Here is a basket, woven fair, and in it a mountain of linen that no soul has beaten against a stone, no soul has boiled, no soul has wrung until her knuckles split. Clean. All of it clean. I put my face to a shirt and there is no river in it, no lye, no smoke, only a smell like flowers that grow in no field I have walked.
My wife would weep to see it. She kneels at the water three days of the seven, winter and summer, her hands gone the color of raw meat, and here is a whole week's washing done by no hand at all. I asked how. They pointed to a humming box that shudders and drinks water and gives it back. A box does the woman's work. A box.
I do not trust a labor that leaves no ache behind. Every clean thing I have ever owned was paid for in a sore back and a cold morning. This linen was paid for in nothing. Nothing at all.
That is what frights me. A thing got for no suffering is a thing the Devil left on your doorstep, and the reckoning comes later, with interest. Somewhere a debt is filling like a rain barrel.
They fold it warm and think themselves blessed. Poor souls. They have forgotten that warmth is a fire someone tended, and every fire wants its wood.