Aimee-Jane Anderson-O’Connor
Laundromat
Eve is sitting on the sharp plastic seat and watching the barrel spin. She tastes lemon stain remover in the air like spring. The glass door is a black static halo. Her towels lighten and leap, turn her face red and yellow and blue. Her underwear falls to the front in flashes like sprat. The radio plays Christian Rock from the top right corner of the room, out of reach of vandals and atheists. Out of reach of Eve. Her pockets jangle with tokens. Bright gold spit-polished sunshine. No Cash Value. She is watching the green flicker-hum of the clock. Letting her eyeballs just hang out, wrung jelly on pink stems. She pulls her washing out and headphones come too, warm and soft, and still unwinding. She shakes the hot buds and they rattle. Eights ghost the empty display and Eve is a hollow drum. She drags her hip-hugger basket across the floor and works her worn towels into hotel rolls. She pairs socks and slips them inside one another. She stuffs her bra to the bottom of the pile. She takes a t-shirt and folds it lengthwise. Yearns for an iron-warm spine. She empties her pockets onto the floor with a rattle. Takes her left shoulder with her right hand and folds herself in half. Falls into the basket with a muffled thud.
Diagnostics
Eve perches on the edge of the moss-green couch and tells her grandad about how the car is making a new noise. Only sometimes, when it rains, when it idles, when she’s waiting at the slow red light on Mill Street. She’s recorded the sound on her phone, hung her hand out the window and pressed it to the hood like a stethoscope. In his lounge it sounds so small, gets swallowed up by the spearmint carpet. He closes his eyes to hear it better, and they both lean in. Can you hear it? she says. She stops the recording. Folds her hands in her lap. It’s like this. She looks at her fingernails and whistles like a hatchling.
Aimee-Jane Anderson-O’Connor was awarded the 2018 Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Essay Prize, and was the co-winner of the 2017 Monash Prize for Emerging Writers. Her work has appeared in a number of literary journals, including Starling, Mayhem, Poetry New Zealand, Landfall, Mimicry, and Min-a-rets. She writes thanks to the tireless support of some of the best people on this great watery rock.