Swimming Through Clouds (A YA Contemporary Novel) by Rajdeep Paulus Read Free Book Online Page B

help or hinder her
getting into the shower and back on her feet. As I fiddled with the lock, my
shaking hands failed to draw out the simple process of turning the key.
    For a fleeting moment, I thought Dad tricked us, giving us a
key that didn’t fit. Teasing us with counterfeit hope. Suddenly, a faint click
preceded the forceful opening of closet doors, and Mom fell out onto
us—the fetor of mom’s soiled clothes triggered my gag reflex. I looked
away and winced while trying to inhale only from my mouth. Jesse picked up an
empty bottle of laxatives near Mom’s legs. Dad had his warped ideas on
“cleansing us,” but this was a new one. And here we stood again, Jess and I,
the clean-up crew.
    Hearing the second hand clicking on the wall clock like a
time bomb, Jess and I frantically went to work, having learned at a young age that
tears bore a price tag we simply could not afford. “Or else” there’d be more to
cry about than ever. After he helped me half-carry, half-drag Mom to the
shower, Jess ran to the supplies closet and ceaselessly gathered, wiped, and
wet- vacked all of Mom’s insides that spilled out of
her over the past two days.  
    I had never seen Mom naked, but somehow knew as I peeled
back her wet, caked-on layers that what lay beneath only scratched the surface
of my mother’s wounds. The grocery store was less than fifteen minutes away,
and each second I stalled moved us one second closer to Dad’s return.
    I thought if I talked through the process, I’d bring a
sliver of dignity to the situation. “Mom, I’m just gonna undress you so that I can help you clean up. Dad’ll be back soon, and I need to get you showered, dressed, and in bed.”
    At first, she sat in the bathtub in a trance-like state, and
I felt so ashamed for her, for us, for the situation. As suspected, once I
unbuttoned her shirt, her skin exposed multiple bruises from Dad’s daily
“reminders” of his authority. Much worse than I had imagined, nearly every inch
of her body was covered with scabs, cuts, blisters, and bruises. Her body
looked sickly, and now I understood why she always wore sleeves and pants. She
never wanted me to see this. I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer, and as I
wiped her down, gently using a washcloth over all her hurts, I bawled over my
mother’s broken body.
    I threw all her clothes into a kitchen trash bag and placed
the sack outside the garage to contain the stench. Returning to my mom, sitting
on the edge of the bathtub, wrapped in towels, she robotically allowed me to
guide her to bed where Jess finished up nearby. He gasped when he saw her legs,
black and blue, certain cuts still oozing. Scooping up the cleaning products,
he wiped over the closet door, and left the can of Febreze near me as he fumbled on the carpet and out of the room.
    Mom stayed quiet, but as I dressed her into clean, cotton
pajamas, tears began to slowly slip down her cheeks. I wiped them with my
kisses and told Mom, “Everything’s gonna be okay,”
knowing it was a promise I could not keep. I was twelve years old. I did not
even know what okay looked like. I tucked her into bed under the covers and Febrezed the room, closet, and hallway until the bottle
shook empty, then headed downstairs to join Jesse in the kitchen.
    When Dad came home, Jess and I clicked on autopilot, putting
the groceries away and holding our tongues, hoping Dad would approve. Back to
normal, Dad’s version of “normal” was the closest thing to stability we knew,
and that was the best we could hope for. But normal didn’t return overnight.
    Mom had her first nervous breakdown in the closet. I
understood this a year later when she had a subsequent breakdown, and the signs
resonated unpleasant familiarity. Two months passed before Mom spoke again.
Somehow, she found the physical strength to get out of bed the next morning and
pick up her list and check it off, one task at a time, as if the last two days
had never happened. Her robotic,