Heather, red hands, shaking, burning, hot, hotter than anger. She exits the man’s bedroom, turns left down the narrow hallway that isn’t lined with pictures, into the bathroom, dumping, dumping, pouring the contents of a once-white bucket into the once-white toilet, soiled-water splattering on her forearms and her hands. She does this, wills herself to do it, five times a day.

            
            She doesn’t gag.

            
            Sometimes she whistles even. Sometimes not. Today – on the first anniversary of her mother’s death – she does not.

            She feels her shirt clinging to the soft folds of her bulging stomach, her thighs resisting the constriction of the jeans that had once been too big. She feels the weight of the cottage-cheese skin dangling from the backs of her arms like hanging meat. She sees these skin-bags in the bathroom mirror, the mirror so large it takes up the entire wall, the mirror as big as she feels. A crack runs vertically from top to bottom of the mirror, an angry crack, she calls it, almost violent the way it jags back and forth the full length of the mirror. She likes to touch it, run her flattened palm down the center of the crack. The texture, the callousness, lets her feel something.

            She flushes the toilet, swirling, swirling, empty. Rising, slowly, slowly.

            
            Stepping toward the bathtub, she nearly trips over the neatly-stacked pile of fifty-pound sand bags, five of them total. She bends at the knees to brace herself. When she regains her balance, she smacks the top bag with an open palm – THWACK! She feels the heft of the collective pile – its resolve – in her stinging hand. She hears the gruff cough of the man down the narrow hallway, the man who sometimes drools on himself – cloudy-yellow drool escaping the corners of his mouth, oozing down his stubbled chin, hiding in the folds of skin on his neck that remind Heather, on those days when she feels like laughing, of turkey skin. The man hacks and coughs and moans. Sometimes the coughing is all he knows. Sometimes he remembers her name.

            
            Heather! he calls from his bedroom. He laughs between coughs, his lungs gurgling. She doesn’t respond to him immediately, but turns on the hot water from the faucet and waits until she can see the steam. She passes her right hand quickly under the water. Hot, like a thousand pin pricks. Then her left hand goes in.

            
            Right.

            
            Left.

            
            Right.

            
            Left.

            
            Longer now, she holds her right hand under the faucet. One mis-sis-sip-pi, two mis-sis-sip-pi, her skin red, numb. Now the left. One mis-sis-sip-pi, two mis-sis-sip-pi. She shakes her throbbing hands, water dotting the mirror.

            
            Heather!

            
            The tone of his voice startles her, only for a moment. He sounds angry, rambling now, his punch-drunk words spewing from his mouth like uncontrolled spittle. She does not respond to him right away, but runs her swollen hands through her thinning hair, watching the reflection of a few more defiant strands breaking free from her white scalp. She grabs a handful of her dyed-brown hair and thinks about ripping it out in one clean motion.

 
            It must be all the medicine, her mother had told her. Xanax, Lunesta, Lortab. She couldn’t always remember what each pill was for, but she knew taking the meds was the only way to feel like living was better than dying. It couldn’t be genetics – the hair loss. Heather’s mother kept a full head of silver and black hair until the day her heart exploded, the day Heather found her lifeless body crushed under the weight of the man down the hallway.

            The man – who other people call Heather’s stepfather – was winding down from a 24-hour binge, slightly longer and more violent than his regular pattern. Heather’s mother, with the house to herself, was enjoying a bubble-bath and sweet tea when the man came stumbling in the bathroom, out-of-control, the weight of his top-heavy body driving his head into the mirror.  He passed-out, draping his 275 pound frame over her body. An autopsy later showed that a massive heart attack – not drowning or asphyxiation – had been the cause of death. With the only witness being a passed-out, unreliable drunk, investigators had to infer what happened. Their conclusion was that Heather’s mother, who had a history of heart-related complications, had simply strained her body to the point of massive heart failure while trying to force the man’s unconscious body from her own. By the time Heather found the two in the bathtub – after hours of calling her mother to see if she could borrow her stand mixer – there was no way to definitively prove that the man’s drunkenness had caused her mother’s death (or so said Heather’s lawyer).

            Heather had always known the man would kill her mother. She was just surprised that he hadn’t meant to. When the man had a severe stroke six months later, friends and family were shocked to hear that Heather agreed to care for him – feed him, bathe him, clean up after him. Heather simply smiled when they questioned. It’s what Mom would have wanted, she told them.

 

            Heather!

            His voice is growing thin now, his breathing heavy, his coughing more severe. She doesn’t respond to him, but stoops to the bathtub and turns on the hot water. With the steam rising to her face she breathes-in the moist, soothing air. She turns on the cold-water dial to temper the hot.

            The tub begins to fill, the silence in the bathroom broken by the steady hiss of the pouring faucet, the thwap thwap thwap of water hitting water. On the edge of the tub sits an unopened bottle of rose-scented bubble-bath, her mother’s favorite. Heather unscrews the cap and lifts the open bottle to her nose, careful to savor the moment. She remembers her mother, a delicate warrior, a fighter, a coward. When she was younger, she hated her mother for staying with the man. But now, at 34 years old, she’s beginning to understand that love is hard to come by, that it’s hard to walk away from fool’s gold.

            Heather!

            She tips the bottle carefully, gently, allowing a good bit of the soap to stream into the tub. The scent mixes with the steam, a perfumed cloud, ecstasy. She’s never known love herself, not really. She’s gotten close a few times – if sex counts for anything. She often wonders if sex is a close as it gets, if love really exists outside of the physical. She’s heard about love, how you fall in it, and she’s seen it portrayed on TV. But she’s never seen any evidence that it’s real. She knows hatred is real, tangible even. So most days, she believes love has to be real, that there has to be something to balance out the hate. Today she’s not convinced. Today, hatred is all there is.

            Heather!

            His voice is straining now, trying its best to muster a shout, but he’s growing weak, tired, more manageable. The disoriented laughter between coughs is absent now. When he’s more alert, stronger, he often laughs for laughter’s sake, a deep, throaty laugh that gurgles with mucus. Heather remembers that very laughter from her childhood years, a laughter that she would hear when her mother was selfish enough to leave her alone with the man. It was a laughter that made her cringe, a laughter that kept her awake at night, remembering. When she hears it now, she often expects to feel his breath on her neck again, to smell the bourbon-musk of his skin, to hear his quiet whisper in her ear – I love you, girl. I love you like I love your momma.

            She stands, pushing against the weight of the sandbags to steady herself as she rises. On her way out of the bathroom, she grabs the soiled bucket from the floor. She walks softly down the hallway, the bucket clanging against her thigh, and listens. The coughing has stopped completely now, the man’s breathing heavy, but rhythmic. The smell of stale urine welcomes her into the room. She feels the man’s eyes watching her as she places the bucket back under the seat of a heavy-duty bedside commode. Thick, chalky spit has gathered in the corners of his mouth. He struggles to raise his head off his pillow.

            Heather. His voice is barely audible. He tries to clear his throat.

            Time to get up, she says, pulling the sheet from beneath the man’s chin, exposing his bare torso, dimpled with fat, covered with hair. As she pulls the sheet further off his body, she sees the wet circle under his adult diaper. He looks at her, embarrassed, as he always is.

            I tried, he says, gasping for air, to tell you.

            You needed a bath anyway, she says, placing a gentle hand behind his sweat-soaked head to help him up. The usual struggle – helping him out of bed, heaving his body to the side, sitting him in the oversized wheelchair next to the bed – is easier today, a day when she feels purpose, her resolve as heavy as the sandbags in the bathroom. The wheels of the chair follow a familiar track in the worn carpet from the bedroom to the bathroom – the only two rooms the man has seen under Heather’s care.

            
            She hears that the pitch of the thwap thwap thwap has risen as she enters the bathroom, the water rising with it near the rim of the tub. Rose-scented bubbles crest the water, a giant vat of champagne.

            
            Drink. Drink it in, she thinks.

            
            She locks the wheels of his chair and stoops to turn off the faucet. She runs her hand through the bubbles, dipping now into the lukewarm water. The man wiggles in his chair, back and forth, back and forth, fighting with all his strength to remove the urine-soaked diaper. But his strength is not enough, his body succumbing, his muscles oppressed by the three Lortab pills she had mixed with his regular morning meds. Heather guides him as he stands, naked, imposing, vulnerable. She looks at his face, confusion furrowed on his brow. She doesn’t explain to him why he’s taking a bath and not a shower – something he hasn’t done since his stroke. He follows her lead anyway, reluctant but willing.

            
            She eases him backward, sitting him on the rim of the tub, his skin drooping loosely on his frame like a wrinkled shirt. Heather watches as he struggles to dip himself into the water, grunting now, short of breath. A part of her – the part she’s never really understood – feels pity for the helpless man, motherly in a way. This old man – this weak, fragile, shell of a man – knows nothing of the man who beat her mother, who raped her six different times over the years. He knows nothing of the pain he’s caused, the lives he’s ruined. He knows nothing about hatred anymore. He knows nothing of love either. He is just a man.

            
            She turns from him as he settles into the water and runs her flattened palm down the center of the crack in the mirror. It looks as jagged, as angry, as it did a year ago, but it’s smooth to the touch now, gentle even, almost soothing the way it rubs back on the palm of her hand. She faces the man again, his naked body shrouded in a cloud of roses. Water spews over the lip of the tub, pooling on the bathroom floor.

            
            The man’s lips perch to apologize. But he can’t get the words out.

            
            It’s okay, says Heather as she stoops near the edge of the tub. It’s okay.

            
            The man shuts his eyes, relaxed, content.

            
            Heather groans as she lifts a sandbag from the pile, heaving it to chest level. She wonders if he remembers her, if she is more than a name echoing through his mind. Does he remember her mother? Does he remember himself? In the end, she knows that it doesn’t really matter. She remembers him. That’s all that counts.

            
            THWACK!

            
            She feels the soft onslaught of water and bubbles sprinkling her face, wetting her hands. The man groans like an animal, the fifty-pound bag coming to a rest on the center of his torso. He opens his eyes, looking briefly at the bag on his chest, and then at her. His arms rise from beneath the bubbles, a steady wave of water splashing at Heather’s feet. He is weak, she knows. One bag would be enough.

            
            THWACK!

            
            His legs stiffen with the weight of the second bag, the water rippling through the tub, over his face. He mouths her name – Heather – but his voice is silenced by the water filling his mouth. As his face surfaces, he moans quietly, breathing heavy with the weight of one-hundred pounds on his body.

            
            THWACK!

            
            THWACK!

            
            THWACK!

            
            As the water begins to settle from the last impact, the room grows quiet, save the incessant wheeze coming from the man – the man with 250 pounds lying on his naked body. Heather sits on the edge of the tub, watching the man’s face – the only part of him left visible. He looks her in the eyes, only for a moment, a look lost somewhere between anger and understanding. He doesn’t struggle, but lies patiently, eyes now affixed on the ceiling. She picks up a nearby towel and wipes the spit from the corners of his mouth. In the bathroom, the two of them will wait together in silence – for hours, for days, for as long as it takes – for the man to pass away.