Waterfoul

The water was hot.  It poured out in a small square column that feathered itself into an upside-down flame as it splashed against the side of the tub, crackling and spitting and swirling into the drain.  She watched it as if in a trance for a minute or two and then got up, suddenly becoming aware of something or someone.  Hastily, her clothes came off into a messy pile on the floor.  It wasn’t the attire you would expect to see on such a small-framed girl:  chest waders, a 4-in-1 wader jacket and a fowler cap.  Then several layers of thermals.  As she peeled the last one off, she turned and suddenly caught a glimpse of her reflection.  The only mirror in the tiny cabin that had been hidden behind the bathroom door startled her, but she fought the urge to look away. 

 

She stared long and hard at her naked silhouette, wondering.  Her skin was covered in goose bumps and puckered as she touched her tender breasts with a cold, bright red hand that no longer felt like part of her body.  Her breasts were larger than usual, with big, flesh colored n*****s.  She always worried that they hung down lower than she thought they should.  A delicate pink scar snaked its way up her midsection from right above her navel to just below her sternum, serving as a nagging reminder of things that had transpired years ago. As her eyes continued to follow the contours of her reflection, she failed to comprehend why men lusted after women the most during their period. 

The moldy rubber stopper had been casually flung over the edge of the tub, hanging precariously from a rusty ball chain over the water stained tongue-and-groove floor boards.  She turned her attention back to her bath as she carefully lifted it to safety and plugged the drain, admiring the flaking enamel of the old cast iron tub.  A random memory reminded her of a painting she had once seen in a text book.  A portrait done by some Renaissance master depicting a robust woman sitting side saddle on the edge of a tub preparing for a bath.  She thought the image rather fitting, all things considered.  After all, just this morning she was bent over the side of this very tub, screaming, her hands pinned behind her and his side-by-side loaded with double-ought buck jammed behind her ear.

 

The water sent the nerve endings in her icy feet into a frenzy as she stepped into the bath.  It was the kind of scalding water that tricks you into thinking it’s actually freezing, and you have to look at the “H” on the faucet just be sure.  She sat down in the tub Indian-style and cupped her hands under the running water, noticing the change in sound as it splashed into the tiny pool she made and then back into the tub.  As she laid back in the water, letting it slowly creep up the sides of her stomach like she imagined the melting ice caps would do to the coastal cities in some obscure future, she noticed little lumps of brown tissue floating in the water beside her.  She remembered why she didn’t like taking baths when she had her period.  Something about sharing her bathwater with rotting endometrial flesh never sat right with her.  Go figure.  Still, she laid in the water.  The floating bits of her womb reminded her of a similar image: wooden decoys floating in a pond before sunrise.  Canvasbacks, redheads, mallards, mergansers.  All of them arranged perfectly in the frigid water by her seven-year-old self.  Her father would take her and her brother hunting every winter, and they would stay in that dilapidated cabin for days at a time. No one even knew that place existed.  It was one of her father’s secret hunting spots.  Her father and brother got to shoot, she got to field dress.  Remove the entrails; don’t break the gal bladder; wipe out the body cavity.  Sometimes she felt like one of those poor birds; gutted and empty, her shamefulness excised to make her more palatable. 

 

Her father had died years ago.   A hunting accident on these very grounds had claimed his life.  His was death was difficult for her but she coped by immersing herself in the sport that her father loved.  She mastered all kinds of duck calls, scouted out the best spots and her accuracy with her Dad’s old Wingmaster was matched only by her brother’s.  The two of them still stayed at the old cabin and often competed to see who could limit out first.  As she sat in the warm bath water, she imagined that’s why it was particularly difficult for her when he also succumbed to hypothermia in the same waters their father hunted.

 

She stared in a trance as the dancing vortex of water circled and gurgled and fought the air down the drain.  As she toweled off and went to the window overlooking the pond, she fixed her eyes over the water on a spot she knew well.  She’d often placed her father’s decoys there as a child.  Now, it was home to her father’s final resting place and, as of early this afternoon, her brother’s.  She wondered if they would ever find the bodies.  If she would ever have to relive the horrible things done to her by her own flesh and blood in that cabin.

 

A pink plastic wrapper floats to the floor.  “Sticky side down” is what she was always told.  She slides her panties up, adjusts her pad and finished getting dressed.  There’s no sense in bleeding anymore.