Bathroom Confessions

By Danny Fisher

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following story contains graphic content and is a frank and honest look at issues surrounding domestic abuse.

My sister, Mel, dreams about having Mike Brady as a father. But our father is dead, and even if our life was like The Brady Bunch, everyone knows she’d be Jan. I don’t know why she longs to be recognized as the ignored middle sister, the one who whines too much to be endearing. When life becomes too stressful for even ABC’s Saturday night line-up to offer escape, Mel sneaks out of the house through the bulkhead in the basement. She rebels, I recoil. I cling to the sanctuary that is my bedroom. There, in the dark, the multi-colored lights from my strobe-lamp dance across the wall, wanting to transport me to another place and time. But the music from my stereo, its bass deep and throbbing, can’t quite mask the turmoil happening beyond my bedroom door. At night, I lie there in my bed unable to sleep. Eventually I roll over onto my side, shut my eyes, draw the covers high over my head and will my brain to let my ears go deaf.  

In the morning, I wake to exactly the kind of silence that I had prayed for only hours before. I dress quickly and quietly. I grab my books, turn the knob of my door ever so slowly and edge my way into the hallway. I am hoping to slip out undetected to the safety of school. To do that, I must clear the bathroom door. I slink past the slim tables littered with knick-knacks that crowd the hallway like giant chess pieces put there to give me away. Suddenly, a shaft of light pierces through the shadows. The metal door-stop goes waaannnggg as the bathroom door bangs against it.

“Danny, get in here!” Mom clutches my collar and yanks me inside. She slams the door behind me, locks it and points to the toilet. “Sit down.”

I obey because that’s what I do.

I try not to stare, but it’s hard. Her hair is matted to her head, which is so unlike my mother who has been known to take three hours to get ready. One eye is red and puffy from crying, the other has swollen shut and turned an ugly shade of dark purple. Her arm is held close to her side, her wrist limp. She uses her good hand to light a cigarette. She inhales the smoke deep into her lungs, exhaling through blood-encrusted nostrils. I sit and watch—as I know I’m supposed to wait to speak until spoken to, if at all. She winces as she slides her robe off her shoulders. It falls to the floor and I stare at my mother in all her nakedness. I’m twelve or thirteen years old, and it’s awkward. Her breasts are firm because they are fake. Her stomach bears the scars of childbirth, both natural and otherwise. Her legs are slim, but pockmarked with cellulite and covered with bruises, old and new.

When my gaze meets her pubic area, my untied Timberlands turn inward. I fold into myself. I tuck my right hand in the crevice between my jean-clad thighs, pick at the edge of the laminate counter with my left one. I stare at the worn rug on the floor, focus on a single thread of carpet that has pulled loose.

Mom locks eyes with her reflection in the mirror. When she opens her mouth, her voice is laced with all the anger she dares not show on the other side of the bathroom door.

“I don’t even know what I said,” she begins. “But I never do. It doesn’t matter. He slammed my face against the wall. There’s blood all over the carpet in there. How am I supposed to get that out?”

I shrug but say nothing. I don’t know why my mother confides in me. I don’t know how to respond to her any better than she knows how to respond to him. I’ve learned to stay silent. Maybe it’s because my bedroom is next to hers, maybe it’s because my sister can’t be counted on, or maybe it’s because she knows I’ll never stand up and say no. But she chooses me, every time. And I hate her for it.

Mom reexamines herself in the mirror. She scrapes at the crusty blood on her upper lip with a fingernail and tilts her head backwards, so she can see up her nostrils. “I don’t think it’s broken this time, not for his lack of trying,” she says.

She bends over to pick her robe up off the floor. At the sight of my mother’s bare backside cracked open, I turn away toward the window. My eyes are squeezed shut.

Mom hangs the robe on a hook on the back of the door. “Danny!”

I turn around—open my eyes, quit fiddling with the counter and sit up straight. “Yes, ma’am!”

“How the hell are you going to testify to a judge about everything he did to me if you’re not paying attention? Look at me!”

I work hard at keeping my expression dull while inside I want to scream. I just want to go to school so I can fail my math test and sit by myself at lunch.

“You see this shit?” The lower half of her right arm dangles limp in front of my face. “He broke my fucking wrist!”

“Are you going to call the cops?” My question is half curious, half pleading.

“Why? What’re they gonna do? Drag him out in cuffs and let him back out tomorrow?”

“If you pressed charges—”

Mom’s laugh is sharp. “You don’t get it, do you? If I press charges, then what? A restraining order? So, fucking what? That just pisses him off more.” She’s digging through drawers with her good hand looking for something to brace her wrist. Her breasts bounce in rhythm to her movements. “Don’t we have an ace bandage for Christ’s sake?”

I point to the closet behind her. “On the shelf,” I say.

Once she finds it, she tosses the ace bandage to me. I catch it, begin unraveling the cloth so that I can wrap it around her wrist. She holds her arm towards me, sucking air through her teeth at every slight movement as I try to make the brace snug enough to do some good.

“After he slammed my face, he snapped my wrist. Kicked me a few times.” She turns her hips and shows me the spot where fresh bruises are blossoming on her thigh. “I should have you take pictures, but I left the Polaroid at his apartment. You look here, Danny, remember this, okay? Make sure you remember everything I said so you can tell the judge.”

I stare past her, focus on the doorframe while I picture the scene from last night in my mind: I can see the look on his face as he calls her a cunt. He’s smug. He thinks he’s funny. I see my mother’s shoulders rise in defiance, but then quickly slouch when she realizes she’s gone too far. I see his hand as it reaches for her, grabs a handful of beautiful chestnut curls. He slams her face into the nearest wall. I see the blood that pours from her nose as he smiles down at her, daring her to speak back to him. I hear the sobs as she begs for forgiveness. I see him reach down between her legs and shove his meaty fingers inside her. He whips her into a frenzy and then calls her a slut for her body’s reactions. And when she dares to reach up and caress his cheek in the hopes of turning his mood around—he snaps her wrist in two—and fucks her anyways.

And while I don’t know if how I imagine it is exactly how it happened, I know this much: no judge is ever going to ask me about any of it.

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Danny Fisher is a current degree candidate at The Mountainview Low Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.

Meet Mona

By Danny Fisher

I’m in bed frolicking, as adults do, head at the wrong end of the bed, feet in the air, engaged in full-on naked frolicking with the new man in my life, when a voice from my kitchen floats up the stairs,  “Danielle-a, are you here? You busy?”

     I forgot that she was going to stop by; I also forgot she has a key. I get out of bed and shut the bedroom door. My new boyfriend does what he does best.

     “Who the fuck is that?” Wide-eyed, he searches for his underwear, tossing blankets and pillows in a flurry of fabric.  

     “That would be my mother,” I say. I am forty-three years old with two grown children. The cat’s out of the bag regarding my virginity. My mother knows.  My boyfriend cannot grasp this fact.

     “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he mutters as he hops around on one foot, his found underwear pulled up mid-thigh,  pants dangling off the other leg. I cock my head and watch as everything dangles.

     “Babe, relax, I’ll go down there. Just chill,” I say. I slip on a  negligee. “If you jump, you’ll probably break a leg,” I add, just in case he decides to try something stupid.  Then I go downstairs and greet my mother.

---

"My mother is the lady who taught me that panty lines were tacky. She oozes the kind of sex appeal most women fake."

---

“Hey, Mom.” I kiss her cheek, “I forgot you were coming up.”

     “I told you I had that doctor’s appointment.” She pulls back and notices my attire. “That’s cute. You look skinny. Were you sleeping?”

     “No, I was fucking.”

     My mother is the lady who taught me that panty lines were tacky. She oozes the kind of sex appeal most women fake. In response to my declaration, her eyes light up.

     “Oooh!” She leans toward the staircase as if to catch a peek. “Is he coming down?”

     “Uh, well, he’s kind of shy. The thing is, Mom, he’s a little younger than me.”

     She raises a brow.

     “Thirty. He’s thirty, but he looks twelve. Okay, not twelve, but not thirty. He’s cute. He’s Asian. He’s a cute Asian.”

     “The Asians always look young,” she says. She walks to the bottom of the stairs.  I’m not sure what she’s about to do, but there’s no stopping her. A force to be reckoned with, that one. 

     “Hey, you up there! You best put your pants on and come down and meet me! Don’t make me come up there!” She smiles at me and winks. 

      I go upstairs. The boyfriend is fully dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed. 

     “Are you fucking serious right now?” he says.

     “Do you really want her to come up here?” We both take stock of the surroundings. There is the bed that looks like a tornado hit it. 

     And then there is the paraphernalia.  Our eyes lock on the paraphernalia. He looks at me. I shake my head, no. There is no time to dispense with the paraphernalia. She will come up here, my expression says. She will see it. She will comment on it. She will not pretend she didn’t see it. 

     “Fuck,” he groans and follows me downstairs. 

     “Mom, this is Pat,” I step out of the way of their meeting. “Pat, this is my mother, Mona.” My mother approaches him, wraps her bony arms around him and squeezes as if she were being reunited with a long-lost love. Pat’s brown eyes shoot daggers at me over her shoulder. Mom stands back from the embrace, leaves her hands resting on his upper arms and says with a bright smile, “So, Danny tells me you two were fucking?”

     The boyfriend laughs—in that way that says he is dying inside—then nods.

     My seventy-three-year-old mother squeals in delight and dances a jig, old lady batwings wagging, toes tapping, shit-eating grin plastered on her face. “Oh, how I wish I was young again and could spend my days in bed with a cutie like you!”

     Somehow, we dated for almost two years.

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Danny Fisher is a current degree candidate at The Mountainview Low Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.

Student Picks: Tallent and Peelle

Danny Fisher-- I was sixteen, sitting at the kitchen with my aunt, when I turned to her and said, “Why doesn’t she just leave him?”

My Aunt set the needle and thread down that she had been using to sew button-eyes onto the sock doll she was making. She sighed, “Because, Danny, some people need to be victims.”

Her true meaning did not sink in that day, but in the years that followed I would learn to understand the mentality behind the victim/abuser relationship. In his novel, My Absolute Darling, Gabriel Tallent dissects that dynamic with a deft use of language, imagery and a nuanced approach to scene building and story-telling.  The reader is granted full admission into the horrific conditions that his main character, a young girl named Turtle, must survive to find the person she is meant to be and not the one her domineering father, Martin, has trained her to become, although Tallent takes the reader there with a subtlety that belies the drama unfolding, allowing the reader to behold the beauty of Turtle and Martin’s relationship as well as the tragedy.

Margaret McNellis-- The Midnight Cool by Lydia Peelle is a delight for students and casual readers alike. Peelle’s treatment of the passage of time and varying points of view provide ample text to study for craft while providing a rich texture to the story. Pair with that universally understood themes at a time when the whole world is in the thick of war, and you get a gripping reading experience.

On the micro-level, Peelle’s writing is beautiful. Her use of metaphors and similes offer substantial opportunities for close readings because in the space of a few words, Peelle expertly conveys character motivations, fears, strengths and weaknesses.

I was particularly excited to add The Midnight Cool to my reading list this semester, as Lydia was my mentor last semester. I had the added benefit of seeing her lessons in action. If asked what I enjoyed most about The Midnight Cool, I’m not sure I could pick any one thing because I loved every aspect of this novel.