My Mother Hated "The Shape of Water"

She couldn’t say why, just snarled,

Oh, it was ridiculous with all that water

and the reptile lover. Just ridiculous.

But I think it was because the heroine

masturbated in the bathtub, twice.

I think my mother never masturbated.

My sister told me that when she was 12,

our mother, assuming she was playing

with herself in bed, got in her face and yelled,

I know what you’re doing, you should

be ashamed of yourself. My sister didn’t

touch herself again until she was 20.

I was seven when my father went to

Japan on business and my mother asked

me one Sunday morning if she was fully

dressed when she came out of the bathroom

at our neighbor’s party the night before.

Had my grandmother told her only men

had a right to her body and she must

save herself for their pleasure? And since

she couldn’t please herself, she depended

on horny neighbors and friends’ husbands.

When I was 11, I caught her with her

face in neighbor Bill’s hairy, naked lap,

his pants at his ankles in our rec room.

Soon after, she and Bill knocked the

sink off the wall in our hall bathroom

during one of her parties, water pouring

into the hallway. And once I came home

and the front door was locked, we never

locked our doors, and when I came in

the back, Audrey’s husband, also named

Bill, came flying down the stairs

and out the front door. A cackle laugh

drifting from my mother’s bedroom.

She almost caught me once. I was 13

when I’d discovered that if I removed

the blade section from sister’s

electric razor I could run the vibrating

shaft of the razor over my underwear.

I heard her red high heels clicking

in the hallway, acting fast I sat up,

popped the blade section into the

razor and started shaving my legs.

She burst into my bedroom, eyes blazing

What in God’s name are you doing? Keeping

my gaze down, Shaving my legs. Her stare

bore into me but she found no evidence,

turned and left the room. I learned

diligence about who was home and when.

In my late teens, sitting around the

kitchen table with my parents and

neighbor Bev, my father proclaimed with

stunning confidence that women have

hundreds of little orgasms. My mother

pursed her lips, smiled, placating him –

but her glance towards me, assured me

she knew that I knew he didn’t know his way

around a woman’s body. I guess that made

two of them, two who could have benefited

from a reptile lover splashing in their bath.