Johnny Chen (soap_opera) wrote in burn_town, @ 2011-11-10 18:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | chinese launderer |
How-de-do Open Post
Zheng Yi made one last pass of the iron before setting it back on the rack to reheat. He took the shirt by the shoulder seams, lifting it with a sharp snap of starched muslin and folding it with the economy of motion that came from repeating a task over and over, day in and day out.
He set the finished garment aside and returned to the rack of flat irons, spitting on the top of one to test the temperature. The droplets sizzled and evaporated and Yi, satisfied, picked up the hot iron, a heavy pad of cloth wrapped around his palm to protect his hand from the uninsulated metal handle. Sweat beaded his brow; the laundry was a jungle, cloudy with steam.
Yi unrolled another shirt, the collar and cuffs damp with starch, and smoothed the iron over it. This was not the life his parents had dreamed of when they came to America, but it was a living, one of the few occupations open to Chinese immigrants. America put up cruel, arbitrary barriers, but still offered better opportunities than China had given them. All that washing and starching and ironing had paid for lessons; unlike his parents, Yi was literate. In Mandarin, and English, too.
He set the iron back on the rack with a muted clank, folded the shirt with another starchy snap. Yi was about to reach for yet another when the bell over the front door jingled. He wiped his face with a handkerchief and stepped through the archway into the storefront to wait on the customer, writing the order on a slip of paper. No tickee, no laundlee! He'd spent the majority of his life in Wyoming and spoke fluent English, but new customers always seemed to expect to be greeted by a coolie with a straw hat and a long queue, babbling in pidgin. What rankled the most, Yi often thought to himself, were the ones who didn't even notice that he failed to fit the image. It didn't matter how hard he tried. The color of his skin and the shape of his eyes marked him as foreign, yellow, a Chinaman: celestial, inscrutable... Invisible.
The customer left and Yi leaned on the counter, watching through the window as the man retreated down the street. There were advantages to being invisible. Johnny Chen saw everything, heard every snatch of gossip, pieced the whispers and rumors and chance glimpses into solid facts that he could use.
Here came another customer. Yi stood up straight. No loafing or slouching for him! He dropped his eyes respectfully as the customer entered, but not before he'd taken in every detail about them with one swift, searching glance.