Panhandles
The stone counter seemed colder to the touch than she had ever imagined, and as she placed her forearms down on top of it, she felt her whole body fill with goose pimples. Her mother was washing the dinner dishes.
“I mean-- her legs, they were like… skeleton bones!” She couldn’t see her mother’s facial expression, but the way her soapy hand flew in the air signaled a vulnerability that couldn’t be masked. “She couldn’t even stand today. She doesn’t eat!” Standing up from the stool and walking to the sink, she cautiously approached her mother’s side. “I really don’t think you girls should see her anymore.” The clunky silver pan was deep, and full of suds. Her mother was almost elbow deep into their tepid, yet welcoming sponginess when tears started looping her cheeks. Still, she held tight onto both ends of the pan and sloshed the soapy water around from end to end, and dumped it out over and over again, until the suds had transformed to faint, clear water bubbles; until the white suds were almost all gone. Neither of them said anything.
The running water and the soft sobbing turned into a synchronized sound, a white noise that they were too tired to acknowledge. She waited for her mother to put down the pan and really let it out. But she kept rinsing and re-rinsing. The silence was long, draining all the sullied hope, the false assurances that her mother might have thought of in that day. She looked to the windowsill above the sink and thought, if her grandmother were doing the dishes, her golden rings would be stacked on top of each other right there, absorbing the cold from the wintery pane. She thought of how she might never see those rings sitting there again.
“Here,” She finally said, holding out the nearest dishcloth “ I’ll dry.”
Her mother placed the wet burden into her hands and stood, witnessing her daughter sweep the smooth silver top, gathering the many constellations of water droplets from each of the corners, the handles, and the bottom of the pan.
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