“Reflections in the Water” 

Susan Fee 

            I lean over the tub and turn on the faucets.  Hot then cold then hot again, negotiating a pool of warm.  Not too much bubble bath –she might slip.  Her body is taut and inflexible, muscles atrophied following a massive stroke.  She is 52 years old.  I am 12.  She is my mother.  Now, along with my father, I am her caretaker.  Bathing her is my job.   

            Her one good arm hooks around my neck, our hands interlock.  Her other arm is stuck in a perpetual arc.  I brace her back and help her sit on the side of the tub.  Hugging her cheek to cheek, I lift her right leg, the paralyzed one, into the tub.  She places her left leg in the water and slowly we descend.  We do this without talking; her brain has been sucked dry of oxygen and language.  She can say only one word, “me.”

“Is the water too hot?” I ask.

“Me, me, me.”

“Too cold?”

“Me, me.”  I don’t know what this means.  I have more questions.

Washcloth soapy, I begin with her back.  It’s easier, less intimate.  She’s broad shouldered, a canvas of freckles like splattered chocolate syrup.  Bra straps have left indention marks.  Are they supposed to?  I need a bra mother; at least I think I do. 

Over the shoulders, down her arms to her hands, the washcloth catches.  It’s her wedding ring.  Remember, mother, you were going to tell me about boys and…  things?  What about cuticles?  TEEN magazine says it’s important to push them back.  What happens if you don’t?   

I wash her legs.  Once smooth and elegant, they are thick with hair.  I touch my own legs; light blonde cilia tickle my fingers.  I’d like to know about nylons.  I tried on a pair.  They itch.  When should a girl start shaving her legs?  My friend Lisa says shaving makes your hair grow back thicker.  Is that true?  I have other hair too that I meant to ask you about mom.  It’s dark, and coiled, and ugly.  There’s something else.  Back in the corner of my closet, dirty laundry, balled up.  It’s stained.  What do I do about that?     

I wash her chest last.  The place where I was cradled the first time we met.  Where she counted my fingers and toes, and told me my name, Susan Diane.  Pictures in my scrapbook show us in the hospital happy and smiling.  She is beautiful, both of us dressed in pink, her hair swept up in movie star fashion.  There are pictures of my first diaper change, first feeding, and first bath. 

My washcloth moves over her protruding clavicle bones and rests on her heart.  I can feel it beating, proof that she’s alive inside.  Can you hear me in there?  I have one last question:  Why?  

I look to her face.  The right side droops as if someone had cut her marionette strings.  Her eyes, brilliant marbles of aquamarine, used to be highlighted with sky blue eye shadow.  Now they’re banked under storm cloud gray.  She stares straight ahead.  I wash saliva from her chin.  Her lips are pale, no longer dressed in Revlon Fire Engine Red.  They move.  She wants to say something.   

            “Me, me, me.”  

            Twenty-six years later I am a mother; my own is long dead.  It’s bath time.  My little girl is full of questions about bubbles and where the sun goes at night and does grass cry when you walk on it and why and why?  She wears me out.  I hold on to her lightly in a cascade of slippery bubbles and answer every single question.