Blood stains come out easily, but the water must be icy. Too warm, and the blood bonds with the fabric, never leaving, like a terminal stage of cancer, each cell contaminated. Wring the garment. If the stream still runs pink, red, or brown, squeeze lemon juice on the stain, how you would lighten your hair. Sprinkle a teaspoon of baking soda. Or substitute with salt, crushed aspirin. Combine water with meat tenderizer, and apply the slurry.
My daughter crouches on top of the toilet, her knees encasing her head. Her thin pajamas reveal the bumps of her spine, like door knobs. I imagine rotating one, opening my daughter, peering inside. Learning why her body has only just begun to shed, at sixteen years old. I tell myself not to worry, it has started now, a good sign. She looks away from the sink, the streaky water swirling around islands of dried toothpaste. I want to do everything for her.
Whenever we cross the street, I grab her wrist, testing how easily my thumb and index finger connect. “Mom,” she says, breaking free. It is unclear which worry of mine she is rebuking.
I pick small, burgundy particles from her underwear. The openings for her legs are so small. I turn around, and my husband is in the doorway, watching me. His rectangular shape, and flat, stony face, like a bas-relief. I scrub harder, my hands tingling from the repeated motion.
That night, he chastises me for still doing her laundry. His bright teeth float in the dark, everything else invisible, like the Cheshire Cat’s smile. “She is too old to be this dependent,” he says. He expects me to break the news. I am often the osmotic membrane between my husband and my daughter, allowing them to communicate without speaking. Showing him a photo where she is scary-thin. Reminding her that he is working the night shift. My watery body, and their hard, linear ones.
I balance the laundry basket at my hip, full of snowy whites. My daughter is organizing a pile of Penguin Classics with acid orange lettering. Only my side profile is visible to my husband, watching from our bedroom. “When you were younger,” I say. “We pressed our noses to the washing machine. We wanted to shrink, so we could fly around the drum, tumble with the clothes. Do you remember?” `
“No,” she says.
“Well, it’s your turn now.” I place the basket next to her bookshelf, her lacy A-cup bra folded on top. Then I wink at her, using the eye that my husband can’t see. She nods slowly.
She washes her own clothes now, with the exception of anything blood-stained. These, she leaves outside my door. They remind me of the pools of fabric abandoned after transformations, when a movie character becomes a rodent, or suddenly tiny, no longer fitting into their clothes.
When I watch her loads thump against the machine, it feels like I have water in my ears. My husband says something to me that I can’t make out, but think is gracious. “It looks violent, right? The clothes chasing each other?” I say. He responds with nothing. Or I miss it. My back is to him, so I can’t tell.
Nora Esme Wagner is a rising sophomore at Wellesley College. She lives in San Francisco, California. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in JMWW, Litbreak Magazine, Milk Candy Review, Flash Boulevard, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. She is an assistant fiction editor at Pithead Chapel.
Lost Balloon 