Our laundry shoot is wide enough to fit a seven-year-old and runs from the bathroom down to the basement laundry bin.
“What’s a hamper?” I ask in fifth grade.
“I don’t know,” says my grandmother, “but ‘to hamper’ something is to impede its progress.”

I mull this over. It makes no sense. My friends put their dirty laundry in something to impede their progress? Remembering the time we were supposed to bring ivory to class for carving, I keep my mouth shut.

“I need ivory” I’d told my father. “For carving. Art Class.”

“Really?” He looked surprised and a bit impressed. Canadian schools might not be so bad. “But I don’t know where we can get you ivory by tomorrow. In any case, please start with a very little piece – not everyone has aptitude. I expect you’ll need very sharp tools.”
He looks at my hands like the next time he seems them they’ll be bleeding and mangled. I nod seriously.

Next day I confess to my teacher that I don’t have ivory yet, but that my father will be buying me some soon. She hands me a bar of soap and says it’s ok, I can start with the others. I’m horrified. Then I see everyone has soap. Ivory is a type of soap. We only have Lux at our house. Who knew? I’m glad I didn’t come with a beautiful bit of real ivory.

The hampers aren’t any different. I know I don’t get it, but I wish I would before someone finds out.

The laundry shoot isn’t just for dirty laundry. Thin copper hot water pipes run along the far side in parallel and braided through them, for about a foot from the top to about four feet in – as far as my arms can reach when my whole upper body is through the opening… braided through them are all the clothes I hate and don’t want to wear. Raggedy-Anne tights – “so cute!” – a scratchy wool dress, worn once, a dickie with gold flecks.

The dickie has been there almost two years, in that zone my grandmother finds so magical:
“Well, my heavens. It’s as if, Tracey, your clothes have vanished. Remember that lovely dickie?”
I nod my head, yes. So sad about the dickie. It strikes me that the shoot does ‘impede progress’ of the clothes, the ones that never make it to the laundry room. I decide it is a hamper.