Chapter 5: Sophie Asked Why I Was Crying
Vanessa closed the door to the staff quarters behind us and I heard her heels click back down the hallway. The room was small and cool after the heat of the laundry. One narrow window, a twin bed with a white coverlet I’d pulled tight that morning, and the tote bag tucked against the dresser where I’d hidden the bottles. The air still smelled like dryer sheets and bleach.
Sophie stood just inside the doorway in her yellow dress and cardigan, holding her own hands together. She didn't come to the bed right away. She watched me.
I sat on the edge of the mattress and tried to keep my hands in my lap. The red had darkened to a raw, patchy color across my palms and between my fingers. It throbbed even when I wasn't moving. I’d wrapped them loosely in damp paper towels from the bathroom, and the dampness had already gone warm.
"Come here, baby," I said.
She took two steps and stopped again. Her little white shoes squeaked on the floor.
"Does it hurt?" she asked.
"Yeah," I said. "It does."
She looked at the paper towels, then at my face. She was doing that thing where she breathed through her mouth a little when she was trying not to cry herself. I could see her chest moving too fast under her dress.
Then she asked it. Her voice was very small and careful, like she was repeating words to make sure she got them right.
"Are you crying because you're being dramatic like Daddy said?"
The hallway had been warmer, full of sconce light and their voices over each other, but now those words were just here in this quiet room. My throat tightened before I could answer. I wanted to tell her that her father was wrong, that he’d said it to make what happened smaller. I wanted to say too much.
I made myself breathe first. I kept my hands still.
"Do you remember what dramatic means?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"It means someone is pretending their feelings are bigger than they really are," I said. "To get attention."
She frowned at the paper towels again. "Are you pretending?"
"No," I said. "I'm not pretending. My hands got hurt from the cleaning chemicals in the laundry. The strong soap they switched to. It burned my skin. And when something hurts that much, it's okay to cry. Crying isn't dramatic. Crying is your body telling you something is wrong."
She moved closer then and climbed up onto the bed beside me. She didn't touch my hands. She leaned her shoulder into my side. Her hair smelled like strawberry shampoo and the hallway air freshener.
"Did you touch it without gloves?" she asked.
I nodded. "There weren't any gloves in the closet. I thought I could rinse it off fast enough. I was wrong."
She was quiet for a moment, picking at a loose thread on the coverlet. "Is it the red stuff?"
"Yes."
"Will it go away?"
I didn't know how to answer that without scaring her. The urgent care site I'd pulled up on my phone that afternoon had said chemical burns could take days to show their full damage, that you needed a doctor to look and to write it down. Richard had said to rest, to ice it, to not make a file where there didn't need to be one. Vanessa had said she'd handle the inventory.
"I need a doctor to look at it to know," I said. "That's why I've been crying. Not because I'm being dramatic. Because I'm hurt and I need help, and I didn't get it right away."
Sophie watched my face the whole time I talked. She was three, but she listened the way she always did, with her whole body still. Then she reached up and touched my cheek with the back of her hand, very lightly, the way I'd touched hers when she had a fever last winter.
"It's okay to cry, Mommy," she whispered.
I had to look away for a second. The window made a bright rectangle on the far wall and I focused on that until I could swallow.
"Thank you," I said. "You are so kind to say that."
She settled back against me. After a little while she said, "Daddy said you were being dramatic again. Has it happened before?"
The word again snagged. That was the part that would stay with her if I let it. Not just this burn, but the idea that I cried to get attention, that her mom was someone who made things up. I felt a flash of anger, not at her, at him, and I pushed it down. She didn't need my anger right now.
"Sometimes grown-ups use words that aren't true because they want a problem to go away," I said. I kept my voice low and even. "But you can always ask me if something feels true or not. And I will tell you the truth."
She nodded against my arm. She seemed reassured in the way kids do when you give them a clear answer, but I could see the confusion still sitting behind her eyes. She believed me, and she also believed her father loved her and wouldn't say something untrue. Both things couldn't fit together yet. She'd have to hold them both for a little while.
We sat there until the light shifted. I listened to the house through the closed door, the faint hum of the air conditioner, a cart rolling somewhere far down the runner. My hands kept pulsing. The paper towels were drying out and starting to stick.
Sophie yawned and I lifted her onto my lap more carefully, keeping my wrists turned up.
"Will you still be hurt tomorrow?" she asked.
"I think so," I said. "That's why I need to do something tomorrow while you're at preschool. I need to go see a doctor and have him write down what happened to my hands. So we have a record. So no one can say it was nothing. And so you never have to touch that soap."
I hadn't said the decision out loud until then. Hearing it in the small room made it real. The tote with the bottles by the dresser seemed to get heavier. I would have to take it with me. I would have to leave the estate grounds without asking, drive the old Camry I was allowed to use for groceries, sit in a waiting room with my hands in my lap and explain that my employer told me to rest. I was scared to do it. I was more scared not to.
Sophie put her head on my chest. "Can I go with you?"
May you like
"Not tomorrow," I said, and I brushed her curls back with the side of my wrist. "But if the doctor gives me a paper, I'll show you. And my hands will get better. I promise I'm going to take care of them now."
She believed that. She closed her eyes and her breathing slowed. I stayed still and let her rest there, looking past her white bow to the tote bag, to the door that led back out to the hallway with the white laundry door and the brass plaque, and I made the plan over in my head step by step so I wouldn't talk myself out of it before morning.
