Clean (an experiment in Erasure)

I’ll try not to bore you… weigh you down with details. I’ll ground you in something tangible. Something to make you consider me human again. Trust me. I’ll admit a few things.

I was probably a little too harsh with the boy.

I hung him up long ago… like an old coat. I hung him up in pieces so I wouldn’t have to deal with him. He was always my boy. I’d never deny him the title. But it ended there. Like I said, I hung him up. Sent him off, day after day. But just like his father, he always came back. He looked just like Ron, you see. That horrible sideways grin that always seemed to catch me at just the wrong moment. When I was face down in a recipe that I never could get quite right, or when the washing machine broke. Or perhaps I was wiping away the fingerprints from the glass counter tops. I never wanted that counter top. Marble, I knew, was much more suitable for a filthy family, such as our own. Hell, brass might have even worked better. But glass? That glass always reminded me of Ron’s hands, how greasy they’d be just before he’d try to touch me. Maybe it’s for the best that he’s gone.

But he knew better than to look at me like that during chore hour, that boy of mine. It was his fault, really. It seemed he knew what he was doing with that sideways grin and those pale blue eyes, with that damn red freckle he got from that Ron. His fault… I couldn’t help myself. If you had sat me down anytime before this all happened and explained this course of events, well, it would be you who was getting charged with crazy. I hadn’t expected this.

I was cleaning when I saw the stain. I was vaguely compelled to keep scrubbing. He came home with that stain on his cheek. I didn’t raise him to shame me like that. Maybe it was more like a smear, a disgusting red smear that screamed to threaten my dignity to the entire neighborhood. I couldn’t let him shame me like that. No, not today. My house was too clean.

I scrubbed. Just like Ron always had me do. I scrubbed that child, that stain on the cheek of that child. A red smear, that disgusting red stain. I sought to remove that insidious stain and I scrubbed ‘till the red from his cheek was replaced by a smear of red blood. Clean. My boy was not in danger…

So perhaps you misjudged me. I was only doing my job, you see. It was he who needed help. Trust me.