The Bathtub

TW: self-harm, suicide

         On the eve of my thirteenth birthday, my mother rose from bed in the middle of the night, ran herself a bath and slit her wrists in the tub. I found her the morning she died. I rose from bed, my spirits high. I had it already planned out what I would say to my friends at school, how I would tell them that I was officially a teenager, not a child anymore, when they would ask if I wanted to join the boys in an afternoon game of ball. I entered the bathroom, blinking away sleep and reached for my toothbrush on the counter when I stopped. In the mirror’s reflection I saw a thin streak of red trailing down the side of the bathtub, leaving a small puddle on the floor. On the edge of the tub a pale hand rested, the fingers curled gently upwards. My eyes followed the hand and saw a wrist which had been sliced open down to the forearm. I turned slowly from the mirror and faced the bathtub where my mother floated in dark pink water. The room was silent, as if all the air had disappeared suddenly from the world. My mother’s hair, damp and tangled, streaked across her face, as if to shield her eyes from the sight of what she had done.  Her lips were colorless. Lying on the floor besides the tub was a piece of plastic. For a moment I didn’t recognize it until I realized it was a pink razor, disassembled and broken, pieces of plastic scattering the floor.

The coroners said she had been dead for five hours before I found her, and I often think of that time. Not the moment in the night when my mother leaned back in the murky waters and let death carry her away and not the moment when I found her, my mouth open in a silent scream before my legs gave out from under me, my knees slamming onto the cold tiled floor. What haunted me was the five hours between the final cut and the opening of the bathroom door, where I had slept soundly in bed, unaware in those last precious hours that it had been the last night I had fallen asleep as a child only to awake as something else. It was in those five hours where I unknowingly floated in a limbo, between the worlds of my mother living and my mother dead. I do not remember making any noise as I knelt on the bathroom floor before the tub, a ringing in my ears. It was only later, after the police had come and I had been taken away, that I was told my screams had alerted the neighbors who came at once, using their key to let themselves in. They told me all this later, even though I do not remember. I do not remember being carried from the bathroom, clawing at the police man to put me down as I reached for my mother, screaming until my voice was raw. I do not remember being taken into my neighbor’s house and wrapped in a blanket and handed a cup of tea. I only remember the splash of red on the white porcelain and the broken plastic of the razor blades on the floor.

         The funeral was bleak. The sky was dark, threatening rain. My family attended in their nicest clothes, the colors ranging from dark coal to black. Most of the women wore veils. I stood silently among the crowd and watched as they lowered my mother into the earth, the coffin balancing precariously on ropes. Vaguely, I wondered if they had dressed my mother in the coffin or left her as she had died, naked with hair damp and strew across her face, mouth open in a silent plea.

         “It’s best we be getting along,” my aunt told me quietly after the priest closed the bible and the last goodbyes were said. “Did you remember to set out the tea and coffee cake?”

         I nodded.

         “Good,” my aunt straightened up. Her gray hair was held up in a black cocktail hat, the fabric a thin netting material which was meant to be fashionable but made my aunt’s hair look as if a fisherman had hauled it from the sea. My aunt straightened her gloves. The lines around her mouth deepened.  She was obviously nervous but trying her best to hide it.

         “Let’s go then.”

         We drove in silence. I watched through the window as the town passed by.

         “He didn’t say heaven.”

         My words broke the silence. Out of the corner of my eye I could see my aunt cast me a look, but I continued to stare out of the window, pretending I didn’t notice, unwilling to meet her eye.

         “What?” she asked.

         “The priest. He didn’t say anything about heaven.”

         Aunt Agnes said nothing to this, maybe she didn’t know what to say.

         “He doesn’t think Mama is going to heaven,” I continued.

         We turned off the main road. The shops were scarcer now. We passed an alley where two children were playing ball.

         “Don’t say that, Rosie, of course she is.”

         The child swung the bat and missed the ball by inches. The other boy roared in laughter. I didn’t reply.

We arrived home and within a matter of minutes our house was filled with people, relatives drinking tea and eating cucumber sandwiches. Everyone spoke in hushed voices. I made my way through the crowd, offering more sandwiches and refills of black tea. Occasionally someone would catch my eye and they would open their mouth as if to say something, but I would turn, pretending I hadn’t noticed, and retreat back into the safety of the kitchen.

         When the last tray was empty, I made my way down the hall and went into the bathroom. I locked the door behind me. I kept the light off, not wanting the harsh fluorescent glare of the overhead bulbs. From the window a weak gray light filtered in through the curtains. In the mirror I caught a glance at my reflection. My long brown hair was held back with a black ribbon. My dress, slightly too small now, had ruffles on the sleeves. I turned away from the sight of myself.

 I don’t know how long I stood there, staring down at the empty bathtub. It had been cleaned and scrubbed, although by who I didn’t know. Perhaps it was my aunt. I wondered what it would be like to wash away the blood of one’s sister. I wondered if it hurt to wash away the only part of them you had left.

In the week before my mother died, as I approached my thirteenth birthday, I prepared myself for womanhood. I came home from the shop one afternoon with a pack of pink, disposable razor blades in my backpack. That night I attempted my first shave in the bathtub, hands trembling slightly, leaving tiny droplets of blood up my calves. With every flick of the blade, the fine hairs disappeared, revealing smooth skin beneath. I proudly walked into school the next morning and showed my friends my legs, beaming with pride at my accomplishment.

Outside the door I could hear talk of the guests like they were from another universe beyond the bathroom door. I climbed into the tub and shut the shower curtain. I curled my legs to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. I closed my eyes, trying to block out the voices of the people outside who had no business being here. I listened to the sound of the water drip from the faucet, steady as a pulse. This must have been like being in the womb, I thought. Listening to a heartbeat, secluded from the world. I thought of my mother and those nine months I spent inside her before I was pushed out and the cord was cut but even after it all she never stopped pushing. For thirteen years she shoved me away with harsh comments and empty stares. This was the final act, the final shove that left me tumbling, head over heels, in the darkness. Then she was gone, leaving behind an empty house and a bathtub which for so many years I had used to wash myself of dirt and mud and sweat. And, in a way, my mother had cleansed herself here too; had washed away past mistakes and regrets with two slits of the blade. The water had washed the blood away, down the drain. I thought of it now, the life of my mother flowing through the pipes and the sewers of our small little town and, finally, out to sea.

The memories came then, crashing in like waves in a storm. I surrendered to them and shut my eyes tight, wondering if this bathtub was strong enough to keep me afloat.

“Does Mama love me?”

I had asked this to my aunt one night when I was around six or seven years old. I was staying the night at her house because Mama had to work late again. The question had caught her off guard and she whipped her head around at me, her lips parting in surprise.

“My, what a question to ask, child! Of course she does!” She then went back to chopping carrots, her hand moving swiftly over the cutting board.

“But…” I remember my young brain whirling, trying to understand, trying to make sense of the cold stares and silence of our house, “Does she love me like you love me?”

My aunt stopped again and turned. She looked suddenly very tired.

“She loves you very much.” My aunt turned away again, dropping a handful of vegetables into the simmering pot on the stove. I was wise enough not to bring it up again.

The second question came about a year later, when I began to notice something absent from my life. It had taken a long time, as a child, to realize that my normal was not the normal of everyone else. I approached my aunt about it again, knowing it was unwise to ask my mother.

“Do I have a father?”

We had been sitting drinking tea in the backyard. The day was unseasonably warm and the flowers were in bloom, their scent bursting under the sun’s rays. My aunt’s face was passive, but the hand holding her teacup clenched so hard she almost spilled it.

“What did you say?” she asked, her voice unnaturally light.

“My friend Laura has a father. And Janie has a father. Do I have a father?”

My aunt took a long sip of her teacup before placing it in the saucer again.

“Yes, everyone has a father,” she said, as if it was necessary to make sure I, as a child, knew this important biological fact. She didn’t offer anymore information, so I pressed on.

“Who is he?”

My aunt shook her head, not looking at me. “I don’t know.”

“What does he look like?”

“I don’t know.”

I began to grow frustrated, as if I was trying to untie a knot but the more I pulled the tighter it became.

“Should I ask Mama?” I asked.

“No!” my aunt’s voice was harsh and quick like a slap. I blinked, recoiling. Her face softened immediately and she reached for me, smiling with her mouth but not her eyes.

“Rosie, please do not ask your mother. She… she is having a hard time and would not like to be asked questions like that, okay?”

I nodded, knowing when I was defeated.

“Okay.”

But there never seemed to be a time when Mama wasn’t having a hard time. By the time I was ten she had been fired from three jobs and officially placed on unemployment. She stopped leaving the house. She didn’t comb her hair. The bills weren’t paid. She lay in bed most days and I would bring her whatever food we had in the house every morning and evening. Occasionally I asked questions, gently. Did she need anything? Did she like her meal? I discovered soon enough that it was best not to say anything at all.

The doctors helped at first. Mama would go to the doctor in town and return with an orange pill bottle or two. For a while whatever was in the bottles worked and Mama held down a job again. She smiled more. The house became clean again and Mama’s friends would visit. She would bring out her record player and play her favorite albums, dancing around the kitchen as she cooked us dinner. She made jokes and helped me with my homework. Still, even in the best moments I knew better than to ask about my father, afraid that it would break Mama all over again. For almost a year everything seemed as if the days of Mama’s darkness were over. We were happy in our little house, just the two of us. Some days, if all the bills were paid and there was money left over, Mama would take me out for ice cream on Sunday mornings after church. We would walk along the pier, watching the seagulls soar above the waters. One day, I knew in a moment with absolute certainty that the days of Mama’s misery was over. For a moment I was filled with such incredible joy I thought my heart would burst.

“I love you, Mama,” I said, resting my head against her shoulder. She wrapped an arm around me.

“I love you too, baby,” she said, softly.

I should have known better than to think those days could last. No skies stay blue forever and within a few months a dark storm cloud seemed to follow Mama wherever she went. She cried most days. She stopped going to work again. The laundry piled up and the food rotted. The record player was put away and I did my homework alone. When her friends came to visit I was told to turn them away, always with the same lie that Mama wasn’t feeling well, maybe come back tomorrow.

The night before my birthday I crept into Mama’s room where she lay sleeping. I gently shook her awake.

“What is it, Rosie?” her voice was muffled, annoyed.

“Tomorrow is my birthday,” I said.

She didn’t reply but shut her eyes again.

“Auntie Agnes wants us to come over for dinner and cake.”

My mother grunted in reply.

“Can…” I stopped before proceeding cautiously like a tightrope walker. “Can we go?”

Mama rolled over in bed, away from me. “Maybe,” she said. My heart sank.

“It’ll be fun-” I started.

“I said maybe.” Her voice was harsh. “Now let me sleep.”

I crept out of the room once again, shutting the door gently behind me. It would be the last time I would ever speak to my mother.

My eyes snapped open. I was still sitting in the bathtub, my forehead resting on my knees. A sharp rap on the bathroom door shook me out of my thoughts. I gasped and looked up before scrambling to my feet and climbing out of the tub. I unlocked the door and found myself face to face with my mother’s cousin, Mark. He smiled warily when he saw me.

“Hey kiddo, sorry, I need to use the bathroom.”

I said nothing as I stepped to the side to let him by. I wished we could have had everyone go somewhere else after the funeral, but my aunt lived in the back of her flower shop and she could not afford to host the event at a restaurant. I turned and fled up the stairs to the privacy of my bedroom. I collapsed on my bed. For a long time I lay there, arms shoved beneath my pillow, staring out of the dirty window where the last rays of sun were beginning to fade, succumbing to dusk. I may have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes my room was dark and the voices downstairs were gone.

I crept downstairs, still in my black dress and shoes and found Aunt Agnes sitting by the fire. She held a wine glass in one hand and her head in the other. For a long time, I stood behind her in the shadows, silently.

“Did Mama kill herself because of me?”

For several seconds my aunt said nothing and I began to think she didn’t hear me at all. Then she turned her head in my direction, holding her hand out to me. I took it.

“No, my darling. It wasn’t you.”

As she said it I knew she was telling the truth and a wave of relief washed over me so powerful I thought my legs would give out from under me. A knot in my stomach unclenched, the pain receding. Tears filled my eyes, but I blinked them away.

“Your mama was sick, but she’s better now. She’s not hurting anymore.”

For many moments we said nothing, our hands entwined, the only sound being the fire as it crackled in the fire place.

“Can I sleep with you tonight?” I asked. She nodded and wiggled over in the chair. I sat next to her, my body squeezing between hers and the armrest. I set my head on her shoulder. For the next hour or so we said nothing, listening to silence and the heaviness of the empty house, her arm around me as we stared into the dancing flames. Soon my aunt was asleep, her gentle breathing a comforting sound. I stayed awake long into the night, watching the logs in the fire place shrink and burn until they were nothing but ash and dust.