Tacos and Chopsticks

The Mexican ladies of Brooklyn are not illegal, nor are the short men they call their husbands.

I see them in the laundry, rushing around pushing those metal carts almost as big as they are.

They are so cute.

I could put an entire family in one and push them down Bedford Avenue like a bag lady hauling her cans off to be recycled for five cents a pop.

Don’t send them home. I enjoy the doing my laundry with them. Although, I’m too tight to pay them extra to wash and fold for me.

I do my own wash in their machines that are much bigger than they are, especially the triple loader– I could wash an entire family in one for $4.75 plus the cost of detergent and fabric softener.

They all stick together, those Mexicans. I notice that especially while in the laundry. They save money by banning together as a community and doing their laundry. They rent out all the triple loaders and fill one with whites, one with darks and one with delicates.

I just don’t know how they manage to separate everything when the loads are done. They seem to know who owns the white sock with the orange stripes and who has the bra with the worn out elastic.

They look at me like I’m crazy when I rent out those triple loaders and wash only a few pieces at a time in the large machines.

“What are you looking at Mexican? This is America. We don’t have droughts here. Get a grip. Wake up! Stop living like it’s the end of times,” I say as I do my wash like a white woman and take over all the machines, like a Mexican heading over the boarder.

They hate me because I can reach that little compartment at the top of the triple loader and pour in my soap without using a ladder.

“It’s in the genes folks. Don’t be haters,” I sing while shaking the wrinkles from my jeans that I dry in machines at the Mexican laundry.

The Chinese ladies of Brooklyn and their husbands who ride bicycles are envious of the Mexican migrant workers.

It’s easier to work at a laundry and sort out socks in American than it is to fry rice all day and deliver it on bicycles along with fortune cookies.

And they are outnumbered, two to one, here in the Western Hemisphere.