Aquarium (15 page)

She screamed if I pulled like that, my mother said. You can’t yank anything, or rub anything. Cancer spreads everywhere. It might begin in one place, but it travels inside and new places become sore. You never know what part of her might hurt next. I used to think if I pulled an arm too hard it might come off, rotten at the joint. All her joints were sore, and bruises everywhere.

I can’t do this.

My mother smiled. That’s right. That’s what I said, though not so early. You’re being a baby. You don’t get to say I can’t do this until a few months have gone by. That’s when you say it and mean it.

I took one of the towels from the bathroom and laid it on the floor beside her. How do I get you on the towel?

There were no instructions, my mother said. No one ever told me how to do anything.

I knelt on the floor and tried to push the towel in along her back, lifted her shoulder blade with one hand. But I wasn’t strong enough from this angle. I had to kneel on the other side and lean over and pull her toward me, my face in close to her armpit, strong smell of sweat from a day of work. Skin clammy and not soft like Shalini’s. My naked mother. I held her close and pulled the towel under, then moved down lower to her hips, all the dark hair down there, and rolled her toward me. She was so much bigger than I was, stronger and taller.

I crossed her arms over her chest, knelt in close behind her head, and pulled on the towel beneath to slide her along the floor. She could have been a dead body. We hit carpet and stopped. I pulled and could not drag her. I can’t do this, I said.

You will. You will or you no longer have a mother. I will leave, just leave, like my father did, and you will never hear from me again.

My eyes wet as soon as she said that, and I hated being such a baby. I pulled harder and dragged her across the carpet down the small hallway to the bathroom tile, where she slid easily again.

The water in the tub was already too high, so I turned it off. I struggled to lift her onto the toilet seat. Sideways a bit, and she was not helping, just limp, but finally she was settled there and peed while I waited. Smell of her pee thick in the air, sound of the tub overflow drain sucking.

Wipe me, she said, so I wrapped toilet paper on my hand and reached between her legs to wipe. Something I could never have imagined doing.

Now the tub.

I put my arms around and locked my hands and dragged. I eased her carefully into the water, her feet at the faucet end. She was so tall her knees were bent.

Now bathe me, and don’t forget dinner.

Which do I do first?

Both at the same time. Everything always at the same time.

I’ll be right back, I said. I went to the kitchen and put a pot of water on the stove to boil, found a box of pasta. No spaghetti sauce in the fridge or cupboard, but I knew she’d tell me I had to figure it out myself, so I found a can of tomato soup, and there were some mushrooms I could add.

I hurried back to the tub and grabbed a bar of soap.

You have to wash my hair, too.

I looked at her long hair, and how tall she was in the tub. I went back to the kitchen for a small pot.

Lean forward, I said, and I scooped bathwater in the pot and poured it carefully over her head.

That’s right, she said. I’m too hot, though. I can’t breathe, Sheri. That’s what she’d say. I can’t breathe.

I ran the cold tap and swirled the water around.

There’s no air in here.

I looked around. We didn’t have a bathroom window or fan. There was never any way to air out the bathroom.

Air! she yelled. I need air! I’m dying!

I ran out and opened our front door and living room window, let the icy air billow in low. Like steam pouring over the windowsill, as if temperature had been reversed. The air we breathed really a liquid, but we saw it only in rare moments like this. Fog born suddenly from nothing, flooding from nowhere, no fog bank outside, no ocean or mountains at the edge. And it wasn’t summer. Fog was usually in summer.

Sheri! she yelled.

When I ran back to the tub, she slapped me. I could have died. I could have drowned. Leaving me like that, with my head bent forward into the water. Do you want to kill me? And I’m cold now. It’s freezing in here.

I opened the hot water tap and hurried out to the door and window, clouds forming at the margins and then gone. They rushed in and vanished somehow. I closed the gates to them, cut them off, and my mother yelled again.

I’m burning! You stupid little shit. Goddamn it, Sheri. You left the hot water on.

I panicked and went for the hot water tap, turned it off, and then swirled the water around with my hand.

My feet are burned.

Even her voice was different, my mother gone. I could not believe my grandmother had been this way, cruel and bitter.

Please, I said. I understand. We can stop.

You don’t understand anything yet. You don’t believe. You’re not going to school tomorrow, and I’m not going to work. Where’s my dinner, Sheri?

Don’t call me Sheri.

My mother grabbed my hair and shoved my face down into the tub water. It was so fast I hadn’t taken a breath. I had no air, panicking. I couldn’t pull my head up. She was so strong. I fought. I punched at her and yanked my whole body, but she had the weight of oceans, pressing down, and then she released me.

You will hate me, she said. I know you will hate me. But my mother did all of these things and I loved her. And I am going to make you see. You will know what it was like, and that’s all I care about.

I don’t care about your stupid life! I screamed.

That’s the problem. We’re going to end that. Now fix dinner.

I was gasping and dripping, and I wanted to run, just run away. She did not even look like my mother, not caring at all that I was hurt. She looked at me coldly, as if I were a stranger.

Fix my dinner, Sheri.

So I did it. I put the pasta in the water that was at a full boil. It looked like rage, bubbles forming sourceless and ripped away and burst. Perfect form of rage. The yellow dried pasta sinking in and calming. I punctured the tomato soup with the can opener when my mother called out again.

Get me out of this bath, Sheri!

S
he 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?