The Ukrainian in Me

I was shivering.

I pushed aside the shower curtain and stepped over the side of the tub onto the linoleum floor. It was just as cold as it had been for the last thirty years. I took a step and a half to my right, as always, to stand in front of the condensation-free mirror.

I knew before I heard it that the fan was running above my head. I glared up at the spinning blades.

I shivered again and hugged myself. Goose bumps covered my legs all the way down to my ankles. I wondered if it was only because of the cold.

I still couldn’t believe it. It was too sickening. I felt like throwing up.

It was as if no time had elapsed—as if the last nine months, one day, and a morning had never happened, as if it was only in my imagination.

Dad, as he had during every one of my previous thirty million showers, had come down the stairs with one mission: to turn on that damn overhead fan. There was no way he would allow shower moisture to build up on his painted green walls or on the mirror. He didn’t give a rat’s ass that the dehumidified cold air would freeze me to the bone.

At least now the paint wouldn’t blister.

Yes, it was real. I shuddered at the thought.

I was back living at home with my parents and standing in their basement shower.

It was as real as my wet, long brown hair pressed against my scalp and down between my shoulder blades.

It was as real as the red conditioner bottle I’d left for my father next to his bar of soap nine months, one day, and a morning ago as a joke. It was still where I’d left it, taunting me to return.

I had.

The shower stopped as soon as I twisted the plastic tap to the left, as I had done all my life—minus the last nine months, one day, and a morning.

I opened my eyes and stared at the blue minisquare-tiled walls surrounding me on three sides. I gazed mindlessly into the mirror and focused on my breasts—soon-to-be divorced breasts, as unremarkable as I now was. They held no meaning for anyone. My ex certainly no longer cared about them. He’d never see them again like this—naked, exposed, unremarkable. It was just as well. Sensitive breasts and his callused hands didn’t go together.

I reached for the pink towel on the rack behind me. It was the one I always used. I knew it hadn’t recently been placed there especially for my return of shame. I knew because it smelled like a mixture of dust, my dad’s dandruff shampoo, and the matches he used in the bathroom.

I rubbed the water from my pale skin and then wrapped my hair in the same towel. Out of curiosity, I moved the small glass medicine cabinet door to the left, exposing the half that had formerly been my side. My toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, brush, and deodorant were still there. Pulsating jabs of paranoia were trying to convince me that my parents had known nine months, one day, and a morning ago that I would return as a permanent occupant of this house, and now there I was, back home, staring at my shit inside the cabinet. I flung open the bathroom door, defiantly naked, to take the walk down the hallway to my bedroom, which was situated at the end, daring anyone—Dad or Mom—to appear and catch their shameless daughter living as though she owned the joint.

No one was there. It was as if they knew their daughter would commit that exact shameless act and did not want to promote an argument on my first day back.

I stopped in the center of my room. For me, it had always been a good size. It was big enough for my double bed, vanity, dresser, television stand with a twenty-one-inch TV, and computer desk

without a computer, and it had enough empty space to chill. But now, standing naked in the middle of it, staring at the wall calendar that still displayed the month when I’d left and the flower-patterned duvet, still crooked the way I’d left it, I was struck by the chilling fact that I was back living under my parents’ roof.