The thick mental fog behind which many of my earliest childhood memories hide like scared animals lifts periodically, if slightly, sometimes long enough that I can grab hold of something before it skitters off again into obscurity. Here’s one: a sweltering summer day in Kansas City. I was sitting on the sun-bleached wood steps in front of my family’s tiny white clapboard apartment. I was three years old, and bored. Mama had sent me outside to play, but there was nothing to do. It was so hot. The air was like steaming bathwater against my skin, in my lungs. Everywhere I looked, things were dying. The small strip of grass alongside our walkway was yellow-brown. The few flowers there had been in pots outside some of the other apartments had shriveled away. In the distance, where it was so bright it almost hurt to look, eerie-looking waves floated upward from the ground like a kind of steam, as if the earth were boiling away under the hot sun. Shrill noises blared from nearby sweet gum and gnarled oak trees. I didn’t yet know about cicadas; I thought it was the trees, screaming from the heat.
I wanted to be inside where it was at least a little cooler, but Mama, who was busy washing dishes in the kitchen, was afraid I’d wake Daddy. Mama had told me many times before that Daddy worked until late at night and we all had to be very quiet in the morning so he could sleep, usually until lunchtime. Quiet meant we had to whisper when we talked. It also meant we couldn’t bounce balls or play with our toys that made music or with anything else that might make a noise if we accidentally dropped it onto the wood floor. Sometimes even when I laughed, Mama would frown and hiss at me, “Shut up!”, and glance anxiously toward the bedroom door.
Mama’s hands had been full all morning keeping everybody quiet. My ten-month-old sister Karen, who’d begun the day crying, was still fussy. Sometimes she’d start screaming for no reason at all. My other sister, Debbie, who was two, was still weak from the polio six months earlier that had left her deaf. She lay on the convertible sofa in the living room coloring with her few crayons, moaning and singing to herself, not realizing how loud her voice was. Once in a while, she’d drop one of her crayons on the floor where she couldn’t reach it, and then she’d start screaming, too. Between Karen and Debbie, things were already noisy. Mama wasn’t taking any chances with me. “I’m not about to have your father come yelling at me because of your racket, too!” Mama said. “Now, out!” She opened the screen door and gave me a little shove onto the porch. I couldn’t help feeling then like I wanted to cry, too, and started whining, but Mama shot me a threatening look. “Don’t you start with me, mister. I’ll give you something to cry about.” She looked up at the pale blue sky. “Besides,” she said, “it’s too nice a day to be in the house.” She went back into the apartment and eased the screen door shut behind her.
I sat down on the porch just as Karen started another one of her screaming fits from her playpen in the kitchen. I could hear Mama trying to quiet her, “Sshhhhhhh!” But Karen wouldn’t shush; she just got louder. I’d smelled poop just before Mama had made me go outside. Karen probably had messed her diaper. Mama kept shushing her. Then something heavy hit the wood floor in the bedroom, and I jumped. I knew it was Daddy. The wall next to me vibrated as he stomped across the floor and flung open the door. It sounded as if he’d ripped it right off its hinges. “Jesus Christ, Barbara!” he yelled out. “Do something about that goddamn crying!” He didn’t wait for Mama to answer, just slammed the door shut again and stomped back to the bed.
“I’m trying,” Mama said, shushing Karen some more.
I was glad I wasn’t inside after all.
The apartment building next door had a small room at one end with a washing machine and a sink. I could see the room from where I sat. A dark-haired woman was standing at the washing machine feeding wet clothes into the top part I’d heard Mama call the wringer. I watched as the yellow rollers took the clothes from the woman’s hand and squeezed all the water out. She pulled the flat, wrung-out clothes from the other side of the wringer and dropped them into a wicker basket. Then she carried the basket of damp clothes out to the clotheslines next to the building and began shaking them out and hanging them with wooden clothespins. She’d already hung a bunch of clothes on the white rope lines; sheets and towels and men’s shirts hung side by side upside down, limp in the hot sun.
I knew what would be fun! I’d help the woman wash her clothes! Mama would be so proud of me. I’d watched her do it; I knew I could do it myself without anyone having to show me how.
I got up from the porch and skipped across the grass yard to the washroom: the washer motor hummed and made a dull clank, clank, clank sound. I wasn’t tall enough to see into the washer tub, but I could hear the water sloshing around inside. Above the tub, the rubber wringer-rollers still turned.
I looked around for something to use as a stool. I was in luck: a couple of wooden soda-bottle racks were stacked against a wall in the small room. I turned them upside-down and pushed them over next to the washing machine. Then I climbed up and looked into the tub. There weren’t many clothes left in the dirty-looking water, a couple of shirts, maybe, and a few socks. I watched them sloshing around for a minute, my heart beating harder and harder. The agitator jerked back and forth, back and forth. I took a deep breath, then plunged my right hand into the hot water and grabbed up one of the shirts, heavy with water. I let most of the water drain from the shirt. Then I poked it toward the wringer where the two rollers met.
The shirt caught immediately, and I started to giggle—until I felt the rubber rollers clamp down on my fingertips, hard. A sudden, sickening realization washed over me like ice water: I’d forgot to let go. Instinctively, I tried jerking my hand back, but it was too late: my fingers were already disappearing into the wringer, then my knuckles, then the top of my hand.
I looked frantically toward the doorway and screamed, hoping to catch the woman’s attention. She pulled aside the sheet she was hanging and gazed in my direction, a confused look on her face. I screamed again. When she saw what was happening, her eyes grew wide and she pulled her hand to her mouth. But instead of coming to help me, she ran off to the side and disappeared.
I fell off of the wood soda racks, and dangled from the rollers which were quickly swallowing my arm, lifting me higher and higher off the floor. I was frantic. I kicked my legs and twisted my body and thrashed every which way. Nothing seemed to help. I knew that something horribly bad was happening, that my arm would be ripped from my body, or the rollers would swallow me up whole, spitting me out the other side, dead and flat.
Something seemed to catch fire under my arm, and I saw blood on the rollers. I’d been pulled up as far as I could go; now the wringer was tearing the skin from my armpit and upper arm. I tried to scream but couldn’t anymore. The rollers churned. Then a hissing sound came into my ears, and everything disappeared.
When I awoke, I lay on the wet floor of the washroom. The washing machine was on its side, toppled, I would learn later, by the force of my twisting and flailing. A man I had never seen before was guiding my mangled arm out from between the bloody rollers, which were now motionless and spread apart. Several other faces I didn’t know hovered behind the man. They all looked worried. My clothes were soaked. My right side, from my shoulder down to my ribs, was numb. Once again, everything disappeared.
When I woke again I was standing beside Mama at the foot of Mama’s and Daddy’s bed, holding onto her pants-leg for support. It was dark; the shades were drawn. Daddy was still sleeping, and I had the sudden terrifying thought that we shouldn’t wake him up, he’d be mad, maybe even take the belt to me. “Don’t wake him, Mama!” I said hoarsely.
Mama ignored me. “Bill, wake up,” she said. She grabbed one of Daddy’s toes sticking outside the sheet and pulled on it. Daddy grunted and jerked his foot away. “Billy’s been hurt!” Mama said. “Wake up!”
Daddy’s eyes flew open. He looked at us out of the corner of his eye. “Jesus fucking Christ!” he said. Mama and I both jumped back. “What is it now?!” He turned his head on his pillow and glared at us for a second, then started looking around the room. I thought he was looking for his belt. I felt suddenly sick to my stomach. “I’m sorry, Daddy!” I said. I started crying again. He looked at me, squinting in the dark. “What’s the matter with you?” Then he saw my arm. He shot a startled look at Mama, then threw off the covers and got up and came over to me for a closer look. “What happened?” Mama’s voice wavered as she told him about the washing machine. About how the woman had left me hanging in the wringer while she ran for help. Daddy lifted my arm to see underneath. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “This isn’t good. He’s all chewed—” He looked at Mama. “We’ve got to get him to a hospital.” He went to his dresser and pulled out a shirt and pants and hurriedly put them on. Mama said something about Debbie and Karen. “Never mind,” Daddy said. He sat down on the corner of the bed just long enough to tie his shoes. “I’ll take him myself. You stay here.”
He got up and Mama followed him out of the room. I shuffled along behind her. “Where are you going?” she asked him.
“To borrow a car,” he said. He glanced at me for a second. He looked almost scared. Then he walked out. The screen door slammed behind him.
Mama watched until she couldn’t see Daddy anymore. She turned and looked at me with narrow, angry eyes. “Idiot,” she said, shaking her head. Then she turned back toward the screen door and peered out to where Daddy had gone, chewing at the inside of her cheek.