There’s a room in every house where the light is best. In my parents’ house, it used to be their tiny bathroom. This was where they rushed any of us children in case of an emergency. They’d even put a kind of bar stool in front of the window, right beneath the ceiling lamp, to bring our bodies even closer to the light. It was on this stool with its wooden seat and almost surgical, white metal legs, where they’d treat our verrucae and insect bites, clean our nails, assess whether a limb was broken or just bruised, and try to pull the back of an earring out of an infected earlobe. From the relative comfort of this stool, I also watched my brother soaking in the bath, making me laugh with his naked little body whilst I was already wrapped in a towel, waiting, undoubtedly, for some kind of parental treatment. For our bodies to be touched with neither desire nor disgust.
Apart from the mould and limescale around the bathtub and foldable shower screen, I don’t remember many of the colours. Maybe a faded baby blue? But I will never forget the sensations of ‘90s bubble baths—the way they turned the water pink or blue, their foam so solid you could build a castle with it, how it smelled like laundry liquid. One of my brothers was once taken to hospital for drinking some, bubbles coming from his mouth like an attraction at the local fun fair.
I saw things in their bathroom that weren’t meant for me—tampons, hair removal cream, and birth control—the kind of stuff parents hide from their children and promise to explain once they’re older. Strange objects lurking among my mother’s bowl of beauty products, my father’s aftershave, my brothers’ contact lenses, and errant strands of my endless hair that would go everywhere. The hair my mother tried to control with vigorous brushing and increasingly short haircuts. I wonder at my childish attempts to get to the bathroom before she did in the morning—at the oversized bottles of hairspray she threatened our lungs with whenever we tried to interfere with her morning routine—at the peace and quiet she derived from her coffee cup and the deafening noise of her beloved hairdryer.
When the new millennium arrived, the slated wooden cabinets that for so many years contained what was needed to keep our bodies presentable was taken to the skip. My brothers and I were relegated to the downstairs bathroom, permanently banned from the space in its remodelled shape: blue and white Italian tiles, a mirror covering almost an entire wall, toothbrush holders made from Murano glass. It was no longer a space for childhood intimacy, for bodies that needed to be cared for. For the little animal stickers used to decorate the plasters my brother had to wear over one of his eyes to strengthen the weaker one. Or the sweet toothpaste I often wanted for dessert. Gone was the toilet with the broken handle.
With the cats now fighting over the only bit of underfloor heating in the house, there was no sign that children had ever set foot in this space, that it had once been shared by an entire family. The big mirror was for adult vanities, and you could see yourself in it through the glass shower door. I no longer dared to set foot there, let alone take a shower, leave a strand of hair, or inspect parts of my now adult body under the newly fitted ceiling lamp with its matte finish and dimmed light.
As soon as the children left, the best light in the house migrated elsewhere. It was no longer needed to care for our fragile bodies and too bright to hide wrinkles and other signs of age; the good light vanished alongside the mysterious bar stool and any claim we had to be looked after.
It’s only when my parents go on one of their long trips to the Mediterranean (and the cats need to be fed) that one of us can sneak back in. My brothers would never admit it, but the first thing any of us does when they’re alone in the house is run a bath. Lying there with the cats’ reproachful eyes on my body, I read through the labels on the bath salts—my mother never cared for foam—and I smile. I know I’ll use my mother’s body lotion afterwards and then sit in her bathrobe for a while, hoping for someone to come in and take a look at my feet.
