Cleansed

Cleansed

         The gloves came on when…I can’t remember.  All I know is one day they were just there, and that’s where they would stay for a long while.
         In the beginning I hated them fiercely.  The skin where the sleek fabric rested on my hands felt irritated and—I had convinced myself—would begin to peel off if the gloves were not removed.
         I moaned; I cried; I stomped my feet; I refused to speak.  In summary, I sulked as if possessed.  Yet, in a cool manner that was always beyond my comprehension, mommy never relented.  As my childish face flushed with exasperation, blood painting ravished blossoms beneath my skin, and tears ran past the folds of my eyes, mommy smiled gently.  How pleasant; how utterly calm in the face of distress.
         “You’ll love them in the end, my sweet.”
         Did I resent her then?  Likely as much as I did the gloves.  Admittedly, they were aesthetically pleasing.  Monotonously white, they were both virginal and sterile.  Delicate and cold.  The only impression this gave me was that, like any valuable dress I owned, I would not be allowed to play with them and risk soiling their purity.
         Thus, a feather-light pair of gloves became iron restraints.
         No, I could not simply remove them.  I was not a simpleton, of course I attempted to slide them off once in a while, let my caged hands run through air, through any surface I wished.  But every time I did so, mommy knew.  I would never understand how but be it a scent or some physical transformation she could always sense that I had gone against her words.
         Then, without speaking, she would stride to the kitchen, fill a large bowl with water and set it in front of me.
         “You know what needs to be done.” she’d say and wait.
         I did know, and so I’d insert both hands inside, let the water swish around and over my skin.  Wincing in pain because, while mommy would not bring the liquid to a boil, it was hot enough to shock me.  To turn my skin faintly numb and strangely colored.  To…sterilize.
         “You understand, don’t you?” she’d ask in a near-whisper, wiping my hands rather briskly with a towel.  She would manage to dry every spot as though she knew the area better than I did.
         “Yes.” I would lie every time.  I would watch my scarlet palms disappear into ivory and wonder: did the pigments melt inside?  Would the gloves and I eventually become inseparable?
         All such speculations were merely the unlikely fruits of my once boundless imagination, of course.  The gloves would come off for brief periods of time each day under mommy’s watchful eyes, and I would be assured that a melding process had not gone underway.  For others, however, who acted as oblivious onlookers to my life, my gloves and I were one and the same.  They became my identifying feature as well as my identity.  Perhaps the gap between me and others came from my failure to explain the gloves’ presence.  I allowed my person to be excluded out of every social activity, playing the part of the wallflower as others laughed uproariously in the sandbox.  But I could not afford the gloves becoming dirty.
         I had lost track of when those lifeless articles began controlling me.

         The gloves came off when—and this I do remember—I neared the age of eighteen.  Maybe it was because by then adulthood began rearing its filthy head that mommy would bring out the bowl more often, letting my hands soak slowly.  Yet it had become a difficult task as the bowl no longer spanned them comfortably.
         Mommy’s arms shook as she set down the bowl that last time.  The clear water rippled within and I could see it reflect her bewildered face, making a mockery of its old motionlessness.  She held me by the wrists with her chilled hands, guiding me forward. 
         Hypnotized by what I saw in the water, I let her.
         Our joined arms, linked above the bowl, managed to set several unstoppable acts in motion.  The bowl tilted to the right, held, then leaped down to the floor, flying apart on contact into so many pieces it was impossible to believe they had ever shared a purpose.  Time swirled, spun, stopped—rippled like the water as we watched it all unfold together.
         Never had mommy looked so ashen or her shoulders so feeble, shuddering in their efforts to support a dazed head.  It was as though she was trying to find the culprit, a scapegoat for the crime that had been done, and finding the fingers pointed her way.  I had never done so before and yet the urge came so naturally, a calling to reach out and touch.  Her pallid cheeks, the warmth hidden beneath.  Skin so finely layered I could feel the rigid bones.  She was not made of stone.
         I marveled at the hands, stunningly pale in comparison to the rest of me.  They had never been of any use—they’d just remain connected, fruitless parts of me that would be better served in a museum, captured within a portrait.  Bending down, I grasped a fragment within curled fingers and began collecting.  There were pieces that were significantly larger than the rest, though it was one of the smallest that broke through, stabbing a hole impossible to see in my palm and revealing a tiny bead of blood.  The bead, breathing in the air, matured and slowly expanded its reach.  I watched it in fascination.
         I still wonder what made me do it.  What had made me seek the gloves with the unharmed hand, later raising it to blot the wound?  Was it spite guiding me to stain the unstained?  Was it carelessness?
         The gloves sit in a cabinet near my bed, folded and yellowed with age.  They have long lost their hold on me.  Now I simply enjoy pulling them out when the mood finds me, laughing at the faded rusty stain and dreaming of mother.  Mommy.