Chapter 39: The Wrong Order
I didn't care about anything else. In a single, desperate motion, I scrambled for an empty shower head, my hands fumbling with the unfamiliar brass tap. I twisted it, and with a hiss and a groan from the pipes, hot water rained down. It was bliss. A scalding, glorious torrent that felt like a baptism, washing away not just the dirt, but the very memory of the cold. I stood directly under the spray, letting the water sluice over me from head to toe, plastering my matted hair to my body. The water that ran off me and swirled around my feet was instantly grey, then black, a disgusting slurry swirling down the drain. It was the physical evidence of days spent in the gutter, a tide of filth I was finally leaving behind. A thick layer of grime coated my skin, and I had to scrub hard with my hands to get it off. As the hot water softened it, it came away in peeling sheets, like a snake shedding a dead layer of skin, revealing the pale, almost translucent flesh beneath. I scrubbed with a desperate, feverish intensity, washing myself once, then lathering the rough bar of carbolic soap and scrubbing again, working up a thick foam before rinsing. I repeated the entire process three times before I finally felt that my skin was my own again, that it could finally breathe.
And then I realized my mistake. The order was all wrong. My hair was still a filthy, tangled mess. In my old life, as a boy, washing was simple. A quick scrub from head to toe, a brief lather of the hair, and I was done. But now, I was a girl. A girl with hair that fell past my chest. Washing it, I was quickly discovering, was a far more complicated and laborious affair. I stared at the dripping, grimy strands, and for a moment, I had no idea what to do.
But necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. I wasn't entirely helpless. I took the wooden bucket I'd brought in, filled it with hot water from the shower, and knelt before it on the tiled floor. I plunged my head into the bucket, soaking my long hair and beginning the arduous process of scrubbing it with the bar of soap. God, I finally understood why girls took so long to bathe. This long hair was a nightmare. It was a tangled, heavy mess, and the rough bar of soap was a poor substitute for proper shampoo. My whole process had been backward. I should have washed my hair first, then my body. Now I was left shivering, my clean but wet body exposed to the air. Thankfully, the steam-filled room was warm enough. If I had been outside, this foolish mistake would have undoubtedly brought my fever roaring back to life.
After scrubbing my hair for the third time, the water I wrung from it finally ran clear, no longer a depressing shade of grey. I was about to go for a fourth round, just to be sure, when I looked up and noticed something. There was another mirror on the opposite wall of the bathing area, likely for the convenience of the patrons. And in it, I could see my own reflection. Not my face, but my back.
And then, my face flushed a hot, mortified red. I had been so focused on the task that I hadn't considered the posture: kneeling, bent over the bucket, my backside raised in the air. From behind... I was completely, humiliatingly exposed. The absurdity of it was staggering. A room full of naked women had failed to stir a single flicker of my old self's interest. But the sight of my own body, in this unintentionally suggestive pose, made my heart pound with a strange, foreign pulse. Was this me? Or was this body, this girl Parula, reacting on her own? What was I becoming? I shot to my feet, my movements jerky and panicked. Only then could I calm my racing heart and truly look at the stranger in the mirror.
Now that I was clean, it was like seeing a different person entirely. I never would have guessed that Parula was, beneath the layers of grime, so lovely. The dirt had been a mask, hiding her pale skin. Her hair, once a matted clump, was now revealed for what it was. Clean, her skin was as white as milk. And her hair… it was now glossy, smooth as silk. It was a strange, beautiful gradient, shifting from inky black at the roots to a shimmering gold at the tips. Free of filth, it was truly stunning, a crown of impossible beauty on a starving waif. A pity, then, that the malnutrition had taken its toll. The stark thinness of her frame, the way her bones jutted out like a famine victim's, detracted from her beauty. A body that was nothing but skin and bones held no real appeal. Parula’s body was still that of a child, not yet fully developed. So being slender, almost frail, wasn't a total disaster. But if she were to grow older without proper nourishment… that frailness would become a permanent, ugly mark on what could have been a true beauty.
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