Mother's Helper

View of neighboring
 buildings from the
courtyard

The first night home was predictably chaotic for the young family, providing little satisfaction and less sleep for everyone. I was happy to do whatever I could the next morning to introduce order and ease. Lucy and Yves did their part: They had productive discussions about needing to impress upon young Phillipe the difference between night and day. They began to observe, too, when Phillipe wants to nurse, and when he needs to satisfy his burgeoning curiosity and just wants a bouncing tour of his new digs.

Lucy's need was for a round of clean baby clothing and blankets. Under normal circumstance, the once-a-week services of their maid (or the maid's daughter or cousin) suffices to keep household laundry under control. But a tiny newborn makes an enormous change in the volume of dirty clothes and urgency for clean ones. Of course I was happy to pitch in: I was planning to wash my underpants anyway.

It is frowned upon to put one's undergarments in the washing for the maid. At least you can do that for yourself. That excepted, when she comes, she renders the apartment spotless and gleaming. She sweeps, dusts, cleans and sanitizes the bathrooms and kitchen; she does all the dishes and puts them away. In the courtyard, the maid washes the weeks' accumulated laundry—bed linens and towels included—by hand and hangs everything to dry. She does the laundry first so by the time she leaves at the end of the long day, most will be dry and she can fold it.

This young woman came when Lucy was still in the hospital and knocked on the window. Not having a clue who she was, I followed my instructions to send strangers away and I did so. But she returned with Coco, who explained her need to be let in, so of course I complied. We smiled, nodded, bowed and conducted an extended, apologetic pantomime of sincere good will. I quickly understood that my verbal regrets were in vain. It wasn't because she couldn't penetrate my appalling French accent, nor was it the incomprehensibility of hers to me. It was that she speaks only Wolof, which is very funny French indeed.

So. Yesterday I undertook the laundry, about half a load by American standards. First, dump the clothes that can be washed with the usual detergent into the tub and run the cold water (no option of hot) in with what appears to be enough Madar to bubble. Madar is a household cleaner one uses for laundry, the floor, dishes—anything dirty.

Then you bend over and scrub, item by item. There was no washboard, as I've seen many women employ, so this was just thorough hand scrubbing, with extra effort for inexperience. I had a goodly accumulation of my own things to do, plus Lucy was persuaded to let me do hers as well.

After the scrubbing, I poured the soapy water down the adjacent drain and began rinsing each item under the tap as it filled the tub anew, on low flow. Of course it's important to rinse very thoroughly one's underwear of the same detergent one will later use to exterminate the ants on the kitchen floor. Rinsing is a time-consuming process and ends with the improving exercise of mighty wringing.

That was the adult laundry. Then there were the baby's clothes and blankets. These required the use of mild baby soap which I lovingly applied to each garment inside and out: Inside for poop and pee, outside for spit up. After washing thoroughly, I once again poured the soapy water down the lazy drain and started the refill the tub, again rinsing each item under the tap. I didn't have to adjust the flow from the spigot this time; only a trickle came out until nothing came out at all. Damn! Another water cut.

Off to the kitchen to heft ten liters of tap water outside to finish up with. But then, when I was on that final soaking tub, Yves came out to say that the water I'd been pouring down the drain was forming a big, sudsy puddle out in the street. The maid (the real maid) poured each tub of used water down the toilet. "What?" She really hauled that huge tub back inside, down the hall, around the door and poured it down the toilet every time? What a woman! Yves took up my final rinse and manfully relieved me of the effort.

In all, it took me around five hours to do what the housemaid would have done in maybe one or two. My New Year's resolution is to get faster and to haul my own water to the toilet.

"Little Orphan Annie has come to our house to stay,
To wash the cups and saucers up and brush to crumbs away;
To shoo the chickens off the porch and dust the house and sweep,
To bake the bread and make the bed and earn her board and keep."

That's the first stanza of a James Whitcomb Riley poem my mother used to recite to me, the first poem I ever knew. I think it was because the girl's name was Annie that she associated it with me. I don't feel like Little Orphan Annie, for I'm proud and interested in my housekeeping tasks here, manifestations of my love, and fulfillments of my curiosity about how other people do things. Most other people do things harder ways than we do, and that's for sure. Wash the laundry in a tub under the spigot one day and you will respect the labor of people can achieve nothing grander in life than keeping order.