The Housewife(7)

I brush my teeth and wash my hands with one of the tiny soaps shaped like little seashells that smell of peppermint with a touch of lavender. I get them online and they’re incredibly expensive, but they’re exquisite. I have variations of them in every bathroom in the house.

I love those soaps. I love them so much, I could eat them. I put a handful in the palm of my hand, bring them to my nose, and inhale slowly.

There. That’s better.





I am eight years old. It’s Labor Day Monday, and we’ve gone to visit my father’s cousin in Prescott, Arizona, because my mother wants my father to ask his cousin for money. They haven’t told me that, but I overheard them. It’s because my father got let go from his job as a mechanic on the lettuce farm. My father can’t hold down a job because he’s a drunk. They haven’t told me that either, but my mother is always shouting at my father that he can’t hold down a job because he’s a drunk.

We get out of the car and I stand there, staring at the house in awe and wonder. I feel like I’m in a dream. I have never seen such a beautiful house. It’s not a big house, probably the same size as our house in Yuma, but while our house is horrible and filthy, this one is straight out of a picture-book with pastel-colored shutters, white walls, and pretty flower borders .

Inside, the bathroom smells fresh and clean, with a hint of lemon. On the shelf are four fluffy, baby-blue towels, neatly folded, all exactly the same size. By the sink is a white ceramic dish filled with little soaps shaped like tiny flowers.

I’ve never seen anything like it, and certainly not in our house, where the towels are somewhere between gray and brown, so threadbare in places you can see through them. And no offense to my mother, but you’d be lucky to get soap.

I pick up a little flower soap and bring it to my nose. It smells of lavender.

When I come home from school the next day, my mother has pretty much destroyed my bedroom and found the soaps. I’d taken them all, wrapped them in toilet paper, carefully tucked them in the pocket of my hoodie and hidden them in a box under my bed. I know she’s gone straight for my box since that’s where I keep my most precious things, and she still trashed my side of the bedroom. She’s waiting for me, holding “the belt,” which is an old leather belt of my father’s with a square metal buckle that she keeps on a hook in the cupboard under the stairs.

Later, when I think of my mother, I always picture her bent down, her face all pursed from frowning, dirty tendrils of dark-gray hair escaping from her ponytail. Invariably, she’s hissing at me: “You want the belt? Is that it?” My sister also gets the belt sometimes, but rarely, and even then you can tell my mother’s heart isn’t in it. When I get the belt, my mother’s heart is always in it.

Anyway. I get the belt. Apparently, my father’s cousin called my father and told him the soaps had been stolen, like she couldn’t afford to buy more. My sister is crying, begging my mother to stop before she kills me. My father is in the living room, sitting on the couch with a can of Budweiser, watching TV. We must be really loud because he ups the volume so we’re drowned in canned laughter.

That night, I am banished to the cellar. My mother keeps me in there all night. She actually had a padlock put on the door when it became her go-to punishment for heavier infractions. Before that, she used to lock me in my room for days, but my sister showed me how to unlock it with a paper clip. My mother came home unexpectedly one day and found me in the kitchen making French toast, which I’d intended to take upstairs and lock myself back in. Anyway, that’s why she came up with the cellar solution. It’s pitch black in there, and the air is thick with the smells of mold, old dust, and dead mice. I can’t go to the toilet, obviously, so I wet myself, which will earn me another belting.

Later, after my parents have gone to sleep, my sister tiptoes down the stairs and sits by the door.

“It’ll be okay, Jo. Don’t cry. She’ll let you out in the morning. I’ll stay here with you all night.”

But I don’t care about the cellar and the belt. I’m used to all that by now. Between sobs, I tell my sister how much I wanted those little soaps, and how much I wanted to have a house that smelled nice and was full of pastel-colored cushions and roses in vases and properly made-up beds with extra pillows.

“You will, Jo,” she says from the other side of the door. “One day, you’ll have your own beautiful house and your own beautiful bathroom with different colored towels so fluffy they’ll be like clouds and your own pretty little soaps. ”

If only she could see me now. Look! I got them! If only I could tell her what I never got the chance to tell her, in the end. I love you, Deb. I love you almost as much as I love my little soaps.

She would have laughed at that.





4





I was serving a five-year sentence for vehicular manslaughter in Perryville when Deb met Roy. She’d moved to LA to be a model, and after my release, I would go and live with her. We were going to start a catering business together when I got out. We’d call it “Deb & Jo’s Petits Fours.” I’d do the cooking—Deb couldn’t cook to save her life, but she loved eating, especially sweet things. I gave her a packet of Oreos once that I’d stolen from Mrs. Donnelly’s grocery store, and she looked so happy and radiant, it was like she’d swallowed the sun. After that, I always volunteered to go grocery shopping so I could steal more sweets for Deb, just to see her happy.