Years of washing clothes had changed my mother’s hands.
Thick, hard calluses covered her palms.
Her skin was rough and cracked, almost like scales.
But when my back itched, those rough hands were the best thing in the world.
A few firm rubs from my mother could make the itching disappear.
Even then, I rarely asked her to do it.
I knew what those hands had been through.
Day after day, she washed other people’s clothes until her hands were no longer soft.
They had become rough and worn from years of hard work.
My mother was getting thinner, too.
The smell of those filthy socks made her sick so often that she sometimes couldn’t eat at all.
I could tell that she was thinking about finding another way to make a living.
Sometimes, in the middle of washing clothes, she would suddenly stop.
She would push the clothes aside and sit there quietly, staring into space.
“What are you thinking about, Mom?”
I wanted to ask her.
But I never did.
Sometimes she would whisper to herself.
I couldn’t make out what she was saying.
She seemed to be thinking hard about something, as if she were trying to find a way out of the life we were living.
I was too young to understand.
I would just stand nearby and watch her.
I had no idea what was going through her mind.
All I knew was that my mother looked worried.
And whatever she was thinking about, she seemed determined to figure it out.