Wet-Tiled Memories
Gabriela Chiu
14th Fl. Wah Tai Mansion, Chai Wan
It seems like the place gets smaller each time you visit, or perhaps you’ve gotten bigger? The ceiling that once seemed miles high above your head is now within reach. You could stand on your grandmother’s footstool and brush your fingertips over the peeling plaster.
But you shake off a slipper instead, to toe the gritty texture of the cooked salmon floor glittering in the ceiling light. The tiles are the same as when you last visited but with a few more stains and dots. Slowly, you draw your eyes from the white shelf over the washing machine to the pink and red plastic wrapped around it like a schoolgirl’s skirt. The drainage tube is caught up with a length of red nylon twine always present in a Chinese house.
Nothing’s ever changed, you think.
Next to you, the bamboo screen rattles open with surprising force from your granny’s thin arms. She twitches her lips at your surprised squawk, her unclouded eye communicating whatever wry humor is left in her. The thin towel she places on top of the washing machine is covered with faded dancing bears. They have little pink ribbons on their heads and yellow socks on their paws. She slides the accordion door closed as you give her a toothy grin in return. You can’t decide whether she’s ignoring you or if it’s another reason to find the quack eye surgeon and punch his lights out.
In the living room outside, Mother rushes to make room on the old wooden bench so your granny can lie down and listen to the program on the telly. You listen as well, squeezing your eyes shut as you step on the variegated shower tiles and turn the ancient water valve.
A chipper news reporter rattles on about rising street food prices and the declining way of life in Hong Kong as the spray hits your face, stinging your eyes.
3rd Fl. Pell Hall, New Brunswick
The shower head in the rightmost stall sprays water like a marble cherub with bad plumbing. It’s so gentle and inoffensive, you’d be touched if you didn’t need to wash the soap out of your thick hair. The chrome head protrudes from the tile wall that you’re careful not to touch. What filth could be hidden there you wonder. What strange new strains of bacteria or womanly gunk could be smeared on a dorm bathroom wall? The water sputtering out is warm, but you tremble a little, feeling the cold bathroom air prickling your back where the shower can’t reach.
Almost finished, you’re almost done. Except that this will be your bathroom for the entire semester and the one after that. Not for the last time as you make your way through university, you let your head spin into anxious brooding. About how you can’t do this, living with all these party animals. How it’ll never be home. How, for the first time in forever, you’ll be more than shouting distance away from your mother.
The new shower basket lies on the wet floor, a bit away from your feet, glaringly green against the grey tiles darkened with water spray. A container of shampoo is open where you left it, haphazardly stuffed next to the cup and toothbrush you brought from home. It’s a 28 oz. of TRESemme Touchable Softness and if there’s any reason you’re tearing up, it’s because you dropped it on your foot. It’s alright. You’re a big girl now. You shuffle around on soggy foam flip flops and try to snort the snot string back into your nose.
From the adjacent stall, glitzy pop music echoes around the bathroom, accompanied by a mumbling voice trying to sing-along. Your shower neighbor misses a few words each beat so what you hear is “Everything….no….is….oooh…baby” and the horrendous slap of naked feet on the shower floor.
5th Floor, Korean Hostel, Dongdaemun-Gu
Beige. Everything is beige. From the ceiling surrounding the dim lamp to the plastic toilet seat that you’re sitting on. The tile walls, beige. The laminated floor that you shuffle your plastic slippers on, beige.
It’s ten o’clock, well past meridian, and the thick cloudy haze of jetlag that’s been pummeling your skull since morning intensifies into a headache. It presses behind your eyes, making them throb no matter how softly as you try to blink. You fight the instinct to sway and loll your head, no matter how bowling-ball heavy it feels. Wait, just wait.
Outside, in the little hotel room nauseatingly cramped with beds and the enormous suitcases, your mother and aunt face off in a ferocious spat that seemed to erupt out of nowhere. If they had been calm, plump hens before, now they were territorial geese hissing threats. They spit Cantonese violently at each other, the words coming out shorter and harder than normal. You hear something about your auntie’s attitude, her drinking, and immediately try to shut your ears off and not listen. It doesn’t work. Even if they’re doing somewhat of a whisper-shout, hoarse and not as loud, their argument slips under the glass door to reverberate around the bathroom.
You sniff, the air is warm and hazy, smelling of fruity body wash and Darlie toothpaste. The room is still foggy from the heat of three consecutive showers; that’s why it’s blurring. Or perhaps it’s the sleep deprivation. No glass separates the bathing area from the sink or toilet and the water has gotten everywhere. Even the toilet roll is a bit damp and disgusting, like snow by the side of the road after a storm. You halfheartedly stab your nail into the soggy paper, twisting it this way and that as you wait until it’s clear to come out.
3rd Fl, Hegeman Hall, New Brunswick
The double mirrors make it hard to subtly side-eye the girl at the other sink. Her name is Jamie, your friend’s friend with the plump face and pink joggers. You absentmindedly shuffle your toothbrush from hand to hand, slowly brushing with pretend sleepiness as you try and remember what little you know about her. All you recall is the way she sat silently, like a stone monolith, during the first RA meeting last night.
Out of the corner of your eye, she bends over to rinse neatly in the sink and goes to rummage through her enormous bath bag perched on the side. Cream tubes and hair clips bulge out of the many net pockets. She pulls out a cloth headband, soft and fuzzy towel textured. The morning light coming through the window strikes her short bob, making each individual strand glow until she an orange halo shimmers around her head. It irradiates her tanned skin and makes the little freckles glow on her cheeks. You forget subtlety and stare unblinkingly as the sullen marble statue transforms into a girl, dull-eyed with sleep.
Be my friend. I want you to be mine. The intrusive thoughts rattle around in your head, still empty from the long summer break. Then Jamie, angel your brain whispers, turns to you with her bangs pulled up and gives a little wave.
“Hi.”
There is hesitation in her smile, shyness in her long lashes. The faucets drip and a flushing toilet in the boy’s bathroom makes itself known. You smile back, slightly foamy like a rabid coyote.
“Hi.”