The Americans

13 Pleasant Street

49 13 Pleasant Street What not to touch: boiling handkerchiefs, a leech beneath a flagstone, writhing. She scrubbed blood with ammonia, poured bleach on coffee or grass, fuller’s earth for oil or a splash of wine. Those were the days with pins in her mouth. In mine: C is for collar. D is for dress. Only our forks and spoons were stainless. She never let the wrong substance set. And where the birds sang over us their instructions, I stood with her while she pinned all our clothes in the wind, whatever we’d slept in, whatever shrank before the end of its season, our cottons, our towels and sheets— the way they moved, the way they moved. ...