Aquarium

~ ~ ~

She was angry I hadn’t made her clean. You know I can’t be in the water for long. I’ll get sick. I can’t breathe. But I’m still filthy.

I knelt beside her with the bar of soap and tried to wash her, but soap doesn’t work underwater. It feels too rough, doesn’t slide or lather.

Don’t tear my skin off, she said.

I ran the soap along her belly and breasts and thighs and followed with my other hand, my chest braced on the edge of the tub. I washed between her legs, tried to reach under along her back, reaching down beneath the surface into a distortion of texture and size and shape, my mother become only a body and not even that, more rubbery than that.

Stop, she said. You have to get me out of here.

I could hear the pasta scum boiling over onto the burner, but I had to lift her from the tub, dead weight. Water all over the floor, and I was afraid of slipping. I couldn’t hold her up, so I sat her down on the tile leaning back against the tub.

No! she yelled. I’m freezing. This floor and the outside of the tub. Do you want me to die?

I don’t know where to put you.

Don’t whine. Move me onto the bed and dry me there.

So I dragged her down the hall.

My heels are dragging against the carpet. Pick me up.

I can’t.

Pick me up.

I couldn’t answer. I kept dragging until I could ease her onto the bed.

Don’t get my bed wet.

I ran back for a towel, tried to be quick but gentle, dried her hair first.

I’m cold, and I’m hungry. You were a mistake, Sheri. If it hadn’t been for you, none of this would have happened.

What?

After the pregnancy, everything changed. My chemistry, how I’m made. I smelled different, my skin dried out, my hair. I couldn’t even eat the things I ate before. I was allergic for the first time. You changed everything inside me, an invasion, and that has to be when the cancer started. It’s because of you that I’m dying.

That’s not fair.

That’s what I said.

She wouldn’t have said those things.

But she did, and after a while I believed them, because I was fourteen and there was no one else and she kept saying them, and I was watching her dying. I believed that I brought the cancer into her, that I was an infection.

But that’s not possible, is it?

Anything is possible with a parent. Parents are gods. They make us and they destroy us. They warp the world and remake it in their own shape, and that’s the world we know forever after. It’s the only world. We can’t see what it might have looked like otherwise.

I’m sorry.

You’re not done yet. Don’t think you’re done. You’ve only just started. Where’s my dinner?

I had forgotten the pasta. I ran for the pot. Most of the water was gone, the spaghetti clumped and not fully covered, but I drained the small bit of water into the sink.

Sheri! she yelled. I’m freezing!

I rushed back to her, and she was so angry, screaming at me. You left me wet! Out in the cold air! You’re a worthless little bitch. I should have killed you.

I was drying her with the towel, as quickly and carefully as I could, but I was crying, my eyes filled entirely and blinking and I couldn’t see well. My grandmother could not have been so cruel.

Get me under the covers.

So I finished drying her and pulled away the comforter and sheet from the other side of the bed and rolled her gently into place, and that’s when we heard the neighbors bang on the wall, protesting my mother’s screaming.

She charged out of bed, the sick made suddenly well, as if miracles could be performed, and she banged the wall with her fist. Fuck off! she yelled.

They yelled, she yelled, banging from both sides, my mother standing there naked and hair wet, arms raised and shouting to a white wall, and then she was back, lying down, yanking the comforter and sheet into place. Well, she said. You’ll have to do a better job or it’s going to be a long night for them too.

I’ll finish dinner.

That’s right.

I poured the can of tomato soup directly into the drained pot of spaghetti and put it back on the burner. I stirred and tried to break apart the clumps. I added some pepper and grabbed two plates and hurried back with our meal.

Sheri, my mother said when I returned. My good little girl. You’re an angel, you know that?

I didn’t know what to say. I gave her a plate and fork.

I’m not hungry, she said. I can’t eat. Just come and lie down next to me.

So I set the plates on the floor and lay down beside my mother and she put an arm around me, her other hand stroking my hair. I was so tense I was grinding my teeth. I expected her to twist my neck or pull my hair.

Sheri, you’re an angel. I made you. I made you perfect. This body died to make you.

She played with my hair and began humming to herself, some simple song I didn’t recognize. You have to remember me, she said. When I’m gone, you’re the only one to keep my memory alive. So you have to understand. Sometimes I say things because I have unbearable pain, but that’s not me. That’s not who I am. Do you understand?

Yes.

That’s good, Sheri. That’s good. I don’t need to be forgiven, because I’ve done nothing wrong. If you do something out of pain, it can never be a crime.

She kissed the back of my head and then stayed there, her mouth in my hair. Pain offers only one choice, Sheri. You have to run from it. You have to try to escape. There’s no other choice, because it’s more terrible than anything else. People complain about emotional pain or psychological pain, the pain of loss, but this is nothing compared to pure physical agony. You’ll twist and turn until you rip yourself apart. You’ll scream and destroy and fight everything and everyone if it brings even a single moment in which you’re not as fully aware of the pain. You have to understand this, or you’ll think I’m a monster.

But you don’t have this pain, I said. Your mother had this pain.

You can’t do it, can you? You can’t be generous and try to imagine another life, even your mother’s. You can’t be Sheri for one night and try to understand what it was like for me to be left alone with my dying mother. Do you think it made the cruelty any better to hear that it wasn’t her fault? She still screamed and slapped me and did horrible things. She still took away my childhood and also my future. Was there a bigger price I could have paid? My childhood and my adulthood.

I didn’t make you pay.

My mother’s arms wrapped around my head, and I really thought she might twist and break my neck. True, she said. That’s true. And what have I always told you? Not to ever let me blame you for my problems. I didn’t talk about the past. I’ve done everything to protect you, so you wouldn’t have to go through what I did. And how have you thanked me for that?

I haven’t done anything.

But you have. You won’t rest until the three of us are skipping hand in hand.

We could live at his house, and he could take me to school. You wouldn’t have to work as much.

Maybe your brain just isn’t old enough. He committed a crime. He’s responsible for that. He doesn’t get to have everything given to him as if he never did anything wrong. Nineteen years. I didn’t see him for nineteen years.

Then why miss the years now?

My mother rolled away from me on the bed. You’re smart, Caitlin. You’re hard to argue with. But he is no longer my father. He gave up that right. And I will not let him be a grandfather, because really I want to see him burn. I want to set a match to him and watch him scream. I want him to feel unbearable pain. I want him to feel more pain than there is in this world. There’s not enough pain available for him.