Parenting

They say it's normal for your kids to hate you. They say that's how you know you're doing it right. Parenting I mean. Especially as they nudge into their teens.

I remind myself of this. I have to. I squash that little seed of doubt that niggles and nibbles away like a little worm. Whispering that it's not true. It never used to be true. Not for us. We were always so close. I prided myself on that. On the love and respect between my daughter and I.

Oh, I was so fucking superior.

We prompt our darling offspring to eat their vegetables and wash their face and go to bed, and we say sometimes we have to do things we don't want.

We learn that I don't want to isn't a good reason at a young age, and then we pass this lesson on to our own children.

But what if I don't want to is their gut, and it's saying something important? Did we ever think of that? What if what I've really taught her is to squash down her own boundaries?

That's something I worry about.

But, no. I've done the right thing. I'm sure of it. I think.

You have to show up. For your friends. For your family especially. You don't do it because you want to. You do it because it's right. Duty. That's part of growing up. Being responsible, and generous, and looking our for each other.

Right?

I watch her, standing at the sink with her hands covered in bubbles, and I think of how simple it all was. Before.

She'd soap them again and again, let the filmy membrane stretch between her fingers and thumb, and then try to blow an enornmous bubble. When she was eight, I used to buy soap based on what was best for bubbles, rather than what smelled nice, or was good for our skin, or had "anti-bacterial" on the label.

She doesn't blow bubbles anymore. Well. She's twelve. I think. That was a kid's game. She can't stay a kid forever. Can she?

Her skin is raw and peeling, but no matter what I say or how often I say it, she scrubs and scrubs and scrubs, until my own hands sting in sympathy, and I can feel the tears come. I leave the room before she sees, but I think she knows anyway.

Still, I hear the tap running and the swish swish of her foamy hands rubbing together. It makes me want to keep walking, right out the door, and down the road and don't stop, don't ever stop, just keep going.

I might, too, except I know it won't help. I'll still hear it. I'll still see her there at the sink. Eyes dry, face set. There's no dirt there, not that I could see anyway, but she can see some. Ground right down into her pores. Bone-deep, apparently. Or deeper.

Can you get grit in your soul?

I always used to think that's a good thing: having some grit. It meant being determined. Sticking it out. Seeing it through. Grit is what makes pearls, isn't it? Some nasty little irritating shit is the catalyst for transformation, and then something beautiful happens. Right?

Right?

But this... This isn't a beautiful transformation. It's unsettling.

I shouldn't be disturbed so easily, or maybe not at all, not after what I've seen. But here we are.

I want to snap at her to turn that bloody tap off, but I bite my tongue.

It'll be pink now, the water swirling down the plughole. Pink streaked with red. Surely, surely soon she will stop. Pat her hands dry. And come and sit in the lounge with me. I'll pass her some lotion. She will scowl. I'll press my lips together and plead with my eyes. Maybe she'll take it. Sometimes she does.

I always keep my eyes trained on the TV screen, because I can't bear to look at her. After everything we've been through, I can't bear it. Can't bear to see how she won't look at me.

And then, as if by magic or magnets, her eyes are drawn again to her palms and fingers and cuticles... She might smooth cream over the ragged mess she's made and massage it in, frowing at the specks I can't see. Picking at her nails until her fingertips are bloody, and then she'll sigh and leave the room and I'll hear the tap running...

When it's not her hands, it's her hair. She'll lather and rinse over and over until the hot water tank is totally empty. All that sluicing in freezing cold water might have made her hair shiny, except there's hardly any left. It's fallen out in clumps. I had to buy her a silk scarf to wrap around her scalp.

I squeeze my eyes shut, and try to forget it all. The soap. The swish swish. The bed of oak and satin. The crushing despair. The stillness. Of her eyes and chest. How pale her lips.

The feel of the night air on my skin, the soft soil under my knees. The candles, the strange syllables that didn't want to leave my throat. The blood.

The rush of power through me, how I felt like I could see all the stars to the end of the the galaxy and beyond, even with my eyes closed... How flat and empty everything felt when it subsided, and it was just an ordinary night after all. A streetlamp flickered. Distant traffic noise. A subtle scent, like you get in the forest when it rains.

Everything I'd laid out with such care, the candles and symbols and the carefully drawn circle that all seemed so significant, so imbued with power... it all looked so stupid. So trifling. Like discarded toys. I was nearly embarrassed when I scooped them all up and put them back in my patchwork shoulder bag. The candles were already dark and cold, and the wax set. The wind must have blown them out and I didn't notice. I thought maybe that's why it didn't work. I didn't have it in me to try again.

It did work. I just didn't realise. I thought I'd open my eyes, and she'd be standing there in front of me. Why did I think that? I hadn't imbued her with powers of teleportation.

What a fool I was. What an amateur! I thought I'd prepared fully for the ritual, but that's all I'd prepared for. I hadn't made the smaller, more mundane but just as significant preparations. Like digging her up.

They say no parent wants to bury her child, but believe me, nobody wants to dig them up again either.

And so I walked away from the grave, feeling stupid and hating myself, and even tears wouldn't come. I had no idea she'd turn up at my door, hours later, eye-whites shining amidst the caked-on dust, shaking like a dead leaf. Clumps of soil in her hair, hands filthy and bleeding, knuckles split.

I walked away still innocent of all that, but not really innocent at all. I even thought that this had been more of a private, solo funeral than anything else. My one last try, which, having been unsuccesful, became a letting go. A goodbye, at last, that I hadn't been able to admit before.

Thoroughly miserable, and hurting more with every step, because each one felt like it carried me another hundred miles from her. I resisted the urge to sprint back and simply stay with her until I crumbled away to nothing. Dust to dust.

I'd never felt so empty.

Until now.

Until I watched my daughter wash the grave dirt from her hands.

I wish it hadn't worked.

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