Charlotte Klein
Appearances
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Saving Graces
We didn't have a lock on our bathroom growing up, which meant that there were often three or four of us in there at once, two in the bath, one on the toilet, and my dad soaping his bristles at the sink. They say that the kitchen is the heart of the family home, but in my house it was the bathroom. As we got older, my sister Robin taught me how to wedge the dirty laundry basket behind the door.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Saving Graces
It took the two of us in fits of giggles to shift it, but it was no match for my family when they wanted in. Like the time when I was reading in the bath and my mum crept in with a sketchbook tucked under her arm and begged to use me as practice for her life drawing class. LAUGHTER Outraged, I said no, but she said that she was only going to draw my face.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Saving Graces
She promised faithfully she was only going to draw my face. When I glanced up from my book a chapter later, she was sketching with joyful abandon across the full double-page spread, and I realized I'd become an unwilling centerfold. Or the time when my first boyfriend, Griff, a flame-haired Welsh metalhead, came to stay for the first time.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Saving Graces
I tried to warn him of the dangers, and I told him to make splashing noises in the bath to signal that it was occupied. But despite his best splashing efforts, my dad appeared at the door, Winnie the Pooh style, a shirt on his top half and completely naked from the waist down.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Saving Graces
and nonchalantly went for a sleepy wee while Griff lay utterly horrified in the bath and tried to act like he was cool with it. The rest of the house was always fairly lawless and alive, so I don't know why we expected the bathroom to be sacred. And I always thought that I wanted more privacy and more boundaries when there was a time when those things unexpectedly and uninvitedly crept in.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Saving Graces
When in the summer before I turned 13, the house went quiet, and we lost my sister Robin in a car accident. Afraid to upset one another further, we gave each other privacy. We built those boundaries, and we locked invisible locks, and it didn't feel like home. I miss the madness that had once driven me crazy.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Saving Graces
We were all looking for our own ways to cope, and my mum had started swimming to try and find her happy place again. She came home, and she went for a wee, and I wandered, uninvited, into the bathroom, something which I hadn't done for a while.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Saving Graces
As she looked down, she found, tangled in her pubic hair, a purpley-pink, mysterious blob that looked like it should have been attached to an intimate part of her body, and now wasn't. And she held it up in shock. And a look of recognition passed between us, mother to daughter, daughter to mother.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Saving Graces
So she squeezed it, and it squished. And she held it up for a closer look. It smelt of strawberries. The pink mystery blob was, in fact, a piece of strawberry hubba-bubba bubblegum that had been chewed completely accidentally into anatomical perfection by its careless previous owner and found itself stuck to her as she sat on the bench at the swimming pool changing room.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Saving Graces
Sorry, I'm going to ruin that gum forever for anyone. We dissolved into bits of giggles reserved only for times of absolute relief. Not only for the lost and now found clitoris. But also the sounds of joy and silliness starting to return to our house again. It felt good to laugh.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Saving Graces
My teenage self behind me, I can see what we lacked in privacy we found in this beautiful naked closeness of what it means to be a family, forever bound by blood and bath water and bubble gum. I have a house and a family of my own now. Funnily enough, with that first flame-haired Welsh boyfriend, Griff, who didn't run for the hills as he ought to have done.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Saving Graces
A few years ago, as I went to close our bathroom door, the lock mechanism, which had been wobbly for a while, came off in my hand. As I held it in my fingers, I realized something terribly important had fallen off and decided to keep it that way. Thank you.