– “Mom asked you to do the laundry, so you’re doing it!” Sergey declared. He had no idea that all those bags were going right back.
– “Mom asked you to do the laundry, so you’re doing it!” Sergey declared. He had no idea that all those bags were going right back.
– “Are you seriously looking at these bags right now like I brought you bricks? Mom asked for a wash. Is that really so hard?”
Sergey dropped two huge plaid bags by the door without even taking off his jacket. A dirty gray track from the hallway tiles immediately smeared across the floor—the snow on the soles of his shoes had melted, mixed with sand, and tracked right up to the doormat. I stood there holding a mug of coffee, looking not at the bags, but at his face. He spoke as if he had already decided everything and my only job was to be informed.
– “Your mom has a washing machine,” I said.
– “Her spin cycle is weak.”
Sergey walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and peered inside with the air of a man returning from a grueling shift. Even though he hadn’t dragged those bags an inch from the bus stop: he’d driven them in his car, brought them up in the elevator, and dumped them right at my feet.
The sleeve of a men’s shirt was sticking out of one bag. Not his. Sergey didn’t wear short-sleeved shirts. In another bag, right on top, lay a curtain from the kitchen of Galina Pavlovna, his mother. I recognized it by the brown squares: one just like it had been hanging above her sink ever since we got married.
– “Seryozha, these aren’t just your mom’s things.”
He pulled a container of buckwheat out of the fridge, lifted the lid, and winced.
– “Whose else are they?”
– “Judging by the shirt, not hers.”
– “Ira stopped by Mom’s and left a couple of things. Don’t start.”
That “don’t start” of his always showed up before I even had time to form a grievance. Such a convenient phrase. You could use it to slam the lid on any conversation just like a pot: the steam would still find a crack, but it would be quieter in the kitchen for a while.
I put my mug down on the table.
– “I’m working until nine today. Then I need to finish my report. I am not doing other people’s laundry.”
Sergey turned to me, the container still in his hands.
– “Lida, seriously, don’t embarrass yourself. It’s just clothes, not a heroic feat. Toss it in the machine and forget about it.”
He said it so casually. As casually as people talk who have never dragged wet duvet covers out of the drum, never hung other people’s towels all over the apartment, never pulled socks off a drying rack that even their owner wouldn’t want to see in broad daylight. To him, laundry was just a button. To me, it was time, detergent, water, space, labor, and somebody else’s smell in my bathroom.
I ended up doing the laundry that night anyway.
Not because I agreed. Out of that exhaustion where it’s easier to just do it than explain to someone why you don’t have to. I ran two loads in the middle of the night. By morning, the bathroom was hung with shirts, a curtain, towels from someone else’s kitchen, and Galina Pavlovna’s bathrobe. The hallway air was thick and humid. My dress, the one I was planning to wear to a meeting, was still left in the hamper. There was neither space nor time left for it.
Sergey left for work looking pleased. On his way out, he kissed me on the temple and said:
– “See? It’s no big deal.”
I watched the door close behind him and, for the first time, thought about how terrifying things rarely start with screaming. More often, they start with the phrase “it’s no big deal,” spoken on your behalf.
A week later, there were four bags.
Sergey hauled them in on Friday evening. He dropped one by the door, dragged two into the bathroom, and left the fourth by the wardrobe because there wasn’t enough room in the entryway. Bulging out of the bags were bedsheets, towels, his nephew’s kids’ jacket, his sister Ira’s sweatpants, and a white blouse tied in a knot like it had been ripped off right in the middle of the room and tossed aside without a second thought.
– “What is this?”
I asked calmly, but Sergey still heard something in my voice he didn’t like. His shoulders immediately tensed up.
– “Mom asked. Her machine is acting up again.”
– “And Ira?”
– “Ira has kids. It’s hard for her.”
– “I have a job.”
– “Everyone has a job, Lida.”
He said this in a different tone now. Not pleading. Bossy.
I walked into the bathroom. My own things were lying in the hamper, pressed up against the wall by someone else’s bag. On top of the washing machine sat a box of detergent I had bought yesterday. Sergey had opened it himself without asking. On the edge of the sink lay a note in Galina Pavlovna’s handwriting: “Whites separate. Curtains no spin. Ira’s blouse by hand.”
I picked up the note with two fingers.
– “Did she send an instruction manual along too?”
Sergey stepped up behind me.
– “Don’t be snarky. Mom’s just organized.”
– “Organized people do their own laundry.”
He let out a sharp breath.
– “That’s not how it’s done in my family.”
That’s when I turned around.
It was cramped in the bathroom. Between us stood the hamper with my things, looming right over it was a bag of his relatives, and this whole tiny room suddenly became a precise picture of our marriage. My space was entirely taken up by other people’s needs. And Sergey stood there explaining that this is the way it has to be because “that’s how it’s done” in their world.
– “Well, in my family, it’s not done to bring dirty laundry into someone else’s home and appoint the woman of the house without her consent.”
He wanted to fire back quickly, but couldn’t find the words. He only took the note from my hand, smoothed it out with his thumb, and shoved it onto the shelf.
– “At least wash Mom’s stuff today. The rest can wait.”
– “No.”
The word came out short, but it wasn’t empty. It stood between us like a stool in front of a door: small, but impossible to walk past.
Sergey looked at me as if I had shattered not his plan, but the entire natural order of things.
– “Are you picking a fight over a bunch of rags…?”
The continuation is in the first c0mment
