The Tub

Daisy

In her tub, my feet looked like someone had taken a meat cleaver to them. The purple, red, and raw flesh was an obscene offense against the bright white ceramic. That's something I noticed about Granny's house. Everything sparkled and shined, and I gathered she washed the world around her like she did her own body, scrubbing her skin with soap and hot water up to the elbows.

I took a page from her book, scrubbing my feet and biting my lip. The pain became me. And I liked that feeling. It was so much more real than watching Carson wither under his mother's gaze or laughing at the fact that he still worked at the same garage he did seven years ago. I had always taken that as a point of pride. At least he could keep a job for all the bottles of PBR rattling in our trash, and so it was confusing and made me feel a little sick that I had even an ounce of pride for a man whose own mother couldn't stand him.

I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, wondering what Jacqueline's feet looked like. I imagine not like they'd been squeezed into tiny shoes and punished for existing. I wondered if her pinkie toes turned in slightly like mine did. I wondered if her arch was pronounced or if she was flat-footed and not made to dance.

Carson had never mentioned it – if my mother had ever danced growing up. And I didn't have the guts to ask him. Where had this come from, this intense need to twirl and jump and spring through the air to prove something to other people?

But what that was, I didn't have a clue.

Oh, Jacqueline, did you do it? Did you make weather girl? Or did you give up and get married again and have another little girl? Do you love her more than me? Do you even remember that I exist?

I thought all those things, scrubbing pain into my feet like a maniac, because honestly, I was having a hard time existing myself.