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    Recipes for Dirty Laundry
    Recipes for Dirty Laundry
    Recipes for Dirty Laundry
    Ebook47 pages37 minutes

    Recipes for Dirty Laundry

    By Priscila Uppal

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    About this ebook

    This short story is taken from the collection Cover Before Striking. The most common phrase in print is “cover before striking,” a warning to those about to innocently strike a match to be careful not to burn their fingers. Uppal’s characters in Cover Before Striking are all people pushing their lives to new levels of intensity, danger, or passion as they test their limits and those of the world. Implacable and just a little unhinged, the stories of Cover Before Striking each move toward that moment of contact when the sparks begin to fly, when destruction and beauty seem to blur together. With this collection, Priscila Uppal offers the literary equivalent of playing with fire.

    “Recipes for Dirty Laundry” was originally published in the TOK anthology Writing the New Toronto.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDundurn
    Release dateJul 4, 2015
    ISBN9781459732650
    Recipes for Dirty Laundry
    Author

    Priscila Uppal

    Priscila Uppal was an internationally acclaimed poet, prose writer, and playwright. A York University professor and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, she was the author of Ontological Necessities and Cover Before Striking. Her memoir, Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother, was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Prize and a Governor General’s Award.

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      Book preview

      Recipes for Dirty Laundry - Priscila Uppal

      Acknowledgements

      Recipes for Dirty Laundry

      Animal Stains: Apply vinegar and baking soda; then scrub.

      Rosa knows Teresa is the pretty one: she has more problems. Today it’s the bath. Water running, Rosa knows Teresa will be pouring in some of the red bubble bath that smells like raspberries her sister always finds enough money for when it’s on sale. Sometimes Rosa uses it, too, waiting patiently until all the bubbles disappear before calling for someone to take her out. Then, after Mamma or Teresa help her into a nightdress, she keeps the towel beside her, inhaling the faint scent of the berries on the cloth. Rosa only bathes on Sundays, but Teresa bathes whenever she wants.

      Today the bath is a problem, Rosa can tell. Her bedroom is beside the bathroom since it’s easier for her to go in the middle of the night. She can hold on to the walls until she reaches the Virgin Mary in a light blue-and-white frock, eyes and hands pointing to the heavens in prayer. It is a good picture, and Rosa, in the dark of the night, always knows which door is the right one. Today, lying down on her single bed, she can hear a faint sobbing from the Virgin Mary’s direction like the hum from her old radio. She decides to get up, pushing against the guardrail for leverage.

      Rosa slides her leg over the end of the bed where the guardrail doesn’t intrude and puts on her brace, attaching the straps across her calves, slipping her fingers through the steel wires. She can tell where the straps should be from the marks over and under her knees, slightly darker than the rest of her skin, pressed like pleats in linen. She tries to be quiet. She doesn’t want Mamma to catch her taking a peek at her sister, which she likes to do when Teresa bathes. If the door is locked, she returns to her own bed, wraps her wool blanket around her shoulders, and looks through one of her picture books, her favourite about a small girl in a red dress who meets a wolf in the forest. Resting the book across her chest, she imagines herself skipping off down a path in a forest to the washroom where Teresa is and pushing her fingers in front of her nose, imagines the smell of bubble bath or leg cream, all flowery and sweet. Then sometimes Rosa pretends to shave her legs, the way she has seen Teresa do it, propping her ankle on the bed board instead of the edge of the tub and scraping against her skin with a hairbrush. She even moans quietly, the way Teresa does once in a while, splashing the water just over her skin, hands hidden and eyes closed, cheeks flushed and breathing heavily, a sound like the soft and quick bursts made when trying to open a stuck can lid.

      Rosa has to use both hands to keep her leg straight when she drops it lightly on the carpet to make her way to the washroom. She can already imagine the back of Teresa’s head, her long hair like

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