The Spanish Lesson 

The gray has been peeled from the sky. An effortless removal of membrane, like a shell from a morning egg.

————

The door at the laundromat pushes in. It is a narrow little room, a row of top loading washers against the wall on the right, dryers lining the left wall. By the back there are three steps up to a small second level with more washers. Vending machines for change, soaps and snacks by the door. In the middle of the room, there is a wide island with a stainless steel table top for folding which seems too clean for this place—the dirty floors spotted with lost coins, yellow walls trapping the natural light, sun going stale, out-of-order signs, dust in the corners, empty bags of potato chips just beside the trash bin.

The room is empty and quiet except for the low vibration of an overstuffed washer and the soft drumming of two dryers spinning slightly out of sync. I load our clothes into three machines, separating the heavy cloth from the delicate and the whites from the rest. As I do this, a young Latino woman enters, pushing through the door with a small two-wheel cart carrying a bulging bag of laundry and pulling behind her a stroller, her little girl inside. 

Our eyes catch. She looks my age, even younger maybe, twenty or twenty one. Her hair is tied back and dark like her skin and she speaks to her daughter in Spanish. She is wearing a bright red shirt that is too tight for her body and her daughter is wearing a small fleece pullover and pink pajamas with a pattern of Hello Kitties on them. Laundry day clothes. I offer a smile and turn back to my task. When the machines are loaded I make change. The woman drags her bag behind her, claiming four washers by opening their lids. Her daughter slinks out of her stroller and sits in the small folding chair by the island in the middle of the room, staring curiously at me and my hands feeding shiny quarters into the washers. I start the machines and leave.

A half hour and I return to move my clothes into the dryer. Now the woman is sitting in the folding chair, her daughter on her lap, speaking on the phone. 

Su nieta quiere decir hola. Your Granddaughter wants to say hello. 

The woman hands the phone to the girl and the girl takes it with two hands and holds it close to her smiling face. 

Hola, Nana. 

There is the sound of relief in the grandmother's loud voice through the phone. The little girl hears happiness—it is there underneath—but I hear the voice of a woman with a lifted weight, knowing her granddaughter is here, that she is real today, that she is alright. 

Te echo de menos. 

I set my clothes to spin for forty minutes and again I leave them. 

————

I am early. There are three minutes left on the dryer now and I sit on the folding table. The woman is moving her damp clothes from one of the laundromat's hamper carts to her dryers, piece by piece, making sure no sleeve or sock is rolled up, that nothing had been bleached during washing, that no coins had been left in any pocket. She walks from the hamper to the machines slowly, eyes on her work. She does not look at me, but the child does. 

Sitting on the folding chair, practicing words with her mother, holding a bottle of red Gatorade, too much for her to drink. She says loudly to her mother, in a sweet, enthused voice: Muchacho. 

The mother repeats, slower, her voice a natural response set off by the voice of her daughter: Si, Muchacho. 

The girl giggles and kicks her tiny feet. She puts the bottle of Gatorade to her mouth. 

No beber demasiado, the woman says. Don't drink too much. 

A buzzer sounds. Inside the dryer, my laundry slows. I open the glass door—the warm air escapes and hits my face, a moment I love. I reach in for a towel, hold it to my skin, breathing in, a fresh, strangely cooling warmth unlike any other. Except the warmth of a mother. 

This warmth transports me. Now I am the child in the stroller, except something is different. I remember being young, trips to the laundromat with my mother when our washing machine broke and my father was too busy to fix it. The washer was old and this happened a lot and the laundromat became a place I could not stand. I recall almost every detail of it, like this one but bigger, brighter, cleaner. I do not recall practicing words with my mother, but now, as I breathe into my soft, dry towel, I am young again at the laundromat and reciting vocabulary, except not in English but in Spanish. Words like Pero, Coche, Abuela. 

I begin to fold my clothes on the table, listening to the young girl's voice. Gato, she says. 

Ga-to, her mother repeats. 

Jugo.

Ju-go. 

Manana. 

This word makes the mother sigh. Si, she says, Manana. Manana.

A sigh is unlike a word; it is never taught nor learned. A young girl will know something is wrong when her mother sighs. She will look at her mother, as this girl does—Gatorade cap in mouth—and laugh in naive attempt to cheer her mother up. 

She points at the woman folding laundry. Mama, she says.

Ma-ma, the mother repeats, folding, not looking.

Now the child turns to me. Muchacho, she says. I smile at her and she giggles. 

Si, Muchacho.

Papa. She says. 

The mother's neck snaps up. No, she says. No es Papa. 

The girl points to me. Papa? 

No es Papa. No es Papa. 

Mucacho.

Muchacho, si. No es Papa. 

My hands are less steady now as I fold my shirts. Words run through my blood in the sweet voice of this girl. Papa. No. I am not her father, and for that I am sorry. I am sorry and ashamed. I cannot be her father and I never will be. There is a father, somewhere, but it is one this girl has never known and he is gone now and there is nothing I can do. 

I'm uncomfortable. I fold faster, clumsily stuffing piles into my hamper as if they are stacks of stolen money and I am ready to run, to leave these people I have hurt and go home.

But home is not the place I would run to. It is a small apartment with a woman I cannot love the way a father is supposed to love his child's mother. How long will we last before our girl is practicing words in a laundromat with mommy? No es papa. Just mommy. 

No. I am not this girl’s father. Even if I were, I couldn't be. I cannot do what this mother does: folding clothes for herself, then folding the small clothes she has bought for her daughter; teaching her daughter Spanish; making up for an empty space of a father, a space which must ache like the ghost pain of an amputated limb, because a family is like a body that can grow or die; pushing a carriage of dirty clothes with one hand and pulling a heavy stroller that will only get heavier in time with the other hand down the road on a hot afternoon—and did I even think to hold the door for her when she came into the laundromat? 

The door pushes in. My hands were full of quarters. 

I look once more to the girl and smile. She quiets, the mother's face is unchanged. I take my hamper of fresh warm clothes and walk out into the sun.

                                                                                                                                                                                Stephen Harutunian is a writer and musician from Boston, MA. He received his M.F.A. in Fiction from Goddard College and has taught writing at the University of Vermont. His most recent work can be found, or is forthcoming, in Pocketsmut Magazine, 52/250 Flash Fiction, and Shaking Magazine.