My Mother In The Mirror.

The first time it happened I think I was about seven. I’d recently been sent away to boarding school and was still in that confused state of not being sure of what I had done wrong to deserve this most terrible of fates.

As was normal every day I had got up with the wake up bell at 7 am. I’d stumbled bleary eyed and mussy haired toward the bathrooms at the end of the dormitory. There the cream colored paint, still peeling today in my memory as it was then those many years ago, caught the fresh cold morning sunshine, leaving irregular shadows on the walls. There were other children stirring, all young and as lost looking as I was myself making their way toward their morning ablutions.

I went into one of the stalls and peed onto the frozen surface of the water lying inside the toilet. It would unfreeze soon, and the heavy galvanized iron mechanism of the flush would clunk unsatisfied, until it did. Probably the spent waste of three children would be enough to generate the heat that would unfreeze the water.

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