Fiction

Closed Doors

by John D. Collins

It's too hot. My skin sweats, even under the water, and it's hard to breathe, like a wet towel over my mouth. I slide slowly down, backside skidding on the dimpled rubber flowers on the bottom, and my ears slip under the water. I open my mouth wide, blocking my throat with my tongue. The hot water runs in quickly, and would keep running except for my tongue. I come this close to inhaling deeply and letting it run.

But not really.

Minutes later she knocks and asks if I'm all right. No, I think, I'm drowning. Yes, I say, I'm fine.

Standing in front of the fogged mirror, I look and see it might be me. Or maybe not. But it doesn't matter, it's wet and it shouldn't be, so I let the towel lick it clean. Clean and hairless like a baby gerbil, pink and squirming. Their mothers sometimes eat them. Or maybe it's their fathers. I had gerbils, but they died. I held one of the babies, but it squirmed and dropped on the ground, and when I put it back, the mother didn't want it any more—it wasn't the same. I screamed when she started to eat it.

While I'm standing on the steamy vinyl floor looking at the foggy gerbil-thing being licked dry, he comes home. I know it's him because our mobile home has a very narrow hall, and the outside door is right across from the bathroom door. I hear him fall against the wall as he fights with his shoes. I hear him curse and then I hear him say Guess Who like he always says. Guess who, he says. Daddy Gerbil, I think.

She's in the kitchen and says something to him and he mutters something back at her and rides the wall toward her, away from my end of the trailer. My robe sucks any drops the towel missed and I pull in the door. He looks back when he hears the door open, and his face opens and he shows me his teeth. I came out too soon. He turns his body, but his feet don't want to. The wall saves him again. His shoes are on the mat by the door down by my feet. When I was littler, they were really shiny, but he's had them too long.

As he reaches down to grab me too hard, I smell the same things—daddy smells, like his breath in the back seat of the taxi that time, and like his side of the bed after he goes to work, and like every time he comes home now. And something else—something almost pretty like her, but different.

He says something loud in my ear and I say something and when he puts me down too hard it hurts my feet and I smile at him. Then I follow him down the hall to the kitchen. She took the pictures off the hall walls long ago, so now it's a dark, bare tunnel.

We get to the kitchen and he reaches around her and grabs her bum, laughing. Over his shoulder she has on her sitting-in-church face. She points him at the table and turns on the burner under the blackened pot on the gas stove. Spaghetti.

I move from the doorway into the light and between them, invisibly, to the fridge. I can just reach the picture taped to the fridge door, and I take it over to him. I did it, I say, in school.

He takes it in both hands and squints his eyes to see it better. It's a picture of a little boy riding away on a horse. Boy, he says, look at that kid screwin' that dog. She yells and throws the wet dishrag at him and he tries to duck. He rips the picture and it drops to the floor between his feet. It's a horse, I say, and I bend down to get the picture.

I tape the picture back on to the fridge and walk past them into the hall again. They are still yelling. I go to my room and close the door.

There's an empty space where the crib used to be. I was glad when they took it away. He just kept crying and crying and I couldn't sleep, so I stopped him. I don't know why she was so sad when he stopped; now we could sleep. Gerbils were quieter.

My pyjamas are warm from the laundry and smell soft, and I smile when I put them on. Something breaks in the kitchen. There is a piece of gum from last night on the bedpost and it makes a little snap when I pull it off. It's hard at first, like cold toffee, but it gets soft soon and there's still flavour in it. I look at the ceiling and chew. The wall bangs and vibrates a little. I swallow a bit more flavour and put the gum back on the bedpost. I still have the gerbil cage on my dresser, and I spin the little wheel with my finger as I go by to turn off the light. I get under the blankets and feel for Bronco Bear beside me. I punch him.

Something else breaks.