Coming Clean by Maegan Beard

When we lived in the blue house, the color of skim milk cartons at school, my mother never allowed more than six inches of bath water. More than that represented a luxury--something we were waiting for, until we could blend into the lives of people who allowed themselves indulgences like full bathtubs.

For a long time I thought the bathtub would crash through pale yellow floorboards into our dank basement under the weight of more water. I thought if I didn’t get out of the bath before all the water drained, I might get drained right along with it -- sucked down the metal grate at the bottom of that slippery tub, where I had seen one of Mama’s rings disappear.

I figured it out at my friend Alice’s house. Alice’s mother let her fill the tub so full that water lapped into the overflow opening. I remembered the blue alien who visited my school, from the power company my daddy worked for. The alien spoke to my class in the library about energy conservation, including shallow baths. I wondered if my mother was acquainted with him. When I questioned her about Alice’s impossibly deep tub, she said, “Don’t be silly! We don’t need a full tub to get clean!”

Soon my daddy found a better job, as a shop teacher. We bought a Victorian house in a nice neighborhood. We went to church with all the doctors and judges. There were gift shops on Main Street instead of a flour mill. We lived near a stately courthouse with fat columns, the county hospital, and other historic homes, instead of rickety mill houses.

The house had an antique musty smell that my mother tried to cover up. She soaked cotton balls in wintergreen, making greasy puddles in Mason jar lids placed strategically around the house. The upstairs landing leaned frighteningly, and I was admonished for standing on it too long or jumping on it or bouncing anything on the floor there.

The best thing about our new house was the tiny upstairs bathroom that housed antique fixtures and an oval Victorian claw-footed tub. I wondered if it was built to withstand large volumes of water. For many years my mother never openly let me test it.

I started by secretly not turning the spout off while Mama was getting my towel. I tried hard to tell a difference in the water level and the effect on my buoyancy and ability to create waves. She pretended not to notice. I stayed in a little longer, only getting out after the tub had drained completely. When the bottom was still slick, I could slide up and down it like I was on wheels. Mama pretended to believe I was drying off.

In our new house in this new neighborhood, there were also new thoughts to occupy me. Would I switch schools and leave all my friends? Would I have to ride the school bus? I stopped trying to stealth more water into the tub and worried about more pressing matters. Mama let me bring my plastic mermaids with the turquoise hair into the tub. Their hair streamed out behind them as I pulled them in circles. I experimented with bubble bath, which I disliked because of my inability to rinse off the globs completely. For one birthday, a great-aunt gave me rose and lavender-scented bath cubes, which crumbled and dissolved under my fingers.

Not long after the move, I demanded solitude for bath time. Since no one was there to object, I used all my bath accoutrements at once and made the bathroom a fragrant, gooey mess. But water level remained a fixed variable - something left over from our old days of scrimping. I never dared to add much more than my allotted six inches.

But one day I could no longer remember any reason not to break the tradition. I sat on the toilet-throne like a princess in my fuzzy robe, while the waters mixed and swirled, warm into cool, and rose up the smooth, cool sides of the tub. Hot water shocked my skin in the chilly bathroom. My legs were red and stinging almost to the knees. I eased the rest of my body down, gripping the curved edges to brace the shock, until I sat on the hard bottom. The water bubbled and sizzled. I had goose bumps.

In that steamy second-floor bathroom with the small, square, high window clouded over, I slid down under the water until my entire body was submerged, relishing the sensation of hot liquid enveloping me, swallowing me into its depths. My hair swirled like my plastic mermaids’ and my nostrils remained the only surface-dweller. I slowed my breathing, closed my eyes, and imagined I was floating. With my ears submerged, my heartbeat echoed through the water and back to my head like sonar.

Under the water all I could hear was my own sound, created by my own body. I felt complete solitude, encasement, relaxation, calmness, and quiet. It was a sensation of reminiscence, of being cradled and breathing embryonic bath water. I remained alone but protected in my secluded cube of stripes and flowers and steam, quiet heat, with the silence in my ears.

Maegan Beard works in the real estate industry in Asheville and plots her escape from the corporate machine. She was once a student of literature and creative writing.