washbasin. The bra strap and bottom of her blouse escaped from the bath as fast as wasps retract their sting after using it. The quick movement made the hoops holding up the curtain tinkle. I also heard the door latch clicking into place.
My sister had left.
The bathroom was silent again.
The apparent peace lasted a few seconds.
Until the bathroom light suddenly came on. I held my hands over my eyes to ease the pain from being dazzled.
“So,” I heard my father’s voice say, “how’s your night going?”
The curtain was thrown open with a metallic racket. The sudden light and deafening noise made it hard to believe I was in the same place where a moment before a fly would’ve given away its position just from the noise of its heartbeat. Even if a fly’s heart is nothing more than a throbbing organ that pumps hemolymph and not blood.
“Sleep well in there?”
I opened my eyes and could only make out stripes of light through my hands. The curtain rail made its noise again. Dad was shaking it. When my vision finally got used to the bright light, I could see my father’s silhouette, a diagonal line that ran from the left of my field of sight to the center. Like how a corpse would see the figure of its burier.
I blinked to focus better. At first I thought he was naked, his torso marked by the flames like a choppy sea of dark flesh, but then I saw the worn elastic of his sky-blue cotton underpants. I looked at him without saying anything, detecting a smile on his face from the shape his hair scar had taken. “Where did you get that pillow?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. In response to my silence, Dad let go of the curtain, which then dangled between us like a plastic barrier.
I tucked my legs in as I raised my back until I managed to sit myself up in the bathtub. Then I lifted the corner of the curtain to poke one eye out without making the hoops jingle. I saw Dad standing in front of the toilet bowl, his back to me. He had the key hanging from his neck on his back and the elastic on his underpants down, so I could see part of a vertical line of black hair. I saw him use toilet paper to dry himself with in front, as Mom insisted I did whenever I’d finished peeing, although now I hadn’t heard a trickle. He did it while looking down and then to one side, looking out perhaps for any movement of mine behind the curtain. I was scared that my hand’s trembling would be reproduced in the portion of material on which he kept watch.
I discovered two pairs of scratches crossing his back diagonally, from his spine outward. Two new wounds on creased skin. He didn’t seem bothered about them at all.
He threw the piece of paper into the toilet and pulled the chain. He stood watching the mechanism work. We had to stay to the end to make sure it drained out properly. It often didn’t, and Dad would get angry if he found dirty water in there when it was his turn to use it. Once it was broken for a few days, so we had to use the washbasin to get rid of liquids. For the other, we used the bin.
The last sucking noise preceded the dripping that filled the cistern. Dad pulled up his underpants, which was when I carefully lowered the corner of the curtain. It didn’t make a noise. I sat looking at the plastic.
His voice came from the other side.
“I discipline you so you learn to follow the rules of this house, and you break them a minute later?”
I didn’t know what he meant.
His fingers appeared at one end of the curtain. He pulled it. I sat there looking at him.
Dad was holding the pink bar of soap in his free hand.
“When you use this”—he raised his eyebrows to look first at the soap and then at me—“you put it back where it belongs.”
He let go of the curtain and returned the soap bar to the dish. The same fish-shaped dish whose sliding I’d heard in the darkness before my sister had again and again washed her hands, mouth, and whatever else she’d washed.
“It’s not so hard, is it?” my
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