Twit the Third

Monday 12 January 2009

One of us (who should probably stay unnamed, except that she lives with us and is 5 years old) was having a bath across the side gallery from my room's back door whilst I was doing homework at my table. The door was open-- we never really close or lock doors round here. I don't know any family that really should. The little one had not closed the bathroom door all the way and I could hear her in there, singing and playing with a menagerie of floating toys. She must have been pouring a bucket over them or something for there was a repetitive sound of water cascading, accompanied by that pert little voice, 'Allllll done! Allllll done!'

Jessy was in her room too, listening her iPod I guess (we've both had them for Christmas) because she didn't hear it first. The singing abruptly stopped. Water moved. There was splashing and then the sound of a worried groan. I waited and heard nothing better. 'Lisa?' I called, to carry my voice out the door and across the gallery. 'Are you all right?'

'Hello?' she called, anxiously.

I got up at once. 'What is it?'

'Janine!' she called, recognising who would come. 'Help!'

I swung the door in to the room and peered round at the bath behind it. The water had run out and little Lisa was sitting cross-legged in the bottom, bent over the drain as though she'd dropt something down there. 'What did you put down there?' I wondered, almost ready to smile as though this was all the trouble there was.

'My hand,' she said, her voice quivering with anxiety.

I smiled then. 'No, I mean what did you reach down there for?'

'Nothing!' she insisted. 'My hand is stuck.'

My eyes went wide; no smile now. 'Your hand is stuck?'

She nodded, her eyes teary, and demonstrated by tugging on her hand now. There was a very final jerk on her shoulder-- her hand was halfway down the drain and not coming loose. 'Don't move!' I said firmly.

'I can't,' she said.

'Don't. Don't do anything.' I bent over, got half my body in front of hers and took her little arm in my hand. Gently I twisted it. Lisa complained. I could not see a thing past her wrist and I certainly wasn't going to snap it off. 'Do you have anything in your hand? Are you holding anything?'

'No,' she said, her voice cracking now.

'All right, relax your hand. Take a deep breath and then let it all out.'

'What are you going to do?'

'I will help you. Take a deep breath and then let it all out. Let whole your body relax.'

She did, somewhat theatrically. Again I tried to dislodge her hand. It swivelled till she cried out and I would not go further.

'All right, we'll run cold water on it. Hand me that soap.'

So we tried that too, though the soapy water did not make it easier to grasp her. The problem was that the corner of her thumb was caught below the rim of the drain pipe-- her little fingers must have been past the 'x' inside the drain. I reached down past where she was stuck and with my fingers I could squeeze her hand a little narrower. By this time she was shivering from the cold water running and splashing everywhere.

'This isn't working,' I fretted-- not the best thing to do in front of a child. I lifted my head up and yelled round the door. 'JESSY!'

She came in ten seconds. 'What is it?'

'Go get Daddy. She's got her hand stuck in the drain.'

Lisa whined then. 'Are we going to have to cut my hand off?'

I shook my head, probably too seriously, and shut off the water. 'I think we'd sooner cut up the bath with a chain saw.'

'A chain saw!' she wailed, and began to cry.

Jessy ran back down the gallery, followed by Daddy and Mother. 'What's happened?' Mother worried.

'Mummy!' she cried. 'I'm stuck in here and Janine says we have to cut it with a chain saw!'

I made a face. Daddy winced and displaced me without a word, leaning all the way down in front of her as I had been. I swear he was performing telekinesis with his eyes down there. 'Sit still,' he said softly, and closed his whole hand round hers. He didn't even put any more soap on it. With ten seconds of gentle squeezing he had freed her.

Lisa wailed, now out of relief, and Mother scooped her up, loud, naked, wet, and shivering, and I wrapped a towel round her. Daddy held up Lisa's wrist to examine it a few moments and then looked at me. 'Chain saw?' he asked wryly. 'Really?'

I shook my head, feeling like an idiot. 'I didn't know how to help her.'

Then he put a hand on my shoulder. 'You called me,' he said, and then kissed my head and went out.

Standing on the potty seat whilst Mother dried her, Lisa looked over at me. 'Thank you,' she said.

'Thank Daddy. He got you out.'

'Thank you, Daddy,' she called, that little voice surprisingly shrill for someone so small.

I kissed her head too. 'Try not to do anything like that again.'

Mother laughed. I suppose we all ought to have been laughing by then but some of us were still pretty disturbed by the whole notion. Bring chain saws into the discussion and it really seems serious. 'I'm pretty sure that of all the things you can think of to tell children not to do,' Mother said, 'sticking your hand down the drain isn't very high on the list.'

'Or licking a light bulb,' I said, recalling a true story someone had told me once.

'Or putting a wet rabbit in the dryer,' Mother said. I'd heard that story before too.

Lisa giggled at both of those and we all contributed a few more stupid examples, most of which I am sure we all made up. Not so cold now, Lisa ran naked round to her room and before Mother and I had stepped out of the bathroom she dashed back down the gallery to Jessy's room where Jessy was sitting back in her bed against the pillows with a book in her lap and her iPod going again. Mother chastised her for risking a cold and I only shook my head. The stamina of a little kid never ceases to amaze me.

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