The house was quiet and dark. Empty. I stood in the door for a moment, letting the rain spatter the wooden boards, and imagined how mother would scold me. The black smell of her soup lingered from the time it bubbled over onto the stove and melted itself into the burner.
I let the door fall shut and peeled myself from my coat. I could have folded it over onto the back of the chair, but I imagined how mother would scold me, so I hung it in the closet instead. I could have kicked my boots in behind it, but instead I dropped them next to the mat because oh, how she would scold me for letting them mildew in the dark and damp, I could just feel it.
The cat wound her way toward me, lithe and white and taking the air straight from my chest like cold water. And then she weaved between my bare ankles and I approached the kitchen because if I didn’t feed that cat, if I didn’t take care of that cat, mother would scold me.
She would look me in the eyes and tell me how cruel I was, how wrong, for letting that darling innocent dear sweet cat go hungry because I couldn’t take care of myself, because I couldn’t be a grown up, because I couldn’t pace myself and behave the way I should because it was time.
It was time for me to behave the way I should.
So I made my way to the cabinet and I crouched down on the gritty floor and I stuck my head into the cabinet and I stuck my hand into the cabinet and I dug around until I came up with a fistful of cat food and I sprinkled it into the cat’s bowl because it was time for me to behave the way I should.
And then I mopped the gritty floor because mother would scold me if I let it become filthy.
There it sat on the counter, white and smooth, light glinting from its surface. But I looked away. It wouldn’t catch me staring. It wouldn’t because if it did it would crack me in half like an egg and everything would come forward and I would crash to the less-than-gritty floor and I would never, ever get up.
I would let it collect dust even if mother would scold me for it. Even being scolded was not enough of a threat to make me look at it, to make me crash to the ground and break and splinter and splash everywhere like a toppled glass of water.
The air pressed down on my shoulders and I was smothered and heavy and hot in spite of the weeping sky. So I clicked the thermostat cold enough to freeze the water droplets caught in my hair and I imagined how awfully my mother would scold me and I fell into the bed without taking off my clothes and without closing my eyes and I lay on my face and soon my eyes slipped shut because I forgot to hold them open.
I was melting and melting and melting like the box of crayons I had left on my mother’s dashboard when I was young and oh how she scolded me. She would scold me if I let myself melt. So I rolled over as the sun elbowed its way into the gray morning.
My mouth was stuffed with cotton and no one had left me a glass of water on my night stand so I went into the kitchen with its clean floors and got a glass of water and swallowed it and let it seep through my entire body. The cat shot out from under the dining room table with a skittering of her claws, so I fed her again and set the glass of water on the floor for her to finish.
This was good enough. I could stand up and I could feed the cat and I could stare at the wall right above it, right above the pretty smooth white thing. But I could not crawl back into bed. Neither could I make myself move. So I would stand in the middle of the kitchen. She could not scold me for this.
My feet ached. But I did not stop standing because if I sat there, on the kitchen floor, it would split like a fault line and swallow me into the belly of the Earth. So I took a shower and let the hot water slough at my skin and play in my hair because if I did not take showers my mother would scold me.
