Laundromat Blues

"Can colors and whites go together?" I almost ask the older black woman in the laundromat.

I catch myself at the last second; scared I'll accidentally say "coloreds and whites." I think of another way of phrasing the question.

“Can lites and darks go together?"

Forget it. I'll just wash them seperately. The language is too fraught with landmines.

I sit back and watch as my clothes swirl and tumble, first clockwise, then counterclockwise. To a moron, it's kind of mesmerizing.

I dream of Europe. Repatriation. Back to white man's Africa. A place where the sins of someone else's father aren't held against me.

I dream of mashing the red clay soil through my fingers like a barrel full of crushed grapes and blending back into a culture where hot tempered arrogance courses through the family tree; where passion is as strong as murder and vendettas are eternal.

She drops her soda. I look up.

Two spanish women walk in. These women are pros. Spanish people, for some reason, tend not to have washing machines.

”You dropped a dolla” the black woman says as she cleans up the spill.

“Oh, thank you.” I pick the dollar up.

“I found a bag of money once,” the old black woman says.

“Really?” I respond with earnest curiousity.

“Yeah, in the thuh WalMart down there.” She says.

“Wow.” I say, and go back to my book.

Mexicans are the new blacks I think to myself. The new uppity malcontents.

I chuckle to myself.

Fuck it. Maybe the only weapon a smirking know-it-all like me has in this world is that he's a smirking know-it-all.