Miriam McEwen

Aunt Lou

See, but you have this thing about not going to restaurant bathrooms with obnoxious able-bodied people who aren’t even attempting to assist you in some way. Your thing is, you just don’t do it. Even when, like right now, the obnoxious able-bodied person wanting you to go with them is your Aunt Lou who made the trip from Long Island. Because the two of you only speak at these family dinners maybe once or twice a decade. Because she cracks jokes like, “Don’t run me down in that roadster of yours! Ha! Ha!” Because you use a power wheelchair—and okay, say you do go to this restaurant bathroom with her—what are you supposed to talk about when you’re actually in there together? Hey, Aunt Lou, isn’t it crazy how you can sit on the toilet all by yourself? Not me! I can’t do that!

But now your Aunt Lou is asking again—and louder this time—because you’re a grown-ass idiot who pretended not to hear her the first time. And now the whole table—including your something-out-of-a-Tim-Burton-movie, silent-triplet cousins—has turned on you. And your mother’s giving you that look like, What can we do? It’s my brother’s wife. Please just go. And you shake your head slightly because you are so not interested in whatever rite of passage this is supposed to be, but you are disabled. And you know all of your movements are more or less interpreted as indefinable disabled twitches. So, for reasons beyond even your pretty significant intellectual capacity, you set out for the restaurant bathroom with your Aunt Lou. And she’s talking about how she didn’t lose her virginity until she was twenty-eight, the same age you are right now. And can you imagine that? And she’s talking about struggles with alcoholism—not hers, just somebody she met in Atlantic City once.

But now that she’s got you in the restaurant bathroom, Aunt Lou says, like, one of the most bizarre things you’ve ever heard from your aunt in your life. She’d like to help you wash your hands. And your first reaction is to half-choke on the scoff you’ve been holding in. But then you look at your reflections through the smudge of this gigantic bathroom mirror, and your Aunt Lou almost seems like a different person. The weird light in here is making her dull blue eyes actually lovely. Making her sharp little mouth appear less determined, more anguished. She says she’s noticed your hands stay clenched most of the time, and that must be so obnoxious and sweaty and painful. And would you let her help you? She promises to be gentle. And the whole thing makes no sense, but you say yes. Okay. And you go with her to the sink speckled with what looks to be tiny drops of blood, but possibly it’s just designed that way, and you let her run the warm water over your hands. And you start to cry. You just start to really cry.  

Miriam McEwen writes about disability and bodily autonomy. She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She serves as an associate editor at the South Carolina Review. Miriam’s work is anthologized in Best Small Fictions and has appeared in Black Warrior Review, SAND Journal, and Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, among others. She lives in the foothills of South Carolina. Find her on Instagram @miriammcewen.