THE FIRST TIME I THOUGHT I WAS DYING IN AMERICA
The first time I thought I was dying in America was on a street that was just a number.
No name, just 4th Avenue.
Maybe I would have preferred a Magnolia Boulevard, Pacific Crescent or Grand Parade be the geography of my end.
Perhaps murder tourists of the future would marvel at pot-bellied oak trees lining the handsome road leading to the gruesome scene.
But you can’t plan or curate these things.
Death is not Instagram.
The first time I thought I was dying in America, I learned the language of coin laundries. Like Polari or secretarial shorthand or French, it’s understood only by those who frequent it, but doesn’t have the traditional words or an alphabet to speak of.
Coin laundry language is a trade in stares.
The first was from the stringy dropout who greeted me at the door of the Dollar Discount Wash on 4th Avenue. She was by sitting in its entrance, rocking on her own pelvis and staring further ahead than exists. There’s nowhere that far away. Nothing. No Taco Bells or broken Tide machines. No taped paper signs or sun-peeling windows. This particular coin laundry sat on a chipped plastic cup intersection that had all of the above.
Inside, a quick sidestep past Rocking Woman’s conversation with the sun, I was greeted by another figure. Less jittery, more deep lead and hung eye sockets, she was bent over a shuddering machine, already mid-cycle, when I walked in with my load prettily strung around my shoulders. Of course, I’d packed it all in bright tote bags and carried it like a Christmas tree sent to the wrong address in the middle of June.
The woman inside wasn’t rocking like the one at the door but something about it disturbed me even more. Her stillness seemed inappropriate, given the circumstances of the Dollar Discount Wash. She said nothing as I shuffled towards the soap machines but her eyes followed my every twitching move. A quick glance told me they were red-ribboned with a lifetime of bad credit, underpaying jobs and a weather beaten marriage that drove fast, asked for change for gas then dropped her here, on the side of a road that could easily be any other. A story of unbeautiful luck. Not all bad luck, not all good, but something in between that’s hard to look at, like a dirty mirror in a clean house.
She watched me with a focussed attention I imagined some scratch-throated women crave from their CNN husbands. A consideration that tracked me as I scowled deeper to look practised at these kinds of places, this kind of atmosphere. Surely, a frown would warn her that I was a local or something like it, a thing more practised at survival than it would appear. At the coin exchange, humbled in the wall by a short and brutal life at the hands of America’s fastest fists, I put in a $20 note, half expecting the machine to be reasonable and dispense a mix of quarters and the rest in notes. Rather, its silver tongue slurped the note and a cacophony of quarters pinged against the metal tray for what sounded like a full chorus of eternity. The soundtrack to a certain death.
I crouched to scoop the coins into one of the less useful pockets of my backpack, reeking with apology, and felt her rise behind me.
You know, these machine cost $7.50.
If you wait for the other ones here, they’re only $2.
Only $2, see?
By now, she’d stalked around to see how I would handle the news of the broken Tide machine. I didn’t know what to say so I just kept shovelling loudmouthed coins. Was she telling me about the $7.50 to see if I would shrug the price off casually, pointing to a lifetime of generational silver quarter coin laundry wealth, ripe for the mugging? Or was she offering me her cheaper machine in good faith, because there wasn’t any Tide and knew how that felt? I found myself hoping she was a woman of God, stealing sideways glances at her neck for signs of a small but sentimental cross hanging there. I’d never wished anything like that for anyone.
I looked down at my shoes that were too white, my shorts too high around my thighs, my hair less practical than was reasonable for an errand. She didn’t move. Then, she started to laugh. A hacking hard time cough that rose up from a deep well of rot and alcohol. What the fuck had I done? This was bigger than me.
See?
She croaked, gesturing to her successful load of limp dark wet things, holding them like the head of a large sodden corpse.
Only $2.
I winced a smile in anticipation of a punch to the cheekbone or the cool tip of a gun. The metal would feel nice for a moment before feeling itself would stop.
At that moment, I felt something erupt in my side and I bolted for the entrance but as I careened towards it, a loud booming voice opened the door and I slipped out on its first chorus of
MARY, WHAT THE HELL YOU DOING HE-
I walked home with my eyes trained on the ground that looks like spit tobacco until I could hear the harbour and a university lawn swims up under my shoes. Checked my side for bullet holes but it seemed the gash I’d felt was just panic ripping a hole in my better judgement.
As I paced, I thought about a conversation I’d had with an Uber driver in Nashville about the divide in America.
It’s huge, you know
she nodded, knowing I didn’t.
The line between the have’s and have-not’s, you know.
No.
And it’s only getting worse. It’s in the heart now. It’s in our hearts.
I’d drifted off in the backseat on the soft leather, which now looked like the burned skin of oil field workers and overpriced gas station attendants and fry cooks.
But now, I knew she was right.
The first time I thought I was dying in America, I was actually attending a funeral.
In memoriam of the American Dream, a small service is being held at a coin laundry - corner of 4th and Main, St Petersburg, Florida.
No flowers by request.
All detergent donations welcome.
TN