I could see children and men and gardens in my hands. I looked into my own eyes and back down at my hands. For the first time our eyes met in the mirror, beneath DON'T OVERLOAD THE MACHINES. I saw him almost grin because he caught me staring at my own hands. Lady Bird Johnson going down the rapids.įinally he got me staring at my hands. It made me nervous, him watching me smoke and blow my nose, leaf through magazines years old. But then I began to wonder if he had something about hands. GOD GRANT ME THE SERENITY TO ACCEPT THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE. An old Indian staring at my hands through the dirty mirror, between yellowing IRONING $1.50 A DUZ and orange Day-Glo serenity prayers. Not directly, but into the mirror across from us, above the Speed Queen washers. He used to sit there sipping Jim Beam, looking at my hands. They skidded in the ripped linoleum and the sound hurt your teeth. I don't know how.įor months, at Angel's, the Indian and I did not speak to each other, but we sat next to each other in connected yellow plastic chairs, like at airports. She died on a Monday and I never went back to the San Juan. That was a terrible thing to ask of someone also then I had to do my laundry on Thursdays. She said that if I didn't see her on Thursdays it meant she was dead and would I please go find her body. One morning at the laundry she gave me a key and I took it. I was a young mother then and washed diapers on Thursday mornings. That was in New York at the San Juan Laundry on Fifteenth Street. Armitage had been different, although she was old too. I mean some days I'd go at seven on a Monday or maybe at six thirty on a Friday evening and he would already be there. The strange thing was that for a year or so we were always at Angel's at the same time. His hair white and long, knotted with raspberry yarn at his neck. A tall old Indian in faded Levi's and a fine Zuni belt.
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