Porcelain Tub

If the porcelain tub were to break, it would be a travesty. All that warm water that had chivalrously quenched my bodily thirst would lose me forever to a cold tile floor. The gravity of the world lets you down, as the sides of the antique tub fall piece by piece, like a distraught alien in a different country. Tears are falling as they miss their train; the porcelain bits are being bombarded with warm water. But warm water was bound to cool, and tubs were bound to break. Frown a frown for what is reality.

I spent the first six years of my life in a tiny white cottage styled house in a historic district of Tuscaloosa. Bellwood was a quaint neighborhood, located a safe distance from more low income and what my mother liked to refer to as the 'white trash' housing sections. We lived in an almost entirely painted white wood house with an open porch and a rocking swing at the far left end. Down the steps and making sure to follow the cement walkway, you would find us, my sister and I. In a house with white paint and oversized porches, I made my first friend with a sister three years my junior and first distinguished fact from fiction.

Where the pavement met the street's end, an oak tree destined for passing stood statuesquely above my sister and my already blooming minds. It was quiet here, across from my nanny's house where she housed boxes of candy pumpkins for our taking. Roly polys littered the front side walk, and we spent hours here touching the tips of our fingers on their backs and watching them immediately tunnel inward and form a perfect round little circle. The miracles of nature are pleasantly exaggerated at a young age. Hours of elaborate play in and around my childhood home, always resulted in a ritual bath. We would gear up before tip toeing to the white porcelain structure. Mom would rummage through our bedrooms and search for our footed pajamas with the sticky suction booties. There were three girls in the house, and I always tried my best to help out. My sister was two persons in one. Although now tangle free, she was knotty demon who ripped the heads of dolls, chewed on my skin until it bled and screamed in the corner of the room, where we were supposed to take our time outs. When I think back to those first six years, I have been able to repress the noise. So yes, while the perfect circles the roly poly's made were incredulous, my sister's squawking demanding each one, so she could squish them between her two meaty fingers was not a pleasant aspect of this memory.

My wooden room sat next to hers and yet I remember quiet nights. My little white table where I sat and ate McDonalds was a place for contemplation and coloring many a picture. My sister's room next to me would awaken with a new coat of color on the walls each day. She would stealthily sneak out of bed each night and stand for hours, moving her grisly hand up and down, up and down. Always a new day to be had with Brittany and difficult children in the beginning are always hard to decipher in the end. "And you, you're a mess to be made.

So with our dirty knuckles from picking up insects off the streets, and with my sister's colored fingers, my McDonald's ketchup smeared mustache always colored our warm bathroom with a sea of palettes. Despite my usual hostility towards my sister and her relentless need for attention, bath times with Britt were always relished. Our plastic bath toys and array of Barbie's who swam under water made for a solid tub. I never had to check the time, and I'd never thought I'd see the day when the large hanging mirror crashed over into the tub and shattered our fragile haven. The Barbie's were removed and our bath toys were in our water box. Snug in our beds in footed pajamas and hours to go before my sister would crawl out of her bed with her hair, assembled like a rats' nest, a great clattering was heard from rooms over. Past the time out, past the front with the great oak tree, past the den where I found that pair of scissors to style my own hair, the great porcelain tub that alleviated aggravated moods, brought two sisters together as they should be was demolished. The first chip blew, as did the second one, and the floor from beneath it buckled but not all the way.

The water yet to be drained left this combine and crept like an unwelcome voyageur to the edges of our rooms. It so stealthily slid along the wooden floors and fatally eroded the edges to my sister's room, being right next door to my own.

And although it is a crazy accusation, I believe the death of our porcelain tub resulted in my sister's noise and a lifetime of messy adjectives. In the bath, she was an angel with plastic who longed for her sister as her playmate. We loved each other then. She would give me four year old little wet kisses with a half toothed grin, and tangle free shampoo did wonders for her. She could made quick miraculous recoveries there in the tub, away from the confines of her world. Here there was no reason to resist orders and to persist at screaming while seated in time out, where she spent hours upon hours throughout the day. She always needed that sort of attention. Defiance is the greatest observer's rating count. A detesting child grabs her aid and subsists upon attention for her survival. But in the tub, the subconscious is watered down, leaving two shallow happy chicks to swim like fish in the sea, wandering every which way without any particular order and desire to be noticed. Ashley and Brittany, two fish among a cloud of others with similar colors, shapes, designs, and movements.

But now, years after the porcelain bits were collected and a new more modern tub went in place of the older, my sister sleeps in my parent's million dollar house and manages to break a new heart everyday. Instead of squishing roly poly's and searching for perfect circles, she draws rough edges and bites pieces of my heart out during her periodic episodes. She turned on me permanently and has become an enemy of an indefinite number of days in this sequence we refer to as life.

I never thought I'd remember the worst part of my past when memories of my childhood used to be so pleasant. But once you accept how things are now, you accept the past. So yes, I will acknowledge that the porcelain tub caved in and warm water never stays warm indefinitely. My sister is still the ruthless demon she was born to be. And sadly, the tub where the tangle free shampoo was stored along with plastic toys and snaggle toothed innocent grins can no longer bring about my sister's both pleasant and miraculous recoveries.

Ode to the future. Preserve tubs and be sure to give them a good scrubbing. A clean haven is a safe one. While in our showers, we begin, we end, and we work. We work at life with hefty bars of soap. My sister has become a broken bar of soap that too easily slips out of my hands again and again. The tub may have broken long ago but I am not willing to spend the next ten years of life storing away my sister--the soap again. I will remain steadfast upon establishing a firmer grip on our relationship, master the method to holding slippery soap.