The Water Cure(7)

Soon he would be out of sight. He went in a straight line for a while and then turned right until he had left our bay. We knew his lungs were robust enough to filter out some of the toxins, even if his large body became weakened by the air’s assault. When Mother started crying we all patted her with our hands.

There was no formal dinner on the leaving days. Instead we ate crackers, the last of the tins, Mother opening more than usual because new things were coming to us: household objects, and food that would keep, sacks of rice and flour and sometimes hard pieces of enamel jewellery that King would place in Mother’s palm and she would fold her fingers over. Gallons of bleach in blue canteens. Our own specific requests: soap, bandages, pencils, matches, foil. I always asked for chocolate and was always refused, but I tried every time. Magazines for Mother, handed over in three layers of paper bags and handled lightly by us sisters, who were forbidden to read them.

The journey took three days. One day to reach the mainland, one day spent there, and back on the third. On King’s return date, we waited all day. In the morning we helped Mother prepare a Welcome Back meal, our fingers raw and quick against stained plastic chopping boards as we cut onion until it looked like rice, the transparent scatter of it browning in the pan. We concentrated on the chopping with our entire hearts, and when we had finished one onion we would look up before starting the next, gazing out of the large windows that took up most of the kitchen’s far wall, searching for the speck of his body.

At dusk we would finally spot the boat and arrange ourselves on the shore to greet him. He returned to us reduced, and it was important for us to hide that it was difficult to see this, so we made sure to keep smiles fixed upon our faces no matter how red his eyes, the hair already covering his chin without his usual routine of a dawn shave, a pre-dinner shave. He always smelled foul. Luckily he never wanted us to touch him upon his return, not even Mother. We unloaded the boat as he dragged his body upstairs to soak in the tub, to let the scum of the outside world fall away. By the time he came back down for dinner he was a little livelier, although with deep circles under his eyes, like someone had taken a chisel to his face. And by the next day he would be back to normal, his regular size, though he still kept his distance for a few days, in case he’d brought something back, and so we were reminded of how easily damaged we were. As if we could forget it.

Once I was caught opening one of the magazines. Mother had left them in their bags on the old reception desk, distracted momentarily by some domestic emergency. Sky saw me reading it and screamed with true fear for me, bringing the others running. Though I didn’t make it past the second page I was still required to wear latex gloves for the rest of that week in case I contaminated anyone, and I was banned from dinner for the rest of the week too. My sisters brought me discs of sweatily buttered bread and dry fish that they had hidden in their laps. Grace accompanied her offerings with strict words about how stupid I was; Sky brought hers with sincere guilt about raising the alarm. I forgave her easily because the scream was proof of concern, of love, the same way she would have screamed had a viper been raising its head, fangs bared towards my outstretched hand.





Grace, Lia, Sky


A piece of paper pinned to the corkboard in reception is headed simply Symptoms.

Withering of the skin.

Wasting and hunching of the body.

Unexplained bleeding from anywhere, but particularly eyes, ears, fingernails.

Hair loss.

Exhaustion.

Trouble breathing. Tightness of the throat, the chest.

Agitation.

Hallucinations.

Total collapse.



There is no hiding the damage the outside world can do, if a woman hasn’t been taking the right precautions to guard her body. Mother could always tell from the first moment a new woman arrived how ill she was, whether she was beyond saving, and she would shake her head at the futile hostility of the world, the impossibility of it all. It wasn’t their fault that their bodies were unequipped.

‘We have young girls,’ she would tell the newcomer from behind a muffler, the muslin bunched over her lips. Perhaps the woman was just agitated. A nosebleed might have afflicted her on the crossing, blurred drops of blood still lingering at her sleeve from where she had dragged it across her face. ‘Please wait down on the beach, just to be sure.’

Sometimes all they needed was a few hours of the new air to improve. From the window as they rested on the shore, heads pillowed on their luggage, we could almost see their strength replenishing, the way it did with King when he returned to our land. We watched their shoulders straighten, the shaking of their bodies subside.





Grace


There is a violence to our eulogizing. We are making something of you that you never consented to. We are turning you into something else: a man finally overcome by the world. I know you would not want to be remembered that way. Thinking about you is akin to dragging your bloated ghost to shore. And why would we want to keep bringing that back?

Lia creates a shrine. Her hands do not shake as she arranges photographs and cowrie shells, even as her eyes leak. I let her have the comfort and do not comment, just look at the tattered photo that is you and Mother on your wedding day, a flower crown, the white suit when it was newly purchased.

Shrines are banned, Mother writes in yellow chalk one morning, the chalkboard propped near the breakfast table so we can’t ignore it. Stay present. Stay with me.