Audrey was neck deep in chores, a typical Thursday afternoon. She had mowed what little grass they had in the front yard, as the landlord was too cheap to have proper maintenance for the townhomes. Then she had been doing the dishes, during which she had asked each of dear sisters, cousin, and best friend to kindly get their laundry down the chute if they needed it washed. Audrey thought she had been clear. She shouldn’t have had to go searching for hampers. Nor been blessed with the column of week old laundry that had piled up below the chute, jamming it with a tower of soiled clothes.
“Everyone is so lucky that I do this!” Audrey fumed over the rumble of a dryer load as she scrubbed to work out stubborn stains before the pre-wash. She suddenly felt sorry of her parents when she and her sisters had been kids. Love meant learning about others more than you wanted too. You could get no worse of dirty laundry than dirty laundry and Audrey had seen all of it.
From Reagan’s skanky underwear to Phoebe’s childish throwbacks, to Ixchel’s mind-breaking shirts with references Audrey didn’t understand, to the unfortunate aftermath when Uma was going commando.
Laundry was once a week because it took Audrey that long to get the smell out of her mind. The combined odors of five women could be too much sometimes.
Audrey knew more about everyone’s fashion statements and intimates than she cared to, week after week of being the only one to do laundry. Well, that wasn’t fair. Phoebe had wanted to surprise her and finish the laundry before her older sister was forced to finish it.
Only that had left the colored dyes bleeding into the whites, bleach mixed in with the darks, Audrey’s favorite floral print shirt five sizes too small, and for days afterwards no pairs of socks could be partnered together.
So laundry was Audrey’s expertise. She knew the lifespan of every article of clothing from its date of purchase to when it finally gave up the ghost. It gave Audrey textile-based intel on each of her roommates. The double-duty dirty laundry.
Today, however, the laundry was painting Audrey a very different picture. From frayed ends and stretched seams, the telltale signs that one of the women in the house was gaining weight.
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