Bathtubs and Bottles: the context

Chapter One

My youth was but a somber storm
Pierced here and there by brilliant suns…
Charles Baudelaire

There used to be colored bottles lined in the bathroom window. On a sunny day, the light shining through caused them to glow and appear to move slowly, in small mesmerizing circles. I used to sit on the bathtub edge because it seemed to be the safest place to sit. Safe from his wrath and safe from their sadness. Split and spilling. Someone should wipe that up, I thought. Meanings untied themselves and ran free, abandoning me with their orphaned situations and I had no idea how to hold hands. Never able to wipe tears without being fascinated. I placed the phone back on the receiver because I knew I could fix that. I walked past her, into the bathroom, and stared out the small window, wondering if it hurt more now.

I used to see a lot in that little room. Before her mad escape, Lucy would sometimes join me in the empty tub and tell stories. She’d create vivid fantasies in which we were the bright heroes who conquered the vicious monsters. Salivating and screaming, the great beasts would descend upon us, huge feet clomping the earth towards us—two small children who seemed to have no chance of survival, much less victory.

Yet, they did not realize who we were. We were not merely children.
For suddenly we would grow bigger, bigger than the creatures, until the tops of our heads brushed the stars.
Brandishing tremendous swords that shimmered in the light of dawning worlds, we would thrust them through the giant monsters—again and again—and they would fall with a deafening thud to the ground. The trees shook, the clouds trembled and peace was restored.

Then our stepfather would walk into the bathroom and we huddled silently in the empty tub, fantasies abruptly crushed.

I also recall my older sister wandering into the bathroom. A spontaneous presence, she would always be disappearing and I was surprised to see her when she entered the little room.

Miette looked lost, even in a tiny space, as if she were not quite sure where to go within it. She would reach out to touch the mirror and stare. I think she knew I was right behind her, sitting in the tub as usual, but I still seemed so far away as to appear completely intangible. Just another blue figure in the dirty reflection. She flickered and then I didn’t see her for a long time.

Years ago, Miette made us capes and we’d pretend the kitchen was another world—one which we could conquer. Spatulas and spoons, we stood on the countertops, tipping over the bowls to challenge the cockroaches. Hands raised to the dim lights, we danced around the kitchen and screamed like gypsies in a world that could not contain us.

My sisters and I were always very close, but when they both began to shift roles, we could not express it as children usually did. We could not play anymore. After our mom got sick, Lucy started to change, until the space between our mom’s new face and her own became barely distinguishable. Her behavior did not change dramatically; rather, it was a relatively gradual evolution. I was right there as she crawled along, pushed deeper and deeper into the distorted world her mind seemed to create. But I was a part of that world.
Even though there were fewer words and less embraces until the only thing I hugged was the corner of the wall between this scene and the next. All that remained in our world were the small puddles of blood, the writing on the wall and the evil she protected me from, but I could not yet see.

And then my own reality started to become indistinct: a vague darkness with splotches of fire, the texture of the clothes hanging in the closet and the absence of laughing voices and familiar melodies.
It was not as if the apartment was void of sound—there were just new sounds. There would often be sizzling from the stove fires because the burners would be left on high, while she would sit cross-legged to rock back and forth, with her forehead tapping the wall as she leaned foreword. There was the crunching on the carpet as his large work-boots tromped over the spattering of glass remnants from the dishes and glasses smashed in the hallway.

There was his booming voice and the dull thuds. And all of the writing scrawled on the bedroom walls made small noises, as if the walls were whispering. I would press my cheek against them when I was really lonely, and pretend that there were people trapped behind them, and find some sense of comfort through the sharing of our common situations on opposite sides of the walls.
But these weren’t the noises I wanted to hear.
I missed Miette’s conspiring and I swore the noises of the past left marks. So I spent much of my time singing to myself, silencing them and wiping my skin clean.

Lucy paid careful attention to our mother. Near the end of our childhood structure, in the place where the grass hit the curb, Lucy just stopped communicating like she had. She would wrap herself up tightly in one of the blankets and lie on the floor all day and night. She would sometimes get up to mumble at the wall, her small face darkened, speaking of the evil that was everywhere, just like our mom had. I felt betrayed. I was outnumbered. I would try to talk with her—I would ramble on with assumed and artificial enthusiasm, smiling and laughing, speaking at a speed that caused all my words to melt together in a thick, colorful and indistinct verbal flow. I would stare at her intently with wide eyes, trying to keep her stare on me.
Trying to make her laugh with me.
Look at me.
Talk to me.
Smile at me. Be her again. I was trying, in a desperate and useless attempt, to capture her attention, her sanity, and make her listen, make her my sister, like she had always been.
She would nod—I think she was trying very hard—and then I would see her start to frown, her eyes slowly, gradually, moving to the ceiling behind me. She would point and whisper: “Shadows.” I’d turn my head quickly, but nothing was there.

Yet, sometimes I wondered if I just was not seeing something that she really was.

Then Miette began to write in blood. There was always blood. I just never knew exactly where it all came from. That came to be much more disturbing than the word patterns the blood created. And I think that is where words lost their meaning for me. I sat on the bed and watched her write on the bedroom wall.

I know that some of the blood came from the flesh cuts: Lucy would walk barefoot through the broken glass and then squat down to make pictures in the puddle that slowly formed. Even then, I was never sure whether I should go get help, or just add on another sailboat to the ocean scene she was carefully composing. I never was comfortable or confident pointing out people’s edges. And I didn’t know exactly where help was located anymore. So I only watched my sisters create from the material of themselves. It stopped seeming surreal long before it stopped appearing insane.

Then one night, he dragged Lucy out the apartment door, down the hallway, down the flights of stairs and threw her on the front stoop. I ran to watch them from the bathroom window. She simply sat up and stared at her hands. A puddle of dark pink accumulated around her. She looked up at me. Her face was pale and still.

It was one of the worst images I will never be able to burn from my memories.

I touched my hair—it stuck out all over, just like hers. He stood above her as people started to gather and sirens wailed in the distance. I knew they were coming to our building, but I just stepped off the toilet and walked out of the bathroom.

I went to find Mom. I knew she would be lying in bed. I could not crawl onto her lap because there was glass between us now. She could not let me in, because she did not see me. I remembered all of the times I looked through. I knew that I could have screamed and pounded on that window, but she could only stare. So I always stayed quiet. I looked towards the corner of the room, where Lucy would lie on the floor, unmoving. So I instead crawled up onto the mattress, the tangled sheets, and stared down at her. I picked up her limp arms and cuddled next to her side, and wrapped her arms around me, moving her fingers with my own, so that she massaged my forehead as she used to do. I suddenly felt sick, and dropped her hand. It fell heavy, in the way any lifeless thing would fall. I made some sort of noise, then tumbled onto the floor, squeezing my eyes shut.

I retreated to the bathtub.

As time went on, I spent most of my time alone in the bathroom. Both sisters gone—insane and vanished, I retreated into myself and sought escape.
I used to peer out from the hall corner as he came home from work. He seemed to drag all of the steam and smoke from his world with him; he stood in the doorway, the grey swirling around his enormous form, clouding his body in a heavy, suffocating haze. Yet, his eyes began to gleam an unearthly light from within the shadows, searching the scene before him, so I stopped peeking and began to stay in the bathroom to sit on the tub.

Head tilted and resting on my hand, I ended up spending hours staring at those bottles in the window. They almost looked as if they hovered above the shelf, weightless and brilliant. When they captured the light inside them in such a way, they seemed to possess some sort of magic. And, I thought at the time, if I possessed some sort of magic, I could avoid this sharp world. The bottles seemed to hold the escape I fantasized.

Or, so I thought, until I decided to test it out by drinking a bottle. I was found lying, sweaty and poisoned, on the damp tiled floor. Mother screamed, I twitched, the ambulance was called and I wouldn’t remember my first trip to the hospital.

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Tags:

bathtubs, bottles, bravery, childhood, daydream, fantasies, home, ill, mentally, sadness, sickness and violence