NUNS: (chanting over the rhythm, metronomic) Wash.

A driving, industrial-percussive number built entirely from diegetic sound — bucket strikes, washboard scrapes, wet fabric snaps, foot stomps on stone — locked into a relentless 4/4 work rhythm that evokes chain-gang music crossed with minimalist process composition. The nuns' chant rides on top like a foreman's call-and-response, metronomic and dehumanizing, until Ruth begins to syncopate against the grid, introducing jazzy offbeats and rhythmic disruptions that the institution can hear but can't quite locate or punish — her voice is percussive, spoken-sung, a proto-rap cadence smuggled into liturgical space.

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Lyrics

NUNS: (chanting over the rhythm, metronomic) Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Hands in the water, Knees on the concrete, Scrub till the Lord says You are complete. GIRLS: (echoing, mechanical) Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. (CLARE scrubs furiously. ELIZA works slowly, watching everything. MARIA winces, one hand always drifting to her belly. RUTH works — but off the beat. She syncopates. She disrupts.) NUNS: Idle hands are the Devil’s loom. Idle thoughts fill the Devil’s room. Every stain on the cloth you hold Is a sin in the blood — scrub it cold. RUTH: (half-sung, half-spoken, cutting across the rhythm) Funny how the stains are always ours. Funny how the cloth is always white. Funny how we wash for hours and hours And nothing here is ever clean or right. NUN 1: (sharp) Ruth. RUTH: Sister? NUN 1: Silence is the Lord’s preferred companion. RUTH: (returning to scrubbing, muttered) Then the Lord has never met a woman with something to say. (CLARE stifles a laugh. ELIZA stares at RUTH with quiet wonder.) NUNS: (resuming, driving) Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. The body is labor, The spirit is meek, And only the broken Have reason to speak. (The rhythm intensifies. The girls scrub harder. The NUNS walk among them, inspecting. The stomping builds to a crescendo — then cuts.) HEADMISTRESS: (entering, her voice a low sustained note) Enough. To chapel. Then to bed. (The girls file out in silence. RUTH is the last to go. She looks back at the tubs. She spits into one.)