Mother's Day
Mirror, mirror on the wall? Who is the fairest of them all. My reflection couldn?t lie; it certainly wasn?t me, I thought. Two children had sparked and grown to nature?s satisfaction in that belly; had been nourished and comforted by those breasts. But it was no longer an exclusive riverside penthouse so much as a quirky two-bed cottage in need of structural restoration.
I was standing naked in the bathroom. A tumbler of claret on the side of the bath.
I sometimes wondered exactly how to howl my decomposition to the world. I mean, don?t people notice? Under my eyes, half-moon shadows lounge, daytime fighting off night. My hands, more creased and pale than I remembered, scaly; my nails, claws. In the mirror, my breasts hung like pendulous udders; canines resembled fangs; fine downy hair covered my face, soft fur. I looked at myself. What the hell am I turning into?
I dropped the plug into the bath and wrenched on both taps.
Despite the throbbing fatigue of motherhood, I wouldn?t go back. I?ve been sharpened like a primal tool, ?wised up?, and I couldn?t care less about the likes of glossy magazines madly cowing to their advertisers. My beauty?s no longer bought; it?s sought, or so I thought.
I tipped three drops of tea-tree onto the water?s surface and each mushroomed into an oil slick.
My hands ran up and down my leg and I felt the stubble from a recent deforestation. Someone had been paid to burn and strip away any signs of growth, leaving the surface unnaturally barren and sore. Sad, I know. I don?t believe in it, just follow the flock. The angry skin over the bridge of my nose and around my chin was dry and flaky, all my natural minerals mined and depleted. I plucked at eyebrows with sharp metal tweezers creating an inflammation and pain to which I had encouraged myself to become accustomed. Like self-harming.
No pain, no gain, the beauty therapists tell us. Therapists?
I released my hair from its docking band and it fell in a sheet down my back. It had been straightened the day before. The grease dried and the hair burned flat because I was too bushed to wash it. But it probed me today: why do you iron out my characteristics, trample on my individual curls. Homogenise? To follow fashion? It?s not hairbrushing, but airbrushing. Are you that unsure of yourself? Men don?t do this.
I?m a phoney bitch, that?s why, I thought. Dirty, unkempt hair is a more honest indication of my feelings; but I have gradually succumbed to this constant covering up, this bogus flattening out, this counterfeit illusion of female beauty. Why? To compete with other women? Not even that any more.
Maroon varnish rubbed from my toe nails, I threw the red-soaked cotton wool into the bin. Underneath the shiny veneer, my toes emerged pink and abused. The nails were yellow, starved of air, ashamed to be plain.
Cleaning mascara away caused black holes of heroin chic. I took a closer look at my nose in the mirror and squeezed, until the very last vestiges of dark oil had spouted from their deep pores. I plucked again at my eyebrows until I caught my own eye looking sideways back at me; its black nucleus, frog-spawn. ?What are you doing?? it asked, blinking fast, like a chameleon in the sun. ?And why are you doing it??
Do you know, I felt a modicum of shame? Felt the need to seek asylum under a fig leaf.
But, as always, it was ignored.
Onto the parched skin of my face, I dotted evenly-spaced land-mines of moisturiser. It smelt stronger than usual, so I sniffed the tube. The allegedly beneficial, innocuous at best, milky-white face cream had two inches of chemical warfare listed down the back of its tube. I scanned the ingredients, as they threatened my largest human organ with explosion. What would my dear liver say?
?Would you rub a host of unknown toxins directly into me?, it might ask. ?To make me smooth and silky on the surface??
?Of course not,? I?d reply. ?Don?t be silly. Nobody sees you.?
I twisted off the cold tap as my body curved over the bath to resemble a crooked question mark.
Don?t you love me anymore, it said? Don?t you know who I am?
I grabbed the products from the bathroom cabinet; the paraben shampoos, the fluoride-filled toothpaste, the paraffin creams, the limoline deoderants, the bleach-soaked tampons and piled them up in my arms. I cast all the products of corporation?s unethical and salacious imagination into the wicker bin, opened the bathroom window as wide as it would go and hurled them out into the garden, one by one. Could I treat myself with more dignity in future, use products that don?t hurt me or anything else? Could I?
I instantly felt better. Ha! I instantly looked old. My falling face stared back at me. Can I handle the oncoming of ancient? Am I happy to sit back and watch as the invisible
creepers and vines pull my skin back towards the earth? What fucking choice is there anyway?
?Look,? my face said. ?You can?t keep the green leaves on the trees forever. They must wither and die having done their bit. Just grow up.?
Scolded, I turned off the hot tap and took a last glance at my flaccid figure in the glass. It was no longer the body of a daughter, but that of a mother. No longer sapling, but compost. No longer egg-cupped acorn or strong green sapling but weathered oak. No longer created, but creator. That was the simple truth. And, do you know, it wasn?t that bad.
As I stood, staring directly into the mirror in front of me, infinite me?s appeared in the steamy mirror behind. A forest of mothers.
They all looked.
?It?s OK,? they said. And then, they smiled.
I sat on the edge of the bath and winced, plunging my feet and ankles into the searing water, breathless at the small ecstatic pain. Little by little, I lowered my body, my house, into the water and sighed as the heat burned my muscles forcing them to relax. The fingers of my hand curled around the tumbler of claret. Then, I lay back and tipped the glass to my lips, feeling the edge of loneliness recede.
Is it mad?!!!!!