“This is it,” he bored, harried young man in the inexpensive gray suit says with undisguised distaste, before lighting a Salem to recover from the four-story climb.
Emma takes one look at the semifurnished studio and says, “I’ll take it.”
She takes out her checkbook-her first ever checkbook-and slowly writes out a check for the first and last month’s rent plus the $200 key deposit the managing agent insists on.
The agent-who Emma notices has a smudge of hair dye on one ear-examines the check and slips it into his pocket. He hands her the keys, mumbles a cynical “Enjoy,” and leaves without closing the door behind him. Emma watches him go down the stairs. There’s a ball of greasy paper on the second-to-last step. She hopes he slips and breaks his neck.
Emma loves the sound the old lock makes when she turns it and the bolt slides into the wall. Then she turns and surveys the first home that she can call her own.
The apartment is just one long room with three windows along one wall and a kitchen built into the far end. It smells faintly of soy sauce and fried dumplings, courtesy of the Chinese restaurant on the ground floor. The walls are the color of tobacco spit. There’s a double bed, a laminate desk, an ornate white dresser making a sad stab at French Regency, its top notched with cigarette burns, a frameless mirror above the dresser. Emma loves the cigarette burns; she runs her finger over the blackened hollows and imagines a poet, a bad girl, a good cop, a lost junkie from the Midwest who was once somebody’s son-all the Manhattan stories this room has hosted. Or maybe just one sad fat old woman lived here for twenty years eating junk food and smoking Winstons until her heart gave out.
The Chinese restaurant has a red neon sign that snakes up the building and suffuses the room with a rosy glow, even in the afternoon light. Emma looks down at the street and sees an old Italian woman in widow’s blacks walking a just-groomed white poodle. She loves this shabby patch of the city where Chinatown, Little Italy, and the Lower East Side converge.
Continuing her inspection, Emma pushes open the door to the bathroom. She stops-the bathtub that bathtub.
“Time for your bath, Emma.” They both knew what those words meant, the cheerful singsong a cruel mockery of their true intent. Emma would scuttle under her bed, stare up at the rusty springs, her head throbbing with dread and fear. “Didn’t you hear me, honeybunch? I said it’s time for your splish-splash.” And then the high-heeled mules would appear in the doorway and approach the bed and Emma would scoot farther under, as far away as she could get. “Where’s my little Mouseketeer? We have got to get you clean if we want Daddy to come home. You want Daddy to come home, don’t you?” And then her mother’s skinny arm with its gaggle of Bakelite bracelets would reach down under the bed, the hand grabbing at the air like a blind woman’s, grasping the first thing it touched-an arm, a leg, a hank of hair-and pull Emma out across the slippery linoleum floor. “Oh, Emma, if you don’t watch out, that expression will freeze on your face forever. I’ll have to put you in a zoo with the other monkeys. Daddy won’t want a dirty monkey around the house.” And then that laugh, that throaty staccato laugh. “Come on, monkey.” She lift her up-Emma going as rigid as a stick-and carry her into the bathroom, set her down. “Can’t take a bath in a dirty little dress, said the owl to the pussycat!” She’d stand there watching Emma under the light of that burning naked bulb that dangled from the ceiling like a hanged man. Then she’d bang down the toilet seat and sit down casual as day, crossing her long legs, humming brightly, checking out her painted nails. Emma would hug herself and look down-then suddenly the slap would smash across her cheek and she swear she would die before her mother saw her tears. “Silly fiddle-faddle! I got all night to party.” Slowly, slowly, Emma would lift the thin dress over her head-the thin blue flannel dress that smelled like her sheets, her nubby bed-wetted sheets. “Splish-splash, I was taking a bath, all on a Saturday night.” Emma would look over at that tub, that big old clawfoot tub with the chipped porcelain finish. It looked as big as a house. Filled with two inches of the coldest water that pipes could produce. “Daddy’s gonna come back, Emma baby, and we’re all gonna move to a fishing shack on the Gulf Coast, lie in the sun and smoke reefer and paint. Now you gonna get in that water or not, you little piece of shit?” And Emma would step into the tub. At least in the tub she could huddle over, hug herself, hide her body from her mother’s eyes. The water was so cold it hurt and she’d close her eyes and clench her teeth and wait for what she knew was coming. It’d start on her lower back-the loofah mitt, the frayed loofah mitt from Walgreen’s. At first her mother used a light touch and Emma always had a moment of sweet hope that it would be different this time. “How do you get so dirty, you cute little nasty thing? Your father knew you were a dirty girl, didn’t he? That’s why he ran away, to get away from you, you dirty thing.” And as she talked, she’d press harder with the mitt, scrubbing Emma’s back and then her shoulders and then pushing her back in the tub and scrubbing her chest and stomach and her thighs, pushing her legs open and scrubbing until little red pinpricks covered Emma’s body. “Filthy little girl, dirty dirty Emma. Daddy hates dirty girls. I’m going to make you clean. Clean clean clean. Scrubba-dub-dub, two freaks in a tub.” And that naked blinding bulb swung overhead. And finally, when her whole body burned and went numb, Emma would float up from the bathtub and look down at her mother scrubbing away, sometimes sprinkling Comet on the loofah mitt-she’d watch as the little girl’s skin got redder and redder, watch as the weird woman did mean things to the little girl. Mean mean things.
Emma stands in the bathroom doorway taking deep breaths. She makes herself look at the rest of the room. The floor is black-and-white linoleum tile. There’s a pedestal sink with a medicine chest above it. Emma resolutely pushes down her pants and sits on the toilet, leaving the door open. As she pees, she slowly forces her eyes over to the tub. It’s just a bathtub. Her bathtub. But she doesn’t deserve a bathtub-she’s a dirty girl. Emma feels the dread spreading like a stain, the familiar tightening in her throat, the queasiness in her stomach; her jaw goes slack and her eyes half close. Moving slowly, she stands up from the toilet, slips off her pants, takes the little tin box from her bag, and climbs into the tub. She crouches down with her legs spread. She runs her fingers over the tiny raised scars that line her inner thigh. The scars are her friends. But no more scars. She’s learned that. Don’t press too hard and you won’t leave a scar. So she opens the box, lifts the velvet, takes the razor and presses gently against her skin-just hard enough for the sweet obliterating pain to bring up a perfect line of blood.