Dear D,
At gramma's house this week. Mom and Dad are doing their usual tour of their old high schools and stuff, old places where they'd barfed from too much beer or driven too fast. Gross.
Gramma's napping in the easy chair, head slumped, with the volume of Walker, Texas Ranger turned up so loud I Can't Believe she can sleep through it. I love gramma, too bad she doesn't watch any good tv.
Just decided to take a bath in the tub. A narrow one, but deep enough to cover my knees without draining water. And I put my hand, Just There, while thinking about Shane Pederson. Then I sortta started thinking about Marjorie. I actually moaned.
Diary! It felt so nice but now I'm worried that I'm a lezzie. And my hands are pruny.Maybe I'll take another bath. Tomorrow.
Friday, September 28, 2007
~Tomorrow by Rion~
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Tomorrow
Dear D,
At gramma's house this week. Mom and Dad are doing their usual tour of their old high schools and stuff, old places where they'd barfed from too much beer or driven too fast. Gross.
Gramma's napping in the easy chair, head slumped, with the volume of Walker, Texas Ranger turned up so loud I Can't Believe she can sleep through it. I love gramma, too bad she doesn't watch any good tv.
Just decided to take a bath in the tub. A narrow one, but deep enough to cover my knees without draining water. And I put my hand, Just There, while thinking about Shane Pederson. Then I sortta started thinking about Marjorie. I actually moaned.
Diary! It felt so nice but now I'm worried that I'm a lezzie. And my hands are pruny.
Maybe I'll take another bath. Tomorrow.
"Just half an hour, that's all I need. After that I'll be fine."
She's weary and needs to rest, to not think, not plan, not do anything. Through the bathroom door, Caroline can hear her husband and children making an evening snack.
"They use more dishes and pots for one snack than I do for a full dinner. Guess who'll clean up the mess?"
Caroline closes her eyes and ears. She just wants to feel the hot water sucking out the day's problems, tantrums, chores, routines. She starts to drift away to a hot sun on the beach. She's in Aruba, floating on the blue-green water with the divi divi trees above.
"Mom! Dad wants to know how to melt butter in the microwave so we can put it on popcorn."
Slowly opening her eyes, Caroline is surprised to find herself in her bathtub.
She turns toward the voice on the other side of the door. "I'll be down in a few minutes. It's easier for me to do it than to explain."
As the water swirls down the drain, she sees a ring around the tub. Scrubbing, she thinks, "I hate these putrid green tiles. I feel like I'm surrounded by mold."
After hanging up the wet towel and wiping the floor dry, she pulls on a robe and goes downstairs to take care of her family.
All traces of her journey are gone.
She didn't like her body.
Even as a little girl, she heard her mother, and she knew that women should not like their bodies. They must despise their thighs, their bellies, their asses. They must obsess over calories and forsake flavor.
So she grew up knowing how to relate, how to complain to her friends, how to sweat in a gym and starve in a restaurant. She knew how to hide her flaws with clothing and compare her own legs to the legs of fashion models and movie stars. She knew how to pinch herself, for proof.
She knew how to be disgusting.
She didn't know how to talk to the woman across the hall, the woman who baked cakes at 4 in the morning and appeared at the mailboxes with chocolate crumbs littering her face. One day, the woman said, "I made some cookies."
She said, "That sounds lovely, but I'm on a diet."
And the woman rolled her eyes. "I can see that. It looks like you've been on a diet all your life."
She admitted she had. Somehow, the woman talked her into eating the cookie. She knew that she would be fatter than ever. She forced herself to lock the bathroom door, strip off all her clothes, and examine her body. She knew she would see that cookie in her hips.
It must have been a magic cookie, though, because she looked about the same as she had that morning. After that, she went to the woman's apartment every day. Usually, she ate one cookie, or piece of cake, or pie, and they talked about a lot of things, like movies and men. After a while, she noticed two things.
First, when she got on the scale, the numbers didn't mean anything anymore, and she couldn't remember them a minute later. Second, she was skinny.
Post a Comment