After waiting by the key scanner for a few minutes, a hulky woman with short, curly brown hair called my name. Hearing her deep voice say “Johnny” through those thin, red lips made me quiver.
“Come on, son, it’s time to get domesticated,” she said. “I’m going to make such an honest man out of you, your lady friend will be impressed!”
Laura giggled and wished me good luck on my first day of work. I walked toward the manly lady with my tail between my legs, feeling emasculated. When I reached her, she harshly patted my back and then put her arm around me. Right now, I couldn’t have thought of anything more disturbing, but, unfortunately, it got worse. She walked with her arm around me all the way to the laundry room. When someone passed by, she’d tell them that I was her new boyfriend, and they congratulated her. Sometimes she pulled me in really close like she was going to kiss me, and I almost suffocated in her boobs.
“I have many boyfriends, Johnny, so you’re going to have to share,” she said before unlocking the laundry room.
“What do I call you?”
“You can call me Mama.”
“Is there anything else I can call you?”
She slammed me up against the door with her brute strength, grabbed me by my uniform, and lifted me off the ground with one hand. With her face only about an inch away from mine, she said, “Am I not good enough to be your mama?”
“I’m sure you’re a perfectly good mama, but I already have a mama,” I said shakily.
“I’m your mama now,” she said before she released me.
I took a few deep breaths to try to calm down.
“Now that that’s all cleared up, let’s start our tour,” she said.
We walked into the laundry room, which was a huge room full of lined-up washers on the left and dryers on the right.
“As you can see, you have your washers on the left and dryers on the right. Straight ahead is the dry cleaning station. Over there, we have detergents, softeners, stain stick, you name it. And lastly, on the other side, we have the ironing and sewing stations. As members of laundry services, we pride ourselves on giving everyone a crisp, clean uniform. You, my love, will be responsible for collecting all the dirty laundry in the entire building and delivering the clean laundry back to its owners. But wait, that’s not all…You are also responsible for sorting the dirty laundry. For example,” she paused, grabbed a dirty uniform out of the pile, and put it on a hanger, “when I receive a naughty uniform, I hang it up on this rack and observe what’s wrong with it. Are there stains or holes in it? If there are stains, rub some stain stick on it, and throw it in the pile to be washed. If there are holes, it goes in a separate washing pile, which is then given to the sewers after it’s dry. All the orange uniforms, towels, and bedding get washed and dried, but everything else gets dry cleaned. Your job is very important, Johnny, so if you screw up, we all screw up, and you’ll take the heat for it. It’s all about sorting things into the right piles so we know what to do with it and picking up and dropping off laundry on time. Do you have any questions?”
“Do people have more than one uniform?”
“Yes, and you’ll be delivering the second uniform to the new arrivals later today. I also want to let you know that every morning you will start your day by collecting everyone’s dirty birdies, then you will sort, and two hours before closing, you will deliver the clean beans. People will let you know they have dirty birdies by leaving their laundry outside their doors. When you return their clean beans, you will leave the laundry on the floor, folded up in a bag. If you have any more questions, I will be sitting at my desk.”
She finally left me alone, so I began sorting the dirty laundry into piles. That lady was repulsive, possibly more repulsive than the strong smell of body odor that came from these dirty uniforms. With each uniform I took off the pile, the smell got stronger, and fanning the uniforms out on a rack made it worse. I could feel my breakfast coming up on me, so I stepped away from the pile and went over by the dryers where the air was cleaner.
“She’s a piece of work, right?” the man next to me said as he loaded the dryer. “You look a little green. Are you feeling all right?”
“The smell and her,” I said, putting my hands over my nose and mouth.
“Yeah, every newbie gets like that on their first day. After a while, you’ll get used to the smell, but I can’t say you’ll ever get used to her. Do a bad job, she’ll spank you naked. Do a good job, she’ll eventually marry you. Half the guys in here are her husband, not by choice, of course. She got like about forty of them, and fifteen were forced to consummate their marriage.”
For the first time, I realized that everyone around me was a man, and now I understood why. This lady was hoarding men of all different ages and making them do laundry (among other dirty things). I was seventeen; I didn’t want to be married anytime soon, especially to that horrifying woman, who was probably twenty years older than me. What if I was forced to lose my virginity to her? I didn’t know if I should try to do my job well or purposely be bad at it.
“Are you married to her?” I asked.
“No, we’re just engaged, see,” he said as he held out his hand. He wore a simple ring made from copper wire that was twisted together.
“What if you say ‘no’ to her?”
“Oh, you don’t want to do that. She’ll kill you. She’ll also kill you if she catches you with another woman.”
“Excuse me,” I said before walking away. “I’m going to pick up the dirty laundry, Mama,” I shouted.
“OK, don’t forget to take the rolling laundry hamper unless you want to carry it all with your bare hands,” she responded.
I quickly grabbed a laundry hamper and rushed out the door. I stopped by the cafeteria to pick up the kitchen’s dirty birdies, and I saw Veronica wiping tables. I pulled out a chair at the table behind her, sat down, and sighed.
“Hey Johnny, how’s your first day of work?” she asked.
“Not so good,” I responded. “I came here to get a break from it.”
Veronica sat down next to me and smiled, which was the first time I noticed the gap between her two front teeth. “The first few days are tough for everyone, but after you get used to what you’re supposed to do, it’s not so bad.”
She twisted her long, dark-brown hair around her finger as I gazed into her eyes like a summer moth attracted to a nightlight. At first glance, her eyes were brown, but a closer look revealed the honey pigments that helped her eyes glow beneath thick eyebrows. There was nothing artificial about Veronica; she glistened brightly with natural beauty untouched by makeup.
“Do you really believe that, or are you just telling me that to make me feel better? I don’t think I’ll ever get used to Mama as my supervisor.”
“I believe that you just have to make do with what you’re given until you have the opportunity to make it better.”
“Are you happy here?”
“Not particularly, but I can’t think of anything else I’d be doing with my life if I wasn’t captured and taken into Walnut Cherryville.”
“Why do you say that? There is a lot you could do with your life; the only problem is deciding what to do with it. I wouldn’t say that I have anything mapped out for mine, but I sure as hell wouldn’t be spending it here by choice.”
“You’re right,” Veronica chuckled. “Look at me: I wipe tables, serve food for a living, and somehow convince myself that I’m satisfied. When I was thirteen, my family fled from Mexico, trying to enter the United States. Everyone, except my brother and me, was shot down by border patrol,” she explained. “We were then captured and brought here to work. I’ve lost my roots, my family, everything, except my faith in the Lord.” She reached beneath her collar and pulled out a golden cross. “I snuck this in my bra when I found out they confiscated your clothing. Where would you be if you weren’t here?”
“I’d be in Phoenix, Arizona, finishing my last year of correctional high school or poss
ibly repeating it,” I answered. “My grades were barely passing.”
“At least you got to go to high school. I haven’t been in school since I was thirteen, so I never got to experience it. I read a lot of books about people who went to high school, and it sounds fun.”
I laughed. “High school is filled with drama.”
“And this place isn’t?”
“You’re right; this place is full of drama, too.”
“Hey, we should ditch this place and go to the library.”
“You mean the entertainment room?”
“No, the Quinton family has a secret library where they keep all their banned books; it’s really cool. You should see it, come on,” she said, jumping out of her chair excitedly. She grabbed my hand, pulled me out of my chair, and raced to the door.
“Wait, I need the laundry hamper,” I said, and she let go. After I grabbed the cart, she led me to the elevator and pressed the up button. When the doors opened, we stepped in, and she entered a code into the keypad. The doors closed, and we began traveling up.
“Did you know that there is a forty-first floor on this building? I bet Kenneth didn’t tell you that on the tour.”
“No, he didn’t.”
The elevator doors opened, and we stepped into a room full of books. The bookshelves formed a maze lit by the sun beaming in from the skylight. I followed Veronica into the maze.
“Stay close, the maze is so long you could get lost and not be able to find your way out,” Veronica mentioned.
“How did you know about this place?”
“I have a friend; actually he’s more like a brother to me. Better than my flesh-and-blood brother whom you met yesterday. When I first arrived in Walnut Cherryville, I didn’t know any English, and I didn’t understand anyone when they were speaking to me. Most people got frustrated with trying to communicate with me, so they kept me out of their conversations, but Alejandro didn’t. He knew Spanish because like me, he is also a Native Mexican. He showed me this place because there are books in here that could help me learn English, so I wouldn’t get in trouble so much.”
I followed her into the next aisle.
“I love this section of the library,” she said, twirling around before she took a deep breath. “All the classics are in this section, and you can tell because this is where that musty book smell is the strongest. Some people judge books by their covers, but I judge books by their smell. There isn’t a scent any mustier than The Quinton Journals.”
At the end of the aisle, a locked glass case concealed three closed journals on display. The first was a leather-bound book filled with parchment paper that was placed near a steel nib with a wooden mount. The cover read James Quinton: Journey to Western Frontier. The second journal, titled William Quinton: World War Veteran, had a gray fabric cover with a spiral binding and rested next to a fountain pen. The last journal was a beige blood-stained hardcover book, titled Robert Quinton: The Business of Depression, accompanied by a ballpoint pen.
Veronica hovered over the glass case, nearly drooling on it. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a tiny silver key, and tested the lock, but it wasn’t the right fit. “Ever since I discovered that these journals were here, I’ve been collecting keys. One day I hope I find the right one, so I can open the case and read what these journals are about, but in a place like this, keys that don’t have barcodes are difficult to find.”
“The fact that someone locked up history this way probably means that person doesn’t want it falling into the wrong hands. It’s unlikely you’d just find the key floating around somewhere,” I said.
“I know,” she replied. “That’s why I’m trying to find a way to steal the keys, but I don’t know exactly who has them, so I steal from everyone. You can borrow any book in the library as long as no one notices that any of the books are missing. I should return some of the books I already read; they’re just piling up in my sleeping bag, and it’s getting uncomfortable.”
I laughed, and Veronica’s giggle chimed in. “You’re funny,” I said. “Have you ever tried to escape?”
“When I first got here, I tried to escape, but I didn’t really plan it out. I didn’t make it past the fence, and I’m lucky I didn’t, because I would have been executed. The punishment for escaping the village is harsh.”
“It won’t be if we’re successful. My friends and I are thinking about escaping. You should come with us.”
“Johnny, please don’t do something you’ll regret later.”
“But think about it, Veronica; you know a lot about this place, and that could be really helpful in developing an escape plan. Besides, do you want to live the rest of your life here in Walnut Cherryville without getting a chance to see what else is out there?”
“Where would we go?”
“Anywhere you want,” I said. “I promised my friends we’d get out of here.”
“I will think about it and get back to you,” she said as she smiled. Veronica looked at the clock on the wall. “We should hurry up; I don’t want our supervisors to notice we’re missing.”
“But I haven’t found a book yet.”
“I think I know just the right book for you,” she said as she hustled through the maze.
I followed her into the environmental section. The book she picked out for me was sticking out slightly from the others on the shelf.
“Take it and hide it in your uniform until you get to your room,” she said as she handed me a book titled Survival in the Desert. I stuffed it under my uniform before we went back into the elevator.
“Thanks for today, Veronica,” I said. “It was fun. See you later.” I walked out on the fortieth floor, looked back at her, and waved before the elevator started to close.
She smiled back at me and said “until tomorrow” before the elevator closed completely.
Before I started collecting dirty laundry, I took out the book from my uniform and read the back cover.
Explore the deserts of the world through colorful descriptions and lifelike photography. Survival in the Desert examines how all living organisms, from plants to humans, survive in the harsh desert environment.
I stuffed it back into my uniform. That looked like a good read and would be useful if we escaped from Walnut Cherryville successfully. Once we got out, we would have to face a whole new challenge of surviving in the desert until we found civilization.