ABSTRACT
Tuesday afternoons were the best. The wash had been done the day before. Tuesdays were ironing day. I would rush home from school. These were the days I loved—the days when I would grab a snack before descending to the basement laundry. Florence was usually already at the ironing board. My mother, Helen, the one I speak of as my birth mother, did work of her own-—shopping, cooking, washing dishes, sewing. But in those days I never saw her iron. Florence did that. Now that Mike and I were regularly at school, I never saw, or thought about, what else Florence did. Nor did I think about the contract by which she did whatever she did. But I knew she ironed, and I loved those days.
