The Last Jeskey
By
Karen Singer
Chapter 23
(Day 4 – Sunday)
Freaky
I can’t begin to tell you how weird those sneakers felt on
my feet. Compared to my boots, they weighed
almost nothing. It was like I wasn’t
wearing anything there at all. That’s
not how I felt about that bra though.
Uncomfortable! Lisa and Shantel
both said I’d get used to it and would barely notice with a bit of time. Somehow, I didn’t think so. And what the heck was ladylike anyway?
All that was on top of them continuing to subject me to the
ways that everything around me was different from living on the farm. Late in the day, Shantel and Lisa decided it
was time to wash some clothes. I
couldn’t believe it. How dumb did they
have to be? You don’t wash clothes late
in the day. When you hang them on the
line to dry, they’ll be there overnight.
Not only will the morning dew make them all wet again, but what if it
rained. When I mentioned this to Shantel
and Lisa, they both looked at me real funny, but since it seemed like they were
set on doing it right then, I followed along with them.
I wasn’t happy that
Lisa suggested I should wash my clothes too.
I had only been wearing them a few days.
How often did she think they needed washing? She and Shantel made me change into that new
dress they had found for me, then they led me to a room where we were supposed
to be able to wash everything. When I
got in there, I looked around. It was
another really weird room, full of really weird things, in a weird building,
that was full of weird rooms. Only this
one I understood less than any of them.
I looked all around.
“Where’s the tubs?” I asked, not seeing any.
“Tubs?” Shantel said as she opened a door in the top of a…I
didn’t know what it was. “In here,” she
told me.
I looked. “What’s
that?” I asked.
“Freaky,” Shantel said.
“Please don’t tell me you’ve never seen a washer before.”
“I think Natalie had one in her kitchen,” I told her. “She said it was a machine that washes
dishes.”
“Well, this is a machine that washes clothes.”
I studied it.
“How? You’re supposed to get the
clothes all wet in a tub with some laundry suds, then you take a brush to them
to get the dirt out, then you rinse them with the hose.”
Shantel and Lisa just looked at me. “Freaky, really?” Lisa said. “Who told you that?”
“Bo, and the other guys.
But…”
“But what?” Shantel asked.
“But…most of it I just kind of figured out by myself. I mean, how else are you going to do it? Bo gave me the big tub to use, and the guys bring
me some laundry suds once in a while when they go shopping for food. The rest…how else are you supposed to do it?”
“Freaky,” Lisa said.
“Just how poor were you? You
didn’t have a TV. It sounds like you
didn’t have a washer, or I’m sure a dryer either. Those boots you were wearing were men’s boots
and practically falling apart. You must
have been really dirt poor.”
“No, we had lots of dirt,” I told her. It was a farm.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Lisa replied. “It just means you had to have been really,
really poor.”
I shrugged. “I
wouldn’t know. That’s all men’s
business. Girls don’t need to worry
about things like that.”
“At least it sounds like they had running water,” Shantel
noted as she began stuffing her clothes into the top of that machine. “She mentioned using a hose to rinse the
clothes. I was beginning to picture her
using a hand pump to get water every day.”
“We’ve got one,” I told her.
“Two actually, but one doesn’t work at all. The guys said it’s just for show. Like a decoration.”
“You have to pump the water out of the ground by hand?” Lisa
asked like she couldn’t believe it.
“Only when the electric goes off,” I told her. “Which happens sometimes, usually because of
a storm. But it comes back on
eventually. But if we need water when
it’s off, then I have to pump it and bring it into the house in a bucket.”
“You had all those guys out there, and they made you pump
and carry the water?”
“Of course I did it.
Doing things like that is women’s work.
Besides, most of the time, I’m the only one who needed it, like for
cooking and stuff.”
Lisa began stuffing her clothes into the machine next to the
one where Shantel had put hers. “No TV
at all. No washer and dryer. A water pump in the yard. Freaky, your life had to be worse than mine.”
“Mine too!” Shantel said.
“And all this time I’ve been here feeling sorry for myself. Of course, mostly I’m in here because I OD’d on
some bad shit, and it turns out that my boyfriend and some of his friends might
have been trying to kill me at the time.
But something tells me Freaky, that despite all the shit you’ve been
telling us, there’s a ton more that you haven’t mentioned yet.”
I wasn’t sure about most of what she had said. I took it to mean something bad must have
happened to her before she came here to the shelter. “Like what?” I said, once again
confused. “My life was good. I knew what I was supposed to do, and I did
it. If not, I got punished, like I
deserved. That’s all. That’s why I’ve always tried hard to be a
good girl.”
“You said you’ve never been off that farm,” Lisa said as she
pulled my clothes out of my hands. She
began stuffing them into the machine where her clothes were.
“Of course not. I’m a
good girl. I didn’t need to go
anywhere.”
“Oh hell, yes you did!” Shantel said as she picked up a
bottle of something. “There’s an entire
world out there, and those uncles of yours kept you from it. You should have learned a whole lot of things
that you haven’t.”
“Like what?” I asked as I watched her pour some of what was
in that bottle into a little place on that machine. “I know everything I need to.”
“Like life!” Lisa said.
“Your uncles have literally kept you locked in the Middle Ages! We have got to bring you out of there into
the modern world.”
“Here Leese,” Shantel said as she passed that bottle to
Lisa.
“Middle Ages?” I said, once again confused as Lisa began
pouring some of it into the machine where her clothes and my clothes were. “Am I middle aged now? I really don’t know. Bo always said he was getting old. He said that a lot. But the guys never mentioned how old they
were.”
“Freak,” Shantel said.
“How old are you?”
“I don’t know. What
does it matter. If Bo was old though, and
I’m the youngest, then does that make my other uncles middle aged?”
“You don’t know how old you are?”
“Why would I? I’m a
girl. Besides, what can it possibly
matter?”
“What if you wanted to get married?” Lisa asked.
“Then I guess I’d get married. That would be up to Bo, not me.” I remembered something. “Except, Bo’s dead now. All the others too, except Gary, so I guess
now it would be up to him.”
“Getting married should be up to you!” Shantel said
as she poked her finger into my chest.
“And Leese is right. Those uncles
of yours have stuck you in a life right out of the Middle Ages, or more likely
some kind of horror show. We have got to
find a way to start teaching you about how things really are.”
I shook my head. “I
just want to go back to the farm where I know what I’m supposed to do, and I
understand everything around me.”
“And that farm is the very last place you ever need to go
again,” Shantel said. “Ever!”
I watched her and Lisa turn some kind of things on those
machines and push some buttons, and both machines suddenly seemed to come to
life. I got scared and backed away,
ready to run out of the room, but both Shatel and Lisa barely seemed to notice
the way those machine things were making all that noise and shaking around.
Do you know they have machines to dry clothes too? You don’t even have to hang them on the
line. And you can dry them even when
it’s raining outside.
