'(Mother Loved a Bath)' by Helen Laycock

My name is Ella Gray.

• I eat lemons (piquant);
• I drink seawater (brackish) and vinegar (pungent);
• I talk to animals and angels;
• I always wear red;
• People call me ‘odd’.
• I scatter my mother’s ashes over my porridge*. [A dessertspoon a day (for 169 days)] At first, I left the ghostly hundreds and thousands on top (in tiny pits); now, I stir them in.
  *She is part of me. Like I was once part of her. 
• I sleep in Mother’s cardigan (red).

My brother is called Edward Gray. Edward Gray lives in Room 16 at Colswell Residential Home, where a dedicated team get to know residents’ unique personalities, ensuring their care is tailored to meet individual needs. A Banforth Home Care Provider.

Edward does not speak.

I do not visit Edward.

My father is in a place we ‘do not mention’.

I do not visit my father.

My father sends me letters beginning ‘My darling Ella’ and signed ‘Daddy’. Kiss. Kiss. Kiss.

Every Tuesday, I fry liver in Mother’s cast iron pan (not her liver). It was her mother’s.

‘It has history’.

When Edward was two, he pulled my hair and I hit him over the head with it. That’s when they took my father to the place we ‘do not mention’.



‘I just cannot cope with you any more, Ella Gray,’ Mother said one evening when I stared at her across the kitchen table. ‘One of us will have to go.’

I looked at the frying pan and pondered which room my mother would have at Colswell Residential Home, where a dedicated team get to know residents’ unique personalities, ensuring their care is tailored to meet individual needs.

No…

When she had her bath, I held up her ankles (for six minutes).

I prefer showers. (That’s not odd).

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First published at Reflex Fiction.