On Laundry
“Hey, uh, would you show me how to do the laundry stuff?”
Jen looked up from her computer slowly, bewildered. “You… don’t know how to do laundry?” It had been only a week since they really settled in, but surely she couldn’t have missed that in her file. Surely Ezri wouldn’t have neglected it. Surely… something in all those years of parenting?
“I mean, I know how to do laundry, obviously,” said Clara. “But like, how you do sorting, and settings, and all that. I think I can figure out the rest.”
“Sorting,” Jen echoed, confused.
Clara knelt next to her as if they had reached some kind of limit on standing. At least she'd actually spoken up when she'd walked in, instead of being eerily silent, with her wrists crossed, like she'd clearly been trained to. “Like, if you have specific, y’know, things that go in different loads? Fabrics, colors?”
Jen looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“Or I can just… sort it myself?” Clara offered.
Blinking.
“I know there’s a lot of black; uh, I could separate out denim and then basically anything else? Load for colors? I didn’t see any whites. Obviously I’d handle leather separately. Not machine.”
“Okay,” Jen said slowly. “You can do that if you want?”
“And then… settings?”
“I… whatever it’s set to is fine.”
Clara’s turn to say, “Okay,” slowly.
“It’s not the ‘50s. Like, clean is all I care about. Preferably dry. Maybe put somewhere not on the floor. Check pockets?”
Something clicked. She could see the lightbulb moment on Clara’s face. “Oh,” she said suddenly, sounding gleeful; “you don’t care.”
“Yeah. I… don’t?”
“I mean, good. I was just—well, Ms. Ezri—Ezri—” She caught the title, but didn’t catch the, well, Ezri says fast enough for Jen to not slap her for it. Flinched. “Right.” Jen had tired of hearing, well, Ezri says on day one, asking for Clara’s opinion on something or stating her own. I’m not Ezri, she’d told her. And neither are you. What do you think?
Old habits died hard.
She really didn’t have to be kneeling there, either, though Jen didn’t mind that one either way. She gave her a little kick, but smiled. “Go do as I tell you without all the questions, then?”
Clara smiled, though her gaze was on the floor. “Yes, Mistress.” She stood, reached for the fabric of a dress she wasn’t wearing, fingers brushing the denim of jeans, finally gave a slightly flustered nod instead of a curtsy, and left while Jen laughed.