vermruka

She sunk into her black chair that rolled silent and smooth across the tile floor. All her flesh spread out as I pushed her around, thighs seeming to triple, belly like a flattened snowman. When we tried to get her out and into the tub she turned quick into an unwilling victim, stiff as death.

But she was alive. I saw her eyes roll exaggerated as we struggled to position her on the plastic seat awaiting in the water. Her cheeks puffed with effort as she decided to make an appearance, to be present for the occasion. ‘You fools,’ she must have been thinking, licking at the hairs that cris-crossed her lip; the even, black hairs. Her arms gripped the sides of the tub with such strength; made me think of square-torsoed German women rolling dough, wringing laundry.

Her lower half into the water like a boulder sinking. Her back sloping away from the rest of her body and ending in a small, firm, unattractive ass. The dark and moist-looking crack of the ass gave birth to a long scar that snaked crudely along the spine before it disappeared between her shoulder blades.

“I’ll need some things from the closet,” she said. She was tired, bored of us. I peeled the latex gloves from my hands and held them, balled, at my sides. I stood there and waited for her to tell me what she needed.

“There’s a bar of soap that I brought. I don’t like your soap, it dries me out,” she said, her tongue thick in her mouth. “And two bottles of lotion, but I only want you to bring me the pink one. No, wait. Bring me the other one. The yellow.”

Bring me. I asked if there was anything else.

“Clothes, get me some clothes.” And she laughed, remembering clothes. I noticed her nipples; decent in size, shape, color. Both ringed in stray hairs an inch long. Her breasts were large and upthrust and firm, her swollen belly giving gentle rise between them and folding them quietly away from each other. She was very unashamed of her body, almost unaware, and I thought of her always being in these situations, how many times her flesh must have been open to review.

I left and walked the small hallway to the bedroom, seeing the black scuffs along the walls and on the floor, from shoes and tires, as we’d tried to maneuver her nude and deformed body into the bathroom. Such a production; what should have been an embarrassment for her and not us.

I heard her calling the names of more things for me to bring as I opened the closet next to her bed.

“And I’ll need a razor,” she said loudly, then changed her mind: “I’ll need two.”

I heard low murmuring, what I knew to be my colleague asking what she wanted with the razors; why two of them, would she be safe with them?

“Of course I’ll be safe,” she snapped; her terrible high-pitched voice. I heard her say she wanted to shave everything, to feel pretty. I re-entered the bathroom with handfuls of her items and saw her rubbing at her legs sexually, eyelids lowering, dark lashes on her face like trembling spiders.

And we stood there and we watched her.

Her eyes remained closed for most of the procedure. (It was a procedure.)

She started by squirting shampoo from a travel-sized bottle into her palm and mashing it into her hair. She kept one hand patiently on her knee and used the other to work the shampoo around her head, into the hair that was cut like a boy’s; indistinct; the perfect and familiar swirl at the crown where the hair’s pattern was set into motion. I found that concentrating on this absence of hair, this eye of the storm, endeared me to her.

“Rinse,” she said, grasping the air like an infant. “Time to rinse.” (Now a mother to her infant.)

Quickly I retrieved a Dixie cup from the dispenser on the wall (she had the big bathroom with all the trimmings) and tried to hand it to her but her eyes were still squeezed shut and she didn’t see me. Smiling at the woman helping me, a middle-aged woman with the large and needy eyes of a koala bear, I dipped the cup into the bathwater and dumped it flatly onto the girl’s cake-frosted hair, stiff white peaks dissolving and smoothing out into dark streaks that squirmed against her neck like leeches.

In surprise she’d thinned her lips to nonexistence and now they sprung open quick, like a mousetrap in reverse: “Cold! It’s so cold!”

I stared at her dumbly, at her bloated legs sitting useless in the water, wondering why she hadn’t complained the moment we’d put her in. Wondering if her legs had any feeling in them at all.

She was saying that we needed to start over. That she wanted out, and could I bring the robe from her closet? And she’d wait in the chair while we made her a new bath, with hot water this time.

Without hesitation we lifted her from the plastic perch, its rubberized feet slipping with the force of all of us pulling and shifting around, and when she was almost out, her own feet caught on the back of the chair and we had no choice but to let it topple over, let it slap flat against the water and then slowly sink down.

I’d already grabbed her robe on my first trip to the closet and now I wrestled with her to get it onto her wet body. She shoved her arms through the thin nylon sleeves with a grunt while koala-eyes made sure her wheelchair was steady; we eased her gently back into it and she took a moment to adjust, make herself comfortable, find a good position. I thought of her body parts sliding around on the fabric seat, her body parts that hadn’t been washed yet; that were still dirty.

Once in the chair proper she rolled herself away, her big arms winding in graceful flourishes. I watched as she coasted easily out the door. As she passed I looked at the way the fatness of her neck made the short, boyish hairs push out and spread, exposing the skin there. Droplets of water streamed down her back.

Then she disappeared around the corner, but before she had gone, I caught her smiling. Her face, in profile, had become sinister; the eyebrow arched in such a way that I’d never imagined it doing before; her jaw was now squarely set, teeth pressed in determination, and she was smiling. There wasn’t any helplessness left in her features, it had vanished with one great push of those wheels.

The koala was picking up discarded towels and hadn’t noticed anything, so after a pause I followed the girl out there, into her bedroom. I went over in my head what I might say to her: “What’s the big idea?” came to mind, causing me to unexpectedly laugh; such a ridiculous phrase. The laugh was low in volume and breathy but she caught it anyway and turned her head to look at me; I spontaneously used the laughter as a friendly segue into my confrontation: “What do you think you’re doing?” I said as I grinned; dropped my head a little to the side like a teacher who’s asked you to meet with them after class.

Her body remained completely out of my vision; just a large spotted head rose from the back of the chair like a puppet show about to start. She stared at me relentless, face frozen like a picture of her and not a real her. In that moment I thought she looked sadly beautiful – again, a stance I hadn’t anticipated taking – but I liked her lips that were pale and poised and full, an effortless blending to the rest of her skin. The whiskers curled away independent, a dozen broken piano strings.

I walked to her, waving my hand in a friendly, forgiving gesture, wondering whether I should actually say ‘I’m sorry’ or just assume that it was understood, and then I saw what she was in the middle of doing. I was standing directly behind the chair now, looking past the endearing swirl and down into her lap. Her left wrist was drawn over the jungle of her pubic hair, elbow tight at her waist. The other hand was pinching the small blade from one of the razors she’d asked for, the ones we’d given to her, it winked at me so shiny. Its pink plastic cartridge rested serenely on her mottled thigh. The strangest part was the movement of the blood; rolling from the wound in milky somersaults, churning out of her body. I took in the scene for what seemed like a very long time, unsure of what to do about what I was seeing, pretending I wasn’t seeing it. Everything in the room was very clear, suddenly – everything edges. The late afternoon sunlight on the white floor; a kind of light I’d found depressing for as long as I could remember. Her closet door standing open from when I’d rooted around for her things; six pairs of brand-new underwear waiting patiently and neatly in the corner of one of the shelves, two piles of three. Her bra still unfolded and laying flat from when I’d looked at it; when I’d held it in my hands and thought of her wearing it. I’d rubbed the material between my fingertips, looked at the tag: 34C, larger than mine. I’d looked at this bra and the other things in her closet – the cheap cotton panties, the tampons – and felt close to her. Understanding of her because she was a woman; deeply and quietly linked to her by this one thing that we shared.

*ending removed fer now ’cause i’m workin’ on it!*