I been using a washboard since I was eight Cutting up the fels-naptha with a paring knife One tub to wash The other to rinse Hanging on the line and then Shaking out the stiff wrinkles In the half-frozen dawn
Sunrise sure looked pretty, All pink and orange and gold I used to shiver but not from the cold Thinking of scrubbing and rubbing My hands raw Bending and stooping As my heart grew old
Not my body though! I knew how beautiful I was But I also knew how Dangerous was love Both the making and bearing of children Lord knows how it rips you up Shreds your most tender parts Screaming bleeding flesh! I don't think about it much And anyway, it ain't always About love - making babies and Soiling clothes
A while back there were six of us In the house With the boys, when they were home Wash day came twice a week then When they brought home That machine, It's true it got a little Easier but it still took me The better part of two days
When the little ones visited, laundry day Was every day I didn't mind then - they Were bright as sunshine those Children No mark of my agony on them
My granddaughter is having her first Baby now and she does complain, There are piles of damp, rumpled Towels, and men's shirts ***** and stained For her to attend to, they Constrain her Conference calls and Computer time - Once I caught her sobbing About the endlessness of it all
And the invisibility! The humiliating impossibility! She hasn't even realized it yet But I won't tell her about that, She'll see soon enough There's no quarter for dreams For girlhood Snuffed by that one First scream The one that is stifled In the dark Under his weight The night of the wedding And never heard again
Oh, the centuries of Drudgery I carry in my cells The wails of grandmothers And their dozens of children - The ones who lived Blotting out the memory Of babies who died - All that! For such a short life!
I don't want her to know the enormity of it One day soon, She will understand all too well And like seasons, The inevitability will break her heart