A Mother’s Other; A Toilet’s Toil (Family Rites)

At 11:00 p.m, a text message awoke Jack. It explained, in no uncertain terms (as all things ought to be explained), all which required explanation. John, Jack’s roommate, was shaken awake.

“John. You up?” asked Jack.

“Yeah,” said John, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm, “what’s up?”

“Text.”

“Oh. You got both?” John yawned.

“Neither, forgot it was happening today. Fifteen bucks if you do it,” said Jack.

“Twenty-five, and I’ll get Jenny as well. Fifty total,” said John.

“Fifty!? I can just— ”

John grabbed the phone from Jack’s hand and read the text message. Turning around the phone, he pointed out a paragraph midway through the text. Jack looked at the phone and sighed.

“Just trying to have some fun,” said Jack, “I’ll get it to you tomorrow.”

“Great. Jenny’s already there,” said John, a man.

So, having received and understood the message, Jack left the comfort of his twin bed, donned his pair of bathroom slippers, and languidly slid out of his room and to the bathroom. 

The freshman dorms only had two single-stall bathrooms per floor, compared to senior housing, which had four single-stall bathrooms per floor, despite there being an equal number of students in each dorm. Waiting for the person inside to finish, Jack remembered this inequality with acute chagrin towards the administration. A formal letter of complaint: dear idiot(s), I write now to protest the inequality and unfairness… the door was opened and closed rather sheepishly, the woman leaving with a speedy walk and downcast eyes. Upon entering, Jack was greeted by an almost overflowing toilet, chunks of shit and toilet paper idly floating, like leaves on a placid lake. The administration would never read a letter. It would be sent directly to the recycle.

Jack brought out his phone, sighed, and placed it on top of the toilet bowl. He then took off his pajama bottoms and T-shirt with the words “SportyboyTM” printed on it, and finally, his teal blue boxer shorts, wondering if anyone else with teal, or some other light shade of blue, boxer shorts was doing precisely what he was doing. Jack carefully folded each article of clothing (fold over sleeve-to-sleeve, tuck in the sleeves, fold the other way; fold at the zipper, roll up nice and tight; one fold, two fold, three fold: teal origami) and then tossed the stack of them into the toilet. 

In a clockwise vortex, shit, clothes, and toilet paper descended. When the water began to come back up, a jet-black razor returned, its color contrasted by the logo of a cheery, personified sun: SunnyZ Razors, the only razors you can trust in the passing of a loved one. Jacked checked his phone once again, and sighed once again. Grabbing the trustworthy, trusting SunnyZ Razor, Jack faced the bathroom mirror. He had a pimple underneath his shaggy bangs, an unkind reminder of puberty. Aside from his head, Jack was relatively hairless, but he made sure to shave his errant leg hairs; their descent to the bathroom tile was brief and unimaginative. Phone; sigh.

Jack went to the common lounge for the floor, allowing a shamefaced man to exit before he entered.

“Grandparent?” asked the man on his way out.

“Mom,” said Jack.

“E-Z Glide?”

“No,” said Jack, “SunnyZ”.

“Huh,” said the man, “I prefer E-Z personally. Pissed in the kettle by the way.”

“Fuck you,” said Jack, suitably angry.

“Fuck you as well,” yawned the man, incensed to an uncontrollable rage.

Jack entered the lounge, greeted by a boiling electric kettle and the acrid smell of urine. Since the kettle was a model from three years ago, Jack had to wait an additional three minutes for it to read 183 degrees Fahrenheit. Jack idly wished he could just use cold water, but knew that the water had to be 183 degrees, just as the toilet had to overflow, his mother had to die, the room had to smell of piss; one-hundred-eighty-three is a pleasant enough number.

Jack understood the water was at the right temperature. Utilising the awkward jutting spout, Jack poured the piss water from the kettle into a 1930s Stanley teacup. Elegant and sturdy. Steam rose out from the cup, slowly dissipating into the air as it approached the ceiling. Jack grasped the teacup and moved it in a steady, clockwise motion. A small vortex formed in the center of the cup, the water level steadily decreasing. As the last dregs began to disappear, a new vortex, going counter-clockwise, rose out of the cup until it reached the top again. Jack wafted the steam. Ohio Earl Grey.

Jack grabbed the SunnyZ Razor off the countertop and dipped it into the Ohio Earl Gray, respectively within the 1930s Stanley teacup. Bringing the razor up, Jack proceeded to shave off all of his black hair. While doing so, he made sure to lean back, allowing the hair to fall behind him. Bald, he turned around and squeezed his pimple between his thumb and forefinger, allowing the pus to drip down onto the mass of hair. Like small raindrops on a pond, the drops of pus rippled out across the hair, causing them to form various letters, punctuation, and other wonderful aspects of English as a written language. Like the text message, it was a letter from his deceased mother. Unsurprisingly, the message was exactly the same as it was in the text message. Oh, wait: the “A” was changed to “An”. And in a bit, the “An” would be “A” again. Jack figured that only one of the two could be correct grammatically; Jack also figured it didn’t matter much. 

Gazing down at the message, Jack thought how nice it would be to sit within the teacup and be dragged away by the vortex, replaced instead by a new package containing chips, chips would be nice. Salt and vinegar preferably. However, the average college-aged male has never, will never, and most importantly, could not at that precise moment fit into a teacup. So, having done all that needed to be done, Jack went back to bed.