Hashtag I too

Cyn Nooney

Dear Editor, Everyday Gazette:

Regarding the slanderous letter you published last week penned by my former staffer, allow me to set the record straight. He joined my employment willingly. I didn’t force him. In fact, I was shopping for groceries when he jumped into my cart. As an offspring of martyrs, I rarely seek help, yet when he began bagging my perishables separately from bread during checkout, I was deeply heartened, and yes, swayed. It was something I could get used to. When we got home, I showed him the laundry room downstairs. I’ll be very happy here, he said, thank you. We agreed that I would send meals down the chute, and he appeared content with the burlap sack I gave him for bedding. He came up to my knees. Called himself Twig.

To his credit, Twig got right to work—patching baseboards, killing spiders, fishing worms from the drain. He also did laundry—that was a given, that was why he was there. His folding skills were superb, though he appeared to care less about sorting. My snow-white bras soon became a mucky salmon. It should be noted most of us have laundrymen. The spouses don’t always know, nor the children, but I’m sure you agree not everybody needs to know everything.

When I approached Twig about the miserable tinge of my brassieres, he confessed to being a musician at heart—laundry wasn’t his true passion. He was only biding time until he could secure a record contract or session work, or at the very least, any gig involving tips.

A musician? I snorted. Please.

We all have our dreams, even lackeys I’ve learned, but it was clear from day one Twig had no sense of rhythm. Every morning I could hear him drumming away on the lid of the washer, which sounded more like violent hail than fleet-footed rain. Finally, to express my displeasure at the relentless (and talentless) racket—I bonked Twig on the rear end several times with a broomstick, and then once on his pointy head before he cowered in a corner, arms raised in surrender. The tears squeezing from his ferrety eyes were a put-on, I deduced, though I’m aware artists possess the wispiest of constitutions. In any event, I forbade him from playing music of any nature. He was there to work. Not create.

On the night in question, which Twig grievously misrepresented in the letter you so carelessly printed in the newspaper, he proceeded to strike the bottom of my steam iron with a large silver spoon shortly after 3 a.m. Naturally, this went against my wishes, and the sound had the melancholy register of A minor. Twig knew full well I’d come running at such a hideous hour while the rest of my family slept through the off-tune clattering, just as they do through beeping smoke alarms and tornado sirens. I scurried to the basement in nightie and slippers, my hair mimicking Mozart’s, wrapped in Saran on the sides, and said, What the—?

Twig told me he’d awakened from a dream in which he’d been captured and couldn’t escape. You’re perfectly safe here, I assured him. Well fed. He raised his eyebrows at the last part, said he’d like to start eating at the table rather than scoop food from the chute.

That’s not going to happen, I said—you’re nothing but a laundryman. I felt slightly feral saying that, but I felt it my duty to be firm.

I’m tired of scutwork, he said.

Who isn’t? I replied, observing he’d used up another jug of liquid Tide. That was twice in one week. The Bounce dryer sheets needed replenishing too. I wondered whether he’d been satisfying himself with these, and I envisioned a rash. Suddenly, Twig seized my leg like an inspired terrier. He was furry and soft, and reminded me of my college boyfriend. I shook him off, put him in the dryer, and said, Sleep there!

I’m not going to untangle your husband’s scurvy boxers ever again, he yowled through the door.

I hope the boogieman gets you, I said.

It’s amazing how quickly gratitude can evaporate, isn’t it? Twig wanted for nothing. Yet there he was, wanting more.

I’m going to form a union! he cried. I’ll round up every laundryman in town!

I bent down. Cracked open the hatch. Listen, I said, I’ll let you out only if you stop threatening me. When Twig exited, he looked sheepish, contrite. For a treat I let him nuzzle me down south. He had to stand tippy toed on top of a footstool, but he did a nice job.

During that time, I imagined bringing him strawberry crepes on a tray, but promptly after noodling my sleepy hollow with his tongue, he announced he would no longer wash my cotton leggings because they do nothing for my mop-handle legs, and the frothy tops I favor are intended for people much younger, and fit. These criticisms were hurtful enough but when he went on to say it wasn’t his fault that I wasn’t finding love upstairs—that issue is much bigger than I, hoho, said he—I kicked him off the footstool and shredded his gunnysack.

Shut up, I said. How dare he! Talk of that nature is criminal.

I’ll have you know, Dear Editor, that my husband and I get along same as other couples do.

According to the letter that you recklessly printed for the whole town to view (apparently fact-checkers are a thing of the past?), Twig is in search of new employment as well as hassle-free housing. My intention is to warn the residents of our beloved community: Do not fall for Twig’s cagey tactics, unless you want your own dirty laundry aired in public.

His commitment to fiction with all its outlandish fabrications will only make you question yourself, and what, exactly, it is that you most desire.

Tepid Regards,
The Queen of Suffering

Cyn Nooney’s work has appeared in CRAFT, Chestnut Review, Ursa Minor, Fractured Lit, New Flash Fiction Review, New York Times, and elsewhere. She was the 2022 winner of ScreenCraft’s Cinematic Short Story Competition and runner-up of the 2020 Anton Chekhov Prize for Short Fiction. Her work has been supported by Vermont Studio Center, Community of Writers, and Iowa Writers’ Summer Workshop. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, earned an MFA from Pacific University, and is a submission reader at Electric Literature. Read more at cynnooneywriter.com.