Her top was unhooked. I saw the straps dangling over both sides of the lounger. Her bottoms were neatly folded and laid on top of a book beside the chair.
I saw her fanny and turned away. “Ah, shoot, come on, Mom!” I hissed to myself. About to head to my room, I stopped. I went back to the window and took another look–not because I liked what I saw. I didn’t. I could happily live the rest of my life without seeing my mother’s bottom ever again.
There were two matters. First, she looked badly sunburned. Second, there was something inside the cleft of her fanny. I squinted, muttering, “What the heck?”
I stepped into the kitchen, opened the door to the deck, and stepped out to get a better look.
Yes. That was a bad burn. And, yes, something pried her fanny apart. Ugh. I turned away.
“Mom?” I hollered.
Nothing.
“Mom!”
She sucked in a surprised breath, and then she groaned.
I yelled, “You’re sunburned! You fell asleep!”
“Oh! Oh-oh-oh. Ow!” she cried. “Don’t look, sugar! I’m indecent! Oh, ouch.”
“I’m not looking. You okay? Need anything?”
“Oh. Oh, my goodness,” she muttered before calling back to me, “No, thank you!”
I went upstairs. Shortly after, I heard the sliding glass door beneath me open and close. I thought about the burn, whispering, “Ouch.”
I heard the water running in her bedroom a few minutes later–cold shower, I assumed. She hollered for me when she finished, and I went to her room.
She had wrapped herself in a dark blue bedsheet. The fabric was pulled tight over her head, and she looked like an old beggar woman. “Mom,” I laughed, “look at you.”
“Everything hurts to have against my skin but this.” She even sounded like an old beggar woman, too, wincing and groaning. “So stupid. So, so foolish,” she muttered. “The tiniest movement hurts.”
“It looked pretty bad,” I offered. “That sucks.”
“Please don’t say ‘sucks.’ It’s coarse,” she groaned. “I called you in here to let you know you’re going to have to handle our supper tonight. Now, please help me to bed.”
I did. She laid on her tummy and groaned. Less than an hour later, she texted me with instructions to pick up some sunburn ointment.
“Back in a few,” I wrote and sent. I picked up a “Soothing Gel Cream” from the nearby pharmacy and returned home. When I showed her the container, she weakly uttered, “You’re going to have to do it for me, sugar–everywhere I got burned.”
I sighed–maybe a little too loudly.
“Am I so repulsive to you, or is it too much of an inconvenience to help your mother when she’s in terrible pain? Which one is it?”
“Mom, I’m–I didn’t mean it to sound that way. You’re not–. It’s fine. I’m happy to help.”
“Thank you. You may pull the sheet down over my feet, but I don’t want to hear any comments about what you see.”
I reached for the sheet, and before I had the chance to draw it off her body, Mom added, “And please never tell anyone about this.”
“I won’t,” I said. Then, I pulled the sheet off, revealing a human lobster. I snatched a breath of air. “Mom, are you sure you don’t need to go to the emergency room for this?”
“No. I will not be paying an emergency room fee for a sunburn. Sit down and help me.”
There was plenty of space beside her. I sat and unscrewed the lid from the jar of ointment.
Dipping my fingers into the white goo, Mom warned, “Whatever you do, do not–I repeat: do not–scratch me with your fingernails. Be very gentle. Light, soft touches.”
“Okay.”
Mom models for Bonny Blue–a women’s clothing outfit that only sells online or through their quarterly magazine. Bonny Blue’s main market is the American South, and its clothes are designed for taller and larger women.
Though we don’t live in the south anymore, Mom definitely has something about her that screams southern woman in the sense of a Dolly Parton or a Jessica Simpson. She’s got big, curly blond hair–piles of it. She’s got super-blue eyes–blue like a summer sky. She’s got the kind of face that doesn’t require make-up, but one that can take a lot of it well. She’s often quite overdone in her photoshoots that way. Mom is tall and not skinny, and at 41 years old, she carries her fat well–not in thick pockets, but evenly distributed through her thighs, arms, and belly.
That’s not completely accurate, though. She has a big fanny and large breasts. So, maybe there are some pockets, but I try not to think about her body; she’s my Mom.
Once I caught a friend of mine tearing out a page from one of the many Bonny Blue magazines we kept in a haphazard stack on a shelf beneath the coffee table. It was a full-page shot of Mom in a stars and stripes bikini, smiling and with one of her thumbs hooked under the waistband of that bikini bottom. We weren’t friends after that.
Though it was late spring, the magazine remained seasonally three shoots ahead. Mom had just finished her winter shoot in April. Her next photo session would be in July for the following year’s spring issue with all the new swimwear. I knew she would take every opportunity between April and July to get her body tanned before the next shoot.
With a nasty sunburn, she’d put herself in a bit of a fix. “Will this heal,” I asked, “before your next shoot?”
“Let’s make sure it does. Go on and start.”
I dipped my fingers in the creamy gel, rubbed my hands together, and very tenderly placed them on Mom’s back.
“Oh. Oh. Gently,” she urged.
“I will, Mom.”
When I started rubbing it in, she stopped me with a flinching gasp. “Don’t rub it in. Just–just leave it.”
“There’s globs and streaks,” I pointed out.
“Yes, put a lot on and just leave it. Don’t rub. It hurts.”
“Okay.” So, instead of kneading it into her skin, I ended up gingerly wiping it on her back.
“Yes,” she said. “I think it helps. You’re helping.”
“The pain?”
“Bad, but better, sugar.”
Scooting further down the bed, I glanced over her big fanny. “Mom, I’ve got to–got to do this part now.”
“Go ahead, and don’t comment. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“Just shush up and be a gentleman. Don’t make fun.”
“I won’t.”
I commenced, wiping the ointment over her fanny and trying to paint the entire burned surface with the goop. Covering her skin this way was better, I decided, because I didn’t have to feel her bottom, really–just kind of gloss over it. My technique improved, so I moved on to the backs of her thighs in no time.
Thankfully, her legs were tightly pinched together. There was no worry about inadvertently glimpsing her special place. I finished her calves a minute or two later. “Done,” I said.
Her back looked as if an incompetent dry-waller had put a thin, haphazard coat of joint compound all over it and then quit the job.
“Don’t put the sheet back on me,” Mom instructed. “It’ll get all greasy and stick to me.”
“Leave you like this?” I asked.
She nodded. “But, can you bring me something to eat? What are you making for supper?”
“Frozen pizza, I guess.”