My Fellow Skin

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IT WAS IN THE DAYS BEFORE I had learned to talk properly. Hardly anything had a name, everything was body. Standing in front of the mirror my father drew the razor blade over his cheeks, stretched his neck and gently scraped the foam from his Adam’s apple. He eyed his face narrowly from under his lashes, the curve of upper lip, the lower lip, the chin.

His dressing gown hung loosely over his shoulders. Behind him, in the bath, I was rocking in the waves he had made getting out, pulling the water with him. The solemn silence between him and his reflection gave everything an extraordinary clarity. I can still see, as sharply as I did then, the wet hairs bunching on his shins. In the mirror, above the slumbering sex and milk-white stomach, a track of curly hair rose from his navel to fan out on the shallows of his chest, where I could see his heart beating.

He had run the bath until it was half-full. He had strewn soapflakes in the water and had rinsed the sting from my eyes when he washed my hair. Clean-shaven now, he scooped water over his cheeks, turned to face me and held out his hands.

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