Water Under the Bed by Danuta Hinc
The woman who used to be the girl in the triptych mirror is standing in her bedroom looking at her husband’s sleep apnea machine placed on the floor next to the bed. It’s the middle of summer. A four-armed fan below the cathedral ceiling, muted and drowsy, is crawling through the hot air. Late afternoon light is coming from between the blinds, leaving a shadow ladder on the rug. Outside, a bumblebee is bumping against the glass, coming back from the same starting point as if on a string. She kneels on the floor and lifts the bed skirt. Under the bed, a round pool of water the size of a dinner plate glistens in the lazy light. This is the second time. The first time, a week earlier, she had wiped the water unable to find the source. She touches the floor between the water and the rug, moves her hand under the rug. She lifts the sleep apnea machine and touches the floor. She removes the water container and shakes it, puts it back in. She runs her hand on the tube and the nasal mask. Again, she can’t locate the leak.
When her husband comes in, she shows him the water and tells him that this is the second time. He points to the wall above the headboard and tells her with high expertise that the water is coming from there and that he had seen something like this before. His arms are moving in sweeping motion when he talks, up and down and to the sides. The woman is not convinced. She points to the sleep apnea machine and says that after all it has a water container. She adds that in the twenty years in the house she had never seen anything like this before and maybe they should just put a dinner plate under the breathing machine and see what happens. Her husband doesn’t like the idea. He uses his arms again, one pointing at her, the other pointing at the wall. The woman jumps on the bed and touches the wall above the headboard. Her palms are sliding up and down, up and down, searching, but find nothing. She insists on the dinner plate experiment. He insists on his expertise. He knows for a fact that disturbing the machine would change the readings and the lack of oxygen would make him sick. He asks her if this is what she is trying to do, to make him sick. The woman closes her eyes, escapes somewhere for a moment, and says, no. He pushes harder now. She is not ready to retreat and asks him why a dinner plate would change the reading and what’s the difference between a plate on a floor and just a floor. Trust, he identifies the problem, and tells her that nothing will improve in their marriage until she trusts him. He knows for a fact that she will never get better unless she trusts him, and the trust has to be complete just as the word calls for and warrants. Motionless and silent, she is still on the bed by the time he leaves the room. She notices the shadow ladder from the blinds on the floor and the sound of the bumblebee bumping against the window, and she can’t decide on what to do next. She starts rocking back and forth, back and forth.
She is still on the bed when her husband comes back with a chainsaw. As he plugs it in, he doesn’t stop talking:
Remember how you didn’t trust me in Hawaii? How you insisted on going onto the balcony of the high-rise. How you shook the railing to prove that you weren’t afraid of heights? Remember how I told you not to do it. And then you ended up in a hospital and stuffed with muscle relaxers, ruining our vacation. Why? Because you didn’t trust me!
Her husband moves the bed and starts cutting the wall behind the headboard. Shards are flying in all directions, some end up on the bed next to the woman’s feet. She looks at the window and remembers something she loves.
A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
An hour later, standing next to the gaping wound in the wall, hot humid air entering the bedroom, her husband says that the wall is already dry. This is what it took to complete the job, he says, leaving the room, chainsaw in hand. The woman already knows that she will be wiping the floor under the bed every day. She will be doing it in secret, quietly, with no trace, in all hours, alone in the house.
Artist’s Statement
For me fiction creates worlds that allow us to imagine the different, adding a deeper meaning to our own lives. Through the lens of imagined worlds, it opens our minds to new experiences, and we become more aware of who we are and how to understand our own reality.
We know that fiction has the power to change us on a very personal level, as well as change the course of history. It is also the magical place where we find answers— You are not alone. I hear you. I see you.
Danuta Hinc was born and raised in Poland and came to the United States at the age of twenty-six. She graduated with an M.A. in Philology from the University of Gdańsk in 1991 when her dissertation titled, Historia Literatury Jarosława Marka Rymkiewicza, won the Polish National Competition for the best dissertation in the Humanities. She completed three years of postgraduate studies at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw under the mentorship of the distinguished Professor, Maria Janion. She later received an M.F.A. from Bennington College in 2016 where she was awarded the Barry Hannah Merit Scholarship in Fiction.
Her first novel, To Kill the Other, which imagines a life of a young boy who becomes a terrorist, was described by Midwest Book Review as “A fascinating and well written story, To Kill the Other is a highly recommended pick, not to be missed.” Hinc’s essays and short fiction have appeared most recently in the Literary Hub, Washingtonian Magazine, Popula, The Brick House, and Consequence Magazine among others.
She is a Principal Lecturer in the Department of English at University of Maryland where she teaches writing.