At Eighteen

The Rain is Criminal

It's the first of August.

It's a Monday.

It's the first day of the month I turn eighteen.

And my sister tells me to clean the toilet.

Because there is no better way to ease someone into being an adult.

*

The blue viscosity of the toilet cleaning solution lies flat on the toilet seat, on the sides of the pot and its lid too. I stare at it, toilet brush in hand. Does it look like how my dad used to do it? Or does it resemble my mother's work? Is this how an adult cleans a toilet?

Step 2: complete. Step 3: wait.

So I read a book, a cup of water at my side, my unbrushed teeth aching in my mouth. I am angry, and I do not know why. But I am interrupted, as adults normally are. I have to keep my book down, and brush my teeth in a hurry. Our guest is walking in through the door as I rinse the mint bubbles off my gums.

It's not embarrassing. This is normal.

"Hello," I wave, finally turning away from the sink in the hall.

Uncle smiles, unperturbed. He's here to check on our car, he's here from a different city. But this is normal, because I still haven't left that city yet.

About the car.

Until yesterday, it was sunk in two feet deep water, its tires submerged in a flood in our basement.

I am an adult for that car, even though I am not adult enough to drive it. For that car, I have spoken to more strangers than I would have liked in a short span of one night. I have approached, I have asked for help. For that car, I have stood in berating rain, sans umbrella. For that car, I have put my feet in mucky, filthy water. For that car, I did not scream when I saw the silhouette of a cockroach on my slippers in the night, standing on the pavement in the rain. I did not scream and panic, but I simply, calmly brushed it off. Because I was with adults. I was among adults, equally worried for my car underground as they were. We, brave humans, gathered at the entry to the parking lot, seeing the formidable tide of water fill the basement and choke our precious cars.

"Yes, that white car is mine. Ours. But we cannot drive it. Our parents are not home," I informed the circle, my arms wrapped around myself, and my wet feet folding around the cold of the air.

Even as I write this from my bed, it drizzles outside. This city is forcing upon me a hatred for the rain. Hatred is a strong word, yes. But don't we all grow to dislike the thing we fear the most? The sound of a shower, the relentless beating of it drives me crazy. Every time I hear it, I want to shut all the doors and windows. I want to create a vacuum so that the knowledge of rain does not reach me. I fear the rain, I fear disaster.

As a child, the thought of disaster would instil a weird excitement in me. As long as I was safe and dry, of course. In the city I left behind, there was a flood once, a cyclone the next year. The school holidays, the spiked tensions, the dramatic setting of rain, wind and shuddering windows offered me the thrill of a main character in a book, battling circumstances greater than herself. There was the essence of a great story.

Story. Where was I?

The car. Uncle, my sister and I stand around it. I am scared. I am scared of many things. The rain, but I write poetry about it. Electric appliances that plug into huge sockets, but I make coffee in the mixer every day. The gas stove and hot objects, but I recently got into cooking.

We open the passenger side door. There's water inside the car, under the seats. The car resembles a foot bath on wheels. After making sure that the engine is dry, Uncle presses down on the clutch and ignition. The car coughs, lights flicker. I instinctively pull away my sister from where she's peering into the car. But then, the engine perseveres. It's like a person waking up from a coma. It's Carla. Her diesel engine, four years old, wheezing throughout the still wet and dripping basement. I'm alive, she says.