Saturday is Ma’s one full day off, but she treats it like a workday, which means it’s a workday for me, too. Groceries. Laundry. Cooking. Cleaning. It’s a full day of gearing up for the next week, and the only part of it that feels like any kind of time off is being at the Laundromat.

I like the Laundromat. I like the way it smells, the way it sounds, the way it’s noisy and quiet and busy and still all at the same time.

The folks who use it are interesting, too. They’re fun to watch because you can tell they’ve got stories, which I try to piece together from the way they act and the things they say and do.

What kind of ruins the Laundromat for me, though, is Ma. She’ll fidget and frown and flip through one abandoned magazine after another without reading much of anything. Once in a while she’ll get up to check the machines to see how much longer it’s gonna be.

“Wish I had a good book,” she’ll grumble when she goes past me. Or, worse, she’ll nose in and say, “What are you writing?” when I’m scribbling fast on a story.

One time I sat a bit away from her and tried to pretend she was a stranger, just to see what story I might put together from watching her. I couldn’t get past knowing her, though, and then she went and slapped down her magazine and said, “What are you doing?”

I guess my spy-eye wasn’t being too sly.

I’ve also tried a bunch of times to get her to go do the other errands and let me watch the clothes, but she always does a leery-eye around the place and whispers, “I’m not leaving you with derelicts and drifters, Lincoln.”

I tell her, “They’re just doin’ their laundry,” but what I always get back is a highfalutin “Mm-hmm” and a look that says my mind’s turned to mud.

The day we got shut out by Mrs. Graves and her cats, though, Ma seemed different at the Laundromat. She wasn’t flipping through magazines or pacing around. She was just sitting there, staring off into space.

“What, Ma?” I finally asked, ’cause her being so still was making it hard to concentrate on my new story, which was about a hunched old lady who magically transformed into a fierce and awesome ninja cat at night. Or maybe she was fierce and evil; it was too soon to tell.

But back to Ma.

I had to ask her, “Ma?” again and give her a little shake before she turned to me and said, “What? Oh.” And then her face started doing this witchy-twitchy thing like she was either about to cry or trying to cast some sort of spell on me.

“Ma!”

The witchy-twitchy thing stopped. “How old are you?”

You better believe that sent worry shooting straight through me. Was working with old folks all day making her lose her mind?

Was crazy contagious?

“Ma!”

She swiped a hand in front of her face like she was erasing one thought and starting over with another. “What I mean is, are you going to remember all this?” She looked around the Laundromat. “How’s it going to settle in your mind?”

Her eyes were going all glassy, but I couldn’t figure out why. “What are you talking about?”

She turned her glassy eyes on me. “Are you going to look back and hate me?”

“Hate you? Why would I hate you?”

She shook her head. “I’m trying, Lincoln. Really, I’m trying.”

“I know that!”

She looked down at her hands. And after a long, quiet spell she said, “My life started going bad at eleven. It was almost surely goin’ bad before then, but I remember eleven being when I really started feelin’ it. Eleven’s when I started to see things.”

“Like what?”

“Like about my ma and the way she…the way she wasn’t there for us.” She shook her head. “And Lord, did I resent Ellie for steppin’ in.”

“I thought your ma was dead.”

“She is. But she was gone long before she died.”

Ma always steered clear of the subject of her ma, but now she was diving right in.

In public.

Comin’ clean in a Laundromat.

“Why you thinkin’ about all this?” I whispered. “Did something happen?”

“It’s just everything.” She wiped her eyes, and after another quiet spell she said, “I guess sometimes it’s the parents doing the abandoning, and sometimes it’s the kids.”

I chewed on that a minute, but it didn’t explain a thing. “What kids?”

Ma was digging through her bag. “I need to call Ellie,” she said, standing up with a fistful of coins.

Which made no kind of sense to me, either.

She started to hurry off but stopped long enough to shoot me a pair of arrow-eyes. “Don’t you ever leave me alone in a place with seventeen cats, you hear me, Lincoln Jones? Don’t you dare.”

Then she swept out the door.

—

A sly-eyed drifter came up to me while Ma was off phoning Aunt Ellie. “Spare some change?” he asked. He looked like he’d been shovelin’ dirt for about twenty years, so using money for a wash and dry would have been putting it to good use. But I could tell from his eyes that’s not where it’d be going. They were watery. And red. And when he blinked, it seemed slow and painful. Like his eyelids were lined with bits of sharp glass.

“Can you?” I asked back. “ ’Cause I got nothin’.”

I worked at making myself look bigger than eleven. Like, maybe, thirteen. And he did back off, but then he stood skulking around, checking me over with his painful eyes.

I tried to ignore him and get back to my story, but I couldn’t concentrate with him there. He was scary. Not in a big-bear way. More in a sneaky-snake way. Like any minute he might pull out a knife and strike.

“Git!” I finally told him. “I got nothin’!” It just sort of popped out and made me feel like I’d bit my own tail. To my surprise, though, he took one last painful look around, then left.

I played what had happened over and over in my mind, and it kept getting better. Soon I had teeth that were flashing like diamonds when I said, “Git!” and there were actual energy beams shooting from my eyes to his. Beams that could lift him off the ground!

By the time Ma came back, I had been made Supreme Leader of Laundrovania and was using my magic energy-eyes to excavate secret tunnels behind dryer portals—escape routes that the frightened citizens of Laundrovania could use if the Drifter returned with an army of derelicts.

“Sorry that took so long,” Ma said, getting busy folding clothes.

I hadn’t noticed the dryer’d stopped tumbling, but Ma didn’t scold me for slacking. She just set about folding like a machine, getting my T-shirts stacked while I got busy pairing up socks, wondering why she’d run off to call her sister. Her eyes looked a little puffy, but she was acting…solid. Like there might have been a leak, but now things were dammed up tight.

“You talk to her?” I asked.

“Mm-hmm,” she said. She smoothed out a T-shirt. Snapped out another. Folded it, too, then smoothed it flat.

“So?” I finally asked.

“So…we’re in a good place. Better’n we’ve been in years.” She snapped out another shirt. “Maybe ever.”

“So…she invite us for Thanksgiving?”

Ma laughed. “No, but that’s a good thing.” She slid a look my way. “Besides, I’m working, remember?”

I stared at her, then got back to sorting socks.

It was a whole lot simpler than sorting out Ma.