiled and responded, “maybe next week?”
Four months into their solitude, Meg convinced a small group to come wash laundry together.
Brian leaned over the washer, carefully measuring the powder with an obsession that accompanies a man who has worked in chemistry. Shortly after the “WASH” light came on, he cracked the top. “If you open it and jam a quarter here, here, and here” he wedged pocked change into the slots where the lids lock. “You can watch it spin ‘round.”
“When I was a kid, we had a front-loading washer with a glass panel,” April said. “And I used to think the soap bubbles were the laundry’s thought bubbles. There was a war between the shirts and towels. Sock bombs fell on both sides. The jeans tried to remain neutral, but once they reached the dryer they called off their treaty with the shirts.
“The only peace was the matrimony between undergarments,” she continued. “Once in a while a bra would marry a pair of panties, but the inter-garment relationships were frowned upon.”
The smell of lavender never faded.
Laundry was not the only event the inhabitants looked forward too. There were classes: reading, writing, science and art. The Laundry Club would have James act poems and stories. April was a fantastic editor, and Brian had an uncanny knack for the sciences. Meg was excellent at carving and sculpting, often providing much-needed advice on how to make the head look less like a potato.
James had taken a gun to his temple and fired several blanks on the stage before a classmate found him. April had jumped and been discovered in a tree by a small boy chasing his kite. Brian had created a drug and was all too eager to test it. Meg had taken a kitchen knife to her arms after carving the Christmas turkey. And I chugged a mug of Tide, she mulled. I should have at least gone for a bottle of bleach or Windex.
The number on the bottom of the bottles was 2, and Brain explained the significance one lazy afternoon. “The numbers indicate what the plastic is made of,” he said. “Two and seven are the most dangerous.”
“Wait,” Meg said. “What is plastic made of? Other plastic?”
“Kinda,” Brian started.
“Funny,” April interjected. “Isn’t number two the most common? And you said it’s poisonous?
“The government decided that if a chemical was toxic, there was a safe level—the amount you could eat or drink before you die—in the seventies. We haven’t really changed our policies since.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” James interjected. “If it’s toxic, shouldn’t it be banned?”
“One would think,” Brian nodded, “one would think.”
The next month, Brian was found in the drug storage room. Whenever asked the nurse would murmur something about detox and shuffle away. His family mailed invitations for the funeral.
Her parents decided upon a “you survived” present. As she walked down the stairs, her mother handed her a set of keys to a used Honda. The small brown car had seen its share; it bore more battle scars than Meg’s arms. Meg said as much herself. Meg, April, and James piled into the passenger seats as they drove off to a restaurant for the first time in that new year. Laughing, they all vowed that they would meet again a month from January first at the local laundry mat to celebrate what they had learned to love: life.
Pulling out from the parking lot, they paused for a man crossing the street. A drunk driver swerved and hit the Honda head on. They say he had a bouquet of lavender for his wife, who didn’t enjoy roses.
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