Ethiopia: White Lady Scrubbing (cont.)

“Yeat no?” I ask, feigning ignorance just to carry on the conversation.  Where?

The little boy on my left points ahead with his free hand.  “Wuha!” he shouts with a grin.  Water!  My little companion, equal parts dust and enthusiasm, escorts me into the hall.

“Sara, Sara!  Ciao!”  A small crowd of children rush to my side as though I had a load of sugar cane strapped to my back.  They bounce and bounce in a semi-circle in front of me.

“Ciao, ciao.  Dehna nachu?”

It is bath day indeed.  Heaps of soggy, once-white towels cover the lunch tables.  A long line of loud, unruly children in various stages of undress snakes along the back wall.  The children pinch and poke one another, play games, slap hands, and prop up younger brothers and sisters on hips and shoulders.  They sing and shout, holler and cry, and swing discarded pants and thread-bare shirts in wide arcs like helicopter blades. Yellow sunshine cuts through the shadows and warms the concrete floor.  It is then that I notice the concrete floor, rough and uneven—perfect for the scraping of knees and stubbing of toes.  It is then that I see the hundred sets of bare toes.  The hundred pairs of knobby knees.  At the front of the line is a massive concrete sink with two giant basins and the ends of two rusty pipes spouting cold water in fits and starts.

 I feel a tug.  “Beatricia alle,” my escort points out proudly, as if we would never be able to spot one another without his eagle eye.  Beatricia squats in front of a little girl with dripping braids and a pained but brave look on her face. 

“Sara, brava, ciao!” she shouts, looking up from the girl’s foot, squeezed firmly between her knees.  She pushes back a sweaty lock of hair with her forearm, a pair of tweezers in her hand.  “Vieni.  Come.”  I chart a path between towel-covered tables and half-dressed children and make my way to Beatricia.  She is tweezing jiggers out from between the little girl’s toes.  I wince inwardly.  That soft tender skin is a feast to the flesh-obsessed insects.

Outside the hall, the older children crowd around the water pump, reserved for dishwashing during the week, splashing each other, and squealing as though frolicking around a backyard sprinkler.     

“What can I do?” I ask Beatricia, hollering above the din.  She points to the giant concrete sink at the front of the line. 

“Wash,” she grins. 

I take a deep breath, roll up my sleeves, and begin scrubbing children.  My first customer goes easy on me, an enthusiastic bather of five or six who can’t get enough sink time.  He soaps and rinses vigorously until the dirt-smeared mob behind him begins to get restless.  “Ishi, ante.  Becha.”  Out you go, bath hog.  He climbs out of the sink, pushing water off his wiry arms and legs.  I throw the cleanest towel I can find over his head and he yanks it down to his chin, smiling. 

When I turn around, a little girl of three or four is standing in the sink.  “Kochebaye,” I tell her, and she sits down on the concrete. I hand her a bit of soap, and she begins to wash, but she is less than thorough.  “Izi,” I say, pointing to her feet.  She soaps up her toes.  “Iza, iza.”  I gently poke both her cheeks and she rubs her face obediently.  I fill one of the plastic lunch bowls with water and pour it over her head.  It runs brown down the drain from her week’s worth of dust.  I fill up the bowl a second and third time until the water runs clean.  “Ishi, gobez.”  She climbs out of the sink and drips her way to a towel. 

Next in line is an older boy of eight or nine, patiently trying to disentangle himself from the arms of his screeching baby sister.  She is perhaps just a year old, eighteen months at the most.  This howling protest, I see from his stoic boyish face, is routine.  Today, perhaps everyday, she is his responsibility, and he will see her washed.  He will see her clean for another week.  But his baby sister is equally determined to keep her dirt, and she clings to his shirt with all the fierceness she can muster.  Brother carries her to the edge of the sink, and I try to pry open her little fists.  Suddenly she lets go and stretches out her arms to me, certain I’ll save her from her cruel babysitter and the big scary sink.  My heart skips with joy, and I pull her close, feeling her little hands grip my neck. 

For a moment I hold her, and her sobbing eases.  But there is a long line of half-clothed little boys and girls pinching and hopping and poking and hollering behind me.  “Sorry sweetie,” I whisper before plopping her bare behind down in the sink.  Her big brown eyes go wide with my betrayal, and she begins to howl.  Giant tears roll down her cheeks, and I turn on the tap before she cracks my washerwoman resolve with her heartache.  “Woynea, woynea.  Muskee.”  I try to soothe her with familiar words, but she’ll have none of it.  She screeches and wails.  I scrub.  She pushes at my hands.  I soap and rinse.  She rubs her face and sobs in dismay.  I bundle her up in a towel and hand her off to her brother.       

Together in twos and threes, children troop back into the bush.  Until lunch tomorrow.  Clean for another week or two or three or whenever their big brothers and sisters cart them off, kicking and screaming, for another cold dunk in the sink and a white lady scrubbing.

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