Break The Child: chapter Twenty-Three: the Extra Compartment

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Extra Compartment

I haven’t been able to write lately. When I started this diary, I was just an average kid doing, you know, average kid stuff. We’ve been learning about Karma in Religious studies and I think, if somebody asked me to go all spiritual and say what I’ve learned from this experience, I have an answer. The one thing that I’ve learned most is that Mum has spoiled Dad. He’s flipping useless. He can’t cook, he can’t use the washing machine, he can’t iron, and trying to change the beds is a fiasco.

            The first time we tried to do the weekly wash was hilarious. Weekly wash; let me tell you right there, that was a mistake all by itself. Mum washes every day to keep on top of it, see. Dad has to be the best of all at everything.

‘Stand back, I’ve got this, I helped Grandma Bell do the washing when I was still sucking a do-de. I know what to do.’

It was as if a big snake was in the corner of the kitchen with all this, stand back, stand back—it was only a pile of washing. I admit, a very big pile of washing but, he thinks he’s Harrison Ford.

When Dad was little it was before real washing machines were invented. Can you believe that? I joke about him doing lessons with a blackboard, but he really, really was alive before they had proper washing machines.

Grandma Bell used to pull out a thing called a Twintub—'cause they did it in two stages see, and really it was two machines stuck together. They put some washing in the first side, then they put a hosepipe on the tap to fill it up. The washing soaked while the water heated up. It washed your clothes and you had to empty it by putting the hosepipe on the side into a bucket and if you didn’t have another bucket ready it spilled on the floor. That was just half of it. Then you had to take all the clothes out of the hot water and drop them in the other side.

Grandma Bell is dead, but it’s probably for the best. My grandma was clean and tidy and prim and proper and—I can’t think of two more things wot go together, but Dad said that sometimes—even if it was dirty nappies, she’d put other stuff in the dirty water after the first lot came out. Gross! And it went white to dark-dirty to clean. It was okay with the nappies `cause, first you scraped them into the toilet to get the poo off and then she had two buckets, everything was in twos back then and a lot of work.  She put the nappies in a bucket of water and mushed them about. Dad said the smell was really bad and came out all over the kitchen, my uncle John must have been really stinky. Then she’d wring them out and get wee on her hands. Then she had to put them in another bucket with some powder stuff in and you had to leave dirty nappies in your kitchen all night long. All night, I’d rather have the snake. Next day, after the coal fire was lit and the kettle put on the cooker to boil, she’d rinse the nappies in the sink and wring them out again. Then they went in the washing machine before anything else on account of them being white. The dirtiest thing of all happened next, they put all their other stuff in the dirty washing water when the nappies came out.

It wasn’t over yet, then they had to put it in the second machine—dad said for a long time they only had the first bit of the machine and the Rag and Bone man took that, and they bought a new one. When they only had the first bit it was even harder work. Dad said they felt posh when they got the Twintub stuck together in one machine. But when the clothes were washed you still had to pick it all out and put it in the other side to rinse it and spin it.  

We open the door, put the washing in and the machine does everything. I appreciate our washing machine so much. I want to tell mum about the olden days but she’s asleep again. She sleeps a lot now.

It took us all day and it was raining, and then we had all this wet washing lying in piles all over the kitchen while we were waiting for the dryer to finish. Then the cats decided to lie on the stuff that was dry, and all folded up ready for ironing. They are getting their summer coat, which means that they are losing their winter ones and the pile of washing was covered in white hair, so we had to wash it all again.  But before that, we had to work out how to use the washer.  I looked to my dad to know. Well, he is the grown up.

            He stared at all the buttons and dials as though he could suss it out, but he was terrified of it. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘what do you think?’

            ‘Dunno.’

            ‘Well, can’t you just sort of intuit it, or something? You’re a woman, kind of. You’re supposed to just know these things? How do you think your mother learned?’

            ‘She probably asked her mother?’

            ‘Good plan. Katie, you’re a genius. Annie,’ he shouted, ‘Annie can you come here a minute love?’

            Mum came in and she was like someone in a science museum where you get to try out all the stuff and gadgets and the like. She pressed every button and turned every dial and when she found the button that opened the door, she just kept opening it and then pushing the door closed, and then opening it and pushing the door closed. Any setting that had been in the right place, wasn’t now. And there were three of us getting in the way and mucking things up.

            I know that you have to separate stuff so that it doesn’t all go in the same load. Dad was going to bung it all in together and hope for the best. So, I made two piles, one of white stuff and one of coloured.  But what about all the gear that is like baby pink or pale blue? They aren’t white, are they? But you can’t put them in with jeans and things like Dad’s navy-blue shirt. So, then we had three piles, but I didn’t know if you can do bedding with the clothes, so then we had four piles. And Dad was working in the garden and he had a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that were covered in mud, so then we had five piles. But can you just put two items in together? I didn’t know, so I added some of his underpants and stinky socks to that pile.

            We started with the whites, because that was the biggest pile, but we’d only put half of it in when Dad realised that the door wasn’t going to shut. We had to split the whites into three piles and then we had to split the bedding into two, the towels took up one load by themselves and we had to stuff them in really tight to get the door to close—that was nine loads of washing. How can three people make so many dirty clothes?

Dad set it to cottons and did it on a thirty-degree wash, because that’s what it said you should do on the television adverts, it would be okay for everything. I was doubtful, but he was being all bossy and scientific and thinking he knows best. So that’s what we did.

            And you’d think that would be it, wouldn’t you? We’d put the clothes in the washer and managed to shut the door. We’d sorted out the dials and knobs and we were almost good to go, but when Dad opened the drawer to put the powder in, there were three compartments. Three! First we had an argument about the powder tablets. I said they went in the drawer, but Dad wanted to put them into the washer with the clothes. I’d definitely seen Mum put them in the drawer bit.

            ‘But we can’t just do what Mum does, she’s nuts.’

            ‘But she wasn’t nuts then, Dad, trust me, the tablets go in the drawer.’

            ‘Okay, if you’re sure.’

            ‘I am.’

            ‘Which compartment?’

            ‘I don’t know.’

            ‘I thought you’d seen her do it?’

            ‘I have, but I didn’t watch closely, did I?’

            ‘Do we work left to right, that seems logical?’

            ‘I suppose’

            ‘You suppose? Okay, let’s go with that then.’ He put the tablets in the first compartment and the fabric conditioner in the second one, but that was only a tiny little one and we didn’t know if it was right. That left the third compartment empty.

            ‘What goes in here?’  He was all red in the face and looked exhausted and we hadn’t even set the first load off yet.

            ‘Nothing, I don’t think.’

            ‘Well something must, otherwise it wouldn’t be there.’ He looked under the sink where we keep the washing stuff and pulled out bottles and cans. The only thing that was washing related were smelly paper things that go in the dryer to make your washing smell nice. ‘Here we go,’ he pulled his head out of the cupboard proper proud of himself. We’ll chuck one of these in.’

            ‘Dad they go in the dryer.’ I took the box and showed him.

            ‘Yes, I know it says so, but things advance, don’t they? Maybe they put the extra compartment in so that you can put them in either the washer or the dryer; stands to reason, doesn’t it? His reason, maybe. He stuffed the sheet in the empty compartment and closed the drawer fast before I could argue with him.

 He pushed the start button and when we heard water filling up the machine we grinned at each other as though we’d achieved something really good.

            ‘And to think your mother does this all the time.  I think we’ve earned a rest, put the kettle on, love.’

            Dad does the washing most of the time now, he does a little bit every day. I’ve learned that ironing is fun the first time that you do it, but after that it’s horrible. At first, I ironed everything, but now I only do my uniform and a shirt for Dad. We’ve worked out that if you take the clothes out of the dryer while they’re still hot, you don’t need to iron much. I’ve learned a lot about house stuff. And Dad’s learned that dryer sheets don’t go in the washer.

            Aunty Linda came round last week and moaned because Mum was wearing an un-ironed cardigan. She said Mum looked like a tramp and that annoyed me. I know she does a lot to help us, but she doesn’t stand up for hours doing the ironing when she’s got a geography project that she’s behind on, does she? She made me and Dad feel guilty because she says that we will be judged on our care for Mum and we can’t be seen to be lacking.

            Jeez, we’re doing our best.

            It’s my Birthday in two weeks. Usually I’d have a list of things that I want and wot I want to happen. This year it’s easy: I just want Mum to have a good day, it’s going to be the last year that she’ll know who I am.

            We were sitting in the garden yesterday. She was looking out but not seeing anything. She had that stupid smile on her face that she does all the time now. I saw though. Dad is in charge of mowing the lawns and chopping hedges, but Mum does the fancy stuff and weeds the flowerbeds and patios and all that. She keeps it tidy and looking nice. It all looks grotty. There were weeds coming out of the patio stones and mossy stuff.  It looks sad, like us. I suppose it’s like a reflection of what our family has become. It’s as though everything we’ve been through has leaked into the garden and is killing it. There were dead flowers with live ones, and everything was overgrown. Mum would never allow that. I got some stuff out of her shed and tidied it up for her while she sat on her bench looking out at some other place.

            ‘Mum, is this a weed, or a flower, I’m not sure?’

            ‘Hmm? What did you say dear?’

            ‘This purple thing, what do I do with it?’

            ‘Well you, preheat the oven and put it in for thirty minutes on twenty fifty degrees.’

            ‘Thanks Mum, really helpful, I’ll do that.’

            She’d already left me.