| Subject: Chapter 8 |
Author:
Kate
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Date Posted: 20:11:42 03/29/01 Thu
In reply to:
by Kate
's message, "Things My Mother Taught Me" on 19:49:51 03/29/01 Thu
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Always bathe when you feel sick. It won't hurt you and you'll feel better afterward.
Milla heard the splashing before she opened the door the inner courtyard, and she halted. The door would be locked.
Several years ago, one of the hotel rooms had a terrible plumbing problem. Everything from the floor tiles to the wallpaper had to be replaced. They'd even gotten new bathroom fixtures and piping in an effort to never, ever have to make any more repairs. After the room had been gutted, everything had been hauled away, except for the bathtub, a huge, ugly, claw-footed thing on rusty casters that was too big to get down the elevator.
Michael had scratched his head. "I don't know how they got it up here to begin with," he said. "But it looks like it's staying."
Initially, Michael thought he could refit the Samuelle's private bathroom for the tub, but it was simply too large for such a small space. Their apartment was tiny -- a small bedroom for Milla, a small bedroom for Michael and Nikita and a pocket living room. The bathroom had a toilet, bidet, sink and stand up shower, and no matter how Michael measured it, the tub wouldn't fit. So they'd hauled the tub to the inner courtyard, which was only available to the family and workers of the Lucia. The open space provided ventilation for the laundry, the kitchen and their bedrooms, all of which opened to the patio. Nikita had planted part of her garden here, but the rest of the courtyard was paved with slate. They pushed the tub to the middle of the courtyard, and after about a week, Milla forgot it was even there.
Then one day, she'd come home from school feeling a bit odd. The next morning, she'd had a temperature; by the afternoon her fever spiked. Milla had turned 10 that year; until then, she'd been small enough to put in the laundry sink when she had a fever.
Her mother had stopped up the tub in the courtyard, brought the hose over and filled it up from the outside faucet. Though Milla's first experience in the tub had been far from pleasant -- she'd been shivering with fever and the water felt icy cold -- in the summer, you could push the tub out to the middle of the courtyard and fill it up in the morning and by evening the water was warm from the sun and pleasant to bathe in. They'd left the tub in the courtyard ever since, and there were only two rules for using it: the first was to make sure that when you pulled the drain plug the water went down the drain in the middle of the courtyard and not into the hotel; the second was to make sure the doors to the courtyard were locked while you were in the bath. Occasionally, directionally impaired guests wandered into the family quarters and no one wanted to be caught in the altogether by a stranger.
Now, Milla stood on the outside of the heavy door. She could hear faint splashing and the murmur of voices. Then she lifted her hand and pounded a tattoo on the door. "Mami? Michael? It's me, Milla."
Footsteps. The door was unlocked and swung open. Michael was fully clothed and damp from the rolled up sleeves of his dress shirt to nearly his knees. She got one brief glimpse of her mother in the bathtub beyond him, then his wet arms wrapped around her. "Milla!"
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