Soak

Naked, slicked-back and sliding into the bathtub, the hot water shocks her system like the day she had spent outside the hospital. Sloping her body, the steam rolls around her; a shroud. She is not drowned, she is a mermaid when her hair curls under the water. Closing her eyes, she lets the water soak into her and pull the memory from her skin, but it doesn’t lift easily.

Wrapping her fingers in her seaweed hair, she feels anchored to herself. She finds this comforting, and pulls tighter.

As she does this, his hands; calloused and sun-kissed, like his father’s, emerge through the steam and they cling to hers. It’s a trick of the light filtering through steam, she blinks and the hands dissolve into the muggy bathroom air. As soon as they vanish, she longs for their return.

She had tried to comfort him, but her words tumbled from her lips and onto the hard waiting room floor. The waiting room, where there was nothing to wait for; it had already happened.

“Perhaps stroking his hair would have been more reassuring”, the sound of her voice surprised her. She laughed at her own strangeness, finding haven in it. Knowing she was different made her feel stronger.

The bathtub is too small for her now, she can only submerge her torso when her knees are bent upwards and drawn in on themselves. She remembers the splashing giggles of Sunday baths with her brother when soap bars were battle ships and flannels were sails. Then, with bubble beards fizzling on their chins, they would pluck adventures from thin air. They were pirates against Vikings, making costumes from sponges and anything from anything; only snapping back to reality when their father pulled them from their underwater world, dripping and laughing as if, at that moment, they were the only things that existed. She often felt like that growing up. Everyone else was made from smoke and mirrors.

When she ran her bath today, she’d hoped the water would return her to her adventures. Of journeys across the seven seas, her brother her only crew member.

“This is a bit like a journey too,” the hopeful words echo in her head, but do not convince her. This wasn’t a journey she wanted to take. Today, she didn’t look forward to bathtime.

You wouldn’t think it to look at her; a girl having a bath. That’s all she was at this moment; girl bathing. She still felt like a child in many ways, and this body felt somehow strange to inhabit. Her small frame now scorched with stretch marks as womanhood burst at her seams, impatient to get out. As a child, she had tried to keep herself in, still wanting to run barefoot and shirtless with her brothers on the beach. It wasn’t long before she could not be contained. Now she was happy enough in herself; still getting used to life on longer, fuller legs, but happy enough.

Water droplets cling to her skin as they had clung to each other on the park bench outside the hospital.

“I’m so sorry,” she had said, knowing this meant nothing.

“I’m so sorry,” she echoed, this time barely a whisper. He did not speak.

“Let’s forget about words for now,” she said softly to him. This seemed close to the right thing to say as she felt his body slacken against her own.

They had sat there, entwined, and everything had stopped around them. Autumn winds blew straight through them like grief. As if they barely existed. Nothing else had mattered to either one of them. She could see that he was drowning and she was his life raft. So he clung to her, and his whole body was shaking. Strung out and gasping for breath. He had never cried in front of her, before now. She felt so close to him that she could almost feel the transmissions between his synapses, the blood pumping through his veins. His father’s words still in his ear.

Shifting herself in the water, she tries to shake the thought from her mind, but the pain begins to billow upwards until it stings her just behind her eyes, and they start to spill. Wincing, she did not want to cry either. She was the life raft, and she was going to save him; of that she was sure.

She had never felt more necessary than during that moment on the bench. Like she was more than human; like she was something base and fundamental for him; like she was water.

She wanted to do more, but she couldn’t keep up with her heartbeat. She didn’t know what he wanted from her, and she didn’t yet know what she was prepared to give.

She wasn’t strong enough for this. Her skin was thin and flaking. Fingernails like straw that splintered under chipped nail polish. Her tiger-stripe hair split apart from itself. She was always the first to cry when they argued. She was the forgiver. She couldn’t cope with stress or pressure. She buckled under the weight of others. But she would get stronger. She had to get stronger, because it was no longer an option. She had been flung into a whirlwind, but she must stay grounded, so he wouldn’t be swept away.

The water grows colder. Small goosebumps pepper her skin. By now, her hands are puckered and wrinkly. They had been hardened by the water, so much so that they felt like someone else’s hands. She tries to mimic his touch on her waist. More hot water. She wants to burn it off of her, but it scalds her skin raw.

Her mind drifts and she is walking on the beach with him. He takes photos of her because he likes the way the grey light hits her cheek. She is in the woods and she loses sight of him, but he’s creeping up behind her and wrapping himself around her waist. She jumps at first, but then she is filled with the smell of him and, doll-like, she gives herself over to his embrace. Laughing, they tumble and make daisy chains and ride their bikes. He pretends that she’s faster than him, but really it’s just so he can watch her giggle against the sunlight.

He is definitely worth saving.

Looking down at her body, disfigured and bulging through the looking-glass water, she suddenly feels indestructible. This feeling is unfamiliar to her, the one who almost always feels weaker than she is. The girl made from string and paper. There was something about the way the water forms a thin film over her skin, like a membrane. Silvery and gossamer, she is embryo and warrior at the same time. Pushing her wet hair from her wet face, she feels irresistible. She was wrong when she thought her adventures at bathtime were over. She pulls herself up, and, dripping, she leaves her day in the water.