when the shower is a mountain
I find Grandma in the bathroom wearing her lavender-colored nightgown. She’s staring at the shower as if it’s Mount Everest.
“Do you want help, Grandma?”
“Um, yeah. I just need...” she pauses. “Um, what shampoo do I use?”
“Any one you want. Do you want me to wash your hair for you?”
“Yeah, baby. That would be good,” she says, grabbing my hand to brace herself as she steps into the shower.
She removes her nightgown at the last possible moment before I turn the water on. I can feel her bashful reluctance as she holds her arms close to her body. She chooses the bottle of shampoo that reads “volume” in big capital letters because she says her hair is always flat.
I run my shampoo-covered fingers through her soaked pale blonde curls and think about when she used to wash my hair when I was a little girl. Mom was in prison and I don’t ever remember Dad washing my hair, so that left Grandma. She’d make sure the water temperature was just right and she’d always brush out my tangles with the wide-tooth comb she kept in her purse.
Sometimes she’d leave me to wash myself. I’d hear her yell through the crack in the door in her French accent that’s thick and sticky like pancake batter, “Make sure you wash your butt!”
Thinking of that time now, I move from her hair to her back, rubbing the suds around and work my way downward.
“We gotta make sure to wash your butt!” I say, imitating her.
Her laugh interlaces with the water and I feel the vibration through her frail bones. Bringing the washcloth around to the front of her, she laughs again. Then she says, “I used to have the nicest boobs. Now they hang on my belly like a couple of dishrags.”
I laugh and inhale the shower steam. It smells like passion fruit and plumeria and feels warm in my throat. My legs and arms are drenched and my back hurts from leaning down to wash her legs and feet.
“I used to take care of you and now you have to take care of me,” she says. Her voice is quiet and I can barely hear it over the sound of the water hitting the shower curtain.
I turn the knob until the stream stops. Spreading a towel that’s twice her size across her shoulders, I say, “I don’t have to, Grandma. I want to."