Outside, an epic rain was falling. The weather forecaster explained that a storm system was “stuck” over New England, that it would “sit and spin” on top of us for days, dumping massive amounts of precip and blowing sustained wind gusts and flooding our roads, our basements and our rivers, and it would be unrelenting. On Saturday night, I’d periodically wake up to the sound of battering rain drops against our windows, accompanied by a persistent sigh of wind that occasionally reared up into a howl. Sit and spin, indeed.
The laundry had to be done on Sunday morning. I lugged our two portable hampers to my car, my face catching the brunt of water flung by the sideways wind. “Enough!” I wanted to shout at nothing. “Can’t you see that I’m already wet? Can’t you see that everything is already wet?” But the storm persisted with its chilled torrent, and I made my way to the laundromat nursing severe feelings of persecution.
When I arrived at the laundromat, there was no convenient street parking, owing to the fact that the laundromat was located in between a Baptist church and a popular bagel eatery — a Sunday morning double-whammy that left me hauling my hampers down two blocks of sidewalk, my biceps burning under the weight of dirty clothes while rivulets of water streamed off my raincoat and the cuffs of my tan pants turned brown with moisture.
The laundromat was empty, although several dryers were in motion — the lingering presence of another launderer. Immediately I began sorting our clothes into a cluster of washers — a mad dash of flying socks, pouring detergent, and clanging quarters, because the sooner the washers start, the sooner I can leave. The washers clicked to life, filling with sudsy water and spinning into a vortex of cotton and synthetics. Sit and spin.
I slipped on my iPod headphones, and watched the washers sit and spin, and watched the rain beat down on Mass Ave. People came in, the wind helping them to burst the door open: A young black man with a single load, carrying a cup of Yoplait yogurt and a banana; two young men, one wearing an oversized T-shirt that said “My Feet Hurt,” bearing clothes that briefly perfumed the laundromat with body odor and cigarette smoke; an older man, washing a comforter. We were all idling in the laundromat, in silence, in a comfortable silence, as the storm periodically intensified and then abated. For once, the scariest thing at the laundromat was outside.
Soon my clothes began to dry. Load by load, I piled the clothes into the laundromat-provided steel basket and wheeled them over to the folding table, where I expertly whisked the jumbled mess of fabric into a neat stack of clothes. I folded with frenetic speed, intent on erasing this last bit of tedium from the task that is laundry. I folded sheets, towels, t-shirt, dress shirts, slacks, boxers, dish clothes, napkins, handkerchiefs, jeans, and sports bras. And as I folded, I darted glances around the laundromat and realized I was the only person moving; the others stood frozen, gazing into some private abyss that existed somewhere outside, in the storm, through the windows at which they gaped.
My iPod hung on my ears, dormant, a silent victim of my preoccupation. So when the church bells began, I could hear them very clearly, and a shiver ascended my spine. The bells overcame the sound of the storm, chiming a winsome, sweet song; it made me think of a sunny spring day filled with flowers and birdsong. It made me think of going to church as a young girl with my family, wearing an airy Sunday dress, content in who I was and who I was with, innocent to the ravages of man, nature, and deity.
I wanted the church bells to last forever, to ring out in everlasting solace. But the song finished, and the rain continued to pour from the sky — from fountains of unfathomable reserve, from the sit and spin weather system that has turned our radars green — to purge the ungodly for our deeds of ungodliness, for what we have done and left undone, for spending our Sunday morning in the laundromat as the epic rain purges the wicked and cleanses the yielding, like socks in the laundry.
