The Gentle Art of Sock Balling

Highly Commended in TSS Publishing Flash 400 Competition

I’m watching my clothes revolve. Trying not to sink into the grey concrete in my mind. The worries of no job or stable home. Nothing filling my wallet except receipts. There’s a lull at the laundrette, just me here and the service wash woman – ponytail, overall and a name badge, Jude.  

She folds towels in perfect squares and t-shirts in soft lines. Her sock balls round as globes. I notice her hands as she’s working, I’m curious about the one that’s missing three fingers. It might be rude to ask, so I say.

‘Do you have a washing machine at home?’

She laughs. ‘Nope, don’t need one.’

Why is that funny? I don’t know why it is, but I’m laughing, too.

‘How comes neither of us have washing machines, Jude?’ 

She tugs a tangle of wet clothes from a top loader and says, ’Well you don’t need one either because you got ten right here. What’s your name?’

‘Gerry Boyle.’

‘Gerry Boyle, I got a ton of bedding from the motel to fold. Would you?’

She hands me a sheet corner. I step five paces back to straighten it then return towards her. We do this like a dance, must be forty times. We fold those broad white suckers in halves, thirds, quarters, until they look like they’re new in a packet. Jude thanks me with her smile and a custard creme.

I start dropping in on Mondays, when jumbles of bedding arrive at the laundromat and hog all the washers and dryers. And while they slosh and spin and tumble, Jude and I sit by the change machine and share a can of Sprite. Then the folding starts.

And when we finish the stack, Jude says … ‘Thank you for rescuing me, Gerry.’

We’re sweaty from the heat stuck in the sheets. She’s pink-faced like a ripe summer berry. And I’m standing paralysed, hot hands in my pockets thinking …  I felt useful, Jude. For a while, I had a purpose.

And she meets my eyes, shoves a plastic basket full of socks into my hands and says, ‘Ball them for me please, Gerry Boyle.’

So I smile, and I do.