David Vann - Aquarium

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!

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.